Help me find a hypocrite!

His homes use non-carbon electricity, and he buys carbon offset credits when he travels. (And doesn't it produce less atmospheric carbon for 200 people to fly in one plane than for 200 people to drive in 200 cars?)I'm not saying that Gore's carbon footprint is precisely zero, but the attempts by conservatives to portray him as some kind of free-wheeling carbon hypocrite aren't based on the facts. At any rate, it's the manufacturing/industry sectors that produce the most carbon, not the actions of private individuals.

If I can't have meat, who would want to? It's just be prolonging the agony. You're much more likely to be exposed to coliform bacteria and food-borne illnesses from plants than from meats. USDA regulations and inspections keep meat products relatively safe, and you have to cook meat to eat it; but there's not really the same inspection and regulation proceedures for produce eaten raw (and probably fertilized with animal manure.)

Yeah, exactly. Not to mention - it takes some pretty hefty chemical engineering to get tofu to taste like meat. At that point you're well beyond bucolic scenes of coolie-hatted soy farmers preparing tofu with ancient Asian secrets, and more into "better living through chemistry" territory.So as a salve for a conscience wrestling with the guilt of modern factory farming, it's disingenuous. Meat-flavored tofu isn't any less a product of the factory than "regular" meats, and probably a lot worse for the environment in terms of processing energy and chemical by-products than the organic, small-farm meats you referred to a few posts back.Also - yes on the chewy tofu. I've never minded the taste, but its flimsy texture is something I find unappetizing. I have the same problem with eggs and jello.Sorry, I guess food isn't on-topic. But I guess my vote for "left-wing hypocrites" would be those people who make vegetarianism a moral, holier-than-thou crusade.

Plants use oxygen, too, incidentally. They have mitochondria just like us, so they have a respiratory metabolism just like us. For the most part, most plants produce more oxygen gas than their metabolism requires. We breath the excess.Here's the thing. The world's plants aren't sitting around starving for CO2. It's not the limiting factor on their growth. It's usually water and soil nutrients (hence you see farmers irrigating and fertilizing their fields, and never gassing them with CO2.)There was already far more CO2 than the Earth's green life needed for photosynthesis. With the advent of human industrialization there was even more of an excess. Well, no, not exactly. It's not oxygen that you're metabolizing; you're metabolizing sugars via oxygen, and producing CO2 as a result of that. Plants, in turn, produce sugars from soil carbon and water using the energy of the sun.Look, you're ordering pizzas for your Dungeons and Dragons group. If you have 5 people and 10 pizzas, you already have too much pizza. If you order twice that, people don't suddenly get hungrier - the excess pizza will just continue to accrue. That's the issue here with CO2 - excess piled upon excess. The capacity of plants to absorb CO2 gas is limited by other factors.
See message 102Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner etc.