Fat people contributing to climate change, says UK’s green guru
June 4th, 2009 - 4:39 pm ICT by ANI ( 1 comment )London, June 4 (ANI): Fat people are a threat to the planet as they are contributing to climate change, believes Sir Jonathan Porritt, the Government’s chief green adviser.
In a lecture to representatives of the food industry, Sir Jonathan, Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, said, “fat is a climate change issue”, reports The Telegraph.
The ex-Green Party politician, who earlier caused controversy by suggesting that people should not have more than two kids to prevent over-population, pinpointed that overweight people eat more protein-rich food such as beef or lamb.
Such intake is responsible for giving rise to greenhouse gases because of the toxic methane livestock emits.
He also said obese people are more likely to use cars rather than walk or cycle, therefore producing more carbon emissions.
“The World Health Organisation recently published some data showing that each overweight person causes an additional one tonne of CO2 to be emitted every year,” he said.
“With one billion people judged to be overweight around the world - of whom at least 300 million are obese - that’s an additional one billion tonnes,” he added. (ANI)
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Tags: adviser, carbon emissions, climate change issue, co2, food industry, green party, greenhouse gases, jonathan porritt, lamb, livestock, methane, one billion, one tonne, overweight person, politician, protein rich food, s green, sir jonathan, sustainable development commission, world health organisation
June 5th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
There are only four things wrong with Porrit’s assessment of this ‘problem’.
1. As only carbohydrates are stored as body fat, and dietary fats and proteins are slimming, and as carbs are derived entirely from plant foods, obese people are those who eat more plant foods, not meats.
2. An atmospheric chemical analysis of the atmosphere published in Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 723–749, 2007, shows no methane whatsoever in the atmosphere.
3. Although methane is purported to be between 70 times as effective or less effective than carbon dioxide as a climate change gas, depending on which ‘authority’ you reference, there is no evidence that it has any effect on the climate whatsoever.
4. All plant life, upon which all animals, including us, ultimately rely for food, is wholly dependent on a good supply of CO2. Atmospheric CO2 is less than 0.04% of the atmosphere. As such it has a minimal effect on the climate, but it does have a dramatic effect on plant growth. CO2 is currently too low. We should be looking to increase it!
One of the major problems with this topic is that it is based entirely on emotion rather than on science, and led by people whio appear to know nothing of the science. Which is why so many thousands of real scientists oppose the idea of man-made global warming.