(Posted by John Goetz)
Saturday, August 30, 2008 by: David Gutierrez
The weight and consumption habits of the overweight and obese are worsening the pace of global warming, said two researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in a letter to the medical journal Lancet.
It takes more fuel to transport people who are obese and therefore heavier, Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote. In addition, heavier people do not just tend to eat more food: they actually require it. The researchers calculated that it takes an obese person 1,680 calories per day just to maintain their body functioning and another 1,280 to sustain their daily activities. This is 18 percent higher than the caloric intake required for a person with a normal body mass index (BMI).
BMI is a measure of weight relative to height that is used to calculate healthy body weight. A BMI of 18 to 25 is considered normal, while a BMI above 25 is considered overweight and one of 30 or more obese.
But according to Edwards and Roberts, 40 percent of the global population has a BMI in the neighborhood of 30 or more.
“We are all becoming heavier and it is a global responsibility,” Edwards said. “Obesity is a key part of the big picture.”
The production and transportation of food is a major source of greenhouse gases, the researchers noted, with agriculture responsible for a whopping 20 percent of global emissions. They also faulted the overweight for contributing to global food shortages.
“Promotion of a normal distribution of BMI would reduce the global demand for, and thus the price of, food,” the researchers wrote.
Tim Church of Louisiana State University questioned Edwards and Roberts’ focus on obesity, noting that 25 percent of the food produced in the United States is thrown away.
“We throw away far more food than the extra 460 calories per day [that Edwards and Roberts] point out,” Church said. “In other words, most of our food overproduction is due to waste, not overeating.”
Sources for this story include: www.reuters.com, telegraph.co.uk.
So Al Gore is responsible for global warming after all (the picture of Al Gore was not part of the original article).
As I’ve said before, this is nothing more than a modern McCarthyism.
Anthony, I know this is off topic, but I thought I’d point it out. The graph for the arctic sea ice extent from NSIDC now shows a slight refreezing of arctic ice.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
I guess the “New record low” and “Ice Free North Pole” are just a bunch of hot air now.
Tom Shields: Can I get in on that? My BMI is 19, body fat 6%. (and no, I’m not Michael Phelps’ uncle…)
Climate Change Modelling predicted the cold weather Down Under? After the fact, no doubt. What did those experts predict before this winter? How do they propose to prevent more violent weather? (OK, I know, big government grants to study the problem.)
In my limited experience, large folks tend to be happier. One friend weighs about three times as much as me, and is about the nicest person I know. Wants to lose weight, but not guilty or obsessed about it. If I could get her to give up smoking… (that has to cause global warming)
Greg Smith (17:40:54) :
“We can expect more extremes in climate,” Mr Toni said.
He said climate records had tumbled over the past year.
Climate records? Sounds more like weather records. Oh, I forget, they’re now
climate event records per the American Meteorological Society.
Fat people cause global warming…
Will Al Gore apologize for the damage he’s done? (See? No mention of Sarah Palin… Oh, drat!) Technorati tags: global warming, climate change, obesity, Al Gore, junk science, Lancet…
What the [snip]is wrong with these people. It’s bad enough they can’t see anything in science, but blaming obese people for “Global Warming” that”s just [snip] stupid.
I hate politicians >_<
REPLY: Please no profabity in comments.
I heard a report about all the Big Mac and Twinkie wrappers Al Gore leaves for the flight crew to clean up after he gets off the private jet.
Real Science Here…yeah.
Poor Al. Let’s go after the real food culprit, Big Foot, who eats at least twice as much per day as Algore. And everybody should wise up and realize that AGW really stands for alien global warming, a nefarious plot hatched by Batboy and Elvis who are ensconced aboard the UFO Mothership and beaming 6th-dimensional rays down on us.
wow, I don’t really know what to say to this. It kind of made me laugh because it is just so ridiculous. I want to know what they say next.
I’m keeping well away from this one.
Here comes the fat tax.
[…] Cooling Cloud Seeding to Avert Catastrophic Global Warming By John Latham Planetwork via M White on Watts Up With That? […]
I’m a little surprised that no one has so far tried to link & blame excess CO2 emissions on the military and its industrial complex. USA has the biggest and most expensive force in the world. That’s gotta be a huge CO2 saving right there. Perhaps they could start with charging the Navy and Air Force the appropriate carbon credits, leading to eventual full disarmament. Basically war is no longer viable; you may stop a genocide but the planet has to be our main concern. I don’t understand why they would rather pick on obese (usually old) people, than dare attack the real enemies. Or do even greenies feel that this would really be jumping the shark? Maybe they’d rather feel USA kept an army to protect them, than save the planet. But if it really is about planetary survival, then stopping war (think of all the arming and rebuilding that has to happen after a war) is surely the first concern? No? Would the numbers support this?
Trouble is when society starts “officially” outcasting fat people and gets away where is the next step. Fat people suffer enough problems, jokes , discrimination etc. Once we have marginalised these people who is next? People who dont use cycles instead of their cars?
Its all very well for academic people, from comfortable backgrounds to throw “Stones” at Fat people, but many overweight people come from poor backgrounds, with bad education and did not from the outset have the advantages of many of the academics.
Whose next SMokers, drinkers, people who use planes, Motor Racing, Boating, gap year students travelling abroad? — all unecessary emitters of carbon dioxide
What rubbish. A 40% figure suggests to me that similarly large numbers in China, India, Africa, S. America and Russia are obese… I just don’t believe it.
This dispatch increases the rubbish quotient emitted yesteday – the Daily Mail had the Arctic an island for the first time in history !
Well, actually it’s not as ridiculous as you might think.
Assuming AGW IS real it is absolutely correct obese people would contribute more to it; as it says in the article – more food, transport etc. Although 40% global population obese is stupid. MAYBE in the U.S., but even in other developed nations, certainly Britain, there’s no way there’s 40% obese people, and if you include Africa… just no.
I think that photo of Gore has been manipulated.
Photos can be stretched or compressed vertically or horizontally with a computer, as here seems to be the case. Can you provide the source of this photo, Anthony?
Not Anthony, concerning the source of the photo, but rather John Goetz.
Now here’s a story:
Prof. Rahmstorfs seal level speculations refuted by GKS Professor von Storch!
From:
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/?WCMSGroup_4_3=6&WCMSGroup_6_3=1247&WCMSArticle_3_1247=407
Slightly shortened text IN ENGLISH:
In a press release dated 7 August 2008, the German GKSS claimed that there has been NO direct link between global air temperatures and sea level changes over the last 1000 years. In January 2007, Stefan Rahmstorf announced in an article published in Science, based on the IPCC temperature increase hypothesis, that a spectacular sea level rise of 50 to 140 cm could occur by the year 2100. Obviously the projected IPCC increase of 14 to 43 cm was not spectacular enough, which thus lead to his own “hasty claim” (von Storch) being made public. This type of artificial alarmism is typical for the species of “political scientists” whom our politicians finance to be advisors.
Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner (Stockholm), the Chairman of the international Commission on Sea-Level Changes and Coastal Evolution from 1999 to 2003, projects a sea level increase of 10 cm by the year 2100 (+/- 10 cm uncertainty).
Sea level rise is the preferred doomsday scenario of the IPCC climate alarmists. This happens to be one of the most complex issues as sea level deviates in various regions -20 to +25 cm from the theoretically calculated mean and is constantly changing (according to the German GFZ Research Center in Potsdam). This is the reason values measured by satelites like Topex and Jason range from 2.4 to 3.2 mm/year, while locally in-situ measured sea levels yield only 1.5 to 2 mm/year, or 15 to 20 cm in 100 years. This corresponds to a sea level increase of the previous 100 years.
The GKSS study shows no constant temperauture sensitivity. Rather it shows highly variable temperature sensitivity, which fluctuated over the last 1000 years between -1 and + 2 mm per degree Celsius annually.
(Published in “Ocean Dynamics”, doi.10.1007/s10236-008-0142-9)
Dr.D.E. Koelle
Praise The Lord, Yep down on your knees people, Putin ain’t as stupid as he acts, if Russia got the AGW fever, HE, (as in The Democratic Russian Federation ) would nuke China and India, and the heat resulting from this clean-up would melt the little North Pole Island,
( I am one who thinks that all the Greens (as in Greenies ) should be sent home ! Greenland needs you !
[…] Obese People to Blame for Accelerating Global Warming? « Watts Up With That? Dieser Eintrag wurde von Daniel Fallenstein am Di, 2. Sep 2008 um 12:44 geschrieben, abgelegt unter Kurz notiert und getagged verlinkt. Setze ein Lesezeichen zum Permalink. Verfolge alle Kommentare zu diesem Eintrag mit dem RSS-Feed dafür. Kommentiere oder hinterlasse ein Trackback: Trackback URL. « Restanarchie […]
Johnny B: “I think that most fat people feel bad about their weight, and certainly have to suffer the physical discomfort and social embarassment of being fat.”
I agree that we should be sensitive about fat people, given their often visible discomfort about their appearance. School-yard taunts such as ‘lard-arse’, ‘blubber-guts’ and ‘Michael Moore’ can be very hurtful, and not only to the younger chubby cheeks but also to the older porker.
My practice on these occasions is to use strictly denotative descriptors such as ‘very large person’, and I find that fatties are often pleasantly surprised and even a little flattered by such neutral and respectful terms.
That said, the hard question must be asked: are very large people pulling their weight in society? Regrettably, I have to say no. There is a good argument that our more solid citizens are free-riding off the svelte and slender, and that this burden is a sizeable one. For example, very large people create disproportionate wear and tear on the public sidewalks, even as their vast bulk prevents the free and unfettered movement of their fellow citizens.
However, while the very large person’s hefty footprint – carbon or otherwise – is a substantial issue, I don’t believe that heavy-handed government regulations or onerous taxation is the answer. I am sure that, given sufficiently generous inducements, there would be ample opportunity for very large people to tackle the weighty issues that confront them every day as a matter of course, or rather, many courses.
My empathy can only carry so much baggage, though. It’s undeniable that the full-bodied are a gross negative externality, although this aspect is probably beyond the purview of government. The only recourse of the normal majority in this case is to grin and bear it.
[…] So Al Gore is responsible for global warming after all Obese People to Blame for Accelerating Global Warming? « Watts Up With That? Dieser Eintrag wurde von Daniel Fallenstein am Di, 2. Sep 2008 um 12:44 geschrieben, abgelegt […]
It takes more fuel to transport people who are obese and therefore heavier, Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote. In addition, heavier people do not just tend to eat more food: they actually require it. The researchers calculated that it takes an obese person 1,680 calories per day just to maintain their body functioning and another 1,280 to sustain their daily activities. This is 18 percent higher than the caloric intake required for a person with a normal body mass index (BMI).