(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).
Love the humour – keep up the good work Anthony et al. At least the “deniers” side of the argument can claim a sense of humour.
I’m ashamed of myself for not mentioning in my first post that this is a problem I can sink my teeth into.
The title, “Obese People to Blame for Accelerating Global Warming?,” and the content “40 percent of the global population has a BMI in the neighborhood of 30 or more” suggests that getting rid of “very big people” will reduce AAGW. (Accelerated Anthropogenic Global Warming). It may well be that getting rid of the other 60% will offer a bigger reduction. Of course, we could be more proactive, and do away with all the breeders, as I like to point out that having children is the most longterm polluting thing most people can do in their entire lives.
Given that it’s tough to get a US politician to talk about saving social security, let alone fixing it, I suspect we’re safe for now.
If fat people help cause global warming, then this is proof that the MWP actually happened, just look at all those rich people who were very large. Or pehaps humans are just fat by nature and global cooling causes thin people due to less food production and the body needing to burn more calories to keep warm. Another chicken or the egg dilema.
OT here, but interesting:
Evidence for Correlations Between Nuclear Decay Rates and Earth-Sun Distance
Link: <a href=”http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0808/0808.3283v1.pdf”
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.
I just can’t wait for the day the Progressives’ National Healthcare System mandates a “healthy” BMI under the guise of its magical “preventive medicine” panacea, which will also “save the Planet”. Serving controllist Utopian fantasies will finally make my life meaningful. No price will be too big to pay, including looking like I have cancer – or maybe Tapeworms – or, better yet, paying all my money to Government in healthtax fines, which will also “help the poor” as well as ensure that I am immune from all further charges of “racism”. Amen.
Pierre Gosselin (02:53:37) :
“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.”
I thought exactly the same thing, Mr Gore certainly looks considerably thinner than in other recent pictures I have seen.
Incidentally, it’s not just AGWers who are attacking me and fellow porkers:
http://thefatbigot.blogspot.com/2008/08/blubber-and-noseprods.html
What about rich people? They certainly contribute way more GHG’s than the poor, or middle class. Their wallets need to be slimmed down immediately, and probably those of the middle class as well. If only there was some way to do that.
“For a politician of any party to tell me that I must change my behaviour because it will be better for me is for him to prove himself unfit for election to anything… I can tell them they will gain more friends by announcing that they will leave people alone to live their lives as they see fit.”- From Fatbigot’s Blog
Amen
I think an important aspect that has been overlooked in this discussion so far is carbon sequestration by the gravitationally challenged. When one also considers the sequestration of H2O, thus reducing the most powerful GHG, the oversight is even more important.
While the obesity problem is only being discussed on this forum, the City of Los Angeles is actually taking corrective action. The construction of new fast-food outlets in south LA are restricted because of the bad eating habits and obesity of the citizens of that area. Positive action I say. When interviewed about their eating habits, some of the citizens remarked that there were no “good” restaurants available. A wag’s response was that all of the “good” restaurants were burned during the riots and had not been rebuilt, the former owners finding it more profitable to locate elsewhere. There was no mention of mention of food stores such as Safeway. Los Angeles, a pro-active city. To insure restaurant parity, the city of Los Angeles should grant a permit to, say, build a restaurant in Beverly Hills only if a similar restaurant was built in south LA.
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.
Your thesis impies that only “thin” people are productive? Are there no productive portly people? That would seem to be a pretty thin arguement to me.
As for the heavier set putting more wear and tear on the sidewalks of the world, consider that the concrete under their feet usually has a rating of somewhere between 2500 and 3500 psi. A person who weighs in at 220 lbs, standing 5 foot 6 inches with a size 10 shoe exerts no more downward pressure than a person who stands 6 foot 3 inches and weighs 220 lbs. One is considered obese, the other is considered fit. Do “fit” people tred more lightly on our footpaths? Even a person who weighed in at 350 lbs with an average size shoe of say, size 9, would only exert a downward pressure of about 13 lbs/sq inch, even if you considered a pressure of 350 lbs/sq inch when the heal strikes, its way below the concrete’s pressure rating. Joggers exert far more impact than that. Further, portly people pose no more impediment to the flow of pedestrian traffic than a parent pushing a stroller.
Health is not the same as fitness or thinness. There are many portly people who are healthier than their more svelt counterparts. Just as there are many thin freeloaders out there living off the travails of the portly. Worth is not inversely proportional to weight.
Skinny people are evil.
So are fatties.
And mesomorphs.
Lesson learned: these type of articles are trash.
If AGW is caused by obese people, should we eat them?
Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
Anyone with only a small amount of life experience realizes that most things that happen, bring as much good as they do bad.
There are numerous articles that blame bad things on the warming of the last century. Has anyone compiled a list of all the good things that accompany warming?
Increased Wealth
Decreased Poverty
Decreased Hunger
Increased Lifespans
There must be thousands, this is a start…
Uh Huh.
Politically correct is certainly reason enough to put categories in concentration camps.
Fat people, ugly people, short people, beef eaters, honey lovers, you name it.
Show me a pot belly mud flipper minnow cave fish disappearing,
and we can name you the “guilty” right quick.
Crank up those camps, fire up the ovens- the psychos have grabbed the reins.
Whoa there! We are carbon-based life forms. Therefore, the obese are not causing global warming – they’re doing their bit of carbon sequestration!
(BTW, it was reported some time ago that in an address before the UN AlGore stated that cigarette smoking is one of the leading causes of global warming)
Pops,
Hold on.
If the political correctness puts cigarette smokers in camps,
war starts.
Step on another man’s vice, you get a lecture.
Step on my vice, you get a fight.
Regarding photo manipulation, that is possible, but it could also be due to someone not being careful when capturing images from a TV and converting to computer images, as the pixel ratios are not the same. The “stretching” of the image looks like that may be what happened here.
As for where did I get the image, just enter “fat al gore” into Google image search and see what pops up. That is how I found it.
John I looked at the image, and it is 720×480 pixel resolution, which is CCIR-601 TV format, used in many TV news cameras. for a ratio of 1.5 to 1 When fit to the TV screen, it will automatically be compressed horizontally to 4:3 aspect , which will give a ratio of about 1.333 to 1, so yes, what we see is a distortion based on the recording source.
If a digital photo camera had been used, the distortion would not be present. but 720×480 is one of those magic numbers for TV that has to do with the 3.579545 mHz color subcarrier frequency in NTSC color televison.
If he had been recorded in Europe, he would have been at 720×576 for PAL, and would not have looked so “wide”.
Seeing that impressive visage of Lord Gore reminds me how fortunate he is that the “Al Gore Enrichment Act” (the phrase I coined to describe the late Warner-Lieberman Act) died in the Senate. Were he to become any more well off, he’d likely explode.
Marshall: Be not afraid nor intimidated. Intelligence is not, sadly, competence.
While it correlates with being able to do certain kinds of tricks well (puzzles, word games) it does not correlate well with happiness and does not assure success. (I can say this because I’m one of those folks who meets Mensa acceptance requirements). I’ve also noticed that it seems to me to correlate with an increased ability for self deception and gullibility in many. In the tech field this is often called “believing your own bull” or “sucking your own exhaust”.
So please, trust your instincts and your grounding in common sense. Trust your own ability to see things through to an acceptable end. And trust your ability to say “The emperor seems a bit light on cloths today”. We need people like you.
Per the BMI et.al. It is very broken. In particular, it is racist. North Europeans have several cold adapted traits. Compared to Africans, the N.E. type have shorter legs (I’m one of them) and longer bodies. Mass vs Height is a bogus ratio when one race has legs for 2/3 of their body and the other for 1/3 !!
There are other problems with it as well. If you are not in a dunk tank measuring fat directly, you have little clue.
Per the heavy yearning to be lighter: I suspect (though have no proof) that trans fat in the diet gums up the fat metabolism leading to fat gain. Since I’ve gone to a strict no-trans fat diet, I’m loosing body fat. Before that I had trouble. Now it’s just going away (slowly) without effort. We’ll see where the society at large ends up as transfat is removed.
There are so many ways a person can end up heavy that have nothing to do with willpower or with self control that any attempt to mandate a specific body form ought to be met with immediate lawsuits. Older people are heavier than younger (age discrimination), some racial groups are heavier than others (compare a Samoan with a Japanese) so it’s racist, some folks have medical issues (low thyroxin) medical / handicapped discrimination. etc.
We will not explore all the crap stuck in our food supply that might be causing weight gain (other than to mention that fructose is directly metabolized in the liver to fat… so guess where all that high fructose corn syrup in darned near everything goes? Any wonder U.S. food eaters are fatter than those in other countries without a corn fetish?)
This AGW causes everything mantra will die soon. The All Gore Cold Period is coming and that will eventually be the end of it.
Thank you E.M. Smith for the encouragement and very kind words. I will remember and live by the message in the top of your response. Thank you again for being so kind and thoughtful.
Sincerely,
Marshall
I don’t have any faith in Lancet. This is the Lancet editor who published a phony study about Iraqi deaths just before the 2004 election: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csxvUzpIQ18
Al Gore is a man of many 1st-s.
Have you seen those pictures of him lately. He’s kind of packing on the pounds .. he’s got to be at least 17 stone.
Maybe .. just maybe .. Al Gore is pregnant. Perhaps inpregnated by “Bear-Man-Pig.”
I have no proof. But since when has that mattered to any political pregnancy discussion.