Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Would you eat insects to save the planet? Apparently the answer is yes – you just need to be persuaded the right way.
Would you eat insects to save the planet from global warming?
Jessica Brown
Mon 15 Oct 2018 19.10 AEDTMore people would give up meat for edible bugs if they believed they were tasty and trendy
The thought of rising sea levels and more intense heatwaves are enough to keep you up at night. But while we all know the situation is getting more serious, most of us are preoccupied with work, doctor’s appointments and paying bills – and these immediate, visceral worries win every time.
…
Edible insects have been hailed as a solution to both global food shortages and reducing emissions from animal agriculture, but despite the industry’s best efforts, our response when faced with a cockroach is disgust. Even in London edible insects are seen as nothing more than a gimmick, and there are only a handful of restaurants serving them up.
But new research from Switzerland and Germany may have found out how to persuade people to eat insects – and it could have a huge impact on lowering human-led carbon emissions.
Up until now, retailers and restaurants have marketed edible insects as a more sustainable option and a healthy source of protein. But the researchers explain the problem with getting people to switch to environmentally friendly behaviour is that it often requires foregoing immediate pleasure for distant benefits, and edible insects have been wrongly framed in this way.
Before the 180 participants in the study were offered a chocolate truffle filled with mealworms, half of the group were given a flyer saying that eating insects was good for them and the environment, while the other half were told the insects were either delicious or trendy to eat.
About 62% of those given health or environmental incentives chose to eat the truffle, compared with 76% who ate the truffle after being told it would taste good or make them trendy. And the latter group rated the truffle as tastier.
The researchers concluded that we need to switch the message about saving the planet from altruism to pleasure. They back up their argument with previous studies showing that attitudes based on emotions are more malleable than those grounded in rational claims.
…
You see they’re not only going to try to persuade you, they’re going to persuade your kids and grandkids, bombard them with messages about [insert empty headed pop star] eating healthy insect snacks to stay thin and get lots of attention from the Paparazzi.
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I am looking forward to the UN restaurant / cafeteria switching to an all Insect Protein Menu to lead the way.
They should also be served special in-flight insect meals to lighten their conscience while they fly around emitting carbon dioxide.
While they are at it, they can get rid of all carbonated beverages, including champagne.
Walt D
Hard to believe but there was a shortage of CO2 in Britain this summer; commercial CO2 for the canned drinks industry is a by-product of steam reforming plants. The plants, producing synthesis gas, were down for maintenance but not ‘synchronised’. It was reported by the BBC et al as a major commercial blunder/fiasco but not a word was uttered about global warming and climate stuff. I found this extraordinary that apparently we can’t get enough of it (CO2 that is) except when a new IPCC report comes out advocating everything from geo-engineering to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere to stopping cows from farting and for the Germans and Swiss to eat pickled insect sandwiches. Stroll on!
Instead of champagne they should drink beetle juice.
beetle juice
Beetle Juice.
Ah beetle juice. Anyone who has raised backyard chickens knows what chickens love. ………. beetle juice, just another name for chicken soup. That’s about as far as I will go consuming insects.
If only saying “Beetlejuice” 3 times would rid of of this madness.
Betelgeuse, you cannot be Sirius 😀
CAGWarmista’s brains have turned to beetle juice after being eaten by insects and excreted out.
Dung beetles, that’s the solution.
They eat your poop, you eat them.
An endless cycle.
But it’s not CO2 in champers. Its dust.
I am very surprised that the journalists of the Guardian and other virtue promoting publications haven’t promoted the “Cat and Rat” farming system as a sustainable system of farming.
There is an intitial cost to starting a “Cat and Rat” farming system but once the system is firmly established and operating there is no further costs except some maintenance of the farm infrastructure.
To begin a” Cat and Rat” farmng system, you first round up all the stray cats you can lay hands on and cage them up ina secure cage.
This beecomes your cat breedsing stock.
You also round up all the rats you can lay hands on and likewise cage them in a separate enclosure.
This then becomes your Rat breeding stock.
The simple Cat and Rat farming system works thus;
You will have to feed the rats for an initial period but after getting those cats nice and sleek and fat on the rat diet and they begin breeding at the usual feral cat rate with lots of kittens, you catch the surplus cats, kill them and skin them for their sleek furred skins and then throw the cat carcases back over the fence into the rat cage to feed the rats.
The Rats on a high protein Cat flesh diet then reproduce in large numbers as rats do so that you have an endless surplus supply of rats for the cats to dine on.
The Cats also being on a high protein Rat flesh diet also breed rapidly and so you have an abundance of Cat carcases as rat feed to maintain a fully intergrated Cat and Rat farming system where both lots of animals are well catered for with a high protein diet.
For your own income you just sell all those sleek cat skins you have removed from those surplus cats for a lucrative figure and you continue farming comfortably forever afterwards.
Considering the very low resources required and demanded by this system of Cat and Rat farming, I am quite surprised that the journalists at the level of the Guardian’s undoubted leading role in promoting sustainability and the essential mitigation of the use of Earth’s very limited resources haven’t promoted this Cat and Rat Farming system.
absurd, I have worked on farms with cattle and I have worked raising insects and small creatures in labs for non-human consumption and the amount of labor, resources, time energy and effort for X amount of mass is vastly less for a cow. I couldn’t even begin to work out how much so..
However go check the prices for mealworms for animal consumption – My guess is the price fairly reflects the labor and costs involved – a rather nice steak of the same mass comes in substantially cheaper.
Another consideration I’d like to toss out for these moralizing do-gooders is the ethical question – is it better to take 1 life or 20,000,000 lives to provide the same amount of food to feed x number of people? For all the huffing about saving life on Earth one would presume this would come up somewhere in their mental deliberations.
Environmentalist do not give a stuff about life. They are perfectly prepared to change from safe non flammable freezer coolants to ones that have caused fires killing hundreds of people for the supposed good of the planet. The most spectacular of these fires was the Grenfell tower one but it still killed far less than the unpublicised many smaller ones.
Now if what I hear is correct they are preparing to develop plastic eating bugs which are almost certain to mutate to eating the plastic insulators ending the electrical era and containment seals that keep the samples of the killers like smallpox contained.
This to reduce a non existent risk from global warming if the plastic was burnt instead.
Beat me to it Karlos51!
The dumb it down approach to climate alarmism where the devout accept any and all claims so long as they’re made by the ‘proper’ sources and approved by the climate funds addicted.
One of these claims is that eating insects is better than eating animals.
Why bother with adding insects as side dishes or appetizers? Just demand that everyone immediately cease eating meat.
Why bother with all of that folderol doing proper science through properly designed experiments run by unbiased researchers? It is so much more convenient accepting pretend science run by a true believer and already vegan?
Then they run a simple very limited and subject to excessive bias poll, where they come with an alleged difference that supports their claims, sort of, maybe, just barely, perhaps not at all.
No control groups.
No testing without first biasing the subjects.
Of course that miniscule sample size absolutely represents every man woman and child around the world… Riiigghht.
Plus, you have to love that “About 62%”. About!?
Rounded up?
Rounded down?
How much is it rounded?
I’ll lay odd the 72% is also rounded. Only, I can guess the direction.
It is still all nonsense and personal opinions.
So looking at the details:
60 were in the “utilitarian” group — eat it for the environment. Presumably 37 of those partook.
120 were in the “hedonistic” group — eat it because it tastes good. Presumably 86 of those partook.
So the appeal to taste, cutting the second group in half, resulted in an extra six people trying the insect-laced truffles. But a majority was already willing to try for the environment, so how much did it change. Further, they are just *trying* insect by eating something that does not have any visible insect parts — none of the participants are being asked to swear off meat and embrace an insect-eating lifestyle. As a “solution” to the alleged problem of eating meat this fails to impress.
From the linked paper, I can’t even find out whether those bold enough to try the truffles actually thought it tasted good — the claimed “tastier” doesn’t mean they rated it as *tasty*, and if I’m reading the paper correctly they don’t think the effect is even significant after adjusting for pre-taste expectations.
It’s potentially interesting research, it just has squat to do with “saving the planet”.
Look at the destruction they are willing to do with these wind turbines to save the very things they claim to be trying to save.
Maybe there is a grant from the UN to open such a restaurant. Of course be sure to negotiate monthly subsidies to make up for not having any customers or income. But if they want to keep up the appearance that they are practicing what they preach, it could work out.
I will be more than happy to send these twits all the garden slugs and parasitic worms and hornets and wasps that I can corral.
Just give the the address, and step aside. They’ll be sorry they ever brought up this subject.
From now on my first question of warmist minions will be:
“So, are you eating insects to save the planet? NO? Then you have NO STREET CRED!”
Chow down on Bugs and Worms, you phony green hypocrites! JUST DO IT!
BTW, several kinds of bugs are sold for human consumption in Asian food markets. Yum! 🙂
They can start in the cafeteria at Google.
I wonder how many of the Googloonies will eat it?
👌
I’d like to see them eating bugs at The Guardian. Making sure they’re fair-trade, gluten-free and non-GMO, of course, though they’d still be capable of offending the vegans . . .
Does anyone take that paper seriously anymore? Most of their headlines read like they should be at the supermarket checkout next to the one that says “Elvis and Jim Morrison caught playing chess on Mars!”
This is so stupid!
In spite of all the other things needed to get people to eat bugs, such as which ones and how to prepare them, someone has forgotten to take into account that in order to supply enough protein, it will take a bit more than people running around with butterfly nets.
In other words, it will be necessary to farm the desired insects, which requires that feed for these creatures must be found from somewhere, and insects have plenty of waste which will need to be dealt with, and I wonder what a large insect farm will look like? A lot of permanent wire netting I would suspect, and what about the distribution of the product? Distribution would need to be similar to todays methods!
And is someone going to tell me that insects do not exhale CO2, no doubt in the same proportion of the protein they produce.
So what idiot though this was a good idea?
Well there might be enough insects to feed the UN and their staff. In fact they will no doubt lead by example. Free of charge I hope..
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Beware the fly-by-night operators!
Actually – Termites are apparently the largest source of CO2 among living organisms. So farming insects would generate CO2…on an industrial(-farming) scale.
https://www.iceagenow.info/termites-produce-co2-year-living-combined/
I can imagine the restaurant staff asking the diners: “Do you want flies with your lice?”
And the diners complementing the chef: “This is the tastiest grub I’ve had in a long time.
They eat insects in North Korea. Fact. To supplement the practically non-existent diet. The worms emerge at the other end. Ask the doctors in Seoul treating refugees. That’s the green way for you: living in filth and eating it, as you are only an intermediary. Prepare to die young.
They need to analyze the energy and resource costs of growing a pound or kilogram of animal protein, either as animals or insects. They would probably be surprised that there is a very similar investment between the two.
Think about bananas. Smaller bananas have less edible content than larger bananas, the smaller having a higher peel to overall weight ratio. The same may be true of insects with their chitinous (polysaccharide, polymer sugar) exoskeleton, long skinny legs, ephemeral wings, and such. The protein content per pound will vary considerably and likely less than real meat, once the water weight is considered. Then, there is the question of how well humans digest chitin. It appears to vary in populations depending on their eating habits regarding insects.
That said, an program or policy of any kind with goals of decreasing CO2 emissions to save the climate is patently wrong, as no gas at any concentration in the atmosphere can detectably warm the planet surface or the atmosphere. It’s simply against thermodynamics 101 and cannot happen.
I was a city boy with farmer forbearers and I bought a farm in the 70s to raise a large family on. In addition to raising sheep, ducks, geese, chickens, pigs and a dairy cow, I had NZ rabbits. Considering the gestion period of the cow and growth of the calf for beef, I got more meat from the rabbits than from the beef steer. I suspect the same from the chickens.
From my farmer’s perspective (on the lookout for problems) I can foresee a world of trouble economically trying to raise insects. Unhappy neighbours, a million birds and spiders, destruction of other crops, flowers, fruit, disease to wipe out your domestic arthropods and likely Arthropodic Gullible Warming (articles on termites) …Also these beasties are high protein so the feed could prove expensive.
Now you could vacuum up wild insects when you cut hay or harvest other crops and feed them to your chickrns to save the planet!
What’s going on in North Korea is they are using human waste to fertilize their crops, which is causing the public health problems.
Isn’t that another green ideal? And not only in NK. I lived in South America and you had to wash any veg or fruits in a blue desinfectant from the pharmacy. If you didn’t you ended up in hospital in no time with amoeba dysentery.
So show me the menu at Turtle Bay.
I’m sorry, but “Let them eat worms and bugs” just doesn’t have the je ne sais qua as the original. I mean, they’re already eating snails after all.
They eat snails. We eat lobsters and crabs. Lobsters are about as close to a big bug as you can get. link The other thing to consider is what the lobsters themselves eat. Yum.
you know if it’s to save the planet, and if they’ll give me a big tax subsidy for doing it, I can sacrifice and force myself to eat lobster every night. If I really really have to for the good of the planet, that is.
Lobsters and other such shell fish are bottom scavengers. And we all know what accumulates down there.
I’ll take lobster on the New York Strip steak for breakfast any day. And giant prawns, with Langoustine for dinner.
But forgo the snails, they taste mostly of garlic.
As regards oysters and other “sea food” except clams, very picky.
On top of that I heard haddock are cannibals, a matter of taste.
You would think that in a fancy restaurant at these prices you could keep the snails off the food! There are so many snails there you can’t even see the food!
The creator put things in shells for a good reason, he put oysters, mussels, whelks, cockles and clams in shells at the bottom of the sea to ensure only the most determined would eat them.
I’m not that determined.
It really bugs me when people suggest eating insects. My grub certainly doesn’t include them. It flies in the face of reason, especially when the source is the land of the Beatles.
+ 97%
(:-))
I also will avoid eating bugs, for the foreseeable future.
From the article:
“About 62% of those given health or environmental incentives chose to eat the truffle, compared with 76% who ate the truffle after being told it would taste good or make them trendy. And the latter group rated the truffle as tastier.”
To the bug-eaters of London:
This just shows that a significant group of humans would eat pasteurized sh!t if added some sugar, and you told them it was cool and fashionable – and they would claim that they like it!
It all started with wearing your baseball hat on backwards or sideways. you know that funny brim thingee on your hat – it was put there for a reason – to keep the Sun out of your eyes. It doesn’t work that well on the back of your head – ponder the concept!
Wearing a baseball cap backwards whilst driving avoids the brim of the hat colliding with the car’s sun visor.
Why do you wear a hat in the car?
Tom in Florida
“Why do you wear a hat in the car?”
For the same reason they wear hoodies, dangle furry dice from the mirror and have ornaments adorning the dashboard – they are dickheads who shouldn’t be allowed a driving licence!
Your comment suggests the driver wore the brim frontwards until he entered the car, reversed while driving, then turned it forwards again upon exiting the car. Have you ever seen that?
So people wear their caps backwards all day because they will ride in a car sooner or later? If the cap has to be adjusted for the car trip I would just take it off while in the car.
SR
Some people are married to their baseball cap – they never take it off, even to sleep or to shampoo.
It is a fidelity they give to no other entity, not even their partners-in-life.
You have to respect this act of faith, even though their hair does get pretty crusty after a few years.
If one’s face is that close to the visor of the car:
– They have a very tiny car;
.OR.
– They have very short arms / legs;
– They are very near-sighted / myopic
– They have a manic look on their face and you should dive for safe cover – the key diagnostic is the shout “Allahu Akbar!”, followed by a loud bang!
Not having the seat so far forward your chest is against the wheel prevents brim/visor conflict also. I used to Wear baseball caps a lot and never had this issue.
“Wearing a baseball cap backwards whilst driving avoids the brim of the hat colliding with the car’s sun visor.”
How close are you sitting to the windshield???
Really? And the brim doesn’t hit the headrest?
Wearing a baseball cap backwards the bill collides with the headrest. Some days you just can’t win.
Protect the red-neck first.
ken griffey jr baseball cap
Search images for the above
Actually, it does prevent the back of your neck from burning. My face never burns. The back of my neck does.
But I still prefer wearing wide-brimmed hats in early summer. Then I don’t have to wear sun glasses.
The warmo crowd always miss the real fruit of the study. The people that went for it are susceptible to simple proppaganda. What they are saying is if we just bullshot them a bit more they will all go for it or at least 97% of them. I hope someone has been taking down names for a real judgement day drawing nighas we soeak.speak. Perhaps we shouldnt be repeating all these Guardian stories. The clones already all read it but we are spreading the word.
It’s all about self-expression. Personal discomfort, inconvenience, or danger be damned.
“To be beautiful, one must suffer.” – French proverb
Can’t wait for the new Al Gore cookbook -“An Inconvenient Diet”.
Eating bugs, more likely an Incontinent Diet
Yes indeed. In fact, we already eat a lot of insects in the food we eat very day. Meat usually has worms, as does fish, which is why I like mine fairly well cooked. Even in grains and fruit/vegetables which can include rodent hairs, mouse poop, maggots, insect eggs and larvae, mold and generally rot of all kinds. And a whole lot more. You just can’t get rid of these by-products of agriculture at a massive scale as agri-business. Especially in bulk foods that get processed in big batches because their grade is lower than direct sale as a whole product. Think canned fruits, veggies or tomatoes, fruit juice and most everything that is bulk processed. But not to worry, as this is much better than heavy metal contamination like mercury or salmonella food poisoning. At least most of all this is just additional protein, and when cooked it doesn’t represent much of any kind of threat. But google this if you don’t have much of a yuk factor on what we eat very day. The FDA has specifications for how much of this is allowed. We already eat a lot of insects and other ‘road kill’ every day. Some estimates are as high as 8-10 pounds per year. Sorry to spoil your dinner tonight…
You know the way this will work. While we are eating crickets the elite progressives (Al Gore and Tom Steyer) will be consuming Kobe beef.
Kobe? Nah, would feed that to worms. Wagyu is the new black.
Maybe before promoting the consuming of them wholesale, use your energy for a fight against insecticides and agrichemicals to save them?
https://www.naturalblaze.com/2018/10/global-insect-decline-now-hyperalarming-according-to-latest-research.html
Two data points from one location do not a complete understanding make.
Maybe stick with science and not hyperbole.
“Would you eat insects to save the planet from global warming?”
Not only no, but HELL NO! Now, I might eat them if I liked them (which I don’t), but for no other reason.
“Before the 180 participants in the study were offered a chocolate truffle filled with mealworms,”
First they had to find 180 people that would do it at all…..millennials
Were they paid participants?
First things first, …. Latitude, ….. first they had to be “approved” for a Government Grant.
To wit:
OH my, my, ….. CO$T is not a concern when you are spending government Grant monies, to wit:
A Google search provided these retail costs for truffles, to wit:
“White Truffles, Medium – 1–2 truffles – $499.95
Truffles Black Winter Whole Brushed – 2 truffles – $395.95
Burgundy Truffles, Small –2 truffles – $149.95 ”
So, iffen they purchased 180 White Truffles at a cost of $499.95 each, the total cost would be $89,991.00 ….. and that’s prior to the truffles being filled with mealworms and dipped in chocolate.
October 30, 2017 – Truffle Prices Double to $3,200 a Pound
All in the name of science.
In fairness I believe those are prices for truffle mushrooms (a hard to find delicacy) not truffle chocolates…
Please don’t embarrass yourself further. “Truffle” is the name of chocolate confection as well as a prized gourmet fungus. This study quite obviously was referring to the former.
“Please don’t embarrass yourself further.”
WAY WAY WAY too late for that.
So what is the price of a chocolate confection “truffle”? Both with and without the mealworms. (How did the mealworms get in there? Don’t they store their food in airtight, or at least bugtight, containers?) Inquiring minds want to know.
“Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins”.
I liked that movie. Maybe because I’d read a bunch the books it was based on, “The Destroyer” series.
But the movie didn’t catch on. They never made a sequel.
Lets hope they never make a sequel to “The IPCC: The Destruction Begins”.
OH, my, my, ……. you three, .. J. Parsons, Remo Williams and Jeff Alberts, ….. should be so quick to criticize anyone who uses or refers to the term “greenhouse gas(ses)”.
“DUH”, all enclosed greenhouses have the same gasses inside their enclosure as is found in earth’s atmosphere. The components of the atmospheric air inside of a “greenhouse’ are exactly the same as the components of the atmospheric air outside of a “greenhouse’.
And “HA”, iffen the researchers had included plenty of ….. Tabanero Extra Hot Sauce …..along with the mealworms inside of their “chocolate truffles”, …… I’m damn sure no one would have noticed the tasty flavor of the mealworms.
The planet can go, I’ll keep my beef.
Under the You Only Live Once principle, then looking at the next generation and their long list of entitlements, I’m going to go with “I’ll keep my beef”.
Of course you have to eat beef, otherwise the planet would be overrun with unemployed catttle.
Why does every eco-Progressive solution to climate change seem like an attempt to regress civilization to the stone age?
That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. The hard greens oppose industrial society, and want to destroy it.
They also want half or more of the population gone and this will do it.
Notice how they never seem to volunteer to go first. Lead by example, I say!
More accurately, they want a neo-feudal world order where they retain all the luxuries of industrial society and everyone else is either dead or reduced to sh**-shoveling eco-serfdom.
That’s Great!
Having jumped the shark long ago, the UK establishment is becoming even sillier than the climate change propagandists about Brexit.
Recently we were told that if we left the EU, our food would be ridden with maggots, rat hair and vermin faeces – “Just like the US”.
I didn’t know your food was so bad over there? But a quality British newspaper obviously does…
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/food-standards-brexit-uk-us-trade-deal-maggots-rat-hair-worms-insects-mould-products-a8575721.html
Dodgy Geezer
Not forgetting chlorinated chicken that’s supposed to contaminate our food chain from the US.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that a high percentage of EU poultry is contaminated by salmonella and the EU’s solution to it is to tell us all to make sure it’s cooked properly.
The Americans, on the other hand, wouldn’t condone selling contaminated poultry in the first place so they chlorine wash it.
How about buying a faulty car and being told by the government “You should have it serviced and repaired the day you buy it, if you crash because the brakes fail it’s your own fault”!
I think you’ll find that’s ammonia they use, and there’s a phage also approved for elimination of bacteria – and that as far as I know is the only approved phage therapy in the US. Sad really, the Russians have had phage therapy going for decades and have no issues with AB resistant bacteria, we in the West cannot have such things because .. no patents to protect the $$ stream. /sigh
Wash your mouth out. Do not mention either the Guardian or the Independent in the same breath as quality newspapers.
‘Quality’ in the sense that it thinks it is…
I bought some Chirp Chips (chips which include ground up crickets as one of the ingredients) at the local supermarket. They’re surprisingly pretty good – they taste “different”. Unfortunately, they’re kind of pricey, so I won’t buy more unless they have a big sale. During our last visit to Korea (my wife’s Korean), we had some fried silkworm larva. They tasted – meh – my wife said they tasted old. Later on in our trip, we had some mulberry wine (made from the fruit of the trees that the silkworms feed on). That was pretty good. I’ll try almost anything once, as long as it’s not still squirming. I love tasting new foods. I’ll eat bugs — but not to save the planet.
The silkworms are beondegi.
Really tasty is you know how to cook them.
all protein
Have them all the time, mix in some spicy peppers, boil dont fry.
here in Seoul it is street food.
If you get them in a can, yes they can taste like old socks
a sock you put in water and underarm sweat
Better than tofu for brains.
(As in, tofu is horrible as a brain food.)
Kimchee, at least it smells better than balut.
Back when I was a boy scout, I remember drinking something called “bug juice”. I didn’t ask what was in it.
So anyway, you know how they put 10% ethanol in our gas, whether we want it or not…you do the math.
A good number of service stations here in SE Oklahoma stock only ethanol-free gas, or offer it as an option at the pump. Costs around a quarter more per gallon most days. Worth it to not shorten the operational life of my car.
New meaning for the term “roach coach”
Most under the age of 50 have no idea what that means.
I posted a comment incorrectly. I think I got it right this time. I hope.
While we will be eating a diet of crickets the elite (Al Gore and Tom Steyer please standup) progressives will be eating Kobe beef.
They are above the rules. Rules are for the deplorables only.
Scroll forward to Friday 26th Oct 2018, noon, and let the ECMWF model animation run forwards from there, especially into the following Monday and Tuesday.
https://www.windy.com/-Temperature-temp?temp,2018-10-26-15,52.322,2.021,5,i:pressure
UK freezing in October, with France, Spain and north Africa getting iced up.
The U.S. has already had snowfalls in multiple states starting in September. Record cold highs are popping up all over the place and snow is already accumulating in the northern states. It even snowed in Texas this last week. In Canada some places never saw summer and the snow is getting deep. It MAY warm a little in November, but December will start off a record setting winter, if Joe Bastardi at Weatherbell has it right.
This is another example of Green religion. The real answer to the environmental damage done by agriculture is to eat even further down the food chain. The answer is protein synthesized in vats using some sort of single celled organism and heated by nuclear power. A rational environmentalist would see that. But it says in the Big Green Bible that only natural is good. Bugs are natural so eat bugs; nuclear power is not natural so it’s use is off the table.
Or try Soylent Green?
“Want flies with that?”
LOL Roger!
“Waiter, there’s soup on my fly.” Cheers
R Shearer
Scotsman to the waiter –
“Och man, there’s a fly in my whisky.”
The waiter apologises and say’s “Bit it’s only a small one sir”
The Scotsman replies “Aye, and it’s feet are touching the bottom of the glass!”
“Waiter, what this fly doing in my soup?” … “Backstoke I think, sir.”
Make that “Waitress…” :<)
“waitperson” in todays non-binary pronoun-fluid PC lingo.
Now that we’ve long passed all their tipping points what makes them think the insects aint gunna fry in Hell too? Besides me mum told me to eat my Greens.
Have anyone calculated how much “food” these insects would be fed with?
If you raise cockroaches (the hissing kind), they eat leftovers. Mine ate potatoes, oatmeal, dog food, etc. They do not eat a lot, even taken as a whole.
Except for the termites and cadaver maggots, humans can eat most anything that insects can eat.
And that is exactly why humans have been “fighting” a constant battle for the past tens-of-thousands of years to protect their “food supplies” from the ravenous insects, …… the locusts being one of said.
I don’t think there is an appropriate name for those persons who think, believe and/or promote the dastardly act of intentionally feeding our food supply items to insects, so that said insects and/or their offspring can be eaten as the primary source of food by us humans.
“DUH”, plant a field of “sweetcorn”, ….. intentionally contaminate all the ears-of-corn with a gazillion Corn borer eggs, ……. and after the eggs hatch and the Corn borer larvae devour all the sweetcorn, collect those “plump” larvae and “eatum” raw, cooked, canned or frozen.
Majority of all Learning Disabled persons …….. are nurtured to be, …… not born to be.
My only experience with meal worms is as fish bait. And I plan on keeping it that way.
Says more about mass psychology than reducing atmospheric CO2. So, how much less CO2 is produced by raising meal worms than chicken, beef, pork, turkey, and seafood?
As noted above, I doubt it’s anywhere near the amount of chicken, beef, etc. Insects don’t each that much food. They are plentiful in the environment. If we switched to insect eating (and I would not), we probably would have to “farm” them, but the space required is much smaller than conventional farm animals.
Don’t the termites emit more methane than all cattle combined?
Termites emit both CO2 and methane. It is estimated that for every human on Earth there may be 1000 pounds of termites. Worldwide, termites may release over 150 million tons of methane gas into the atmosphere annually. They also produce more CO2 each year than all living things combined. It amounts to about ten times as much carbon dioxide as all the fossil fuels burned in the whole world in a year. So let’s farm them and produce more of them. Not!
If we all changed over to an insect based diet, it would require an industrial scale operation to supply the huge quantity of insects needed. How is this going to produce less evil CO2 than producing meat?
We’re eating bugs already. Just check out the FDA regulations regarding amount of insect parts permitted in wheat flour etc.