I have been reading with amusement these angst-filled ravings. Nothing new here that we have not said before, but this thread is worthwhile because it integrates all the needed concepts into one versus several threads in several diverse forums.
51% of the human-caused greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere do indeed come from our livestock, and feeding grain to the food animals does multiply the gastric methane emissions, and methane is indeed about 80X as effective at trapping solar heat than is carbon dioxide. Actually 269X as effective on a ton-for-ton basis, but it also disassociates quicker, so the net impact is about 80X. I have recently began to realize that as I move from the urban human warrens of California to the bucolic dairylands of Wisconsin, that I will be moving into an area that is intensively farmed and thus is a leading producer of GHG's, in fact one of the most intense emitters in all the world. I adjusted to this, when online house-hunting I learned to zoom out the overhead satellite view, and to recognize the manure-rotting fields of huge corporate dairy farms and the overhead appearance of the row houses used for production of chickens and eggs.
My solution is the same one that I have been advocating for years, to your derision. I am hoping that you have now come to realize that there simply is no saving of the planet we live on and it's already sick and rapidly getting sicker ecosystem. However, our technology may yet save us in one of several ways, a couple of which I will share.
It would be nice if every human on the planet had the fine sensibilities and regard for the welfare of all other species as do the peakoil.com members. Certainly our musings have taken us to some dark places and equally dark conclusions. But the darkest of all these thoughts is this one: however well WE understand our eventual fate and it's causes, most of the First World and just about all of the Second World and Third World never will, and as a result those positive environmental changes that might save us are few and feeble - and the planetary ecosystem will therefore sustain continued and accelerating damage from the surfeit of Humans, aka Kudzu Apes. Most of those apes are going to die, without it ever entering their heads that there was something that could be done to help their fate - indeed, never even realizing that alternatives existed. We as a species are probably going extinct. We will persist for a few more human generations but our fate is actually already sealed, by our ape natures, and the certain knowledge that the average human already struggles to survive and therefore will never be making informed choices about what to eat and how to live for the good of the human race and the other species.
One alternative is one that I have presented many times and that almost all of you have rejected out of hand. I won't belabor it here, I'll simply note that for some few apes, leaving the surface of the planet and choosing to live in space where living space and energy and materials resources are effectively unlimited is a rational and viable alternative. But you say, only a very few can be saved that way. YES, I say, but that is better for humans than perishing
en masse. But even Elon Musk has the same failure of imagination that hobbles most of you: he thinks that colonizing other planets is the answer, when it's simply much more practical to build colonies in space. There - done with alternative survival scenario #1, which is viable but does not save 99% of the apes or the planetary ecosystem.
Alternative survival scenario #2 is in fact very scary. I have spent many posts and many hours explaining my understanding of man as an ape, hobbled with ape instincts and emotions and - in the absence of widespread extensive education - having no resources to overide and overcome our limitations as the most self-aware of the apes. It is now possible to overcome these conceptual limitations, because recent technological innovations in genetic engineering have made it possible to edit the human genome almost as easily as we edit text. I'm not going to debate this topic with you, because frankly most of you are out of date when it comes to capabilities and methods in this regard. If you want to become current, then search out and read about the CRISPR technique. I am a lifelong fan of both electronics and science fiction, this technique of gene editing - presently being used to edit genetic diseases from human parents - I believe is just as significant as the transistor - the late 1940's invention at Bell Labs that was the enabler of our digital world. But it's a real and current capability and it is already being used to modify the species we call Kudzu Ape.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/17/a-crack-in-creation-by-jennifer-doudna-and-samuel-sternberg-reviewIMHO, CRISPR is even more certain to change humans than the ongoing hybridization with digital devices. Both of these things are changing the very nature of the human species in the present, without most of you thinking about either one, let alone both.
Later this week, I'll start a seperate thread on CRISPR, after the concept has sunk in. Meanwhile, for those of you who realize early on that this technique exists and is already being used, I'll offer this:
https://www.amazon.com/Abolition-Man-C-S-Lewis/dp/1609421477/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=