You can’t make this stuff up.
Eric Worrall at Watts Up With That? highlighted in a recent post a study suggesting people consume more insects as a way to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, which some scientists believe are responsible for causing higher temperatures and all the alleged “harms” resulting from warmer climates.
The study, titled “Could Consumption of Insects, Cultured Meat or Imitation Meat Reduce Global Agricultural Land Use?,” was published on April 22 in the journal Global Food Security. The researchers, all of whom come from Europe or Australia, wrote in their abstract, “Animal products, i.e. meat, milk and eggs, provide an important component in global diets, but livestock dominate agricultural land use by area and are a major source of greenhouse gases. Cultural and personal associations with animal product consumption create barriers to moderating consumption, and hence reduced environmental impacts.”
The researchers wrote one of their goals was to determine a way to reduce animals’ land use and greenhouse-gas emissions by examining nutritious alternatives to eating animals, such as cows.
“The results suggest that imitation meat and insects have the highest land use efficiency, but the land use requirements are only slightly greater for eggs and poultry meat,” the researchers wrote. “The efficiency of insects and their ability to convert agricultural by-products and food waste into food, suggests further research into insect production is warranted. …”
“We conclude that although a diet with lower rates of animal product consumption is likely to create the greatest reduction in agricultural land, a mix of smaller changes in consumer behaviour , such as replacing beef with chicken, reducing food waste and potentially introducing insects more commonly into diets, would also achieve land savings and a more sustainable food system.”
In its report of the researchers’ findings, an unnamed writer at Phys.org wrote, “Replacing half of the meat eaten worldwide with crickets and mealworms would cut farmland use by a third, substantially reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, researchers say.”
Cows have long been a target of global warming alarmists, who say they are one of the greatest contributors to climate change. According to a United Nations report in 2011, livestock methane emissions (yes, that’s a scientific way of saying “animal farts”) accounted for 39 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture, which itself made up a large chunk of the total emissions.
Justin Haskins
