Cut global warming by becoming vegetarian
July 7, 2005Global warming could be controlled if we all became vegetarians and stopped eating meat. That's the view of British physicist Alan Calverd, who thinks that giving up pork chops, lamb cutlets and chicken burgers would do more for the environment than burning less oil and gas.
Writing in this month's Physics World, Calvert calculates that the animals we eat emit 21% of all the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity. We could therefore slash man-made emissions of carbon dioxide simply by abolishing all livestock.
Moreover, there would be no adverse effects to health and it would be an experiment that we could abandon at any stage. "Worldwide reduction of meat production in the pursuit of the targets set in the Kyoto treaty seems to carry fewer political unknowns than cutting our consumption of fossil fuels," he says.
Physics World is the international monthly magazine published by the Institute of Physics.
Source: Institute of Physics
-
Engineers build first sub-10-nm carbon nanotube transistor
Feb 01, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (29) |
30
-
Something old, something new: Evolution and the structural divergence of duplicate genes
Jan 31, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (7) |
1
-
The hidden nanoworld of ice crystals: Revealing the dynamic behavior of quasi-liquid layers
Jan 30, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
1
-
Stock market network reveals investor clustering
Jan 27, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (23) |
8
-
Of microchemistry and molecules: Electronic microfluidic device synthesizes biocompatible probes
Jan 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
More news stories
Transparent iron? For the first time, an experiment shows that atomic nuclei can become transparent
At the high-brilliance synchrotron light source PETRA III, a team of DESY scientists headed by Dr. Ralf Röhlsberger has succeeded in making atomic nuclei transparent with the help of X-ray light. At the ...
9 hours ago |
5 / 5 (5) |
1
|
Physicists build highly efficient 'no-waste' laser
A team of University of California, San Diego researchers has built the smallest room-temperature nanolaser to date, as well as an even more startling device: a highly efficient, "thresholdless" laser that ...
9 hours ago |
5 / 5 (14) |
2
|
Quantum physicist explains $100K offer for proof scaled-up quantum computing is impossible
(PhysOrg.com) -- MIT researcher Scott Aaronson has certainly riled the physics community with his offer this past Friday, of $100,000 to anyone who can prove that scaled-up quantum computing is impossible. ...
Unusual 'collapsing' iron superconductor sets record for its class
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland has found an iron-based superconductor that operates at the highest known temperature for a material ...
14 hours ago |
4.3 / 5 (3) |
2
|
Flipping a light switch in the cell: Quantum dots used for targeted neural activation
By harnessing quantum dotstiny light-emitting semiconductor particles a few billionths of a meter acrossresearchers at the University of Washington (UW) have developed a new and vastly more targeted ...
11 hours ago |
5 / 5 (3) |
0
|
Astronomy team discovers nearby dwarf galaxy
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team led by UCLA research astronomer Michael Rich has used a unique telescope to discover a previously unknown companion to the nearby galaxy NGC 4449, which is some 12.5 million light years ...
Amasia: As next supercontinent forms, Arctic Ocean, Caribbean will vanish first
(PhysOrg.com) -- Geologists at Yale University have proposed a new theory to describe the formation of supercontinents, the epic process by which Earths major continental blocks combine into a single ...
Why are there so few fish in the Earth's oceans?
(PhysOrg.com) -- A Stony Brook University researcher has found that, contrary to popular belief, there are not plenty of fish in the sea.
Scientists strengthen memory by stimulating key site in brain
Ever gone to the movies and forgotten where you parked the car? New UCLA research may one day help you improve your memory.
Study shows how DNA finds its match
It's been more than 50 years since James Watson and Francis Crick showed that DNA is a double helix of two strands that complement each other. But how does a short piece of DNA find its match, out of the millions ...
Most stretchable spider silk reported
The egg sac silk of the cocoon stalk of the cave spider Meta menardi is the most stretchable egg sac silk yet tested, according to a study published Feb. 8 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.
Jun 25, 2008
Rank: 2 / 5 (2)