Why Food With A High “Carbon Footprint” Taste Better
Which tastes better, a steak cooked on an open coal flame on your backyard grill, or Tofu made inside?
You were salivating at the mention of that steak, weren't you?
Kevin Killough, the energy reporter for Cowboy State Daily found that GOOGLE will soon let you know how "environmentally friendly" your food choices are.
Say you are having friends over and you are looking up food recipes. That recipe will come with "guidance" from Google as to the "carbon footprint" of your meal. Google hopes this will influence you to make better choices and "save the planet."
WELL HOLD ON A MOMENT!
At first, I was annoyed at Google but then I realized that I can actually use this algorithm to my advantage.
Tofu has a low carbon footprint. And the way it is prepared, to save the planet, would involve very little if any heat to cook it. Tofu has some nutritional value. But it is not packed with nutrition. It also tastes like... well, IT SUCKS!
A steak begins with a high carbon footprint before anything is done to it. Now, let's smoke that meat, more CO2, then cook it over hot coals. Steak is packed with iron and other minerals, plus vitamins and proteins. It's high concentrated nutrition. Steak, cooked over coals, TASTE GREAT!
The more I looked at it the more I realized that any food you can eat that has a low carbon footprint is only a little good for you and does not taste that good.
Any food that has a high carbon footprint and is prepared in such a way to vastly increase that footprint is DELICIOUS and VERY GOOD FOR ME! - AND GOOD FOR THE PLANET!
Thank you GOOGLE!
I will be using your online recipes, just not the way you wanted me to.
I will also be eating that steaking knowing that I did, in fact, do something good for the planet.
You see, CO2 is not a pollutant.
It's not putting our planet in jeopardy. It's actually saving it. So buy and prepare food with a higher CO2 content - if you want to "save the planet".
Read below for several scientific studies that prove this.
Study: Rising CO2 Causes Greening…Which Cools The Earth
About 70% of the Earth’s post-1980s vegetative greening trend has been driven by CO2 fertilization. More greening has offset or reversed 29% of recent anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Greening also has a net cooling effect on surface temperatures.
A study (Haverd et al., 2020) asserting rising CO2 and warming are the dominant drivers of Earth’s strong post-1980s greening trend. This greening expands Earth’s carbon sink so profoundly that by 2100 the greening of the Earth will offset 17 years (equivalent) of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
A 17% offset over 80 years, or net CO2 emissions reversal, would easily supplant the effectiveness of Paris climate accord CO2 mitigation policies.
Studies by major universities and NASA shows CO2 makes the planet greener by promoting plant growth. The more plants, and the bigger they are, the less the planet warms.
New Paper: CO2 Rise + Warming Are 91% Responsible For The Earth’s Accelerated Greening Trend Since 1990.
Satellite observations indicate the Earth has become much greener in recent decades. According to scientists, the overwhelming majority of the “significant increases in tropical forests and the forests of North America, Eurasia, and China” since the early 1990s can be attributed to the combination of CO2 fertilization (56%) and climate change (35%).
Let's have a look at a major publication that recently wrote about CO2 and how it causes the greening of our planet.
A new Peer-Reviewed study in Science Mag. reveals the greening of the Earth by rising CO2 levels
The vegetation-climate loop
Just as terrestrial plant biomass is growing in response to increasing atmospheric CO2, climate change, and other anthropogenic influences, so is climate affected by those variations in vegetation. Forzieri et al. used satellite observations to analyze how changes in leaf area index (LAI), a measure of vegetation density, have influenced the terrestrial energy balance and local climates over the past several decades. An increase in LAI has helped to warm boreal zones through a reduction of surface albedo and to cool arid regions of the southern hemisphere by increasing surface evaporation. Furthermore, more densely vegetated areas displayed a greater capacity to mitigate the impact of rapid climate fluctuations on the surface energy budget.Science, this issue p. 1180
So why doesn't the news media sit up and take notice when a scientist screams out, "YOU'RE GETTING IT WRONG!"
The term “carbon pollution” is a deliberate, ambiguous, disingenuous term, designed to mislead people into thinking carbon dioxide is pollution. It is used by the environmentalists to confuse the environmental impacts of CO2 emissions with the impact of the emissions of unwanted waste products of combustion. The burning of carbon-based fuels (fossil fuels - coal, oil, natural gas - and biofuels and biomass) converts the carbon in the fuels to carbon dioxide (CO2), which is an odorless invisible gas that is plant food and it is essential to life on the planet. (ICECAP).
Take your time and read what these scientists and major institutions have to say. Since you have probably heard only one side of the story your entire life you might have to give yourself a little time to process what you are reading.
Always have as much information as you can before you decide.