sell! sell! sell!

[eek.]

I always wonder what drives these people??

There are various drivers but being selfish and egotistical are major factors in most cases
They are like junkies and it's all about what THEY want and everything else takes second place, including family

Jealousy seems to play a large bit part as well from what I've seen, with a healthy dose of paranoia too

It's not a happy place to be, sometimes you hear them say "my family is everything" but the reality is that their family is "the only thing" because they have no real friends and only close family would put up with their crap

Most disappear into oblivion like the rest of us because there is so little genuine talent around

Accumulating money is a wonderful diversion for these people, money makes a good consolation prize and has saved a lot of war/conflict from happening over the last 100 years

 

[eek.]

The easiest route to delve into the psychology of the rich and powerful is to spend a while studying the monarchies of the medieval periods around Europe

An embarrassing catalogue of murder betrayal and greed tends to underpin most monarchies, child killing, assassination, you name it... they did it

Nowadays there are additional parameters like surveillance hacking and the mass media

A good place for nutters and gangsters, not much use for the rest of us though.
This is why is why I am in favour of direct democracy

The whackos can still fight each other over money once they've been kicked out of power

 

[tiznow]

Here we go approaching the previous low..

 

[PatsFan1283]

Icahn was on CNBC talking how bad fed policy is and how a downturn could be imminent.

If only he was in a position of power and had a voice to say something over the past 6-7 years.

 

[tiznow]

Yeah he says it after the fact after he rode the bubble up.. Where was he before talking trash when the fed was busy inflating bubbles?

Guys like him love these fed created boom/busts...

 

[tiznow]

[h=1]Climate change: Why beef is the new SUV (Opinion)[/h]Lexingon, Texas (CNN)This is the story of a giant pile of beef.

Well, 1.27 pounds (0.58 kilos) of brisket, to be exact.
But before I get into the business of explaining where this meat came from, and why eating this stuff has a massive, unexpected effect on climate change, I feel the need to confess something: That huge slab of brisket, which came to me by way of Snow's BBQ, a delightful shack of a place out here in the heart of Texas beef country, easily was one of the most food-orgasm-y things I've tasted.
The phrase "OHMYGOD" dropped out of my mouth, involuntarily.
And I don't eat much meat.
A colleague of mine had a better line.
"I mean, f--- Al Gore, right?"
I write about climate change for a living and appreciate what the former U.S. vice president has done (or has tried to do, in his own wooden way) to raise awareness about what I consider to be one of the most critical issues facing the planet and people. But, in that moment, I had to laugh and agree with my co-worker.
Forget the climate.
This stuff was too good.
Here, take a look.

Snow's BBQ in Lexington, Texas, was rated the best barbecue in the state by Texas Monthly in 2008.



Daniel Vaughn, BBQ editor at Texas Monthly, and the No.1 carnivore I know -- this is a man who has developed white bumps on his tongue, apparently from failing to eat nonmeat food groups -- helped me dissect the meal. Note the salt-and-pepper "bark" at the edge of the meat, the red tree rings where the smoke that cooks the beef, slowly, overnight, has left its artistic mark. The cloudlike strips of beef were so tender locals insist you peel them apart with your fingers, not a fork and knife.
Knowing the beef's backstory only adds to the experience.
The barbecue "pitmaster" at Snow's is 80-year-old Norma Frances Tomanetz. White hair, red apron. Everyone calls her "Tootsie." Tootsie's shift starts at 9 p.m. and ends the next day after about 600 pounds of beef have been served. Her recipe is simple: salt and pepper. And, in addition to working here -- again, at age 80 -- she also serves as a middle-school custodian, helps manage a cattle ranch and takes care of two sick family members. (They could use your prayers, by the way.)
Texas beef people are lovably tough.
You want to root for them.
But there's "an inconvenient truth" about beef consumption, too, as I would discover on a trip through the supply chain of that meal: Beef is awful for the climate.
Don't blame me alone for bearing the bad news. In a Facebook poll, thousands of you overwhelmingly voted for me to report on meat's contribution to climate change as part of CNN's Two° series. You commissioned this highly personal topic over more widely feared climate change bad guys such as coal, deforestation and car pollution.
Cattle and climate?
They're not often used in the same sentence.
But eating beef, as I'll explain, has come to be seen, rightly, in certain enviro circles, as the new SUV -- a hopelessly selfish, American indulgence; a middle finger to the planet. It's not the main driver of global warming -- that's burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat and transportation -- but it does contribute significantly.
Globally, 14.5% of all greenhouse gas pollution can be attributed to livestock, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the most reputable authority on this topic. And a huge hunk of the livestock industry's role -- 65% -- comes from raising beef and dairy cattle.
Take a look at how beef compares with other foods.

The world is faced with the herculean task of trying to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius, measured as an increase of global temperature since the start of the Industrial Revolution, when humans began burning fossil fuels. That's the point at which climate change is expected to get especially dangerous, leading to megadroughts, mass extinctions and a sea-level rise that could wipe low-lying countries off the map. That one little number -- 2 degrees -- is the subject of international negotiations in December in Paris, which are critical if we're to avert catastrophe.
We've already warmed the atmosphere 0.8 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution; and the World Bank says we're locked in to at least 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming based on the pollution we've already put into the atmosphere.
It will be hard to meet the 2-degree goal no matter what; it will be impossible if livestock pollution isn't part of the mix, said Doug Boucher, a PhD ecologist and evolutionary biologist who is director of climate research and analysis at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"We can't hit that goal without it," he told me.
In Texas, as in most places, however, no one seems too worried.
"Everybody here in Central Texas goes for beef," Tomanetz told me. "People are gonna eat what they wanna eat -- what their appetites call for."
Any vegetarians around?
None she's knows, personally.
"They won't eat their beef," she said with a grin, "so somebody else will."
[h=3]70-mile meal[/h]It wasn't long before I wished somebody else had.
The night after I ate at Snow's, it felt like a grapefruit was trying to climb out of my esophagus. I ate 0.61 pounds of the beef I was served, leaving 0.66 pounds of the stuff on my tray. I gave the leftovers to a guy at the hotel desk because I couldn't stand to look at it anymore. I felt so crazy-uncomfortable, so full.
The next morning, over a decidedly small, vegetarian breakfast, I calculated the climate change pollution associated with my massive meal. I did so with the help of data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and from Anne Mottet, livestock policy officer at the FAO.
Result: Nearly 29 kilograms of CO2-equivalent gases.

O'Brien Meats in Taylor, Texas, supplies high-quality beef to Snow's BBQ.



From the atmosphere's perspective, that's about the same as burning enough fuel to drive an average American car 70 miles, or 113 kilometers.
A 70-mile meal.*
That's San Antonio to Austin, Texas.
Granted, this is a beyond-ridiculously-oversized portion of meat. And, depending on how you calculate beef's climate footprint (Mottet, from the FAO, provided me with her organization's estimate for beef cattle raised in feedlots in North America), you could arrive at very different results.
Regardless of the exact mileage, however, this is illustrative of an indisputable fact: Beef contributes to climate change in a substantial and outsize way.
Why is that the case?
And where does all of that pollution come from?
I went on the road to find out.
[h=3]Where are you city slickers?[/h]First stop: I wanted to meet a cow like the one I ate at Snow's. And, as it turned out, I wouldn't need to travel far. Kerry Bexley, who opened Snow's BBQ with Tomanetz in 2003, owns a ranch nearby. Some of the cattle he raises may end up being smoked and served as brisket at the restaurant. Possibly even mine.
If only I could find Bexley and his ranch. I kept getting lost en route.
Where are you city slickers? he asked over the phone.
We're close!
I had no idea where we were.
We drove maybe 20 miles (an estimated 0.36 pounds of North American beef, in terms of the climate pollution) out of the way before arriving at the rolling green pasture where Bexley raises about 65 or so "momma and baby" cows for slaughter. These cattle chomped on tufts of grass, making hilariously bug-eyed faces while we talked.
Bexley is a gray-goateed guy with an endearing "King-of-the-Hill" twang in his voice. He doesn't think too much about climate change, but when he does he pictures factories and coal mines -- or highways packed with gas-belching cars.
"I would picture the industries -- the large industries," he told me. "A coal-fired power plant or a chemical plant. I think of larger areas, industrial areas."
Standing in the field, I found it hard to imagine, too.
There's a bizarrely satisfying explanation for that, though.
You don't see or hear the cattle burping.
[h=3]'Cattle are very polite'[/h]If you want to talk about beef's contribution to climate change, you really have to talk about cow burps (and, to a lesser extent, farts).
Scientists don't love the b-word, though.
"We call it eructation," said Andy Cole, retired research leader at the Conservation and Production Research Laboratory in Bushland, Texas, nearly eight hours by car from Bexley's ranch. (To avoid that, I flew from Austin. I know, not exactly green of me.)
"Cattle are very polite," Cole told me. "They don't burp out loud."
My bad. Sorry, cows.
Regardless of verbiage, the focus for Cole and other scientists in Bushland is clear: They want to know how much climate-change pollution cows produce as part of their digestive process. I like to think of it as a Cow Burp Research Station.

Cattle are very polite. They don't burp out loud.
Andy Cole
​

Their work sounds silly, but it's vital for two reasons.
One: Cattle digest food differently than we do. They're ruminant animals, meaning they have multichamber stomachs where a whole bunch of bacteria hang out waiting to digest cellulose from the grass they eat. Humans -- like all other nonruminants -- can't digest grass. Cows, goats and sheep can, which is fairly incredible when you think about it. They're taking plant material that is hard to digest, and not particularly nutritious, and making food out of it. One byproduct of this magical digestive process, however, is methane. An average cow in North America, raised in a feedlot, belches out 117 pounds (53 kilograms) of this stuff per year, according to 2006 guidelines from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Pigs and chickens don't do that.
And two: Methane is a superpotent greenhouse gas, with 25 times as much global warming potential as carbon dioxide, which is the main climate villain.
Understanding how and what we know about the climate-change emissions from beef is so important, because there's rampant misinformation on this topic. On one hand, you have activists who say, incorrectly, that eating meat, especially beef, is the main driver of climate change. It isn't. Fossil fuels are. (If you want to get into the weeds on that subject, take a look at this report in the journal Animal Feed Science and Technology. Oh, you don't subscribe?) Then, you have other environmentalists who claim beef shouldn't be a big part of the climate conversation -- since it will be impossible for the world to meet its climate targets if we don't get off fossil fuels pronto.
Without jumping into the fray, researchers out here in the Texas Panhandle are collecting data that helps clear things up. They use all sorts of curious, sci-fi methods to try to understand exactly how much methane is produced. They put cattle inside metal chambers, for example, to measure their burps; they have specialized feeding systems that track how much methane comes out of their nostrils while they're eating a treat; and Richard Todd, a research soil scientist with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, is experimenting with lasers as a way to track methane emissions coming off the pastures where cattle are raised.
Todd has arranged these lasers -- "not the kind that will burn through steel or anything" -- in a crosshatch pattern over a field in the Texas Panhandle.
The near-infrared lasers are set to a frequency that detects methane.

Like all ruminant animals, cattle burp methane as they digest grass.



Others, I'm told, are doing similar work from airplanes and cell phone towers.
This invisible pollution adds up. According to the FAO, which bases some of its stats on work like this, 43% of global greenhouse gas emissions associated with beef cattle come from this "enteric fermentation" -- or methane burping.
Thinking back to my meal at Snow's, about 12.5 of the 29 kilograms of CO2-equivalent gases came from burping cows. Of the estimated 70 miles you could drive on that much climate-change pollution, about 30 of them come from cow burps.
It's the biggest part of beef's climate footprint.
[h=3]'Beef Capital of the World'[/h]Snow's BBQ buys all of its meat from a wholesaler called O'Brien Meats in Taylor, Texas. Outside, there's a life-size statue of a cow stuck to the front, like a mermaid on a pirate ship. Inside, I met lab-coat wearing butchers who trim slabs of brisket for Bexley's exacting specifications. You might think that transporting and refrigerating beef would be a big part of its contribution to climate change. But for all the talk of "food miles," processing, refrigeration and transit-related emissions from beef production only account for 8% of its footprint, according to the FAO.
To use the miles analogy again, that's only 5.6 of 70 miles.
Andy O'Brien, who runs the place, told me most of the meat he sells to Bexley likely comes from a feedlot in the Texas Panhandle, possibly in Hereford, Texas, the self-described "Beef Capital of the World," about 475 miles northwest of the meat shop in Taylor.
So that's where I went next.
Warren White, the cowboy-hat-and-jeans-wearing manager of Mc6 Cattle Feeders, a feedlot in Hereford, agreed to give me a tour.
The first thing you notice about being anywhere near Hereford is the smell: the sweet-earthy stench of cow manure, strong enough to stick to your shoes.
The smell, though, offers only a hint of how many cattle really are hanging out in this board-flat part of the country. At the Mc6 feedlot alone, the capacity is 55,000 head of cattle. Jayce Winters, spokeswoman for the Texas Cattle Feeders Association, told me 3 million cattle live within a 150-mile (241-kilometer) radius of nearby Amarillo at any given time.
More ruminant animals means more methane burps, of course. And more poop. About 5% of the emissions associated with beef, the FAO says, come from "manure storage and management."
Walking around a feedlot can ping the this-seems-wrong center of your brain. The cattle are organized in numbered pens that seem to stretch to the horizon. Each animal has a number clipped to its ear, making the cattle look like some sort of now-defunct motorcycle gang. They poop and pee all over the place, sometimes while looking you right in the eye.
Feedlots, which are where more than nine in 10 cattle in the United States spend part of their lives, are bemoaned by many environmentalists and animal rights activists for being allegedly cruel and for their contributions to water and air pollution.
But, when it comes to the climate, feedlot ethics are anything but simple.
That's because, according to some studies, feedlots actually are the most efficient way to raise beef cattle. This is logical when you think about it, and all comes back to what they're eating and how long it takes the cattle to grow to "slaughter weight."
In a feedlot, cattle eat corn, not grass.
So they don't produce as much methane.
Plus, they're fattened up quickly, then killed.
So, cynically, that means there's less time for them to pollute.
That's partly why the U.S. National Cattlemen's Beef Association claims this country produces the "world's most sustainable beef."
But to fully understand feedlots, you also need to understand the feed.
[h=3]'Just like Corn Flakes'[/h]White, the manager of Mc6 Cattle Feeders, walked me to the one part of his feedlot that smells, surprisingly, less like cow s--- and more like cereal.
Tons of corn roared out of a grain elevator, landing in a massive heap.
White picked up some of the stuff and sifted it around in his hand.
It was still warm from on-site processing.
"If you add sugar and milk, it'd be just like Corn Flakes," he said.
At capacity, the cattle here consume 1.5 million pounds of the stuff per day.
Where does it come from?
Somewhere in the Midwest, he told me.
The "somewhere" I visited on the final stop on this beef-climate odyssey was Auburn, Illinois. That's where I found Garry Niemeyer, a corn and soybean farmer, and former president of the National Corn Growers Association, who told me he sells most of his corn to feedlots such as White's in Hereford, Texas. (Some of it, he said, is used to produce ethanol and then byproduct of that becomes food for cattle.)
I met him on the first day of harvest: September 8.
Niemeyer and I rode in an air-conditioned tractor while enormous red "combine" machines started the several-day process of mowing through his rows of corn. These machines are incredible up close: They not only snap the corn stalks, they remove the ears of corn -- each stalk has only one -- and almost-instantly strip the school-bus-yellow kernels of corn off the dimpled cobs, and toss the cobs aside.
It's not the harvest that creates the most climate pollution here, however.
It's the fertilizer.

The fertilizer farmers apply to corn -- which feeds many cattle -- also contributes to climate change.



Niemeyer told me he "applies" 0.79 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per bushel of corn. Some of that is "knifed" into the ground with giant farm equipment, and other times it's sprinkled on the surface of the land. Some of it is liquid, some of it is solid pellets. Fertilizer is expensive stuff, and Niemeyer uses less than he used to -- down from 1.2 pounds per bushel in the 1990s, he told me, proudly noting that this reduces pollution in a nearby lake and the Gulf of Mexico, which suffers an oxygen-dead zone in the summer because of excessive fertilizer runoff.
But it's still a huge amount. And one unwanted offshoot of all this fertilizer use -- and something people out here aren't thinking much about -- is nitrous oxide.
Nitrous oxide is kind of the ultimate greenhouse gas.
About 300 times as powerful as CO2.
Largely because of fertilizer, producing food such as corn for beef cattle accounts for 36% of greenhouse gas emissions from beef and dairy, according to the FAO.
When it comes to beef, it's second only to burps.

Cutting down forests means you're cutting down trees, and half of the tree is carbon. When you burn it or let it rot, that produces carbon dioxide.
Doug Boucher
​

And growing food for our food takes a wider environmental toll.
About 70% of this planet's agricultural land is used for livestock production, according to a 2006 report from the FAO. And in total, 30% of all terrestrial land on Earth -- all of it! -- is used for livestock.
These are truly astounding figures.
True, some of that land is well suited for cattle grazing. "Eighty-five percent of the land we produce cattle on in the United States isn't suitable for other food production," said Daren Williams, spokesman for the U.S. National Cattlemen's Beef Association. "You can't turn the Flint Hills of Kansas into spinach fields."
"The argument that we should stop raising ruminant animals on land that is made for ruminant animals is frankly nonsense," he added. "We'd be taking vast amounts of land out of food production at a time when we need more not less" because of population growth.
These land-use choices do matter, though.
Internationally, for example, rainforests very often are cleared to make room for beef cattle. In the Amazon, cattle production accounts for an estimated 50% to 80% of all deforestation, according to Boucher from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Deforestation is one of the reasons beef from Latin America and the Caribbean is among the worst, per pound, in terms of its effect on climate change. (Europe, North America, Russia and Australia are among the more-efficient beef producers, according to the FAO.)
"Cutting down forests means you're cutting down trees, and half of the tree is carbon," said Boucher. "When you burn it or let it rot, that produces carbon dioxide."
Carbon dioxide, of course, is a heat-trapping gas.
These so-called "land use changes" make up 15% of beef's overall contribution to climate change.
[h=3]'Meth corn'[/h]In Illinois, I watched cornfields zip by the window as Sean Bolton (spelled "like Michael Bolton," he told me) drove a truck full of Niemeyer's just-harvested corn down the highway to a towering grain elevator for storage. We could see a blue-gray rainstorm mounting on the horizon as we approached the drop-off.
Bolton is 43 and has spent his life doing odd jobs here and there, driving trucks, installing office cubicles -- you name it. Lived all over: Texas, Phoenix, New Jersey, Idaho, Germany, Nebraska. He doesn't look past flaws in the corn industry.
"It's like meth corn, I guess you could say," he told me.
Meaning: This corn is grown with so much anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer that's also an ingredient in methamphetamine ("You ever seen 'Breaking Bad?'" he asked), that you could compare it to an illicit drug. He sees this as somehow unnatural, which is a claim Niemeyer and others dispute, noting that technology and fertilizer have helped make corn much more resource-efficient.
But what about climate change?
Is Bolton concerned about that?
"I think climate change is a government scare tactic," he said.
Here's the thing, though: Whether he accepts climate science or not (the climate is changing, and we are to blame, as 97% of climate scientists agree), and whether he cares about beef's contribution to climate change or not, Bolton is eating less beef.
"Me and the wife eat a lot of chicken and pork these last few years," he told me.
Why?
"Because the price of steak has just skyrocketed."
"We splurge every now and then," he said, "but I'm not a billionaire, by any means."
Bolton isn't alone.
While the United States is one of the top meat-consuming countries, per capita, our rate of beef consumption actually has been leveling off for a decade or so. Take a look at the trend line.

Chalk that up both to increasing prices and greater awareness.
Beef now is seen as carrying a host of health, and, increasingly, environmental costs.
But consumption is going up internationally, and the trend in the United States is not yet pronounced enough to breathe a sigh of relief. The FAO expects meat consumption to increase 73% by 2050, which could be disastrous for the climate. It's true there are some parts of the world where iron levels are low and where more meat consumption actually would be healthy and would combat malnutrition. But for the industrialized world, meat consumption already is seen by many as unhealthily high.
There may be ways to use technology to make beef production more climate-efficient. Scientists are working on new types of cattle feed that will make cows less gassy and therefore less harmful to the climactic system. Researchers in Argentina have experimented with putting backpacks on cattle, using them as tanks to trap the methane they're burping. And, in the long term, other scientists, like those at Modern Meadow, are trying to engineer meat from cell "cultures," in hopes of minimizing ethical and environmental concerns about beef production.
The mainstream industry also says it's making changes.
"Are we perfect? Absolutely not," said Kim Stackhouse-Lawson, a PhD animal biologist who is executive director of global sustainability at the U.S. National Cattlemen's Beef Association, an industry group. "But I think that this is an industry that gets very excited about continuous improvement. And sustainability is something that they hold very near and dear. It's very personal. They are the original stewards of the land."
The beef industry in the United States reduced its climate emissions by 2% between 2005 and 2011, she told me, with much of that improvement coming from better packaging, with less plastic, better corn yields and faster-growing animals. Cutting back on food waste, Stackhouse-Lawson said, also would further reduce emissions from the livestock industry.
The FAO, for its part, estimates that using local "best practices" for livestock production could reduce the sector's greenhouse gas emissions by 30% globally.
That's not insignificant.
But it's likely not as effective -- or immediate -- as cutting back on beef.
[h=3]'Climate carnivore'[/h]Climate change is a numbers game.
If we want to meet the goal of stopping warming short of 2 degrees -- which is of the utmost importance -- we have to cut back on pollution of all types.
Fossil fuels must be the central part of these efforts.
But beef, too, can be seen as essential.
A 2014 study published in the journal Climatic Change makes this clear. If current meat-consumption trends continue, agricultural pollution will amount to 12 billion tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent gases per year by 2050, the study's authors find. That amount of pollution alone could help put us on a path to whiz right by the 2-degree target, they write.
With new (but expensive) technology, we might get to 8.3 billion tonnes.
Better, but still not safe.
Dietary changes would get us much further.
If the world adopted a "climate carnivore" diet, in addition to the technology, for example, then agricultural emissions would drop to 4.9 billion tonnes in 2050.
The authors define a "climate carnivore" as someone who replaces three-quarters of beef, ruminant and dairy meals with chicken or other nonmethane burping animals.
I think of this as the Chick-fil-A approach.
More chicken, less beef.
Going for a "flexitarian" diet -- replacing three-quarters of beef or lamb meals with vegetables and other sources of protein that aren't meat and dairy -- goes further still, generating only 3.1 billion tonnes of agricultural pollution per year.
Either way, "if you want to be certain to reach the 2-degree target, we have to reduce beef consumption," said Fredrik Hedenus, associate professor of energy and environment at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, and the lead author of the report on beef's contribution to climate change.
Other studies have shown fully vegetarian and vegan diets are, in fact, the most climate-friendly. Think about it: Vegetables are lower on the food chain, and therefore require fewer resources to produce. We don't have to raise food for our vegetables to eat; we do raise corn for cows. Those of you who go vegan or veggie should know that the climate thanks you.
But moderate dietary changes would help us hit the 2-degree target, too.
It wouldn't be so hard to become a "climate carnivore."
If I'd ordered 1.27 pounds of whole chicken at Snow's BBQ, instead of beef, for example, I would have created climate pollution equivalent to driving 6.5 miles, not 70, according to a calculation using data provided by Anne Mottet, a livestock researcher at the FAO.

If you want to be certain to reach the 2-degree target, we have to reduce beef consumption.
Fredrik Hedenus
​

I understand these choices likely would have real, and unwelcome, effects on the beef industry. I'm torn about that, honestly, since I respect the people who helped produce the brisket I ate in Texas. I don't blame them directly for the emissions associated with their trade. But I've also stood on the shores of the Marshall Islands, which scientists say may no longer exist if seas rise as much as would be reasonably expected at 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Climate change, as Pope Francis and others have argued, will hurt the poor and vulnerable most. We all should do our part to help cut emissions. It's a moral imperative. And while I can't ensure, on my own, that my electricity comes from 100% renewable sources, I can decide what to eat.
Our diets are a rare chance for us to take control of our climate footprints, as researchers explained to me. We don't need governments or utilities to help.
Apathy is all that stands in the way.
Two° challenge: Submit a 'climate carnivore' recipe
I'd like to think people would try to reduce their climate footprints out of the goodness of their hearts, but incentives could provide a needed push. Perhaps boosting the price of beef should be considered. That worked on Sean Bolton, the truck driver in corn country. The European Union puts a price on carbon pollution from cars, for example, but doesn't apply those levies to beef and lamb, the carbon-heavy foods. Labeling should be up for discussion, too. I'd want to know, for example, how many pounds of CO2 are associated with steak versus fish. And if I saw that info in the grocery store, it might alter my choices.
Whatever gets us there, those of us in the industrialized world -- where meat consumption levels already are too high for our health, for the environment and for the climate -- need to start thinking of meat, and particularly beef, as a rare treat.
Not an every-day or every-meal sort of thing.
[h=3]'Tender love and care'[/h]Strangely enough, this is something I could have learned back at the start of my journey, at Snow's BBQ in Lexington, Texas. It's likely unintentional, but a "climate carnivore" sensibility is baked into the way the place does business.
That's because Snow's BBQ is only open one day per week.
Saturday.
And for one meal.
Which is basically breakfast.

Aside from special events, Snow's BBQ is open only on Saturday morning.



Tomanetz, the 80-year-old pitmaster, beamed when she told me her restaurant was named the best BBQ place in Texas in 2008. "It takes a lot of tender love and care to prepare a brisket that's so well liked by so many people," she said.
So, to recap, this is meat that available only once per week.
You have to drive to the middle of nowhere to get it.
And it's some of the best in the world.
In other words: the definition of a treat.
Afterward, if you're me, you're so freaking full you never want to eat beef again.
I have to think that if more of us went on the Snow's diet -- the once-a-week, beef-as-treat diet -- we'd actually be OK. We need to wean ourselves from our addiction to fossil fuels, too, of course. Reducing beef consumption, alone, won't fix climate change.
But it would help ensure we hit the 2-degree target.
If you do go to Snow's, give Tomanetz a hug for me.
And, a word of advice: Order a smaller plate.
More than a pound of anything is way too much.
That's especially true for beef.

 

[snoop]

 

[snoop]

OKLAHOMA CITY — Chesapeake Energy Corporation laid off hundreds of employees Tuesday.
Officials say a total of 740 employees from all areas and levels of the company were laid off; 562 of those employees are from Oklahoma City.
The layoffs affected 15% of employees overall, but the numbers represent 19% of the Oklahoma City employees.

 

[snoop]

Houston-based Halliburton Co. (NYSE: HAL) has confirmed that the company will be making additional job cuts that will specifically target management positions, according to an internal communication obtained by the Houston Business Journal.

Total headcount: TBA

 

[snoop]

(WICHITA FALLS, TX) - Oilfield workers across the country are feeling the impact of lower oil prices, but those in Texas have been hit especially hard.

Gas is creeping below $2.00 per gallon throughout the state. Many are celebrating the relief it brings, but those who rely on a strong oil industry for income are beginning to fear.

ConocoPhillips recently announced they will they will layoff 10% of their global workforce, the second Texas-based company to make cuts in light of the impending oil bust.

Haliburton made a similar announcement earlier this month, saying they will be letting thousands of people go.

Wichita Falls resident Christin Crafton is worried about her family's future. They, like many Texas families, rely on the oil industry to sustain their lifestyle.

"My husband is in the oil field industry and when the gas prices are low that's obviously bad for our economy and our paychecks, our family," Crafton claims.

She goes on to reveal her husband has already been experienced strain from lower prices, "He took a pay cut back in December. They took 10% pay cut and if you didn't get a pay cut you were laid off."

Officials with the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers say it starts with the price of crude oil, which went from $100 a barrel all the way down to only $40 a barrel in less than a year.

Texas Alliance of Energy Producers Alex Mills says, "until we get supply and demand back into kilter, you're going to continue to see a downward cycle in the oil and gas industry."

 

[snoop]

Did they do any hedging when oil was around $100?

Their $75 hedge will expire in Oct, if they're lucky, they might be able to get $50 - $55 for 2016/17. Most banks lower their forecast for crude/brent way far into 2017. That explains why Credit Suisse threw a hammer at them. They cut DNR to $.99/share.

The entire industry is in free fall.

 

[PatsFan1283]

CHK really cheap at $6.70

Not sure how much lower than can go unless global recession.

 

[eek.]

Tiz. I think the global warming climate change thing may be entering a silly season period

There's 40 million odd cows in the USA nowadays.
60 million Bison ran around the USA for gawd knows how long and dinosaurs did nothing except eat and fart for 100 million years

 

[snoop]

Macau casinos are racing to the bottom.

LVS broke below $40.
WYNN is hugging $50 level, not sure how long they can hang on to that.

 

[tiznow]

Tiz. I think the global warming climate change thing may be entering a silly season period

There's 40 million odd cows in the USA nowadays.
60 million Bison ran around the USA for gawd knows how long and dinosaurs did nothing except eat and fart for 100 million years

Temps were really hot when the dinosaurs ruled needed asteroid to hit and whipe them out to cool things down before we became the new top dawg..

----------

Did gassy dinosaurs cause global warming?

LOS ANGELES

Dinosaurs' gassy guts may have contributed to global warming tens of millions of years ago, according to a new study that finds a group of plant-eating dinosaurs could have produced about as much methane as all of today's natural and man-made sources of the greenhouse gas.
British researchers reported in Tuesday's edition of the journal Current Biology that the methane emissions from sauropods far outstripped those of today's cattle, goats and other cud-chewing mammals.
Sauropods were a diverse bunch of plant-eating dinosaurs, known for their small heads and giant bodies with long necks and tails. An average-sized sauropod _ such as Apatosaurus louisae, once popularly known as brontosaurus _ could weigh 44,000 pounds, making it several times bigger than an elephant.
Like many modern herbivores, scientists think, sauropods probably hosted a diverse community of microbes in their guts to help break down and digest their food, producing methane in the process. In cattle and other ruminants, that gas is released in the form of burps and flatulence.
Such emissions from modern-day cattle are considered a major source of the greenhouse gas, adding up to roughly 55 million to 110 million tons per year. Though carbon dioxide is more abundant in the atmosphere, methane is more than 20 times as effective at trapping heat, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The problem of cattle emissions prompted ecologist David Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University in England to consider the climate-changing effects of sauropods.
He and two other researchers used a formula from a study last year that linked body mass to methane emissions from guinea pigs and rabbits. The relationship is straightforward: The more body mass there is, the more methane is produced.
For their investigation, Wilkinson and his colleagues had to make some assumptions _ for example, that the ratio of body size to gas produced is the same for small and extremely large animals. "That's a slightly dodgy thing to do," Wilkinson acknowledged, "but in this case there's not any other option."
The researchers also used published population estimates from the late Jurassic (about 161 to 145 million years ago) to gauge how many sauropods had been roaming the Earth back then.
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Altogether, the team concluded, sauropods were likely producing on the order of 572 million tons of methane per year _ more than five times as much methane as modern-day cattle and other ruminants. Today, worldwide emissions from animals and from such human activities as burning natural gas and collecting trash in landfills is estimated to produce 550 million to 660 million tons of methane per year, the researchers said.
Wilkinson said he expected to find that the dinosaurs were perhaps only a little more productive than today's animals. The results, he said, "surprised me."
It would take more study of the ancient climate to find out whether, and how, sauropods warmed Earth's atmosphere during the Mesozoic era, said Marcus Clauss, a digestive physiologist at the University of Zurich who helped develop the formula for determining methane emissions from body mass.
Wilkinson's team was not the first to suspect that Earth's ancient behemoths were responsible for some climate change: A 2010 study in the journal Nature Geoscience found that atmospheric methane levels dropped in the Americas once native megafauna such as mammoths and giant ground sloths went extinct _ around the same time that humans arrived on the continents.

 

[tiznow]

As for bison stuff.. Cows just a part of equation a fraction of the total but significant.. X out all fossil fuel use and keep mass cattle
production the same probably wouldn't be an issue..

mass cattle production so gross anyway.. Amazes me how difference in the flavor in " natural beef" vs corn fed hormones up unhealthy cows. Granted makes sense you are what you eat..

Got some free range wattle pig sausage the other day so delicious..

 

[tiznow]

Also Heavy antibiotic use in livestock production is creating lots of antibiotic resistant bugs.. Just common sense Mother Nature always is adapting to the obstacles thrown at it...

--------------

[h=1]The Overuse of Antibiotics in Food Animals Threatens Public Health[/h]

The Overuse of Antibiotics in Food Animals Threatens Public Health​

​

​

Antibiotics have been used since the 1940s and have led to a dramatic reduction in illness and death from infectious diseases. But according to the federal Interagency Task Force on Antimicrobial Resistance, “[t]he extensive use of antimicrobial drugs has resulted in drug resistance that threatens to reverse the medical advances of the last seventy years.”1 Since antibiotics have been used so widely and for so long, antibiotic resistance has become a major public health threat.
In response, there has been a concerted effort by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others to encourage doctors and patients to use antibiotics more wisely. Unfortunately, little progress has been made to reduce the use of antibiotics on farms, where most of these drugs are administered.
Approximately 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States are used in meat and poultry production.2 The vast majority is used on healthy animals to promote growth, or prevent disease in crowded or unsanitary conditions. The meat and poultry production industry argues, however, that that there is no harm in this. They say for example that “animal use contributes little, if anything, to the burden of human antibiotic resistance…”3 .
A key question is, can antibiotic use in animals promote the development of hard-to-treat antibiotic-resistant superbugs that make people sick? And if it can, are the illnesses rare occurrences, and the risks theoretical, or could current usage in animals pose a serious threat to human health.
But Consumers Union has concluded that the threat to public health from the overuse of antibiotics in food animals is real and growing. Humans are at risk both due to potential presence of superbugs in meat and poultry, and to the general migration of superbugs into the environment, where they can transmit their genetic immunity to antibiotics to other bacteria, including bacteria that make people sick.
Numerous health organizations, including the American Medical Association, American Public Health Association, Infectious Disease Society of America, and the World Health Organization, agree and have called for significant reductions in the use of antibiotics for animal food production.
History of Expert Opinion
Scientific expert bodies for more than two decades have concluded that there is a connection between antibiotic use in animals and the loss of effectiveness of these drugs in human medicine. In 1988, the Institute of Medicine (part of the National Academy of Sciences) concluded that “the committee believes that important, although as yet sparse, data show the flow of distinct salmonella clones from farm animals medicated with antibiotics in subtherapeutic concentrations, through food products, to humans, who thus acquire clinical salmonellosis.”4
Ten years later, the National Research Council (part of the National Academy of Sciences) concluded that “a link can be demonstrated between the use of antibiotics in food animals, the development of resistant microorganisms in those animals, and the zoonotic spread of pathogens to humans.”5
In 2003, an Expert Workshop co-sponsored by the World Health Organization, Food and Agricultural Organization (FDA), and World Animal Health Organization (OIE) concluded “that there is clear evidence of adverse human health consequences due to resistant organisms resulting from non-human usage of antimicrobials. These consequences include infections that would not have otherwise occurred, increased frequency of treatment failures (in some cases death) and increased severity of infections”6 .
In 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the CDC all testified before Congress that there is a connection between the routine use of antibiotics for meat production and the declining effectiveness of antibiotics for people.7 Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, Director of the CDC, noted that “there is strong scientific evidence of a link between antibiotic use in food animals and antibiotic resistance in humans.”8
Most recently in 2012, the FDA stated “Misuse and overuse of antimicrobial drugs creates selective evolutionary pressure that enables antimicrobial resistant bacteria to increase in numbers more rapidly than antimicrobial susceptible bacteria and thus increases the opportunity for individuals to become infected by resistant bacteria.”9 Also in 2012, the FDA, in its final rule banning certain extralabel uses of cephalosporin antimicrobial drugs in certain food producing animals, stated “In regard to antimicrobial drug use in animals, the Agency considers the most significant risk to the public health associated with antimicrobial resistance to be human exposure to food containing antimicrobial-resistant bacteria resulting from the exposure of food-producing animals to antimicrobials.”10
Nevertheless, the livestock industry continues to argue that while antibiotic use may have something to do with antibiotic resistance in bacteria on the farm, it is not an important human health issue, and little change in current practices are needed.
What Happens on the Farm
Numerous studies have demonstrated that routine use of antibiotics on the farm promotes drug-resistant superbugs in those facilities. Some of the most dramatic evidence came as a result of FDA approval of flouroquinolones–a class of antibiotics that includes Cipro (ciprofloxacin), which has been used in poultry production since 1995. By 1999 nearly 20 percent chicken breasts sampled contained ciprofloxacin-resistant Camplobacter, a disease-causing bacteria.11 After a long fight in the courts, FDA finally banned use of the drug in 2005, at which point nearly 30 percent of C. coli found in chicken breasts were ciprofloxacin resistant; by 2010, resistance to ciprofloxacin had declined to 13.5 percent.12
The reason for this is that when you feed antibiotics to animals, the bacteria in and around the animals are exposed to the drug, and many of them die. But there are always some that the drug can’t kill, and those survive and proliferate. Voila, superbugs.
While not disputing these facts, the industry argues essentially that what happens on the farm stays on the farm. There may be some superbugs there, but they don’t affect people. There are two main routes, however, by which superbugs can leave the farm and infect humans. One is a direct route, in meat and poultry products, and the other is an indirect route through the environment.
Superbugs Move From Farm to Kitchen
Once they appear on the farm, superbugs most definitely move from the farm to the kitchen, via uncooked meat and poultry. Consumer Reports tests of chicken in both 200613 and 2010 14 revealed widespread presence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens in retail poultry products. In both years, more than two thirds of chicken samples were contaminated with Salmonella and/or Campylobacter, and more than 60 percent of those bacteria were resistant to one or more antibiotics.
The industry argues that even this is not a concern because people know to cook poultry thoroughly. Indeed they do, but packages can drip in the refrigerator, or cutting boards can become contaminated, as well as other problems. There aren’t good data on how frequently this causes illness, especially difficult-to-treat illness, because most people just ride out an infection and it fades into the background of the estimated 48 million cases of food borne illness we have annually in the US.
But occasionally a superbug outbreak is serious enough to command the attention of the Center for Disease Control. One such case occurred in 2011, in which ground turkey was linked to 136 illnesses and one death, all caused by a strain of Salmonella resistant to four different antibiotics, ampicillin, streptomycin, tetracycline and gentamicin.15 Some 36 million pounds of ground turkey were recalled.
Another case was ground beef from the Hannaford grocery store chain in New England linked in 2011 to 19 infections and at least seven hospitalizations, all caused by a strain of Salmonella resistant to multiple antibiotics, including amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, ampicillin, ceftriaxone, cefoxitin, kanamycin, streptomycin, and sulfisoxazole.16
Superbugs Move From Farm to the Environment
Superbugs can also spread beyond the farm and threaten public health through environmental transmission. This can happen in various ways, particularly via workers, or farm runoff. Once farm-raised superbugs make it off the farm, they can exchange genetic material and give their resistance to other bacteria, even of other genera and species, that have never been anywhere antibiotics. This can happen in lakes, in wild animals, and even in the human digestive tract.
Workers are particularly likely to pick up resistant bacteria from animals and take them elsewhere. A study of poultry workers in the Delmarva peninsula found they were 32 times more likely to carry gentamicin-resistant Escherichia coli, and more than five times more likely to carry multi-drug resistant E. coli, compared to other community members.17 A study performed in the Midwest found methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in 70 percent of the pigs and 64 percent of the workers at one facility, while no MRSA was found in pigs or workers at a facility in another state, strongly suggesting that the MRSA strain moves between pigs and humans.18 Indeed, a careful genetic analysis has found that a particular MRSA strain found in pigs (e.g. ST398) originated as a methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) in humans, jumped into pigs, where it acquired resistance to methicillin and tetracycline, and then jumped back to humans, where it’s known as livestock-associated MRSA (LA-MRSA).19 This LA-MRSA (e.g. ST398) is quite prevalent in the Netherlands, where it is responsible for over 20% of all MRSA.20
However, resistant bacteria can also escape from a large livestock operation (often known as a confined animal feeding operation, or CAFO) by a number of routes, including via manure applied to fields as fertilizer,21 from trucks transporting animals,22 the wind leaving hog facilities23 or even via flies attracted to the manure which can pick up and transmit resistant bacteria.24 A recently released study of the South Platte River found that antibiotic resistance genes (coding for resistance to sulfonamides) were 10,000 times higher in river sediments downstream from larger feedlots (ones with 10,000 cattle) compared to river sediment upstream from such feedlots.25 The same study found these same antibiotic resistance genes were only 1,000 times higher from sewage treatment plants that discharge ten million gallons of effluent per day, compared to pristine sediments.
Bacteria in many environments can readily exchange genes coding for antibiotic resistance with neighboring bacteria. Antibiotic resistance genes are often located on mobile genetic elements, especially plasmids, transposons and integrons which can easily move between bacteria of the same or different species, which facilitates the spread of resistance to multiple drugs by multiple types of bacteria.26
The industry says that 40 percent of all the antibiotics used on the farm are drugs (called ionophores) not used in human medicine, so it doesn’t matter if bacteria become resistant to them. However, a study by scientists from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Cornell University involving monensin, one of the most commonly used ionophores in cattle production in the U.S., demonstrated that use of monensin in cattle feed and the selection of monensin-resistant ruminal bacteria lead to a 32-fold increase in resistance to bacitracin, which is used in human medicine.27 This study demonstrates that one cannot claim that ionophores cannot select for cross resistance to any antibiotic used in human medicine. The study called for more research.28 So, it is appropriate to consider ionophore use as part of the antibiotics used in animal agriculture.
Conclusion
Use of antibiotics on the farm most definitely poses a risk to human health. Antibiotic use can promote creation of superbugs which can contaminate meat and poultry and cause hard-to-cure disease in people.
Superbugs can also exit the farm via farm workers, wind, runoff, and wildlife. Even if they don’t immediately cause illness, bacteria are uniquely equipped to exchange genetic immunity via their plasmids, with other bacteria wherever they encounter them.
It is for these reasons that the public health community and FDA have been proposing to limit use of antibiotics on livestock for more than three decades (see list below). Consumers Union believes that as a prudent measure, we should drastically reduce use of antibiotics on food animals, and eliminate use altogether for growth promotion or disease prevention in healthy animals.
Some of the Organizations Supporting Restrictions on the Use of Antimicrobials in Animal Production
American Medical Association, 2001
Adopted Resolution 508, Antimicrobial Use and Resistance, which states, in part, “AMA is opposed to the use of antimicrobials at non-therapeutic levels in agriculture, or as pesticides or growth promoters, and urges that non-therapeutic use in animals of antimicrobials (that are used in humans) should be terminated or phased out”.29
American Public Health Association, 1999, 2004
Policy Number 9908: Addressing the Problem of Bacterial Resistance to Antimicrobial Agents and the Need for Surveillance, which urged “FDA to work for regulations eliminating the non-medical use of antibiotics and limiting the use of antibiotics in animal feeds”30 In 2004, passed a resolution urging ”bulk purchasers of foodstuffs to adopt procurement policies that encourage and, where feasible, require procurement of meat, fish, and dairy products produced without nontherapeutic use of medically important antibiotics.”31
Infectious Diseases Society of America, 2009
“IDSA supports efforts to phase out the use of antimicrobial drugs for growth promotion, feed efficiency, and routine disease prevention in food animals.”32
World Health Organization, 2001
The WHO Global Strategy for Containment of Antimicrobial Resistance, recommends that governments “terminate or rapidly phase out the use of antimicrobials for growth promotion if they are also used for treatment of humans.”33
For the PDF version, click here.
_________________________
3 Pg 5 in American Farm Bureau Federation et al June 12, 2012 letter to Congressperson Slaughter

4 Pg. 2 in Institute of Medicine (IOM). 1988. Human Health Risks with the Subtherapeutic Use of Penicillin or Tetracyclines in Animal Feed. National Academies Press. Washington, D.C.

5 Pg. 6 in IOM. 1998. The Use of Drugs in Food Animals: Benefits and Risks. National Academies Press. Washington, D.C.

7 Hearing: Antiobiotic Resistance and the Use of Antibiotics in Animal Agriculture, Subcommittee on
Health, Energy and Commerce Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, July 12, 2010

13 Consumer Reports, 2007. Dirty Birds. January 2007, pp. 20-23. Consumers Union.

14 Consumer Reports, 2010. How safe is That Chicken. January 2010, pp. 19-23. Consumers Union.

20 van Loo I, Huijsdens X, Tiemersma E, de Neeling A, van de Sande-Bruinsma N, Beaujean D, Voss A and J Kluytmans. 2007. Emergence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus of animal origin in humans. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 13(12): 1834-1839. At:

21 Chee-Sanford JC, Mackie RI, Koike S, Krapac IG, Lin Y-F, Yannarell AC, Maxwell S and RI Aminov. 2009. Fate and transport of antibiotic residues and antibiotic resistance genes following land application of manure waste. Journal of Environmental Quality, 38(3): 1086-1108. At:https://www.crops.org/publications/jeq/articles/38/3/1086

 

[tiznow]

Chances are near sided mankind will do nothing about all the problems that we've allowed to build up since the industrial revolution started.. No signs of it stopping .. Still hoards of denial.. Just a lot of chatter like oh fuck we screwed..

Hopefully im wrong.. None of us currently living will be around to see the real bad shit anyway if that's the direction we are heading.. This stuff takes time .. Lots of chatter but no real action to tackle all these pent up problems mankinds massive expansion has created...

and in in the end why does it matter or why do I care other than just to amuse myself observing things.. Our lives are completely meaningless just floating on a rock in a humongous universe..

 

[tiznow]

Speaking of documentaries, human ego, need for importance, search for a worth or whatever you wanna call it

halfwsy through .. going clear: Scientology and the prison of belief .. Good watch..

 

[tiznow]

That doc on Scientology a great tiny case study of why humans are scroomed..

few sociopaths/crazy fucks rope in a lot of good meaning people to do bad things.. The bigger they grow and deeper they go the worse it gets ..

Much like the soulless megacorporations of today's society.. Good people deep down working for evil companies that are doing a disservice to mankind as a whole.. Many who understand this fact and still have no other choice cause they need the paycheck.. As well as being very difficult/risky to make your own way today.. Since the economy is rigged for the big guys.. One party system bought and paid for.. Boom/busts great for them... Can get bigger gobbling up cheap assets.. Blah blah blah.. Lol