einhverfr
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One thing to point out is that I don’t see anyone who is educated on this matter on either side saying it is possible to get runaway global warming like Venus. We are burning carbon that was sequestered at a time when the earth was a bit warmer than it is today.
I do not side with the alarmists here, btw. Many of the claims appear to be demonstrably false. For example, all our archaeological and such data points to a medieval warming period that at least in the Northern Hemisphere left the arctic relatively free of ice. This relative lack of ice was important in the Norse expansion to Iceland and Greenland, and in the voyages over to the New World down the coast of Baffin Island. This says something about polar bear resilience that is not getting into the discussion.
This isn’t to say that AGW isn’t real. The problem though is that we don’t have enough data to say for sure. And rising sea levels could be a problem so we probably don’t want to wait until we can.
I don’t think it’s either. True education is the ability to learn and the ability to perfect. One of the very serious issues I have been arguing against in the US for decades has been the trend to treat college education as a sort of vocational school, and therefore the most important topics (the humanities) are reserved only for those who want to go into law (and maybe eventually politics). This is dangerous.
My degree is in general studies, with an emphasis on History, sorta. Professionally I am a software engineer and developer in the open source world. Hobby-wise I am trying to turn my small town lot into a permacultural garden (I figure I have less than 10% of it converted so far). I estimate right now it produces maybe 800 lbs of food a year (mostly fruit) but that is slowly developing. Both these areas are greatly helped by my college studies. I can learn anything. I can pursue perfection at anything. I can question what I am told at anything. Critical thinking is thus a very underrated skill.
In order to do these, I have taught myself (largely) a great deal of botany, ecology (though I studied some of this in college), computer programming, software engineering, financial accounting, marketing, etc.
I think that one of the great challenges ahead is to foster ways of developing critical thinking in our children and young adults that doesn’t require going so deeply into debt. Such individuals are far better prepared to carve economic niches out for themselves than individuals who go through the education system expecting it to be preparing them for a job.
I am in Indonesia at the moment. I don’t know about the Middle East but I expect there are some of the same constraints there. I went to Pizza Hut once here and concluded it was bad.
I think part of the problem is that the primary toppings we love in the US are full of pork, and pork is haram when it comes to Islamic dietary laws, so you have a company which is trying to serve American-themed foods in a country where adding pork is likely to make the food not sell. So they resort to gimmicks like this. Yes, I have seen “chicken” nuggets in the crusts of pizza over here, and yes they were as gross as that sounds.
So this is part of what drives the innovation. Pizza Hut is selling Americanism to the rest of the world, and by that I mean corporate Americanism. I suspect we will see more of this to come.
I am a fermenter, both lactic and alcoholic ;-).
I make mead, beer, ebulon (sort of an early American elderberry malt liquor), and various variations on that theme. I have experimented with wines and fermented fruits. I also make sauerkrauts and the like. My breads have, however, to date all been yeast breads.
BTW on wheat-free sourdough, I understand that you can make a 100% rye sourdough and that once the gluten is acidified it will rise better than it would without the sourdough.
I don’t know too much about the system but it does look like (based on the USDA web site with their notices of proposed rulemaking) the USDA currently is talking about implementing it only for animals moved interstate. That doesn’t get rid of all concerns, of course.
While I hate to get too political, this is one reason why I think the fight to keep the federal government one of (in Madison’s words) “limited and enumerated powers” is important. As long as the USDA can only address animals moved interstate, we can avoid the regulations. If they start reaching in and saying “no backyard chickens because we want to support industrial food-like substances” then we have a larger issue.
