Here we go, another example of why the climate change hoax movement is out of control: they take a real environmental issue, and drag it under the banner of “climate change”
(Treehugger) There’s perhaps no other animal on Earth so synonymous with all things diminutive as the modestly framed shrimp — but, as it turns out, not everything about those famed crustaceans is small. Biologists say that common shrimp farming methods across Asia are so devastating to fragile ecosystems as to make ordering a simple shrimp cocktail one of the worst things you could do for the environment in the name of grabbing some grub.
In an attempt to measure the economic costs of deforestation and habitat loss, Oregon State University biologist J. Boone Kauffman set out to quantify the oft overlooked true pricetag of harvesting shrimp. According to the researcher, over half of the shrimp consumed in the world originate from farms in Asia, with most of those farms having been established on land where mangrove forests once stood. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, the ecologically impactful farms are horribly inefficient.
How’s this for mindboggling: it takes five square miles of cleared mangrove forest to produce just over two pounds of shrimp — and that land is typically left depleted within ten years and rendered unusable for another forty. By comparison, the devastation left behind from cattle-ranch deforestation seems, well, quite rosy.
“The carbon footprint of the shrimp from this land use is about 10-fold greater than the land use carbon footprint of an equivalent amount of beef produced from a pasture formed from a tropical rainforest,” Kauffman tells the AFP, via Phys Org.
There’s no denying that the ecological degradation is horrific from a true environmental standpoint. Yet, instead of decrying the actual impact for what it is, the Warmists have to hijack the issue and place it under their banner, which deflects from solutions necessary to deal with the issue. And causes many people to roll their eyes when they see the phrase “climate change” and “carbon footprint.” This is one of the things that drives me nuts about the Warmists, especially since their solutions seem to be “tax people” but never actually deal with the issue.
Over to the Physorg article
If the seafood is produced on a typical Asian fish farm, a 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving “has an ecosystem carbon footprint of an astounding 198 kilograms (436 pounds) of CO2,” biologist J. Boone Kauffman said.
Who gives a crap? I’m more concerned with the what happens to the land. But, let’s go back to something else
The farms are inefficient, producing just one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of shrimp for 13.4 square kilometers (five square miles) of mangrove, while the ponds created are abandoned in just three to nine years because disease, soil acidification and contamination destroy them, he wrote.
Seriously? 2.2 pounds of shrimp for 5 square miles of clear cut land? I’m not buying it.
I expect all Warmists to stop eating shrimp immediately.
