Swedes claim climate conscience: study

Protestant guilt secularized.

Protestant belief that man is the master and his guilt is the cause of all the worlds ills and that man being the master can rectify his wrongs and create a paradise on earth for Jesus's return. Just take Jesus out of the picture, secularize it and there you go.

I have not seen as many V8 cars in any other european country.........so as a per capita the percentage of big muscle motors must be large.............good job they all have a guilty concience and practice miljo korning...............thus reaffirming their high moral standpoint in the world. Get real!

All you climate conscious Swedes (and the non-Swedes who are dominant on these pages), turn Vegetarian or at least have deliberately chosen Vegetarian days in your week.

It is becoming increasingly clear that hunger, poverty, de-forestation and the consequent droughts, not to mention many medical problems including obesity are all directly related to meat production and consumption.

It is far more environmently friendly and resource efficient to eat a kilo of grain than to eat a kilo of meat which can only be produced after lots of kilos of grains and lots of litres of water have been fed to an animal, and lots of kilos of waste and gases have been produced by the animal.

If you really needed fast food, you could eat a banana and a cereal bar and drink some fruit juice.

But above all, become Vegetarian from your Heart. Give a thought to a few days old suckling calf which is forcibly removed from his mother to be eaten by you while you happily drink the mother's milk. Or does that not give you a guilty conscience?

Craicen has it exactly right and Kooritze clearly points out the hypocracy of the leftist socialists. As for Kindhearted, more useless guilt. Gag me.

Because his scientific study done on only leftist, socialist, Swedes clearly points out only fact.

Kindhearted:

I agree with your point about vegetarian food being more beneficial for the environment, health and energy efficient... but your argument fails to take into account the tastiness of that beef, followed by a chocolate fudge brownie smothered in ice cream.

I would happily pay more for the cost of my food, by doing away with the farm subsidies - which would result in less consumption of meat. However, I doubt that such a fundamental change will happen in my lifetime.

Odd they are 14th in energy consumption per capita.

http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/data_tables/ene1_2005.pdf

BCR, you have hit the nail on the head - taste, is the main reason why people are so reluctant to give up meat. But there is a stark choice:

Taste of meat OR kindness to a few days old suckling calf forcibly removed from his mother and slaughtered for you to eat?

Taking the life of an animal to satisfy one's taste buds is cruel and unnecessary. The world is full of tasty fruits, vegetables, grains and nuts. It won't take that long to get adjusted.

Regarding the cost, its back to the rich versus the poor phenomenon - only those who can afford it can eat it.

The point here is the production and consumption of meat does have a direct negative impact on the welfare of humans as a whole. Comments to this effect are being heard from high places quite often these days. From what I have read, a local council in heavy meat eating and rich Belgium has set up a Vegetarian day once a week when schools etc. have only vegetarian food served.

For me, vegetarianism is because of kindness towards other living things and respect for their desire to live and not to die. Control over the taste buds is the first step towards mental and spiritual advancement.

Before there is a comment about it being cruel to kill plants, yes, plants too are living things and do feel pain, but having only one sense, they feel much less pain than living things with two or more senses, so it is less cruel to eat plants than it is to eat animals. There is a whole philosophy about plant life as well but that is beyond the scope of this discussion.

Anyway, even if you can't yet become a full vegetarian, it would be of benefit to many, if you could at least have deliberately chosen Vegetarian days in your week.

@ mkvgtired

Yes but about 50% of our power comes from nuclear energy and about 48% from water, wind and solar energy. Not much Co2.

Not for nothin' but I don't think eating a hamburger or a nice thick steak is the biggest morality issue concerning animals here in Sweden.

No bad conscience here. Can't understand why a poor Swedish middleclass should lay awake every night trying to calculate their CO2-emissions the previous day, while a rich Indian middleclass, eight times as big, happily emit whatever it takes to live the good life. Building a new coal-burning power plant every week, or is that the Chinese?

I agree.

It astounds me. Nitrogen, Oxygen and select trace elements comprise 95 percent of our atmosphere. Five percent of the other gases in the atmosphere are believed to influence global warming. Of that five percent, 95 percent is water vapor(clouds). Of the remaining five percent, less then 4% is CO2. Of that less then 4% it is believed that man contributes 2%, the rest is natural. Even if we find out in the future that CO2 is a global warming forcing, what real effect is man's contribution?

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We can all agree that the UN will be one of the biggest beneficiaries if nations sign an environmental treaty that limits CO2. This will mean bigger budgets for them, and even more do nothing bureaucracies. That being said, we can expect their reports to be some of the most liberal on the subject. So Al Gore says there will be an increase in sea levels of 50 million-bajillion feet by mid century. What do you think the biased UN report says about this? 20 feet? 10 feet? 3?... It states 2 centimeters (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter10.pdf). Considering all of the variables that that play into sea level, I dont see how they can claim 2 centimeters is even statistically significant (or rationally significant for that matter). Also, Al Gore purchased a condo only blocks from San Francisco's coast. I wonder why he would do such a thing if the city was going to be under water in less than 50 years (http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/12/prweb326327.htm).

Face it, he made over $100 Million pushing his global warming agenda. That is his motivation, not saving the planet. Many other people and companies have jumped on this bandwagon. I agree green energy is good. Dependence on fossil fuels funds nations that are hostile to Western values. Burning fossil fuels also creates bi-products that can be harmful to people. That being said we should take measures to become energy independent, but we need to do so without crippling our economies.

No one is denying the climate changes. It has done so without human involvement since the beginning of time, and it continues to do so.

Kindhearted: It does not give me a guilty conscience. how about we all stop eating meat and just let the cows grow to a ripe old age and die of natural causes. lol....hehehehhe!

A correction from me; I was talking about our electricity consumption, not our entire energy (which as far as I understand is electricity + a lot of things including gasoline and diesel usage) consumption; quite the difference.

there is only one guy (entry) talking about science here.

man-made-global -warming is not the same as global-warming, global-warming is not same as climate-change, climate is not the same as environment, don't understand why they're interchangeable now in the media and political cycles, don't think they care about science very much.

good old all knowing commies predicted that capitalism would destroy the world, and the only cure was communism.

we are supposed to be in an ice age if the prophets in the 60's and 70's were correct.

good grief...

If you dont simplify all those tough schools of thought how would Al Gore, et. al., sell books to idiots? There is a much smaller market for actual scientific research as far as the general public is concerned.

Speaking of the idiot Pied Piper and the President of the Planet... According to Al Gore "the interior of the earth is extremely hot - several million degrees"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns_4pzfOSTc

Note to Global Warming Alarmists: Your science hero & prophet is only off by a few million degrees in every temperature scale you can imagine.

http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/16/al-gor...-he-or-wont-he/

The CEI is organizing a fund to entice Al Gore to participate in a climate debate.

Pledge a dollar to goredebate@cei.org

If Gore accepts the invitation to the debate the CEI will ask you for $1. If he never accepts the invite you owe nothing.

I dont see what the alarmists should be concerned about. If Gore's science is as sound as he says it is he should win hands down.

Gore is a waste of space. I would much rather see Mann & Hansen on stage to debate against one of many real scientists regarding the broken hockey stick & the GISS data, or Phil Jones of East Anglia explain away his lost CRU data sets or Keith Briffa debate the merits of his Yamal cronologies.

I completely agree. The only problem is many think everything Gore says is fact. It would be nice to have someone discredit his ridiculous theories in front of a crowd of his cheerleaders.

I hope you can take my word in the following.

Swedes are so damn REsponsible that you cannot even imagine being otherwise.

The idea of "why should I care about turning the heat on the Globe?" is so strange to you that you cannot imagine a nation where about half or a third, depending on who asks, lets say a substantial part of the population just does not care enough to even find out what is this about "Global Warming". The percent of Americans that do NOT believe Global Warming is true, is actually INcreasing!!

This must be funny in Sweden but, sadly, it is true. It is not the lack of information but the failure to care about the implications of the truth, this Very Very Inconvenient Truth!