I am sitting in the sun room with my Canadian purchased red vest on reading about global warming. According to some intergovenmental agency "experts" in the UK and USA, measurements of surface temperature around the world have gone from a period of stability, ie, not changed since 1998, to global surface temperature decreasing recently. The earth's Southern Hemisphere has been cooling for the past 8 years with snow fall in Buenos Aires for the first time since 1918. Australia has suffered its coolist June ever. Sorry Leah. Yes, the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide has risen, the surface temperature just has not followed. Now there's a howdoyoudo. My local newspaper tells me that I should expect a colder than normal winter this year. Gas supplies for my furnace are still plentiful, I have my new vest, and several more, I regularly wear my Christmas present slipper stockings (thanks Bec), I have set the thermostat to 68 degrees, and bundled up a bit more.
If this global warming story turns out to be a hoax, I am going to be really pissed. It would mean that I have misallocated my stock portfolio, and will be a pauper at a time when energy prices go through the statosphere. Imagine Kathy and I sitting with a blanket around our shoulders, typing on our computers with half-finger gloves on, like Bob Cratchet, trying to coaks a few more BTUs out of the stand alone electric heater at our feet. Will Ebeneezer Coal Company Scrooge have night time visitors? provide us retirees with electic rate relief? the golden turkey of the 21st century. It is just interesting what actual measurements can do to highfalutin talk.
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One of the interesting features of a discussion I heard about obesity was the carbohydrate, insulin, fat cell connection, information known for 50 years. The gist of the story is that the only way to get fat is to eat carbohydrates. Eating fat does not get converted into body fat; neither does eatig protein get converted to fat. Everything has to go through the carbohydrate system to get to the fat cell.
I am intreged by this discussion since there appears to be a world wide epidemic of obesity. This epidemic begins in asia within one generation of the "green revolution" in India and India's ability for the first time in its history to be able to feed its people. There were no major famines in India after genetically altered grains could be grown in abundance. Grains get converted to simple carbohydrates: ie, glucose, fructose, galactose, go to the liver and packaged to glucose only molecules and transported to the body cells, including fat cells, require insulin to enter and be converted and stored as fat.
So, maybe the obesity "crisis" of the world is not due to McDonalds and it Big Mac, rather its due to the whole grains, nuts and fruits that are being recommended as "good." Maybe McDonald's contribution is the 40 oz regular Coke with its high carbohydrate content, the carbohydrate content of the "fries" ie the potatoe, and we all should be eating more Big Macs, with its double meat patty ladened with chemicals and hormones.
Of course, if we all resorted to "organic" meats and vegetables we would have to decide upon which 3 billion people of the world need to be eliminated, since organic farming has substantially less yield per acre than current genetically engineered crops, hormone and antibiotic fed beef, pork and poulty.
Food for thought. Blaming the agrobusiness is not an option; it may make people feel better, but is not a solution. RICH
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