Here I thought it was going in the direction of fear-mongering NIMBY types exploiting, what I would assume were, the horrors of living through the Great Stink & cholera outbreaks to slow the rapid growth of London at the time
i think that even then, that's not a problem, as one horse drawn cart can remove a lot more manure than it produces, i.e. a small number of extra horses can remove the excess manure of all horses and the overhead the extra horses introduce is mimimal.
I suppose not for biblical prophecies.
- Keeping in mind that your horse farts even you're not travelling
- And that methane is a good deal worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2
1: Methane leaves the atmosphere a lot faster than Co2
2: The methane is a result of breaking down food where the carbon was captured from the air by the plants that were the source of the food.
3: (And I'll let you figure out the numbers) You need to calculate the methane to Co2 ratio of the expected release of methane vs Co2. I suspect there is significantly less methane released than (equivalent) Co2 from cars.
That being said, who wants to go back to horses? I don't.
But then I read about getting licked by a dog that had just tasted poop (I think that is the implication here)…
Fun fact, dried horse/cow poop makes and excellent fire starter. It's loaded with fibers the burn like crazy. [1]
Oh I dispute that! I grew up in a small town that offered horse-drawn carriage rides for the tourists. You could smell that shit for miles.
To me, pig and sheep were the worst smelling farm animals. Everything else, cows, horses, etc were just "meh". There's a smell, but it's not like stepped in dog poop smell.
Even driving past cattle feed lots I don't generally notice too much of a bad smell.
Yeah, "grassy" is a word for it. But it still smells like shit. Less horrid than dog shit, but it's marginal.
As far as dogs being dirty - mine won't eat animal shit, either because she is not interested or because she picks up that we wouldn't like it (surprising, actually, how attuned she is to things we don't like). But she does not care at all about touching her own shit. She'll walk in it, throw it around after pooping when she is scratching the grass.
Now that is pungent and nauseating. I like cats, but their pee and poop make me cringe.
Studies show that cat urine contains more concentrated urea and ammonia than other pets’ urine, making it especially pungent.
High Concentration of Waste: Cat urine is highly concentrated due to their evolution from desert-dwelling ancestors. This adaptation allows them to absorb more water, resulting in urine that contains a higher concentration of waste products.
Breakdown of Urea: When cat urine sits in a litter box, bacteria begin to break down urea, a component of urine. This process releases ammonia, which contributes to the strong, unpleasant odor.
Presence of Mercaptans: As urine decomposes, it also produces mercaptans, sulfur compounds that emit a skunky smell. This intensifies the overall odor of cat urine over time.
Hormonal Influence: Unneutered male cats produce urine with a stronger smell due to hormones used for marking territory. Unspayed females also have potent-smelling urine, especially when in heat.
If so, why did you think it was a good idea to paste that here?
I've often seen people letting their dogs lick their faces and eat off the table and I reckon they must never have been taught hygiene when young (surely if not at home they'd be taught that at school?).
I'd never knowingly eat food they'd prepared.
I'll take getting bit by a dog over getting bit by a human any day of the week. We're much dirtier.
But our animal bodies evolved to live in the dirt, no? I believe it to be true that babies who grow up with dogs and are exposed to their "dirtiness" actually develop stronger immune systems.
Here's the first study I could find on the topic: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088915912...
Anyways, not to criticize your hygiene, but I find it interesting how human constructs are often not actually that good for humans.
It's a good place to be, if you can get yourself there.
It seems like that was not really the case. At least I don't find much evidence that this was the consensus.
There wasn't a consensus and science isn't a democracy where the most popular idea wins. Global climate ideas and modeling are very new and if you go back to the 70s or the 20s "consensus" isn't what you're looking for, nobody should have been particularly sure of anything as there wasn't enough information available.
None of the fear-mongering ever seems to come true.
I mean, "bad things will happen if we don't fix the thing" is not fearmongering if, after the thing is fixed, bad things don't happen.
But also, merely surviving is not the problem trying to be avoided. It’s all the decrease in quality of life on the way to adapting to the scarcity of the resource (which very well could mean thinning the herd) that is the issue.
For disaster scenarios, we benefit from extreme caution.
Arguably we haven’t done enough of this, if you look at e.g. global climate change. We may yet be able to avert a huge disaster, but even if you just look at the local damage like intensified tropical storms, or wildfires, that’s quite a big deal.
SweetSoftPillow•6d ago