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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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 Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 1:29 am Post subject: |
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| Space Cowboy wrote: |
| I apologize for the snarky "Flat Earth" comment - that did come off as mockery. I do think you are being a bit proud and willfully ignorant about the mercury situation, though. |
That's okay, perhaps I am being... I just don't live my life according to what the science journals are publishing. I'm not a scientist (though I do have a basic understanding of biochemistry), but I don't trust a lot of the mainstream science coming from the environmentalist crown (like global warming turning out to be an admitted sham for example). I'm not quite as stubborn about it as you might suppose, but unless it jives at least somewhat with common sense I won't buy into it just because it's published in the mainstream media (and let's not pretend the science is neutral).
The whales they catch are not 'toothed', they are baleen whales caught far out in the open ocean (where they feed). They do catch toothed whales such as dolphins as well, though I've not tried eating them (I believe it mostly consumed in Kyushu). Dolphins live close to shore, where the pollution levels are higher, so it stands to reason that their meat would contain higher levels of toxins. Whether it's as toxic as the environmentalists claim (they call it "toxic waste") is up for debate...
Anyway, Minamata-byou was caused by the people eating fish in an extremely polluted bay where a company dumped large amounts of methyl-mercury directly into the water for several decades. Unique case. There's simply no way you're going to get it from eating regular seafood (or whale meat for that matter).
I'd still much rather eat whale meat caught in the wild than factory processed, mass-produced, chemical laden, Monsanto gmo corn-fed, hormone injected beef from back home...
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| I lived in Japan for two years. While I don't think this makes me an expert, I can say from personal experience and experience with Japanese people that whale is not some sort of delicacy. Whale is something that's entirely supply-driven: After the expedition comes in, whale meat appears in school lunches, and whale meat is sold at bargain-basement prices at grocery stores. After the reserves are used up, one rarely sees it in the grocery stores until the next expedition returns. |
This is about right, but the supply is still very limited for a nation of 120+ million people. Most people never eat it, and you can't just find it at any store.
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| If you liked whale, great. Maybe you had better quality samples than I did. Just don't use one restaurant meal to support your entire argument. |
I've eaten it quite a few times. Of course the manner in which it's prepared makes a huge difference. It's a wild meat, so like venison it has a strong flavor which some people might not like (I find the whale sashimi to be a bit much). But if it's cooked well, it's very tasty (at least imo). |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 6:29 am Post subject: |
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| visitorq wrote: |
They do catch toothed whales such as dolphins as well, though I've not tried eating them. |
I'm similar to you in that I don't mind eating meat if we can be sure that they are a) Not of endangered species b) are killed humanely.
But with Dolphins and whales, that is just not the case.
They don't fully know the status of what they are killing. Its not like with a herd of livestock on a farm, where you know exactly how many are on your property, which ones are old or injured and can be hunted, which ones you need to keep alive for breeding etc.
And they kill endangered species as well as abundant ones because the hunting is not tightly regulated and controlled. Their methods alone are too imprecise.
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| Japanese fisheries are responsible for the largest slaughter and capture of dolphins with an annual quota for 3,000 animals. Dolphin drives target multiple threatened and endangered species and employ brutal, inhumane methods for killing these animals such as stabbing or beating dolphins to death. Species at risk, but not limited to, include: striped dolphins, spotted dolphins, risso's dolphins, bottlenose dolphins, orcas and pilot whales. |
http://www.pacificwhale.org/content/dolphin-drive-hunting |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 6:57 am Post subject: |
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| Junior wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
They do catch toothed whales such as dolphins as well, though I've not tried eating them. |
I'm similar to you in that I don't mind eating meat if we can be sure that they are a) Not of endangered species b) are killed humanely.
But with Dolphins and whales, that is just not the case.
They don't fully know the status of what they are killing. Its not like with a herd of livestock on a farm, where you know exactly how many are on your property, which ones are old or injured and can be hunted, which ones you need to keep alive for breeding etc.
And they kill endangered species as well as abundant ones because the hunting is not tightly regulated and controlled. Their methods alone are too imprecise. |
So your main issue is that they don't know precisely how many whales there are? Sufficed to say, in the case of Minke whales, there's a crap load of them. Even if the number were only in the hundreds of thousands (more likely it's even more than conservative 1 million estimate they've given), killing a mere ~500 per year is completely sustainable, negligible even. Surely you can see this.. |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 7:46 am Post subject: |
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| visitorq wrote: |
| So your main issue is that they don't know precisely how many whales there are? Sufficed to say, in the case of Minke whales, there's a crap load of them. Even if the number were only in the hundreds of thousands (more likely it's even more than conservative 1 million estimate they've given), killing a mere ~500 per year is completely sustainable, negligible even. Surely you can see this.. |
Firstly, how is a million whales (assuming that there is in fact that many, for which there is zero evidence) "a lot"?
If there were only a million people on the earth, would you say that there were a lot?
Especially when you consider the carrying capacity of the oceans for these whales- then they are dramatically underpopulated. Genetic studies show that prior to industrial whaling there must have been multimillions. Its just that the population has never recovered. How does this underpopulation affect the marine food chain and the health of our oceans? We don't really know yet.
Second, recent surveys indicate the number of Minkes has crashed by 50% since the 1980's, in all areas monitored. So there definitely are fewer than 500 000 (of both species combined).
Thats the population of a small town. If the global human population amounted to the town of chuncheon, and was decreasing year on year, would you be worried?
They are suffering from more than just whaling. There is also commercial overfishing, death by industrial noise (sonar and other sounds), pollution which lowers resistance to disease, destroyed fishing grounds (climate change has killed the coral nurseries in many areas), and so on.
Finally... Minke whales were found by DNA testing to be two distinct species, in 1998. The Japanese are hunting the Antarctic Minke (for which there is no population data). So its equivalent to sailors knocking dodos on the head thinking that there was "a crapload " (your negative term for another species) of them. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:47 am Post subject: |
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| Junior wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
| So your main issue is that they don't know precisely how many whales there are? Sufficed to say, in the case of Minke whales, there's a crap load of them. Even if the number were only in the hundreds of thousands (more likely it's even more than conservative 1 million estimate they've given), killing a mere ~500 per year is completely sustainable, negligible even. Surely you can see this.. |
Firstly, how is a million whales (assuming that there is in fact that many, for which there is zero evidence) "a lot"?
If there were only a million people on the earth, would you say that there were a lot?
Especially when you consider the carrying capacity of the oceans for these whales- then they are dramatically underpopulated. Genetic studies show that prior to industrial whaling there must have been multimillions. Its just that the population has never recovered. How does this underpopulation affect the marine food chain and the health of our oceans? We don't really know yet.
Second, recent surveys indicate the number of Minkes has crashed by 50% since the 1980's, in all areas monitored. So there definitely are fewer than 500 000 (of both species combined).
Thats the population of a small town. If the global human population amounted to the town of chuncheon, and was decreasing year on year, would you be worried? |
Whatever. I don't necessarily believe those stats ("in all areas monitored", as if that's supposed to mean anything - sounds almost as contrived as global warming data). We've been lied to by scientists before, and this is far from a neutral issue. Bottom line is that as far as the miniscule demand for whale meat goes, there's no shortage of Minke whales (as if the fact that there's less of them than humans in the world means anything). As far as I'm concerned ~500 per year is fine.
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| They are suffering from more than just whaling. There is also commercial overfishing, death by industrial noise (sonar and other sounds), pollution which lowers resistance to disease, destroyed fishing grounds (climate change has killed the coral nurseries in many areas), and so on. |
Yeah yeah, mother nature is so "fragile" and all that jazz. Heard it all before, don't believe much of it (and care even less).
If it's really as bad as you claim (and the whales can't even cope with "noise" without going extinct), then there's not much hope for them... May as well get a meal out of it. |
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johnnyenglishteacher2
Joined: 03 Dec 2010
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| Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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| visitorq wrote: |
| sounds almost as contrived as global warming data |
I take it you're referring to the UEA CRU data? The only hint of manipulating data coming from those e-mails was for the tree rings on the graph. That was not done for a peer-reviewed publication, and does not form part of the scientific literature. "Hiding the decline" was done at the request of the publisher, who didn't want too complicated a graph for the readers. The rationale was that tree ring data and thermometer measurements started to diverge at that point - we know that temperatures weren't falling for the period covered, so it was a reasonable thing to do. The tree ring data is, however, available for anyone to see as part of the scientific literature on the subject, and is openly discussed in climatology journals (do a Google Scholar search for "tree ring data climate anomalies" and then take your pick from the thousands of articles which come up), which rather puts paid to the "data was being fixed" idea. Funnily enough, the scientifically-illiterate media overlooked that tricky little aspect to the story.
I'm not going to get into the scientific evidence here, as I there is just too much of it, and as you have already said you are not scientifically-trained, so I'll address the "global warming's a big scam" side of things.
Scientific budgets are set on an annual basis by governments. Researchers are then pretty much in competition to secure their funding from this budget. Scientists aren't going to just make something up and have precious funding diverted into the study of a phenomenon which doesn't even exist. Being a researcher takes up to 7 or 8 years of university study and then the chance to earn a wage which is far lower than counterparts in private industry (check out the jobs section on the New Scientist website for evidence of this). You don't spend years of your life studying to get lower wages just for the chance to make something up.
As somebody who is currently studying for a degree in physics and chemistry, I find it sad to hear the old "scientists can't be trusted" line again and again and again. Sometimes an individual scientist might commit fraud, sometimes even a small team, but a conspiracy on this scale in the scientific world is unprecedented and probably impossible.
And before anybody comes out with the old "sceptics can't get their work published because of political correctness" chestnut, here is a collection of 850 peer-reviewed papers which are sceptical of the IPCC's position:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
You'll notice that most of them were published in prestigious journals, so that's another little myth debunked. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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| ^ um, I hope you didn't write all that bluster on my behalf?? No offense (I don't mean to simply dismiss what you've written) but you should be aware that whole threads on here (full of citations from both camps) have been devoted to that subject already. So my mind is quite unlikely to be changed... I remain quite convinced it's a scam, but more from the political side of things. As for the climate gate scientists, after reading their emails I frankly couldn't care less what those government-funded charlatans have published in their "prestigious journals"... |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 5:29 pm Post subject: |
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| visitorq wrote: |
Yeah yeah, mother nature is so "fragile" and all that jazz. Heard it all before, don't believe much of it (and care even less).
If it's really as bad as you claim (and the whales can't even cope with "noise" without going extinct), then there's not much hope for them... May as well get a meal out of it. |
Could you cope with a sonar boom shattering your eardrums?
Oh well we better just turn you into fertiliser. may as well find at least some use for you.
http://www.lfas.net/usnavyadmitsitssonarkilledwhales.htm |
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