According to Michael Kahn of Reuters news service, an article in the British medical journal, Lancet, yesterday, May 17, 2008, declares that obesity causes global warming, high food and energy prices. This is based on the simple metabolic calculation of energy input required to sustain a body mass index (BMI) of 29 vs. a BMI of 24.5. The higher BMI requires more food, more transportation for the food, more use of transportation rather than walking for the 29 BMI person, or so the story goes. And does smack of being just that: a story made up for publication.
I was unable to gain entry to Lancet undoubtedly by being honest on the sign up form and admitting to not being in the medical field. But I am betting that the article did not do exhaustive studies on metabolic outputs of obese individuals vs. athletic individuals, nor did they consider carbon sequestration.
Since these researchers considered global warming to be anthropogenic, then it should be noted that it is unlikely that obese persons emit anywhere near the CO2 that athletes do. And it is unlikely that they even eat as much as true athletes. But even if they do, they sequester considerable amounts of the carbon in the form of fat, disabling it from being turned into pernicious AGW gaseous effluent... unlike the athletes, such as walkers who generate heat with every step and expell CO2 with every breath. Except in the largest cities, neither the slim nor the obese walk much of anywhere. They take cabs, subways, buses, or autos. So the slim have no leg up there, either.
To prevent this "research" story from being incomplete, the obese should be given credit for their accomplishment. Obese persons should be given tax credits for their reduced emission of "greenhouse gases" and for their contribution to carbon sequestration. They are, after all, a significant portion of the earth's cherished biomass.
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