Any Vegetarians/Vegans here?

[James2014]

The point is all the studies show that per kg of protein, meat is worse for the environment, producing 11 times as much greenhouse gasses.

Methane breaks down in the atmosphere, and furthermore climate scientists blame the EGHE's contribution mainly on CO2 and Black Carbon and less on Methane.

The measure of how many kg of grain does it take to produce a kg of meat is useful only in so far as it is a measure of inefficiency and harm to the environment. The point is no matter how you raise cattle it is still worse than grain.

What?

How about land that's unsuitable for produce and it's only agricultural use is to raise animals?

Australia's problems don't stem from a lack of arable land, which it has huge amounts of per head population, but from a lack of water. The best way to deal with that is to increase the efficiency of irrigation, reduce wasteful water use on cattle by stopping eating meat, increase the use of drought resistant crops and reduce global warming.

Oh please, we're not even in the top 30 driest countries. Here's a hint: about 85% of the world's population lives in the driest half of the world. As if that's our problem. It may become our problem if we accept exponential population growth - which I don't think we should and I think we should cap our population now and realize that we're at capacity (22 million).

Firstly, while it may be true that methane is second to CO2 in driving global warming, as it breaks down in the atmosphere relatively quickly, pound for pound it is 20 times more potent than CO2! Even NASA agree that it has an important role in climate change

Secondly they also produce CO2, and a lot of CO2 is created through transport/herding etc.

Now, as for farming on land unsuitable for crops, as I said before the emissions from grass fed beef are just as high as feedlot beef. So as long as some arable land is available then it will always be better to use the arable land for growing crops.

As for water and Australia, in the severe droughts that have happened recently the production of many grains reduced significantly, so yes it does have a problem.

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I would like to know how those with Thalassemia minor are supposedly to survive on a vegetarian/ vegan diet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassemia

People with thalassemia have a mutation which means their haemoglobin doesn't form properly, however that doesn't mean people can just eat some meat and use the haemoglobin from the animal. Haemoglobin, like virtually all proteins we consume, is broken down into its constituent amino acids in the gut which are only then absorbed. One of the big problems people with thalassemia get is actually too much iron, which sounds rather counterintuitive. Essentially because they have less haemoglobin to bind iron in their blood and the patient then receives blood transfusions, they can then have too much free iron which can be toxic. Many patients are told to eat less meat, and vegetables containing lots of iron for exactly this reason. Of course because they have less haemoglobin they can also become iron deficient very easily if they are pregnant for example, which is why careful supplementation is required under the supervision of a doctor. A diet containing meat however is not required.