Dinosaur Farts Contributed to Global Warming, Study Suggests
150 million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the Earth and the average temperature was about 18 degrees hotter than it is today. A new study by British scientists connects the two, arguing that flatulence from sauropods could have produced 520 million tons of methane annually, enough to partially explain the warm climate, the BBC reported.
Dino Gas
Published in the journal Current Biology, the study was conducted by David Wilkinson, of Liverpool John Moores University, and scientists at the the University of London and the University of Glasgow. The team studied flatulence in cows, and used estimates of the size and number of sauropods (an order of large dinosaurs that includes the apotosaurus, aka the brontosaurus) to come up with the 520 tons figure.
It's difficult to know what to make of the findings. According to Dr. Wilson, cows today produce between 50 and 100 million tons of methane annually- less than 20% of what sauropods contributed, a seemingly insignificant amount. But given the size difference between cows and sauropods, among the largest land animals of all time, 100 tons is a lot of methane.
There's no reason to believe that the meat industry that produces huge numbers of cows is shrinking, so things aren't going to get better soon. As it stands, the meat and dairy industries are responsible for 51% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
What's the Takeaway?
I worry that the study will be used to fuel climate change denial: if dinosaurs can cause global warming, surely humans can't be at fault for rising temperatures today, right? The problem is that cows aren't the only animals producing methane, humans are pumping carbon dioxide into the air as well and we're on track for an 11 degree Fahrenheit global temperature increase by 2100: not so different from dino times.
Maybe the lesson is: With all the havoc we're already wreaking on the environment, it's a really good thing we don't have dinosaur farts to worry about, too.
Since CH_4 is apparently a stronger GHG than CO_2, would it make sense to burn all the CH_4 for energy. So we should all carry around little storage cylinders for our effluents.
ReplyDeleteSir!
ReplyDeleteIn my eyes,you have just earned your professorial titular designation!
That's a brilliant idea (and, hopefully, I'm not making reference to the "flashes" that might result in the process [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpBZ7qMK4iI , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-mOJ9wHmNY ,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKABaNGO-EE ]
The empiricists have been at it, apparently not realizing the earth-shattering significance of their work.
"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." (Szent-Gyorgi)
Given time, you would no doubt have expressed your theme further:
our domesticated cattle (a dominant source of CH_4 emissions) could be "harnessed": physically and energetically.
They would carry a back-pack: tubes would collect their eructile and posterior CH_4 emissions, conveying these to a catalytic surface in the back-pack, where controlled oxidation would release-and-concurrently-store (usable) energy, plus carbon dioxide and water.
At the same time, why shouldn't they be carrying solar panels?
Cattle, in addition to being a source of milk and meat, could be net producers of energy in a usable form; their CH_4 emissions would be transformed to the less damaging carbon dioxide, further reducing the negative social stigma associated with human meat consumption [that is "by", not "of"].
Of course, we would have to have the Animal Rights' people "on board" [no, not literally]; perhaps, they might expedite their cooperation, in the interests of Gaia?
And, the mechanical / technical phase might be short-lived.
Bovine net metabolic function could be transformed through:
- genetic modification (splicing in a gene from, say, a fungus, that yields a CH_4 => CO_2 enzyme; or, something which would yield a product that was catabolically useful in the normal bovine metabolism)
and/or
- symbiosis (inoculating the normal bovine flora with an organism that innately carries out this transformation, although this would not yield net energy in a useful form; and, it might over-heat the cattle, particularly problematic during extreme heat events (EHEs), of which we can expect many more.
I do hope that there is no one else reading this -- it is seemingly a patentable concept. I would be writing to you off-line, but I don't have your e-mail address; and, for an academic, you seem to have an incredibly low 'net-profile. Perhaps you would be so kind as to send me you re-mail address, and we can collectively rush this through to our friendly and brilliant patent clerk (after all, Albert Einstein was one) who will surely expedite the process.
Regards,
Uģis