It is the ultimate testament to the life of the academic. You spend ten years in the finest schools gathering your degrees only to find yourself calculating dinosaur farts. British scientists have done exactly that. Estimating the flatulence of sauropods including the gas giant, Brotosaurus. The result is a finding that the Earth’s climate was actually warmed by the huge amount of methane gas produced by dinosaurs. It was also the reason why alien civilizations never invaded our planet.
It has long been known that cows are a major source of emissions of pollutants, particularly methane. Cows, sheep and other ruminants are estimated to be responsible for one-fifth of global methane production — a greenhouse gas linked to climate change.
Scientists used cow farts to estimate the amount of gas produced by dinosaurs at 520 million tons a year. Perhaps the creationists are right and man did walk with the dinosaurs. If so, those primitive cave pictures might have been efforts to design the world’s largest air freshener.
The most gaseous were likely sauropods who fed on vegetation in the Mesozoic Era like the Brontosaurus. Studies indicate that the Earth was up to 10°C (18°F) warmer in the Mesozoic Era and apparently a lot smellier.
Source: BBC
wow
I am a support dog who visits a nursing home for the elderly twice a week. My dog house is next to a cattle ranch. I totally dispute the thesis that cow farts somehow would outweigh the volume of methane emitted by humans. Air conditioning does not cure the problem.
*groan*
That reminds me of an OT joke, junctionshamus.
The coach goes up to the quarterback holding a football and asks him, “Do you think you can pass this ball, son?”
The quarterback replies, “Coach, I don’t think I can even swallow it.”
A biology professor asks his students when the Age of the Dinosaurs ended. A student’s hand shoots up, so the prof calls on him.
The student says, “The Age of the Dinosaurs ended 65 million and four years ago!”
The professor asks, “How can you be so specific?”
The student replies, “Well, when I took this class from you four years ago, you said it was 65 million years….”
http://instantrimshot.com/classic/?sound=rimshot
bettykath,
Do you remember what happened during the two Irag wars? Many just took off their uniforms and went home. What happens to the richest one percent when everybody else just goes home?
OS
When it runs out, it runs out. Will we be allowed to eat the richest one percent then? I figure they will be tough and stringy, and not particularly high in nutritional value.
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I think they will have the reverse in mind. They’re doing everything else nasty to us, why not?
Dredd:
that is what I was thinking as well. There are so many variables which are unknown. Do we know what the dinosaur digestive track looked like? How did they metabolize food? What bacteria lived in their gut? Were they warm blooded? Were some cold blooded? There might have been something in the plants they ate which prevented methane production.
Is this really a scientific study or just another puff piece?
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Damn good questions, in the sense that if this article were bona fide, it would have mentioned them in some relevant detail.
There are no gut microbe fossils from pre-K-T, nor do we know when microbes became symbiont to humans, to mammals, or any other species with definitive information.
There are no fossils of microbes that I know of (except in meteorites?).
The only thing we have are their “fingerprints” or “footprints” if you will.
And strangest of strange, that genetic footprint is in our genes, making up 99% of the genetic material found in “human DNA.”
It was, until quite recently, called “junk DNA” by the bloviators from the old school Darwinian genetic world (Those who think genetics determines everything evolutionary in nature, including ourselves.)
The problem with studying that 98% of the human microbiome, microbial DNA (purely human DNA is 2% of the total), is that it really does not tell us when or exactly how microbial DNA got there in the first place.
We can detect current microbes doing DNA engineering on us today, but that does not tell us how long that has been happening.
One clue might be the genetic material that provides a way for monkeys and humans (but not rabbits or other non-placenta users) to reproduce.
The genetic material that allows it to happen comes from a microbial source, of the viral sort, which must have happened quite some time ago.
Surely it happened after the K-T extinction event that got rid of the dinosaur farts.
I think I’ll give commenting on this story a pass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_formation
The days of declining oil production might not be here yet.
Raff,
You might be right….. Maybe the Koch brothers should fund a study through alec to our make sure it isn’t……
Pee and poo, or as we delicately refer to it in the US. #1 and # 2.
The dinosaurs were busy for 100 million years doing #1 too.
There is no drop of water on this planet that has not passed through
The billions of former dinosaurs urethral milieu.
That is why in my coffee I put..
A spoonful of sugar and a shot of moo.
In Sweden (oh no not again!),
the four years olds, both sexes together, laugh loudly at “pee and poo” jokes or allusions. Their lack of embarrasment at this humor is easy to understand when you realize they did pee and poo together earlier by pulling down their
diapers and squatting on their bowls on the floor. Sex education begins early here.
But I was raised in America, so my ROTFLH reaction can be explained by that, especially when it is my jokes being cracked (solely for myself)..
I hope JT had a ball. It was he, wasn’t it who wrote this?
Are we sure it wasn’t politician flatulence?
I’m doing my part….. It’s not just the dinosaurs….. I can assure you…..
Dredd, that is a problem that is going to solve itself unless we blow ourselves up first. Oil is a finite resource, and to paraphrase what Will Rogers said about land, “They ain’t making no more of the stuff.”
When it runs out, it runs out. Will we be allowed to eat the richest one percent then? I figure they will be tough and stringy, and not particularly high in nutritional value.
Dredd:
that is what I was thinking as well. There are so many variables which are unknown. Do we know what the dinosaur digestive track looked like? How did they metabolize food? What bacteria lived in their gut? Were they warm blooded? Were some cold blooded? There might have been something in the plants they ate which prevented methane production.
Is this really a scientific study or just another puff piece?
By the way oil is naturally occurring and there are areas around the world where it seeps to the surface. Water is toxic too, it is all about the dose.
Otteray Scribe 1, May 8, 2012 at 7:02 am
I have been trying to come up with a flatulence joke, but there is no way I can add to this. Maybe I will try red beans and rice for dinner tonight and revisit the story with a new nose this evening.
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How about this, which is true: “Brain farts cause global warming.”
The greatest brain fart of all time was the decision to become addicted to dirty, toxic oil which would destroy the environment we must have in order to survive as a species.
Well I believe this also clears up the mystery of why the dinosaurs went extinct. After millions of years of Fart accumulations the flash point was reached. One fart too many and a poorly time volcano eruption.
YEP, that’s my new theory, and I’m sticking to it.
I will leave it to the scientists to decide if it passes, the smell test.
I have been trying to come up with a flatulence joke, but there is no way I can add to this. Maybe I will try red beans and rice for dinner tonight and revisit the story with a new nose this evening.
I had to double check on the author of this post, thinking that bdaman had finally done a guest post.
This BBC report leaves out what the Reuters version included in the headline “In a major new climate finding, researchers”, then shortly modifies that in the body of the text with “A simple mathematical model suggests”. It is intellectually dishonest.
Mathematical models calculating methane release, used by super computers today, have very recently been shown to have been in error when researchers did on-site work then wrote two scientific papers showing the mathematical models to be utterly in error.
So, mathematical models that suppose something about creatures that became extinct 65 million years ago during the K-T extinction event, and about microbes of that time living in their gut, for which we have no fossils, is not credible.