Academia, Environment, Science, Society

Report: Dinosaur Farts Warmed Earth

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

53 thoughts on “Report: Dinosaur Farts Warmed Earth”

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  4. … ROMNEY 1984…OBAMA 2012..

    Any entrepreneurs out there want to create this as a bumper sticker !
    I am serious..or at least semi. I don’t have the skill level, nor a myriad of other things. Of course this phrase may already be in being, I don’t know.

  5. The Turley Blog comment section is not unlike large portions of the memetic Internet, in the sense of the evolution of memes:

    Let’s follow the arc of just one wingnut whopper. It starts as a seed in the form of a flatly untrue headline by none other than Fox News shouting out ‘scientists say dinos farted themselves to extinction’. Ahem:

    (PZ) — But the paper makes no such claim, instead suggesting that the mass of herbivores during the Mesozoic would have made a substantial, but stable, contribution of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere that may have been partially responsible for the warmer, moister climate of the era …

    But the truth doesn’t matter, facts are so unimportant we can’t even stop to check; we are witnessing wingnuts getting busy, hotly engrossed in zombie baby-making! Dozens of news sites get sucked in. Next up RushBo takes the false headline and pollinates it, mocking climate scientists for ‘claiming dino’s farted themselves to extinction’. Worldnut Daily and other large sites soil themselves congratulating Rush for ripping scientists who say ‘dinosaurs farted themselves to extinction,’ and throw in some zippy one liners.

    Now the spawn grows, it goes viral. Conservative hillbillies see it and pass it around to one another, giggling at those stupid scientists: “LOL, did you hear the latest? Climate scientists say dinosaurs farted themselves to extinction! Hahaha, does that pass the smell test?!” And just today a regular conservative stalker is concern trolling me about some climate change stuff, decides the NASA data measuring it must be false because he doesn’t like what it says, and emails back maybe it’s from the “same scientists who said dinosaurs farted themselves to extinction.”

    (Grats! A new wingnut zombie lie is born). Memetic evolution under the microscope before our eyes, even as the concept of a meme is denied.

    1. How sad and true your comment is. I hear many conversations among fox or rush listeners that contain the phrase…..”Obama said”….what is so heinous about this is they are repeating what rush or hannity..etc. said.
      These “hanus” (yes I mean the spelling) talking mouths put words into Obamas mouth, and then the minions of fanzis repeat them as factual. These straw men are very real to the devoted dolts. Woe is me, Woe to a future when a powerful media can make Dupes of us all.
      Obama 2012…..or Romney 1984…… I would prefer others but reality doesn’t have wings.

  6. “The past twelve months were the warmest twelve months in U.S. history, said NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) on Tuesday, in their monthly “State of the Climate” report. (Think Progress).

  7. Game over for the Climate:

    If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate …Civilization would be at risk … If this sounds apocalyptic, it is … The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.

    (Jim Hansen, NY Times, 5/9/12).

  8. In an Academic vein, nice to be brought back to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels…
    (the story about the university lab workin’ on converting huge amounts of excrement into useful products.)

  9. Bob is right. Global warming is happening. And who else says whatever they want to promote their own agenda? Politicians and preachers, among others. Remember all the tobacco company executives who testified before congress that they don’t think smoking causes cancer?

  10. bdamans,

    James Lovelock’s changed opinion does not reverse human-generated climate change.

    Fritz Vahrenholt is a Ph.D. chemist who works for the energy industry. He doesn’t do ANY research on climate change. His contribution consists of misinterpreting the work of others.

    “An August 2011 Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults showed that 69% said it is at least “somewhat likely” that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs, including 40% who said this is “very likely”. (The number who said it’s likely is up 10 points since December 2009.)

    As for “scientific consensus”, 57% of those surveyed believed there is significant disagreement within the scientific community on global warming.”

    It matters not that a majority of the U.S.A. public thinks that “some scientists have falsified research data” (of course, SOME have), or that “there is significant disagreement within the scientific community on global warming.”

    U.S.A. citizens believe in all sorts of things that aren’t true. What, exactly, do they think is the “significant disagreement”? There is no significant disagreement within the scientific community that human-caused global warming is happening. There are disagreements in the details, which is true in all science.

    Good luck in disproving global warming by cherry-picking of news.

    It’s happening whether or not you choose to believe it.

  12. I knew, before looking, that the subject matter of this post would draw a huge response from the sophistos who read this blog.

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