My guess is that both
Congressmen and comedians (Is there any difference?) will have a field day with
this; but it appears that the latest issue of
Current Biology offers up some interesting food for thought (so to
speak) about global warming in the distant past. Here is how the BBC Nature Web
site
reported this latest
scientific insight:
Giant dinosaurs could have warmed the planet with their
flatulence, say researchers.
British scientists have calculated the methane output of
sauropods, including the species known as Brontosaurus.
By scaling up the digestive wind of cows, they estimate that
the population of dinosaurs - as a whole - produced 520 million tonnes of gas
annually.
They suggest the gas could have been a key factor in the warm
climate 150 million years ago.
David Wilkinson from Liverpool John Moore's University, and
colleagues from the University of London and the University of Glasgow
published their results in the journal Current Biology.
To give that productivity
factor some context, Wilkinson estimates that the metric tonnage of methane due
to cows comes in at between 50 and 100 million. Could this provide inspiration
for the next film in the
Jurassic Park
franchise?
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