Cows Causing Global Warming?

[SARGE]

I've said it all along but folks only laughed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/...000/662397.stm

[Kubie]

Sareg,
It would be interesting to see how they monitor the cows output to come up with their terribly inflated percentages.
Carl

[Colonel Sanders]

Isn't methane explosive? If so, bottle the stuff and use it to power your cars . I do wonder how they measured teh gases released by the cows?

Logan

[KR0316]

thats what I want to know. how do they measure it?

[piasabird]

Why dont they close all pubs that sell alcohol to limit beer methane productions by humans???

Landfills put off methane non stop 24/7 but it is burned off.

[HAL9000]

The heck with bottling it, lets just design cars with room for a couple of cows in the back farting all day. I wonder what the equivilant of 2 cowpower would be in horsepower.

[Kubie]

Sarge,
Good timing. This was in this mornings paper.

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/31...-4188569c.html

Carl

[Computer Hobbyist]

I have always wondered why they didn't have global warming back in the days when the buffalo herd in the American west would stretch from horizon to horizon. They must have produced a whole lot of far...er...methane.

CH

[tranman]

ROFL, Hal!

Also, with two cows in the back, you don't have to blame it on the dog...

[W.C.]

Originally posted by Logan_85 I do wonder how they measured teh gases released by the cows?

From http://jamshowbiz.com/AllAboutCanoes...1_cow-par.html :

"They are put into a special enclosed pen and the gas is drawn from the room through a pipe, collected in an airtight bag and transferred into a machine called a reflectometer that uses infrared light to measure gas. "

[SARGE]

Originally posted by W.C. "They are put into a special enclosed pen and the gas is drawn from the room through a pipe, collected in an airtight bag and transferred into a machine called a reflectometer that uses infrared light to measure gas. "

Are they then given an "emissions sticker" like we get for cars?

[Charger]

When I was younger I worked as a plumbers apprentice at a waste treatment facility. Human/animal waste (methane) is flamable and and "it" burned all day in the smokestack. For some reason (politics/money) it never came to fruition.

[mrjohnsonjr]

lol @ sarge

[Kubie]

There may be some truth about "happy cows". If you enclose cows in a special pen, they're already nervous. It doesn't take much to spook em'. A spooked cow really puts out both ends. I don't believe the researchers ran a valid test unless they're trying to pad the figures to "prove" global warming.
Carl

[LWHiway]

I'm not sure what happened to the people, but some years back, and I'm sure this is a true story, they were working on feeds that would increase the digestive rates produced by microbs, to allow higher outputs of methane. Bovine fuels that is.

Problem was that there was, at the time, no effective way of controlling pressures generated from stomach 1 and/or stomach 2. The production rates of the gas were such that unregulated escapes of the gas were uncontrolled and spontaneous.

Add this to the fact that the cow, using his/her tail to brush flies on their back generated adequate static electricty to ingite the emited gas. If the spark happened at the time of expulsion of the gas and the arpiture of the vented orifice was momentarily open, unchecked, internal combustion would naturally occur. I/E The cow would explode.

Now if the cow, that exploded, was alone this would not have posed a particularly grim scenerio. But subsequent investigations have revealed that this cow was part of an on-going research project. Meaning that 100's of cows were contained within the same lab. This would normally pose low risk. But, data concludes that when the first cow blew, the trauma of this happening increased stress values in the remaing cows and thus an increase in non-gastric realms. The microbes that had been genetically engineered, were of such capabilities that they were able to keep up with the other increases. Methane production increased 10 fold. Cows bloated immediately and tails swished as if they had a mind of their own.

This all happened within a short time, causing each cow in turn to ignite until all had expired in a similiar fashion to the first.

First reports were misleading, allowing people to believe that a brewery of Jim Beam was actually the cause of the ensuing explosion and fire.

Bessie III, will she be remembered for her unshelfishness towards science? Time will tell.

[HAL9000]

That sounds like the tale behind the old DOS game Cow Wars. In the game, two farmers developed cows that produced large quatities of methane gas. So much that if they had a sudden impact with anything, they exploded. The military wanted these cows and the two farmers were fighting for the right to sell to the military. So, in the game, you set your trajectory and velocity and tried to launch one of your cows into your competitors barn. The impact would set off a chain reaction exploding all of the cows.

The cow fuel story is most likey urban legend.

[Kassia]

Originally posted by KR0316 thats what I want to know. how do they measure it?

Eeeegaaads! I'm not sure I wanna know.

[Battery Powered]

Would the things they use to measure this class as an animal rights case :-))

[piasabird]

There are a lot more people than cows.

I wonder if less Air pollution is cuasing global warming? Not enough smoke in the air. I wonder if we really know what global warning is caused by.

Do we know what caused the ice age?

If we don't, how can we know what is causing a supposed global warming?

[jessho]

Global warming? What global warming? This link says the climate data doesn't support the claim.

[Computer Hobbyist]

Originally posted by jessho Global warming? What global warming? This link says the climate data doesn't support the claim.

From what I read the US government has now concluded that globial warming is real. President Bush, acknowledging the government's conclusion, says we shouldn't take any any serious action to combat globial warming. Instead, he suggests we should just deal with the symptoms. I guess we should just put all the houses in Florida on stilts and wear more sun block.

CH

[jessho]

The governments say it is so, the press says it is so but the scientist disagree.

[doctorgonzo]

We're not going to solve this problem here, and we certainly aren't going to solve it by seeing who can come up with the most links to websites proving their particular point of view. Few of us here are meteorologists, so for us to debate is pretty pointless. Why don't we discuss tensor calculus instead?

[jessho]

Okay. Here are the rules.

[Computer Hobbyist]

Good doctor, I agree. If you do a web search you can find a lot of people who call themselves scientists on any side of any public policy argument. They all make nifty sounding arguments. None of them speak the truth because none of them know the truth. Neither do I. I would rather we discussed something else--like how you measure the amount of methane in a cow fart.

CH

[Kubie]

Maybe we should look at this from a different perspective.
If I was a big time research scientist, how would I keep the multi-million dollar grants coming?
I would do a study that really doesn't have a definitive answer. That way I could say I need to do more research and get more money.
After causing all this worldly commotion, I would set back with my millions and laugh at the world.
We are being scammed.
Carl

[doctorgonzo]

Originally posted by Carlgif Maybe we should look at this from a different perspective. If I was a big time research scientist, how would I keep the multi-million dollar grants coming? I would do a study that really doesn't have a definitive answer. That way I could say I need to do more research and get more money. After causing all this worldly commotion, I would set back with my millions and laugh at the world. We are being scammed. Carl

Yeah, because all of the research scientists I see are driving BMWs and living in million dollar homes, having grown fat and happy on the millions of dollars they are getting.

[Computer Hobbyist]

The research scientists may not all drive BMWs and live in million dollar homes, but the department chairs and presidents of the universities, and presidents of research companies who hire them drive nice cars and live in fancy homes. Given the general lack of integrity we have seen from tobacco company scientists, oil company scientists, environmental scientists and pharmaceutical company scientists, I wonder if anybody is willing to speak the truth. Astronomers? Physicists and chemists? Nah--remember cold fusion.

Boy, I am in a grumpy mood.

CH

[doctorgonzo]

Originally posted by Computer Hobbyist The research scientists may not all drive BMWs and live in million dollar homes, but the department chairs and presidents of the universities, and presidents of research companies who hire them drive nice cars and live in fancy homes. Given the general lack of integrity we have seen from tobacco company scientists, oil company scientists, environmental scientists and, pharmaceutical company scientists, I wonder if anybody is willing to speak the truth.

I see two possibilities here:

1) A majority of scientists who have spent years in their field and put forth their work in peer-reviewed scientific journals believe that there is enough evidence of the phenomena of global warming.
2) There is a conspiracy involving these people to get more money by falsifying evidence.

I'm willing to bet on #1. True, some industries, especially the tobacco industry, have lied; however, their lies were easily debunked in a peer-reviewed environment, and we all knew they were working for the tobacco compnanies themselves. As for cold fusion, that too was a fiasco that was not in a peer-reviewed journal: Pons and Fleischmann announced cold fusion to the world without having anything to back it up, and they certainly paid the price.

When politicians or other laypeople comment on global warming, why do we listen? Would we listen if pundits and politicians discussed the best methods of performing open-heart surgery? I doubt it; we would know that they have no idea what they are talking about. The fact that the implications of global warming are political should not drag the actual science of global warming into the realm of politics. I just don't think that men and women who have studied for years to find empirical truth would be in on some giant worldwide conspiracy to pass lies off as truth. Possible? Yes. Will I believe it because Rush blabs about it? Certainly not.

[Computer Hobbyist]

I don't believe in conspiracies either. They are just too hard to pull off and mostly they are unnecessary. Most people are not scientists. Most people don't know what is meant by a scientific theory, peer review, or the scientific method. Most people who report science news are not scientists. All they want to do is tell a good story. A good story from the media's point of view means a story with at least two sides. A story that will sell soap. All you have to do to trump a peer reviewed scientist's report is spout something to the contrary that sounds plausible. If it sounds like something the audience wants to hear, the audience will believe it, regardless of the amount of peer reviewed science you stack up on the other side. The media will report the contrary report because it makes a better story.

In the case of globial warming, most people don't want to believe it is possible for men to damage the environment. To do so means that men (and women) might be able to clean up the mess. If we can clean up the mess we created logically it would be our responsibility to clean it up. People don't want to take on that responsiblity. They don't want to hear about globial warming. They want to listen to the "scientists" and spokesmen hired by the polluters and others who don't want to clean up the mess. No need for a conspiracy. Just plain old human nature.

Anyway the media has contributed to the general distrust of scientists. Everytime you hear about the debunking of some unduplicated study announcing that this or that common substance "causes" cancer in rats, you hear a story that diminishes science in the minds of the average person.

On top of everything there is a lot the scientists don't know. For example, I heard last night that most big, wild cats (tigers, lions, etc) carry the virus that causes feline lukemia (related to HIV). For a long time the scientists who discovered this fact thought an epidemic would soon sweep big cats from the world. It took a decade for them to figure out that the big, wild cats also have an immunity. Before they figured it out they were wringing their hands trying to mobilize against the coming epidemic.

CH