Minggu, 06 Mei 2012

Dinosaurs 'produced enough flatulence to force climate change'

Dinosaurs 'produced enough flatulence to force climate change'

By Pamela Owen

PUBLISHED: 10:01 EST, 6 May 2012 | UPDATED: 14:08 EST, 6 May 2012


Dinosaurs may be partly to blame for a change in climate because they created so much flatulence, according to leading scientists.

Professor Graeme Ruxton of St Andrews University, Scotland, said the giant animals spent 150 years emitting the potent global warming gas, methane.

Large plant-eating sauropods would have been the main culprits because of the huge amounts of greenery they consumed.

A Paralititan Stromeric - a sauropod which weighed up to 80 tons and reaching 100 feet in length - would have been one of the many culprits emitting methane gas

A Paralititan Stromeric - a sauropod which weighed up to 80 tons and reaching 100 feet in length - would have been one of the many culprits emitting methane gas

The team calculated the animals would have collectively produced more than 520m tons of methane a year - more than all today's modern sources put together.

It is thought these huge amounts could easily have been enough to warm the planet.

It is even possible that the climate change was so catastrophic that it caused the dinosaurs eventual demise.

One of the animals, a 90-ton argentinosaurus, which measured 140ft in length, would have consumed at least half a ton of food in one day.

After breaking down in the animal's stomach it would have produced thousands of litres of the greenhouse gas compared with a modern cow which only produces 200 litres of methane daily.

Methane is up to 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2).

It is created from a variety of natural and human-influenced sources which include landfills, natural gas, petroleum sources and agricultural activities.

Scientists claim humans have pushed levels of the gas up 2.5 times higher than they should be and estimate this is responsible for 20 per cent of modern global warming.

Cows and other livestock currently only emit about 100m tons of methane a year.

The world's livestock collectively emit only 100m tons of methane a year

The world's livestock collectively emit only 100m tons of methane a year

According to Professor Ruxton and his co-researcher David Wilkinson, of Liverpool John Moores University, this is only a fifth of what was produced when Dinosaurs walked the Earth.

'In fact, our calculations suggest these dinosaurs may have produced more methane than all the modern sources, natural and human, put together,' said Mr Wilkinson to the Sunday Times.

The research is due to be published in an academic journal this week.

 

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Zzzzzzzz.......phut, phut........zzzzzz!

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Surely you can't be implying that there were SIX BILLION of these creatures living on this planet and thus contributed to the climate change. I find it impossible that they purely destroyed their habitat, thus disrupting the balance of the eco system and started a trend for the change in climate! Next you'll be blaming them for contribution to their destruction, i.e. the asteroid!

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Dearie me, it is a wonder that the methane those big boys produced all those years ago didn't diffuse away before it got to cause the climate change that we are experiencing today. It is a nice one for the deniers to chuckle over as they huddle around the fire.

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That's right blame the Dinosaurs.

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Oh this is rich LMAO! So now some scientist say that dinosaur farts created (a prehistoric global warming??), climate change. Maybe a T-rex lite up a cigarette and ignited all the methane gas in the atmosphere and caused their extinction?! 'He' probably yelled "Leerooooy Jenkiiins!" as he fired it up (For those lost, google Leroy Jenkins)! ;)

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What a load of crap. They will say anything to get in the news. So are they responsible for the global warming today (the scientests I mean for their load of crap).

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7 Billion people produce less flatulence than the dinosaurs?

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Don't be silly, that's harmless "natural" methane. It's only nasty "man-made" methane that causes climate change (allegedly).

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"Huge creatures may be to blame" - for climate change - "because they produced so much flatulence" - well, if that's so then, with the increase in the number of obese people in Great Britain - there is an even bigger case for a 'Fat Tax'! Not only to save the NHS - but to save the entire planet! Amazing that - 'innit?

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So the Earth's fragile ecosystem is threatened by millions of years of collective farts. I love science, don't you?

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