Starship Asterisk*

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/05/07/dinosaurs-farted-their-way-to-extinction-british-scientists-say/ wrote:

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Dinosaurs farted their way to extinction, British scientists say
Fox News, May 07, 2012

LONDON – <<Dinosaurs may have farted themselves to extinction, according to a new study from British scientists.

The researchers calculated that the prehistoric beasts pumped out more than 520 million tons of methane a year -- enough to warm the planet and hasten their own eventual demise. Until now, an asteroid strike and volcanic activity around 65 million years ago had seemed the most likely cause of their extinction.

Giant plant-eating sauropods were fingered as the key culprits in the study, which appears in the latest edition of the journal Current Biology. An average argentinosaurus, weighing around 90 tons and measuring 140 feet, chomped its way through half a ton of ferns a day, producing clouds of methane as the food broke down in its gut.

Professor Graeme Ruxton from St. Andrews University in Scotland and co-researcher David Wilkinson, from Liverpool John Moores University, worked out just how much of the greenhouse gas the billions of dinosaurs would have generated during the Mesozoic era, starting 250 million years ago. "A simple mathematical model suggests that the microbes living in sauropod dinosaurs may have produced enough methane to have an important effect on the Mesozoic climate," Wilkinson said. "In fact, our calculations suggest these dinosaurs may have produced more methane than all the modern sources, natural and human, put together."

The dinosaur output of 520 million tons is comparable to current natural and man-made emissions of the greenhouse gas, which scientists say is around 21 times more powerful than CO₂ at trapping heat on Earth and causing climate change. Cows and other farm animals globally contribute up to 100 million tons a year of methane.>>

Moonlady wrote:
That explains how this could happen

A group of dinosaurs survived in Siberia and caused this event, the dinosaurs were gone with the explosion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

neufer wrote:

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

.

Moonlady wrote:
That explains how this could happen

A group of dinosaurs survived in Siberia and caused this event, the dinosaurs were gone with the explosion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

neptunium wrote:
Ah, jeez... sorry. Can you delete this post and the one before it? This was completely accidental.

Ann wrote:
Yeah, well. My mother always told me it was impolite to break wind.

Someone should have told the dinosaurs, too!

neufer wrote:

Ann wrote:
Yeah, well. My mother always told me it was impolite to break wind.

Someone should have told the dinosaurs, too!

Dinosaurs would never have lasted for ~165 million years if they had held it in.

emc wrote:so we're in the exstinktion period

orin 'Pegleg' stepanek wrote:
(Mrs O'Leary took a lantern to the shed; the cow kicked it over and this is what she said)!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_O%27Leary wrote:
<<On the evening of October 8, 1871, a fire consumed the O'Leary family's barn at 137 DeKoven Street. Due to a high wind and dry conditions it spread to burn a large percentage of the city, an event known as the Great Chicago Fire. After the Great Chicago Fire, Chicago Tribune reporter Michael Ahern published the story that the fire started when a cow kicked over a lantern while a woman was milking it. Though the woman was not named in the original report, Mrs O'Leary was soon identified, since her barn had been the source. Various illustrations and caricatures soon circulated depicting Mrs O'Leary with the cow. The story took the population's imagination and is still widely circulated.

Ahern admitted in 1893 that he had made the story up because he thought it would make colorful copy. Mrs O'Leary herself stated that she was in bed when the fire started, and had no knowledge of what set it off.

Daniel "Pegleg" Sullivan, who was the first person to raise the alarm, reported that on seeing a fire in the barn, he ran across the street to free the animals (which included a cow owned by Sullivan's mother). He then informed the O'Leary's, who were at home.

Anti-Irish attitudes at the time encouraged stories scapegoating the O'Leary family. It was claimed that the supposed accident happened because she was drunk, or that she hid the evidence to avoid being blamed. Neighbours later claimed to have seen shards from the broken lamp, but none of these stories could be verified. One person stated that he had found the lamp, but it had been stolen by an Irishman to protect the O'Learys.

Other theories posit that Daniel "Pegleg" Sullivan himself may have started the fire, or Louis M. Cohn, who later claimed to have been gambling in the bar with the O'Learys' son and several other boys.>>

Beyond wrote:
I don't think i want to 'cow down' to all this pasturized bovinian fertilizer.

http://www.dairyherd.com/dairy-news/latest/New-study-blames-dairy-farms-for-much-of-LAs-smog--150468535.html?ref=535 wrote:
New study blames dairy farms for much of LA’s smog
Tom Quaife, Editor, Dairy Herd Network: May 8, 2012

<<Dairy cows may be a bigger contributor to smog in the Los Angeles area than many people thought, according to a new study. The study, conducted by scientists from the University of Colorado and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and published in Geophysical Research Letters, found that dairy farms and motor vehicles are about equally responsible for a sizeable fraction of the smog over LA, says this article in Ars Technica.

A large portion of the smog is ammonium nitrate, consisting of small particles from the interaction of ammonia and nitrogen oxide gas. Both cows and automobiles are responsible for ammonia, but it’s the automobiles that produce nitrogen oxide. Data gathered in and around the Los Angeles basin in May 2010 suggest that the region’s 9.9 million autos generate about 62 metric tons of ammonia each day, according to this article from Reuters. Ammonia emissions from dairy farms in the eastern portion of the basin ― home to about 298,000 cattle ― range between 33 and 176 metric tons per day, the article says.

Yet, many of the dairy farms east of Los Angeles ― particularly those around Chino ― are no longer in business. “There are not many dairies left in Southern Cal, and I am surprised to hear that these few dairies would have a major effect. The ammonia that they have measured does not come from the San Joaquin Valley with all its dairies,” says Frank Mitloehner, air-quality specialist in the Department of Animal Science at the University of California-Davis. “I disagree with the notion that cows produce more smog than cars,” Mitloehner says. “Both contribute pollutants that need to mix to form PM2.5 (fine particulate matter). It is as if you were to say ‘flour is more important than the egg when baking a cake.’ You need both!” The study appears to overstate the number of cows in the area. There are about 100,000 mature cows -- milking and dry -- on about 110 facilities in Chino, Ontario and San Jacinto, according to Rob Vandenheuvel, general manager of the Milk Producers Council in Ontario, Calif.

Ying Wang, director of Life Cycle Assessment research for the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, issued the following response to the study: “We believe the ammonia emissions estimate of California dairy farms from the study published in Geophysical Research Letters is more than 50 percent higher than other research that we have reviewed,” Wang said. For instance, the National Air Emissions Monitoring Study (NAEMS) study, which the National Milk Producers Federation commissioned with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, came up with significantly different findings, Wang said. “NAEMS was conducted from 2007 to 2009 at seven different dairy production facilities located in New York, Indiana, Texas, Wisconsin, California and Washington. The study is a credible representation of ammonia emissions from U.S. dairy farms,” Wang said.

According to the NAEMS study, the average ammonia emissions per cow per day are approximately 60.9 grams. To convert this to metric tons and compare it to the Geophysical Research Letters study: 60.9 grams per cow per day multiplied by the 298,000 cows referenced in Geophysical Research Letters article equals 18,148,200 grams per day, which is about 18 metric tons per day. This is significantly less than the 33 to 176 metric tons per day range cited in that study. And, if there are only 100,000 cows, the final number would be one-third of that, or 6 metric tons.>>