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Methane Producing Dinosaurs May Have Changed Climate
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that huge plant-eating dinosaurs called sauropods may have produced enough greenhouse gas by breaking wind to alter the Earth's climate. Scientists believe that, just as in cows, methane-producing bacteria aided the digestion of sauropods by fermenting their plant food. '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,' says study leader Dr Dave Wilkinson. 'Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources — both natural and man-made — put together.' The key factor is the total mass of the animals which included some of the largest animals to walk the Earth, such as Diplodocus, which measured 150 feet and weighed up to 45 tons. Medium-sized sauropods weighed about 20 tons and lived in herds of up to a few tens of individuals per square kilometer so global methane emissions from the animals would have amounted to around 472 million tons per year, the scientists calculated. Sauropods alone may have been responsible for an atmospheric methane concentration of one to two parts per million (ppm), say the scientists and studies have suggested that the Earth was up to 10C (18F) warmer in the Mesozoic Era. ''The Mesozoic trend to sauropod gigantism led to the evolution of immense microbial vats unequaled in modern land animals. Methane was probably important in Mesozoic greenhouse warming. Our simple proof-of-concept model suggests greenhouse warming by sauropod megaherbivores could have been significant in sustaining warm climates.'"
In addition to being 18 degrees warmer, scientists also concluded the climate was 43% more stinky
The world today is very different than the world millions of years ago. There were a lot more trees back then, which provided more shade for the ground and more oxygen in the air. It's not Methane alone that is affecting the planet, it's ALL of the ABOVE!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Careful citizen. At the most-recent Warming Conference a scientist proposed labeling climate-deniers as "mentally ill" and sending them to hospitals to be cured of this deficiency. She got unanamious applause.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(12)00329-6 in which the authors thank Lynn Margulis and say that she would 'savoured" fart jokes. "We thank the late Lynn Margulis for infecting us with her microbial enthusiasm — she would have savoured the notion of sauropods as walking methanogen vats.
"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" -- Homer
I'm nto going to read the article. This is just another tree hugger trying to prove global warming is caused by people by showing it has been done before. I'm fine with being modded down.
For a guy who picks a nickname of 'SensitiveMale', you really like getting kicked in the balls, huh.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Well, what do you call people who make up their own reality which can not be penetrated by facts? And lay off the persecution complex, it does not become you.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Actually it kind of makes sense. We see in our modern developed culture that Childhood Obesity is on the rise. The Fast Food Industry has plainly stated that foods slow to digest are not their responsibility. We are already witnessing "in herds of up to a few tens of individuals per square kilometer" wondering in local Walmart Supper Stores. Possibly a grant could be established that would allow the study of ventallation systems exhaust particles of Nordstroms and Walmarts?
This research stinks.
She's way out of line there. Climate deniers are stupid, not crazy, and you can't cure stupid.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
How's this:
Since the dinosaurs never existed, because God put the bones in the ground for us to find and remind us we will one day die and go to heaven, it's easier than ever to say that climate change doesn't, and never did, exist.
Am I doing it right?
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Are you sure? Most politicians seem to be talking out their ass all of the time.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Yeah, yeah, and Ted Nugent got unanimous applause for insinuating that he or someone else would assassinate the President. Hyperbole often tends to cross lines of appropriate discussion, sometimes causing actual offense, but let's not give credence to it by pretending it's more than it is.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
To be honest I hope Obama DOES win re-election. I want the next four years to destroy anything left of his legacy.
This is the problem with Americans today. Instead of desiring a bright, hopeful, prosperous future, we instead want one where the people we dislike bring us into ruin just so we can say "I told you so."
The problem with climate change is the rate. The dinosaurs, were here for 160 MILLION years. The amount of time it took for the type of climate change the research is suggesting (due to excrement) is hard to agree with. There could have been a lot of other naturally contributing factors in that timescale.
The amount of climate change brought about in the past 100 years, however, is largely due to anthropogenic emissions. People consuming resources, driving, industry, cows (yes meat production and transportation as well as dairy farm methane), depletion of natural carbon sinks, irresponsible land use and the list goes on.
So stop trying to push climate change off as a totally natural occurrence that we have nothing to worry about. The earth's climate has never remained the same for long, and yes it's had plenty of warm and cold spells in the past but never, ever have we been able to find that rate of change occurring over the course of a measly 100 years. This is the worrisome part. People need to accept that we have changed the course of climate on this planet at a rate never seen before and the earth will continue to warm unless we start changing the way we live. And soon.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Funny enough. The Soviets did the same thing to "revolutionary reactionists" or the people who didn't believe in the glories of the motherland. Then they decided that sending them off to gulags or killing them was better.
Om, nomnomnom...
I think a better goal would be finding a way to offset electricity costs using the farts.
Who (name) said what (quote) where (place) when (date)?
But at least the people who modded you "+5 Informative") demonstrated what passes as facts in climate deniers camp. And since advanced enough self-deception is indistinguishable from genuine mental illness, perhaps we should forgive any real of imaginary person who confuses the two.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Doesn't matter how wrong someone is. Nobody deserves to be subjected to a "reeducation camp". Unless of course you want something equivalent of the the German Stasi enforcing environmental regulation.
Life is not for the lazy.
A model is only as good as its assumptions, and their assumptions about population density seem difficult to believe. Tens of sauropods per square kilometer? A quick Google search shows that population densities for African elephants are on the order of .1-4 individuals per square kilometer. Even assuming sauropods had a somewhat lower metabolism than an elephant, it's difficult to believe that you could take sauropods, which are several times the size of an elephant, and pack them in at ten times the population density; they'd just strip all the leaves off the trees and then starve to death. That's ignoring the fact that the plants may have been less productive, which would limit the amount of food available. The dominant trees in the Mesozoic are conifers, which grow more slowly than modern flowering plants, so there's just not as much forage being produced by the environment.
Another recent study suggests the dinosaurs died off because they couldn't stand the smell.
One small thing; If these "mathematical models" have anything to do with assuming Sauropods farted proportionally as much as industrial cows, I'd politely disagree and want more proof. Sauropods ate what they were designed to eat; most cows do not. If they take a grass fed and naturally pastured cow, if not wild (not corn and grain fed and stressed to the max) and calculate based on the amount of flatulence those cows produce, I'd be more convinced. There's a reason conventional cows have to be given daily antibiotics in their "feed" and that's because they shouldn't be eating that food in the first place. Affect bowels? You bet your gassy, grain fed ass it does.
I always love to look up the context for quotes. So tell me...where did this quote come from? When did the word "treated" get "added" in? Obviously, the word "treated" is the source of all the consternation, with folks jumping to believe that the word implies sending skeptics away to hospitals (as cpu6502 alleges). Where is the proper context, so that we may determine what capacity "treated" was being used in?
Let's start with the Register. (lol, half a step above the Daily Mail!)
"Resistance at individual and societal levels must be recognized and treated"
Which links to the university press release
"Resistance at individual and societal levels must be recognized before real action can be taken to effectively address threats facing the planet from human-caused contributions to climate change."
Which links to this presentation.
"What social factors drive ongoing environmental degradation? Existing scientific conversations have generally failed to include psychological understanding of individual behavior, or sociological insights regarding culture and social organization. This session highlights key psychological and sociological concepts essential to understanding social inaction. We integrate research on relational trust, social normative beliefs and cultural and political-economic constraints on pro-environmental action."
I ctrl-f'd for "treat" but found nothing except the original Register quote. I also ctrl-f'd for "hospital" and found nothing. And the original Register "quote" wasn't even quoting her.
:(){
We don't know for sure how fast a sauropod's metabolism was compared to an elephant's. If their metabolisms were similar to those of modern reptiles, then it's perfectly reasonable to imagine that they could survive on an order of magnitude less food. From WP: "A crocodile needs from a tenth to a fifth of the food necessary for a lion of the same weight and can live half a year without eating." During the Jurassic and Cretaceous, the climate was very warm and humid, there were no polar ice caps, and a much higher proportion of the world's surface area was covered with rainforest compared to today. There seems to be a lot of uncertainty about productivity of the ancient forests, but this paper says that in the Cretaceous it was probably double that of today. Believe it or not, the scientist who did this work may not have been a complete idiot. In fact, he may know more about his subject than you do, and may have made his estimates based on knowledge of his field. In fact, his publication list contains papers with titles like "The energetics of low browsing in sauropods."
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Well, when you are in a room of like thinking people and say something they like. Chances are very good that they will applaud you.
If someone was to get up front and give a well informed speech and slide show to say the climate of the Earth changes over time from hot to cold and back again. That is the nature of the thing. That person might have been tossed out of the place.