I don’t have much comment on this, as the press worldwide has pretty much said it all. I await the coming comparisons between, ahem, human emissions, and dinosaur emissions.
Click image for the story.It’s another modeling extrapolation. From the article:
==============================================================
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,” said study leader Dr Dave Wilkinson, from Liverpool John Moores University.
”Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources – both natural and man-made – put together.”
==============================================================
Something smells alright – the stench of extrapolation is overpowering.
It says the paper was published in Current Biology, but I can’t find it. Anyone know where to get a copy?
UPDATE: The BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17953792
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.
“520 million tonnes”, that’s all? That seems in error. They obviously mean 520 teragrams. (/sarc from the paper – they quote teragrams, which sounds much bigger for MSM scare stories, but I guess they needed some unit people could get their nose around)
Here’s figure 1 from the paper:
The paper itself is a marvel of weak extrapolation:
Link to excerpt of curent “Current Biology” issue, showing the full article:
http://download.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/PIIS0960982212003296.pdf
Could methane produced by sauropod dinosaurs
have helped drive Mesozoic climate warmth?
David M. Wilkinson1,*, Euan G. Nisbet2, and Graeme D. Ruxton3
Mesozoic sauropods, like many modern herbivores, are likely to have
hosted microbial methanogenic symbionts for the fermentative
digestion of their plant food [1]. Today methane from livestock is a
significant component of the global methane budget [2]. Sauropod
methane emission would probably also have been considerable. Here,
we use a simple quantitative approach to estimate the magnitude of such
methane production and show that the production of the ‘greenhouse’
gas methane by sauropods could have been an important factor in warm
Mesozoic climates. Sauropod dinosaurs include the largest terrestrial animals known
and exhibit a distinctive body shape, featuring a small head at the end
of a very long neck. Their diversity and geographic range suggest that
sauropods may have been keystone species in many ecosystems during
the Jurassic and Cretaceous [1]. Based in part on data from the
Late Jurassic Morrison Formation (Western USA), Farlow et al. [3]
estimated population densities for sauropods ranging from a few
large adult animals to a few tens of individuals per km2. Specifically,
they estimate that if dinosaurs had an endothermic, mammalian-style
metabolism, then the total abundance of these megaherbivores would
have been 11–15 animals/km2 with a total biomass density of around
42,000 kg/km2. It is, however, very unlikely that large-bodied sauropods
had metabolisms as high as predicted by the assumption of mammalian
metabolism [1]. If instead a reptilian metabolism in assumed, then Farlow
et al. [3] calculate a predicted biomass density of 377,000 kg/km2.
————————-
Per Caddyshack, I think we have a new exclamation, “Oh, dinosaur farts!”
Best not to say it during a thunderstorm climate disruption.
More likely proof that the very short-lived atmospheric methane plays little role in overall temperature.
Yep. Must have held it in for all 135 million years of their existence. Wouldn’t want to be around when they finally lost control.
I thought it wasn’t bovine flatulence but rather bovine burps that was the problem. Did dinosaurs burp? Am I just confused?
– Standard rule : “If a story is too bizarre to be true … then it’s not true”, especially if it’s one new story on it’s own & is in the distant past so it’s not likely to be proved with evidence.
– Standard rule 2 : “If a story is too bizarre to be true ..and it suits their dogma then the British press will churn it anyway without any fact checking”…
An obvious bid for an Ig.
Sing cuckoo now, sing cuckoo!
ANON, 13th Century
may have produced enough methane to have an important effect on the Mesozoic climate
==============================
Still trying to figure out where that massive pool of CO2 comes from………..
The notion that a thing could pass, yes pass, peer-review made me think it was a joke played on the MSM but no, here is the link: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(12)00329-6
It’s here http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2812%2900329-6
Aha! So let me extrapolate further and hypothesise that the real reason for their extinction was was they all bottom burped at the same time and a stray spark caused an almighty explosion.
It must be correct. The Beeb reported it 6 hrs ago.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17953792
Shall we count the billions of buffalo? Academia is handing out degrees that are smellier than dinosaur farts. Makes an honest hard working person scream in frustration.
Hmmmm,
I could be very wrong here, but a quick perusal of available data, such as Veizer’s paleotemperature curve (available at http://www.globalwarmingart.com), and my knowledge of when the large Sauropods lived (dominant in the Jurassic), the world was characterized by cool climates, not quite an ice-age, but not quite the Cretaceous “hot house” we hear so much about.
Many of the North American Sauropods come from the Morrison Formation, which at the time was subtropical, due to the drift of the North American Plate away from the African/European Plate.
The LARGE Sauropods (Diplodocids, Apatasaurs, Brachiosaurs, Camarasaurs … ) were extinct by the earliest Cretaceous, and their decendants were minor players until the Chicxulub (sp?) event.
This does not appear to be a viable hypothesis, unless I am missing something?
Best regards to all,
Mark H.
So the Dinosaurs died out because of an extended game of “Pull my Finger”???
I call bullshit on this one.
”Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources – both natural and man-made – put together.”
—
Are they claiming that methane producing bacteria can’t exist outside of dinosaur stomachs? What happened to the plants that were not eaten by dinosaurs? Did they never ferment or decompose and produce methane unless they were eaten? It defies reason.
Can someone explain to me what the difference in composition is between a dinosaur fart and bacterial decomposition of “unconsumed” plant life? Plants still dying/getting consumed/emitted as GHG gas…does the organism matter?
-Scott
This obviously passed pooh-review.
This represents a new low in pseudoscientific garbage talk. I cannot think of a more foolish postulation. It reminds me of the low level of environmental discourse led off by ol’ Ronald Regan who made his famous “trees cause more air pollution” or some similar statement. The imbeciles who write these things seem to never have heard of volcanoes and their strong influence on our entire global ecosystems. These same imbeciles still do not comprehend that most of the earths heating comes from that bright star up in the sky. Drives me crazy…..
Link to excerpt of curent “Current Biology” issue, showing the full article:
http://download.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/PIIS0960982212003296.pdf
The Beeb (BBC) also ran the story today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17953792
What will they think of next? (Beware an attack by the climate police on owners of livestock – it is only a matter of time!)
Kurt in Switzerland
So that explains why all the pictures of dinosaurs show them as brown.
There will always be a balance between the number of plants, and the number of animals that eat plants. The amount of methane produced per pound of plant material eaten is probably pretty close to a constant. (Assume that animal guts will always evolve to get the maximum nutrition per pound of food eaten.)
As a result, there is probably a linear relationship between the productivity of the vegetable portion of the biosphere, and the amount of methane in the atmosphere. In other words, if there was more methane in the atmosphere back then, it had more to do with their being more plants, rather than dinosaur having bigger farts compared to modern animals.
Jurassic wind
Studies in Sauropod Scatology
I would have thought that the UEA liar story would have been far more important and made to be a sticky post as is seesms to be getting a lot of attention elsewhere. This graph explains it all really
http://www.soutersmith.net/serendipity/index.php?/archives/143-UEA-accused-of-lying.html. I think this will affect the AGW movement big time.
REPLY: I thought I had…I guess it didn’t take, and I don’t visit the front page when I’m editing/moderating. Fixed now. – A
If farting caused the problem. then how did the dinasaurs grow to be the biggest animals to be found on earth in history in the first place? Are we to assume that these wonderful animals lead a life of centuries of constipation before they suddenly started farting to bring about their own extiction? How do these idiots know how many dinasaurs were on the earth at the time compared to the billions of people, cows and other animals that are on earth today, all farting away to their hearts content?. Surely the Daily Telegraph have been taken in by a huge scam by bogus researchers; they should be ashamed of themselves for publishing such utter rubbish, and the science editor should be locked in a methane-filled room.
Scott says:
May 7, 2012 at 9:44 am
Can someone explain to me what the difference in composition is between a dinosaur fart and bacterial decomposition of “unconsumed” plant life? Plants still dying/getting consumed/emitted as GHG gas…does the organism matter?
=============
not one bit Scott
fred houpt says:
May 7, 2012 at 9:47 am
The only difference is that Reagan was right. The hydrocarbons released into the atmosphere by trees, was much larger than the amount released by autos.
I left a post on the University of East Anglia thread, following hearing about this on the BBC Radio 2 News at 3:00pm today. Even the newsreader could not stop laughing. By the time she got to the 4:00pm bulletin she had coined the term “Flatulentosaurus”,the Newsreader and Tony Blackburn (the veteran DJ) thought it funny and ridiculous and took the p***. By the 5:00pm bulletin they had a spokesman from Liverpool University who was discussing this with great sincerity. The 6:00pm news bulletin (on now) has made no mention of it, but they did mention the equally surreal item about Putin being sworn in as the new Russian President!
It really cheered up a Bank Holiday afternoon, where I am confined to the house with a bad back and the AGW has given us an outside temperature of 8.5 celsius and rain!
”Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources – both natural and man-made – put together.”
Indeed, calling this drivel “calculations” is mere academic ostentation. They are, indeed, mere POOMA* numbers.
Richard Lyman says: “I thought it wasn’t bovine flatulence but rather bovine burps that was the problem. Did dinosaurs burp? Am I just confused?”
Dinosaurs may have burped, Richard, the amount depending on their diet. However, dinosaurs weren’t as evolved as present day bovines, who possess four, count ’em, four (4) stomachs, presenting the former with fewer opportunities to burp. There is NO safe place to stand in the vicinity of a dinosaur.
R Taylor says: “The notion that a thing could pass, yes pass, peer-review made me think it was a joke played on the MSM but no…”
The pee-er reviewers obviously didn’t know coprolite.
* Preliminary Order-Of-Magnitude Approximation. Really.
If farting was the cause, then how did these wonderful beasts grow to be the biggest animals on earth in the first place? or were they constipated for a few million years before they started farting? How do these people know exactly how many dinosaurs were on the earth at the time compared to the billions of people, cows and other animals that are on earth now? Surely the Daily Telegraph have been taken in by a huge scam by bogus research workers, if not, they should be utterly ashamed of themselves for publishing such utter rubbish, and their science editor should locked up in a methane-filled room.
YEA!!!
The Weekly World News is back!!!…. in the form of The Telegraph.
Can’t wait for the stories of Bat Boy.
“An instant later, Professor Waxman and his time machine were obliterated, leaving the cold-blooded/warm-blooded dinosaur controversy unresolved.”
http://ts3.mm.bing.net/images/thumbnail.aspx?q=4804256489014194&id=63ab7c21508b8df0334780621d923fb5&url=http%3a%2f%2fimg.photobucket.com%2falbums%2fv616%2fCobraChief%2ffarside1.jpg
@ MarkW: You wrote “The only difference is that Reagan was right. The hydrocarbons released into the atmosphere by trees, was much larger than the amount released by autos.” It is so long ago I forget the nitty gritty of that argument. I am assuming here that the hydrocarbons released by trees is mostly when they die and decompose. For me that insanity of his comment was to link something we need (all plants) with automobiles, that we do not need to survive. This lopsided logic also came from the same man who felt it his mission in life to liberate the people of Nicaragua by funding a band of terrorists squads (aptly named ‘freedom fighters’). May we all be protected from such lunacy again, including the influence of pseudoscientific babblers, which includes the periodic eruptions from Dr. David Suzuki.
Good call Scott, BUT I think in some circumstances plants can decay naturally without releasing GHCs like when they become peat.
This is just hilarious entertainment.
“‘520 million tonnes’, that’s all? That seems in error. They obviously mean 520 teragrams.”
Is this some kind of Pacific Coast humor that went over my head? For any who don’t know,
1 teragram = 1 megaton. –AGF
REPLY: yeah, I was being a little cheeky, I’ve added a note to make that clear since I didn’t express it well the first time. In was playing on the media’s tendency to use the largest number possible and tera is much bigger than mega. – Anthony
just…wow. what will they come up with next for sources on earth causing warming? clearly ALL warming must come from the planet, nothing else according to them. This is an absurd theory and shows the lack of an argument they have nowadays.
Dinosaur version of the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles.
Blazing Sauropods.
What a hoot!
Of course, if we still had any dinosaurs around, they’d be classified and an endangered and protected species. Mainstream media would be fretting (going bonkers) over their imminent extinction.
As a satire, written for publication in The Onion, this would be a great article. But it isn’t.
As science, it’s a load of coprolites!
Dinosaur version of a Mel Brooks movie.
Blazing Sauropods.
Did the animals have long necks so that their noses were as far as possible from their bottoms?
Seems like a lot of hot air.
Academia climate science has turned into a big joke. Lot of really funny British comedians are Scouses (Liverpudlians), I wander what Ken Dodd would have made of it
http://laceysfilms.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/ken-dodd-insurance-431.jpg?w=431
It just doesn’t pass the sniff test
So, how does this differ from growing corn or soy to fuel our vehicles? Which is not supposed to result in any net warming?
Anthony!
520 million ton is = 520 000 000 ton = 520 000 000 000 000 gram = 520 teragram
or in sequence:
520 teragram
520 000 gigagram
520 000 000 megagram
520 000 000 000 kilogram
520 000 000 000 000 gram = 520 million ton
REPLY: No, I know that…it was a poorly executed pun at MSM’s tendency to use large numbers to describe things in the worst possible terms…see the update I added in parenthesis – A
Where’s did I set that BS button again . . . ?
Makes me ashamed to admit that I am a paleontologist! Forgive them Cuvier, they know not what they do.
It’s almost hilarious the traction this story has acquired, apart from the fact that so many people are taking it so seriously. FFS, it was mentioned in the headlines of BBC Radio news today. I guess it appeals to the five-year-old in all of us.
It’s obvious tosh, of course. The truth about the demise of the dinosaurs is here.
A climate craziness of the week already… IT’S MONDAY!
… and it stinks.
A few years ago I read a book ” Dinosaur Heresies” by Robert T. Bakker, and in that book he detailed his theory (?) that dinosaurs are more closely related to modern chickens and birds than reptiles. If you look at the digestive system of a chicken they use a crop to break down food, instead of using multiple stomachs to ferment their food like cows do. Chickens don’t fart http://www.fartingchickens.com/dochicksfart.htm . I am not a paleontologist, so perhaps sauropods are different, and use a different digestive system. Interesting to think about, but I am not going to lose any sleep over it.
It seems that if all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. But isn’t this hitting below the belt?
This deserves the Josh prize of the month!!
I will keep it treasured with the other warmist papers that deserve the prize:
1) http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n6/full/ngeo877.html
“Methane emissions from extinct megafauna” – caused the ice age to end not CO2. Shaviv is shown in error by warmistas!
But alas we humans killed the megafauna and caused the Younger Dryas.
What the paper does not solve is who started the farting end of Younger Dryas.
Willis had a take on it here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/27/anthropogenic-decline-in-natural-gas/
2) Then the europeans causing the little ice age colonising the Americas:
“A team comprised of geological and environmental science researchers from Stanford University has been studying the impact that early European exploration had on the New World and have found evidence that they say suggests the European cold period from 1500 to 1750, commonly known as the Little Ice Age, was due to the rapid decline in native human populations shortly after early explorers arrived”
http://phys.org/news/2011-10-team-european-ice-age-due.html
And
3) the green conqueror itself:
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/was-genghis-khan-historys-greenest-conqueror
and now a new green-pearl to my collection!!
I have two questions–one directly related, the other indirectly related.
I have asked them before, but have never seen an answer (for what ever reason).
I have searched for an answer on my own, and either am just plain wrong, or don’t know how to search for it. If somebody will acknowledge here having seen the questions, I’ll stop asking.
I think I saw, withing the last month or two an article (which I little noted and dismissed at the time) saying that through some mechanism the warming could be stopped by injecting methane (dinosaur and cow and ….. farts and outgassing) and particulate carbon (backyard incinerator smoke, London coal smoke, Denver stove smoke).
Did I imagine that? I wish I’d paid more attention to it but at the time I was absolutely sure the ideas would be shredded by the people that actually know what they are talking about and that I would be tired of the subject before it left the scene.
I worry about my sanity.
I wonder if the Dinosaur Fart Extinction Theory should be taught in school along with the Meteor Impact Extinction Theory.
Something tells me Walter Alvarez’s theory remains relatively safe.
The light begins to dawn.
I mounted the search for the injected methane thing and Bing found one reference (that included mention of sulphate aerosols (“acid rain”) injections) at a globalwarmingmlight.blogspot.com that does not exist anymore.
I think I have been rickrolled or something.
I’ll just grab coat there–I can let myself out.
“Assume that animal guts will always evolve to get the maximum nutrition per pound of food eaten”
You definitely can’t do that. Only ruminants (=most Artiodactyla) have highly efficient digestive systems that produce large amounts of methane. Most plant-eaters (e. g. horses, kangaroos, elephants, birds) make do with much less efficient systems and produce much less methane.
There is absolutely no evidence that sauropods were ruminants, and their anatomy (e. g. their teeth) makes it extremely unlikely that they could have been. As already noted dinosaur digestive systems seem to have been somewhat bird-like, so ostriches or geese are probably better analogs than cows. And yes, plantreating birds do produce methane, but vastly less than ruminants like cows.
Outside of being very funny, this type of article causes me to wonder if Spike Milligan is really dead.
WTF@Reality
Heggs
And they know how many dinos lived at any given time how? We don’t even have a handle on how many animals are on the planet today.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/dinosaurs/9250060/Suburban-dinosaur-discovered-outside-Melbourne.html
Speaking of fart knockers…..
There are a couple of things I draw from this paper.
1. The contribution of Methane to temperatures would have been around 0.05 (Idso 1998 / Lindzen & Choi 2011) to 0.4 degrees (IPCC central estimate).
2. The much higher temperatures and CO2 levels lead more abundant vegetation = a much greater animal mass being supported.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2012/05/07/dinosaur-flatulence-caused-pre-historic-warming/
How? Methane is lighter than air and doesn’t hang around in the atmosphere – as a ‘greenhouse gas’ absorbing heat it becomes even lighter taking the heat away from the surface..
..just as carbon dioxide does in the water cycle.
Daddy, what do you do at work?
I measure dinosaur farts.
But daddy, dinosaurs are dead
Shhhhush…I need this grant.
Daddy, whatsa grant?
It’s what you get for counting dinosaur farts.
“Specifically,
they estimate that if dinosaurs had an endothermic, mammalian-style
metabolism, then the total abundance of these megaherbivores would
have been 11–15 animals/km2”
My Arse!
Smallest elephant herds are about a dozen animals and need at least 12k m2. I doubt very much you could support 11-15 6 ton elephants per km2, let alone 11-15 90 ton dinosaurs!
Good logic. I mean, if there were that many dino’s you’d expect to find a much larger amount of fossil bones waiting to be dug up.
I’m gonna say, whatever they might be, these guys aren’t ranchers. From the article:
Now, 42,000 kg/km2 works out to be about 375 pounds per acre. An average cow weighs about 1000 pounds. That means they are figuring about TWO AND A HALF ACRES PER COW … get real. You can get that on irrigated pastureland, but not on range land. On range land, the usual numbers are more like twenty to a hundred acres per cow. So their claim is exaggerated by more than an order of magnitude.
Also, they say that a given area can sustain nearly ten times the weight of lizards as it can of cows … what is the theoretical justification for that? I mean, I know that it takes energy to stay warm, but that would mean that 9/10ths of our energy is expended keeping warm … does that make sense? Seems high …
w.
fred houpt says:
May 7, 2012 at 10:22 am
“I am assuming here that the hydrocarbons released by trees is mostly when they die and decompose”
Contrariwise. Living and healthy trees (especially conifers and eucalypts) release large amounts of volatile hydrocarbons, particularily in warm weather, Ever notice the smell in a pine forest in summer? Some of that stuff really is toxic by the way, but mostly to other trees since plants engage in extensive chemical warfare with competitors.
Back in the 80’s when I was working on the environmental effects of aircraft I heard that the Swedish environmental authorities were thinking of simplifying the rules on organic pollutants and were considering a general rule prohibiting organic aerosols above a certain level. However any level that would work for reasonably toxic organics would also make pine forests illegal, particularily after a rain, so they had to give it up.
Personally I don’t worry about how pines smell (I rather like it), neither do I worry about these deadly particles EPA is so excited about. My ancestors have lived for millions of years in envronments that were both dusty and full of smelly trees, so if they did not adapt to it I wouldn’t be here.
.
We were told that animals were to shrink with global warming. Did these animals shrink after their fart induced, permanent heatwave?
I guarantee you that bovine burps are far more voluminous than their farts. If you stand with cattle when they rest from feeding and are chewing their cuds, you’ll note a gentle, near-continuous flow of grass-flavored gas from their mouths from the fermentation taking place in their rumens. It’s like the primary fermentation of beer. Cattle live mostly on the fatty acids from the bacteria that ferment the fodder.
I’ve never heard a cow fart unless it had the scours.
UK BBC Radio four had this on when I was driving home from work today. I don’t normally listen to that pile of sh*te government propaganda station but I mistuned my radio. It actually had the Professor guy on, spouting his nonesense. This is publicly funded radio and if I hadn’t become outraged at the mass deception and lies some years ago this probably would have pushed me over the edge, causing a shouting-at-the-radio moment, while driving (never good).
A lot of people like radio 4 because it’s more in-depth, more intellectual. I used to like it. But it’s full of the same sh*t as the rest of the so-called media. This is a good example of how various different media outlets all run with the same story on the same day, but if you look at how many hands are behind that, it is not many.
It really shows how badly ‘science’ and media and banking and politics and industry have become tied in the terrible tangle that Eisenhower warned us about. And what does it say about ‘their’ estimation of our intelligence, these eliteists who push this stuff? But hey, they might be right (about our intelligence):
Conversation on bus next day:
Man 1 – “Turns out the dinosaurs caused their own extinction by farting too much and causing global warming – saw it in the Sun/Daily Mail/Express/Telegraph”.
Man 2 – “Yeah, I saw/heard that on the BBC/Sky/Whatever”.
Basically both men go away having had their opinions ‘confirmed’. See what the controlled media have done there?
Full dislosure: I did light my own farts at scout camp. Did I mitigate my emissions? 🙂
Kid next door: Whats your dad do?
He gets grants
Whatsa grant?
I dono but I stand upwind from him now.
“Dr Wilkinson and colleague Professor Graeme Ruxton, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, began to wonder about Mesozoic methane while investigating sauropod ecology. ..”
as they helped their eighth grade children with a class Climate Change Research project.
Anyone know what the approx animal population of the word was say 5000 years ago when the human population was tiny? Many milions of bison and billions of other animals, together with nature prodcing just as much co2 as today-probably more-could have a similar effect to the dinosaurs.
Whether or not it is true is another thing of course, although to be fair the scientist involved in the dinosaur study when interviewed by the BBC said illustrating the amount of methane produced was a very different thing to proving it had any effect on the climate.
tonyb
fred houpt says:
May 7, 2012 at 10:22 am
This lopsided logic also came from the same man who felt it his mission in life to liberate the people of Nicaragua by funding a band of terrorists squads (aptly named ‘freedom fighters’).
Ya I agree fred liberation, freedom and all is a bitch. Not worth fighting for. NOT.
Get your facts right.
One is sorely tempted to fight fire with fire (or, as it were, dino poo with BS) and subject these guys to Freudian anal(!)ysis: “Climate alarmists seem to be mentally arrested at the anally-fixated state…”
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Trees_cause_pollution
“Reagan’s statement was disingenuous because volatile organic compounds produced by trees do not cause pollution any more than the sun causes pollution. Reagan might as well have said, “the sun causes more pollution than automobiles do”. Photochemical ozone pollution is created when automobile and power plant pollution is broken down by strong sunlight in the presence of any number of volatile organic compounds. “
fred houpt says:
May 7, 2012 at 10:22 am
@ MarkW: You wrote “The only difference is that Reagan was right. The hydrocarbons released into the atmosphere by trees, was much larger than the amount released by autos.” It is so long ago I forget the nitty gritty of that argument. I am assuming here that the hydrocarbons released by trees is mostly when they die and decompose. For me that insanity of his comment…
__________________________
Your assumption is incorrect.
The rest of your post is a screed of similar bent.
Thus, you are presented with an opportunity to reflect on how political bias can color one's perception of reality.
Al gore has got to stop talking out of his “A” two snakes, or we are all doomed.
fred houpt says:
May 7, 2012 at 10:22 am
Pine trees release hydrocarbons every day that they are alive, in copious amounts. Other types of trees do as well, just not as much.
The contras were not terrorists, though the real terrorists, the Sandinistas loved to label them as such. The usefull idiots on these shores loved to repeat the left wing propadanda.
Do I smell an attack on our carnivorous habits?
Sorry to continue the off topic dialog, but bad information has to be countered.
It’s funny how the people of Nicauragua voted for those so called terrorists in large numbers, once the Sandinistas were forced into allowing real elections.
fred houpt says:
May 7, 2012 at 12:40 pm
As Reagan once said, there you go again.
Reagan made this statement in the middle of a debate regarding massive changes to cars in order to get them to emit fewer hydrocarbons. Reagan was just pointing out that it was useless to go to such extremes to regulate auto emissions while ignoring the much, much, bigger emissions from trees.
You are so invested in the Reagan was an idiot myth that it is causing you to say stupid things in defense of it.
It is easy to debunk this article by proxy global temperatures during the time and when these large dinosaurs walked the Earth. These large dinosaurs wondered the lands during the Jurassic period, roughly between 145 million and 200 million years ago.
There was none of these species found during the Triassic, so whats the problem you might be thinking here?
Well during the Triassic when none of the species lived, proxy global temperatures were shown to be slightly higher than the Jurassic period (at least at the beginning). So in fact temperatures cooled from the beginning of the Triassic until the end of the Jurassic. This occurred at the same time while CO2 levels were increasing.
Therefore this was no evidence these dinoasuars affected climate because during their presence on Earth global temperatures continued to decline. Between the beginning of the Triassic and the end of the Jurassic, global temperatures roughly declined 6c. The much warmer climate was obvious when the placement of the continents were considered.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/LateJurassicGlobal.jpg/240px-LateJurassicGlobal.jpg
Starts around the 27 minute mark on the PM programme on radio 4:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01h646c
I heard that the vegetarian dinos tried to convince the meat eating dinos that eating meat caused warming that could lead to extinction. 🙂
The big problem I see with this study is it ignores the fact that if the sauropods were cold blooded they would eat less and produce less gas, and if they were warm blooded there would be fewer individuals. And last but not least we have no clue how many sauropods were around at a given time due to the nature of fossils. Basically had they consulted a paleobiologist, they would have been told how impossible this study was.
I Have two comments to this paper
1. This is whydinosaurs are ex Stinked.
2. I don’t know what university this person is from, but he needs to be expelled.
“And then one day one of them published a story about dinosaurs breaking wind. And that boys and girls, is when people stopped reading Newspapers altogether.”
The End
I rather like the idea of the Earth farting it’s way out of the Mesozoic into the Cenozoic. It certainly explains the current stench!
Warmists are sooooo desperate to keep the methane scare alive, so sad, so desperate…
Someone talked of “sauropod scatology.” But since we are talking about extinctions, it’s also “sauropod eschatology.”
(sorry, can’t help being Greek)
I can’t see the problem here, probably because I don’t understand the biology. If there were no dinosaurs, what would happen to all the plant material they would have eaten and turned into methane? Aren’t there plenty of other critters — bacteria and termites, for example —- which would have consumed the same plant material and converted it to methane? Wouldn’t these two methane producing life forms end up producing about the same amount of methane?
HA, HA,HA, HA, HA, HA,HA, HA,HA, [&etc. ~mod.]
We would need to quatify the total mass methane of that period with the modern area of nearly 7 billion humans and the sum total of all methane producing processes, before even attempting to exprapolate that dinosaur farts caused global warming, by over 10C more than today. Pumps (as they call them in northern England) are mainly nitrogenous anyway -over 85%. Methane is the least gas in passing wind
@Someone talked of “sauropod scatology.” But since we are talking about extinctions, it’s also “sauropod eschatology.”
That be me … I suppose to extend the alliteration we could go with:
Sauropod scatology eructs eschatology.
Kids, so the next time your mother tells you to eat your vegetables, you can tell them no because you’re trying to save the planet!
Stick around long enough and one recognises that all these stories keep being recycled. Here’s a news item from the year 2000
Friday, 28 July, 2000, 16:04 GMT 17:04 UK
Ill wind ‘killed dinosaurs’
The dinosaurs were not wiped out by a comet or asteroid impact or some other planetary catastrophe but by a serious flatulence problem, according to research quoted in a Chinese news report.
Dinosaur wind contained a high proportion of methane gas – powerful enough to damage the ozone layer, said the China Youth Daily quoting a French scientist.
“The animals, weighing from 80 to 100 tonnes, would eat on average between 130 and 260 kilos of food every day. They would fart non-stop,” said the traditionally austere paper.
snip
China Youth Daily did not identify the French scientist behind the latest theory.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/855813.stm
At least now we finally know the cause of man-made global warming.
Jurasic Park!
The “Brontosaurus” didn’t exist. It was an error made by putting the skull of a Camarasaurus, upon the headless skeleton of an Apatosaurus.
http://www.unmuseum.org/dinobront.htm
However, a we seeing a shift away from CO2 being the bogeyman, to Methane?
This could finally explain how the Pterodactyls became airborne. I wonder if they had afterburners? This bright crew should be encouraged to study this.
When useful idiots are making mistakes I never correct them. I encourage them to do more of the same.. Some eventually figure out that they are being used, but generally they are the last to figure out what is going on. They are cruelly surprised when their masters dump them after they have become a laughing stock.
Louis says:
May 7, 2012 at 9:40 am
”Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources – both natural and man-made – put together.”
—
Are they claiming that methane producing bacteria can’t exist outside of dinosaur stomachs? What happened to the plants that were not eaten by dinosaurs? Did they never ferment or decompose and produce methane unless they were eaten?
______________________
The plants got squashed into coal (along with the methane) and that is why our kindly Green leaders like the EPA say we mustn’t play with the black rocks called coal because we could release all those unused dinosaur farts….
Well it makes as much sense as a lot of the stuff I have read including this bird cage liner and recent EPA regs.
MarkW says:
May 7, 2012 at 10:05 am
fred houpt says:
May 7, 2012 at 9:47 am
The only difference is that Reagan was right. The hydrocarbons released into the atmosphere by trees, was much larger than the amount released by autos
______________
The study from PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/04/q3/0927-trees.htm
Seems all life is lethal.
Charles Dawson should have been knighted.
There are so many now following in his footsteps …
It is well known that dinosaur footprints are often found in coal mines, that is, they have a huge carbon footprint, which could well be consistent with the fact they went extinct. Need to say more?
Yeah I saw the article re Dinosaurs.
So now dinosaurs are to blame for Climate Change. Have they given up on pre-historic man for causing Climate Change? 🙂
Maybe the next research out will say all bipedal and quadrupedal carbon based lifeforms cause climate change.
Perhaps this was the origin of the dragon myth.
Dinosaurs burping and through some static electrical cause, the burp was ignited!
Yeah I know that by conventional wisdom, man & dinosaur never coincided but it’s fun to speculate as they have in this paper.
DaveE.
Pull my claw, ….
As Gallon’s link points out, dinosaur digestion was more like a bird’s, as seen from the gizzard stones found with the skeletons–one more piece of evidence that they were warm-blooded. Feathers is another. A fossilized four-chambered heart is another. The fact that they and their ancestry included the top predators is another. Cold blooded dinosaurs is a notion as good as the one that the brontosaurus was too big and unwieldy to stand on dry land. It was even suggested that it used its long neck like a snorkel, keeping its body underwater. Of course it would not have been able to inhale in that case, but these theories didn’t develop in the physics departments.
All big animals are warm blooded to some degree–body temperature is a function of mass, metabolism, surface area and insulation. The more pertinent questions pertain to metabolism and homeothermy. Here it should be recognized that exothermy or poikilothermy are not necessarily the primitive condition: in general the more primitive the fish, the higher its metabolism and temperature requirements. Sharks are primitive but relatively ferocious. Lungfish likewise have high metabolic rates, survive only in the tropics or semitropics, and chew their food! And they bark like birds and mammals (unlike modern reptiles).
The point being, the primary stock in vertabrate evolution has always been warm-blooded, while the metabolism required to retain this endothermy in ever expanding environments steadily improved due to the ever-present need to fight, chase, and escape–and fly. Frogs and lizards are not at all representive of the top gun predators that dominate the main chain of rapid evolutionary adaptation. Rather they are dropouts from the metabolic rat race, specialists that survive by not competing in the main arena. Lizards aren’t just energy efficient temperature wise, but they are inactive generally, hiding, resting, waiting for food to come to them, while existing on what would be starvation rations to birds and mammals. Likewise amphibians have metabolic rates that are a mere shadow of those of their ferocious ancestors.’ Some amphibians have even lost the need for lungs, while relying on dermal respiration.
No biologists understood this a century ago, and not too many do still. In some important respects humans are more closely related to lungfish than lizards are to either: we chew our food, we croak, we have moist skins, we have high temperature requirements, and even high metabolisms, taking into account our far superior heart and lungs. A lizard has the blueprint of a much better cardio-pulminary system than a lungfish, but like the frogs, its ancestors abandoned the top of the chain metabolism they once boasted. Lungfish have voracious appetites, totally unlike reptiles and amphibians, and they certainly did 390 million years ago.
Cold-blooded dinosaurs and CAGW go hand in hand–outlandish theories that should have been long since discarded. –AGF
But Pachauri wants us to meat less meat and more greens. What is one to do? Are beans OK?
On another matter:
http://notrickszone.com/2012/05/06/arctic-warming-has-nothing-to-do-with-co2-caused-by-sulfur-dioxide-from-russian-smelting/
To be fair to the scientist. BBC PM this evening was trying to say that Dinosaur farts caused global warming and when he was interviewed he stressed that was not the point of the paper, they were merely pointing out that dinos produced unexpectedly massive amounts of Methane.
Mad warmist science like this is exactly what we need to show the warmist slush funds circus for what it is. Bookmark it, send it to a warmist friend, ask him if he still feels comfortable about his luminaries.
All our skepticism is completely unnecessary. These ‘scientists’ continue to expose the absurdity of their own warming theories each day —no help needed from the bearers of common-sense.
Truly e-scat-alogical!
YEP @ 1.38pm:
Sorry, just seen your post!
It is too bad that the authors have already aired this one out. It would have been an ideal submission to the Journal of Irreproducible Results (as would much of Jones’, Mann’s et al publications corpus of published work.) jir.com
Future scientists are SO going to make fun of our generation. School kids in the year 2100 will think that we’re all a bunch of morons. They’ll view us the same way we look at doctors in times past who bled patients to death to keep the from dying of viruses.
I remember that about thirty years ago I read a bit about a “dinosaurs farted themselves to extinction*” theory. Is this the same theory revived, or is a new one?
(*I forbear from the obvious puns.)
Living plants emit methane.
“Looking at methane sources in the right light
UV radiation and rising temperatures increase methane emissions from plants
May 27, 2008
Plants store one greenhouse gas, but emit another. Whereas they bind carbon dioxide, they release methane – albeit in small quantities. This has now been confirmed by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, the University of Utrecht and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute in Belfast. In two new studies, they also established that some of the greenhouse gas comes from pectin, a substance that plants use to build their supporting structure. The studies went on to reveal that UV light boosts methane production – which also explains why some researchers were unable to identify any plant-based methane: they were growing plants under light sources that did not radiate UV. (New Phytologist, May 9, 2008 Biogeosciences in press)”
If dinosaur farts warmed the planet, then why did global cooling in the late Cretaceous account for the decline of the dinosaurs? Did they finally learn to hold it in?
This self-parody by the science establishment points to the bestial idiocy of the belief that only “greenhouse gasses” and nothing else can influence and change climate, and that humans or – failing that – other animals, have to accept the BLAME.
So continental configuration, ocean currents, mountain range uplift, volcanism, cosmic rays etc can all now be ignored, since no-one can be blamed for any of these?
This has moved away from rational science deep into the territory of religion, no factor will be considered as affecting climate if there is not a direct link of moral culpability to a human or other sentient animal.
So all farting herbivores are now weapons of mass destruction?
Or, maybe, weapons of gastric ruption.
Catastrophic Dinopogenic Global Warming.
agfosterjr says:
May 7, 2012 at 3:30 pm
Cold-blooded dinosaurs and CAGW go hand in hand–outlandish theories that should have been long since discarded. –AGF
Thanks for some very interesting biological-evolutionary thoughts. The authors of this dino-fart paper try to make dinosaurs coldblooded just to increase the biomass they can argue for, but more biomass of slower-metabolism dinos would equal the same methane emission, so the attempt is as pointless, empty and self-defeating as the whole paper.
I read a nice paper in a special dinosaur edition of the Anatomical Record recently where it was shown that dinosaurs had the breathing and lung system of birds (in addition to all the other ways they are similar to birds). This avian breathing system is much more efficient than our own – principally because air travels ONE WAY through the avian lung, while our lungs are tidal, and the air has to return the same way it came in. This one-way avian lung system – which employs a complex system of air tubes even extending into bones, is approximately ten times more efficient than our own at gas exchange. All the gas exchange alveolar-equivalent surfaces are exposed to oxygen at atmospheric concentration in the one-way system, while in the inferior mammalian tidal system O2 concentration declines from the trachea and bronchi down to the gas-exchanging alveoli.
Another interesting thing about the breathing system of birds is that – due to its greater efficiency, it does not require lung deformation with thoracic and abdominal expansion that we need to breath in and out. The lungs are smaller also. This is why the body of a bird has ribs going all the way to the abdomen, they dont need the soft open abdomen that we do (ever seen a chicken with a six-pack?). And, as it turns out, the dinosaurs also had ribs all the way down the abdomen, just like birds (its actually pointless describing birds and dinosaurs separately, birds ARE dinosaurs, they are the “crown group” of the dinosaurs, i.e. the only surviving members).
Other proofs of this avian type breathing in dinosaurs include the forked insertion of the ribs at the vertebrae. If – as seems likely – the dinosaurs had avian one-way breathing, this blows out of the water for all time the nonsense about dinosaurs being “cold blooded”. (I even remember reading a book in my early teens arguing that dinosaurs were hot blooded – and that was a few decades ago!). They would have run rings around us mammals, having cardiovascular fittness equivalent of birds flying thousands of km on migration. Basically they would be “Isiah-40” type animals, they would “run and not grow weary”. (Not much fun if one of them fancies you for dinner!)
I am sure there are several comedians who would be interested in hiring these guys as writers. LOL
Does this bring new meaning to the term “farting against thunder”?
klem says:
May 7, 2012 at 11:48 am
I wonder if the Dinosaur Fart Extinction Theory should be taught in school along with the Meteor Impact Extinction Theory.
Something tells me Walter Alvarez’s theory remains relatively safe.
_________________________________________________________________
Actually, this further support for the Meteor Impact Extinction Theory. Combining the high levels of oxygen from the plant biomass necessary to support the Sauropods with the resulting methane and one large spark (BIC lighters not having been invented) and a Great Die Off is an obvious consequence.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2012/may/07/excuse-me-study-says-gassy-dinosaurs-helped-warm-e/
Well, Gavin has spoken and put things in perspective. Thankfully he got the info into an article that just popped up on Google News where it can be seen rather than a post on some old whipped-up “anti-climate denial” website that barely anyone cares about anymore.
“Did Dinosaur Flatulence Warm Prehistoric Earth?”
Cant say really but flatulence from Michael Mann, James Hansen, Phil Jones and their merry men, is definitely warming modern Earth.
kadaka (KD Knoebel): The article you cited concludes with:
University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver said: “Frankly, methane emissions from dinosaur burps is probably not the No. 1 thing we should be concerned about in modern society.”
Finally, some sanity in the coverage of this issue. And from a climate modeller too!!!
Ok so….
Bovine’s have four stomachs which amongst other things accomodate specific bacteria for breaking down cellulose in grasses.
Sauropods had ? stomachs which housed ? for breaking down cellulose from ferns and cycads (because grass didn’t exist at that time).
Ummmm yep makes real sense to factor up from cows. After all we know nothing at all about saurod digestive pathways or biochemistry so lets just assume that they’re are like cows because cows are homeothermic and sauropods were ? so we don’t know if they maintained a gut temperature sufficiently high to maintain methanogenesis.
And we know the population of sauropods because……?
I just can’t get over the numbers…. 11-14/sq KM. But that is for mammalian metabolism. Looks like 7-8 times more for reptile. So 80-110 of these big dinos per sq KM. Now imagine sending little Johnnie to school back then, he would have to dodge one every hundred yards or so. What about chasing one of these out of your back yard…. Dang these things would be all over the place… All farting incessantly. Of course these are only the big guys. There would be thousands of smaller dinos…. some tooting too.
Every day is the 1st of April!
Goldie says:
May 7, 2012 at 9:33 pm : Exactly right. It’s like studying rats and extrapolating for geckos because “they are about the same size.”
Should we now start calling DF (for Dinosaur Farts) on stories instead of BS?
That’s one small burp for a dino, one giant lie by mankind.
BREAKING!
TIME-TRAVELLING scientists could solve the world’s energy problems by harnessing dinosaurs’ powerful methane emissions.
Re: David Ball David Ball “Shall we count the billions of buffalo? ”
I’ve always found it fun to make a watermelon’s head explode by pointing out that, if cow gas is causing us trouble, killing all those buffalo was a GOOD thing…
You know I think the time of the dinosaurs is extremely important to understanding the earth’s temperature and climate. Is everyone here in agreement that dinosaurs had the largest carbon footprint? Not sure if anyone knew but this is a point of hot debate with true believers, who of course say that humans have to have the biggest, but it doesn’t make sense. Dinosaurs consumption is so much higher than that of a human. The massively high levels of carbon dioxide during the time of the dinosaurs and their prosperous existence makes global warming theory false.
Whatever completely made up figure that is arrived at should be cut in half, because as we all know lady dinosaurs didn’t fart.
I think the “Ancient Astronaut Theorists” are more believable when they state that aliens hunted the dinosaurs to extinction.
For those who want an excellent laugh, tune into Ancient Astronauts on H2, a whole bunch of alien wackos including the granddaddy of them all Erick VanDanikan. It’s especially hilarious when [they] frame a question and the half-crazed interviewee posits that the only possible answer is “aliens”, duh!”
– I have this wacky theory that the Mega-tonnes of CO2 that the dinosaurs got from plants, probably went back into new plants. And meanwhile the Tera-tonnes released from ocean storage when sun changes or something made the ocean warm would be far likely to make a difference to the CO2 level in the atmosphere.
Holy cows!
In cows the methane finds its way out primarily via burps. Many years ago there was a story in a Dutch newspaper under the headline “Cow burns barn down”. It told about a vet who wanted to show a disbelieving farmer that his cows indeed produced methane when burping. He did this by lighting the gas when it was expelled. Unfortunately there was quite a bit of force behind it and the cow was not optimally positioned so the flamethrower it had become pointed straight into the hay supply for the farm.
– I see PZ Myers said “I read the report it says nothing like that headline” ..
.. His commentors went on to say it’s just another anti-global warming headline Fox news made up
… funny that’s not the way the BBC hyped iot up & spun it… Their meme seemed to be “see the dinosaurs ruined their earth with CO2 & nopw we are doing the same”
..Stew & No2BS
–
Interesting closing comment to the article. I thought the “reptilian metabolism” hypothesis was disproven back in the 1970s. While that does not necessarily mean that dinosaurs enjoyed the full-up mammalian metabolism, I’m skeptical of their use of the reptilian end of the spectrum.
I wonder…. Could this all be a precursor to; ‘Too many people exhaling too much CO2?”
http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2012/05/what-really-killed-dinosaurs.html
Yes, but it was natural variability.
“Stars and Stripes” Mideast Edition picked up the story today via the AP and popped it — predictably — on the weather page. The final paragraph has this corker: “NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt quickly ran some calculations based on Wilkinson’s figures. Dinosaur methane would have increased temperatures about half a degree, which is a fraction of what has been caused by the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil in the 20th century, he said.” My emphasis.
Whenever his name comes up on WUWT, I’ll have this awful visual of Gavin Schmidt running calculations on Cretaceous cropdusting…
Here is a funny article about this in the Toronto Sun
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/05/09/when-inconvenient-wind-blows-strobel
Well, that squares perfectly with a hypothesis advanced before the meteor thing that the rise of angiosperms gave dinosaurs indigestion.