Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Scientists researching the underlying reason for the low methane content of Kangaroo farts, with a view to reducing cow flatulence, have been disappointed to discover there is nothing special about Kangaroo gut bacteria.
According to The Guardian;
For some time, researchers intent on breeding less windy flocks and herds hypothesised kangaroos might have a unique mix of micro-organisms in their stomachs that produce less of the gas.
The hope was by transplanting these micro-organisms, cattle and sheep might produce less methane.
But new findings suggest otherwise, and should help refocus sheep and cattle research on alternatives that might yield results.
The experiment saw red and western grey kangaroos kept in comfy, sealed chambers, allowing researchers to analyse the mix of gases going in and coming out.
“We think that the methane is low because of the way food moves through the kangaroo stomach, and not because of a unique gut fauna,” study author Dr Adam Munn said.
You might think the next step in the battle to defeat the bovine methane menace, is a transgenic KangarMoo, a cow with the gut processes of a Kangaroo. The Guardian article sadly shies away from this fascinating possibility, and kindof peters out with some vague speculation about researching possible land use changes.
Just add a burn-off on the tail of the critter
But doesn’t burning methane releases carbon dioxide and water vapor?
Yes, but methane is a lot stronger a GHG than CO2, which is weak
Alright then add a stack and CO2 scrubber – that project should keep them occupied for at least 7 years
“but methane is a lot stronger a GHG than CO2”
Would burning just create rural heat islands?
I’ve read that an elephant releases 2000 litres of methane gas per day, it would be much easier to add a burn-off. Maybe use the “dung cam” to monitor results?
Alright add a boiler and turbine to recover the energy
arthur4563 prove that CH4 is a stronger greenhouse gas. It actually is not if one understands chemistry, heat transfer and looks at actual data. see https://cementafriend.wordpress.com/2011/10/ The IPCC have no proof they just accepted this lie from individuals, in “green” groups, who have no qualifications but are good at spreading false information.
But if the gas composition ain’t right, surely the air blast will assist the turbines.
Who do I contact to obtain a grant to study this phenomenon?
Contact the EPA for a grant. Be sure to state right up front that the study will allow you to save the world from Climate Change – a shoo-in (or is that a moo-in) for the money.
Oh my gosh, there goes another slug of methane!
Do you think I should burn off my farts as they occur?
What about the Queen and her family? Maybe they should set example(s).
I bet they are the most royal farts of all!
(Caviar probably)
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
I don’t think cross breeding cows and kangaroos is a viable option as there will be a lot of challenges to overcome. Not the least of which would be trying to ride a cowgaroo bull at a rodeo. Or being a spectator for that matter.
A cowgaroo leaping and bouncing through you vege patch will do untold damage to your “greens”
http://lowres.jantoo.com/farming-farm_animal-ozone_layer-farm_animal-experiment-cow-01235829_low.jpg
I’m all for doing maximum damage to greens.
Just feed them with some fruits and you have ready made mikshake after the cowgaroo have jumped around for a while. 🙂
Time to get Monsanto GM group working on this. Added benefit, the alliance would be a 10:10 video reenactment for the Greens.
I disagree. What about the success in developing the jackalope? Similar technology could be used.
http://www.museumoftheweird.com/news/2014/06/06/the-jackalope-actually-based-on-science-and-its-kinda-gross/
I never saw a jackalope grow once it was created though…something about the taxidermy process stops all that, but then again I never saw one pass any methane either.
🙂 Extra points for the (intentional? inadvertent?) Kipling reference in the headline (“The Great Gray Green Greasy Limpopo River…”)
Inadvertent – I must read more Kipling… 🙂
Honestly? This is where the grant money is going? To teach cows to fart like a ‘roo?? Don’t try to teach a cow to fart like a kangaroo. It is a waste of time and money and it annoys the cow.
There are too many people in the world today getting paid for non-jobs with no productive value.
+10,000
But, but, but…the processing of billions of dollars of grants has a value. Doesn’t it? Think of all the unemployed bureaucrats and paper pushers that would be out of work if researchers had to actually produce something of value, even a small percentage of the time.
Welcome to the Nu economy of dismantling jobs that produce wealth and replacing them with “service” jobs, what could go wrong?
The obvious answer is to tax cow emissions, i.e. a flatulence tax, or a flat tax for short. Republicans have pushed for it for years.
That’s it… I’m officially declaring my candidacy. The cornerstone of my campaign platform will be my FLATUS Tax Plan.
Yet another disappointment is that no correlation can be detected between the rate of methane emissions from enteric fermentation and net changes in atmospheric methane.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2674147
Do kangaroo’s taste as good as cows?
They taste like giant mice.
Because they are.
Then do mice take as good as cows?
Giant mice? You must be joking.
Mice are placental mammals, where kangaroos are marsupials.
My cat prefers them
Mice or kangaroos?
They taste like chicken.
They probably taste like humans, if we use the PETA “a cow is a dog is a boy” mantra.
“Do kangaroo’s taste as good as cows?”
Use of apostrophe s to form plural is required only with lower-case letters, so watch your p’s and q’s.
Is a kangaroo’s taste as good as a cow’s? Use the apostrophe only to indicate possession. The horse’s gas will eventually pass.
—Correction–
I said:
“Use the apostrophe only to indicate possession.”
I should have said:
Use apostrophe s only to indicate possession.
The kangaroo’s pocket…
Form plural of any noun simply by adding s. That’s it.
The apostrophe is also used to indicate contraction, where it stands in for omitted letters.
He’d been spending too much time watching TV.
I think the apostrophe-s combination can also properly be used in the plural form of an acronym: I have three CD’s.
kangaroos don’t posses their taste?
Michael 2
November 5, 2015 at 11:30 am
“I think the apostrophe-s combination can also properly be used in the plural form of an acronym: I have three CD’s.”
There’s no need for the apostrophe to indicate plural:
My CDs have all been ripped. The CD’s contents included songs from the ’50s.
The only reason the apostrophe is used with lower case letters is to avoid ambiguity: p’s and q’s vs. ps and qs. There is no ambiguity with CDs, or DVDs,
Simplicity rules.
“Form plural of any noun simply by adding s. That’s it”.
Rather, that’s almost it. ‘Forgot about these guys:
Nouns ending in ss form plural by adding es:
mess messes, guess guesses, boss bosses, toss tosses, miss misses, hiss hisses, and so on.
Heh. Well, I woke up in the middle of the night realizing I’d overlooked a few more nouns that add es to form plural: bush bushes, wretch wretches, bitch bitches…you get the idea. In these cases, the word’s pronunciation will be your guide.
So let me try again: English nouns form plural by adding s or sometimes es, but almost never by adding apostrophe s.
Only in a very few special cases is apostrophe s required. Some writers may add the incorrect apostrophe in forming plural because they see others doing it.
Monkey see, monkey do.
☺
Roo meat is very lean, a bit of a cows liver hint of taste to it. Very good marinaded with a garlic, mushroom or pepper sauce. I have still to try emu and crock.
The Judge’s forehead formed a frown.
“You stand before me, William Brown,
Charged with violations backed
By the Threatened Species Act,
To wit that you on April 2,
Did kill and eat a kangaroo.”
I did, my Lord, my plea is guilty.”
“I have in mind a heavy sentence
Unless you show me great repentance.
Something short of execution –
It’s too late now for restitution.
What say you to mitigate
The value of the roo you ate?”
My Lord, I beg to you for mercy.”
“The farm I had had copped the drought.
The roos ate all the pasture out.
I had no work, the kids no food,
I did what any father would
To save the life of kith and kin –
We ate the roo and tanned the skin.”
(His left eye shed a gentle tear.)
The Judge’s eyed were moist as well.
The level of his fury fell.
“In view of evidence presented,
Because you have so much repented,
I see no need to go beyond
A 3-month good behaviour bond.”
“All stand please”, the Usher said.
As William Brown walked out of court
His Honour said in afterthought,
“Before you go, and now you’re free,
Would you please describe for me
And learned counsel here too,
What is the taste of kangaroo?”
William Brown thought long and deep.
“Your Honour, it is hard to say –
Let me put it in this way.
On one hand it is flavoured rather
Like a freshly-grilled koala.
But then again, it has a touch
Of marinated platypus.”
“With leave, my Lord, my cab is waiting!”
Geoff.
Actually they (kangaroos) taste very nice, gamey and very, very lean. It needs a kind of strong flavouring to go with the flavour though.
YES! cooked properly I have fooled people who say they wouldnt eat Roo.
excellent casseroles and extremely tender as a fillet steak..so tender you need to be as careful in searing it as with fillet, so it doesnt stick to the pan and rip.
best is shot yourself as you CAN check for tapeworm
however in handling many tons of the secondgrade meat as petfood I only ever saw one suspect tapeworm segment
our QA is very very good.
sth aussie company called DEWS I believe they export cryovac packs globally.
“Do kangaroo’s taste as good as cows?”
I had a roo burger once. Quite nice.
I should have added, there are many specialty butchers that will provide it, along with numerous other meats, in Australia. Don’t worry that the kangaroo is on the coat of arms. In Australia they are a feral pest, whose numbers need to be kept down.
It hardly matters, since according to the UN high command, we will all be switching our steak and burgers for roaches and moths.
Cut Methane 40-45%? Climate hysteria gone crazy. A Limerick
cowbackpacksA Message that EPA sent.
Cut Methane by 40%.
No more rice, no more beef,
no more milk, no more cheese.
And yet, it will not make a dent.
What is the EPA belching out now? http://lenbilen.com/2015/08/18/3766/
There is no cure for stupid!…pg
Reblogged this on Dave Alexander & Company — Ukuleledave and David Edgren and commented:
“Honey? Remember how I said I was a part of a really important scientific study? Yeah. Well, never mind.”
Why don’t we just start eating Roo’s instead of cows ????
Mmmmmmm…Roo steak !! LOL…
What is funny about roo steak? You just have to cook it different because it has almost no fat in it.
Thar’s your problem, right thar.
Marcus…it may have no fat…but it is a good eat, try it but do not cook it like a steak. You then may as well eat a used tyre. Basically cook it “blue” or rather just show it the flame.
Note that it all the future-casted fictions of a global hegemony (1984, Soylent Green, etc) meat is something only the very rich, politically-connected elites have.
George Orwell very correctly saw the Left as it really is.
Well for one they picked the wrong end (maybe they are just a wee bit smarter in New Zealand):
“According to researchers at New Zealand’s largest Crown Research Institute, AGResearch, up to 95 percent of the emissions comes from the cow’s mouth rather than its behind.”
But then here is the rel difference between the animals (and this on ehow yet):
“Although it consumes a diet similar to the cow’s and shares digestive similarities, such as two stomach chambers and cud-chewing, the kangaroo differs from the cow in that it produces almost no methane during digestion. As the kangaroo’s food ferments in its stomach, hydrogen is produced as a byproduct. Bacteria turn this hydrogen, not into methane, but into acetate, which the kangaroo then uses as energy. Scientists have considered introducing these bacteria to cow digestive systems in order to reduce emissions of methane”
http://www.ehow.com/info_8638441_digestive-system-kangaroo.html
They didn’t measure which end the emissions came from. They put the roo in a room and measured the changes in the air content in the room.
Was just going by the title of the article and in the Guardian link. Even by the “comfy room” description doesn’t say what or where they measured. My bad for not reading the original (apparently now always required)….
BFL
November 5, 2015 at 7:03 am
“”According to researchers at New Zealand’s largest Crown Research Institute, AGResearch, up to 95 percent of the emissions comes from the cow’s mouth rather than its behind.””
You didn’t give a source, but I did find this:
Let’s start with how and why cows produce so much methane gas. Cows, sheep, goats, giraffes, and deer belong to a class of mammals called ruminants. Most ruminants have four stomachs, two-toed feet, and store their food in the first chamber of the stomach, called the rumen, before regurgitating it. This regurgitated food is called “cud” and the animals chew it again to help further break it down to make it easier to digest. Inside of the rumen, over four hundred different kinds of microbes exist that also play a critical role in the digestion process. Several of these microbes create methane gas as a byproduct. Due to the sheer number of cows on the planet, along with the large size per cow, our tasty friends produce more methane gas than all other ruminants combined.
[…]
In actuality it’s not as much the farting that’s the problem, cows’ burping and manure contribute more methane gas than flatulence. According to researchers at New Zealand’s largest Crown Research Institute, AGResearch, up to 95 percent of the emissions comes from the cow’s mouth rather than its behind. It’s estimated, through whichever orifice, that each individual cow lets out between thirty and fifty gallons of methane per day. With an estimated 1.3 to 1.5 billion cattle in the world today, this adds up fast.
http://gizmodo.com/do-cow-farts-actually-contribute-to-global-warming-1562144730
(my bold)
I don’t see anything on the methodology of this study wrt how the researchers were able to distinguish between gases vented from the front of the cow as opposed to those vented from the rear, but I suppose it was by process of elimination.
Given this info, they now have a reason to get into phase II of their study. ‘Roo burps need to be studied as well.
“We think that the methane is low because of the way food moves through the kangaroo stomach, and not because of a unique gut fauna,”
Well wouldn’t pursuing a different stomach(s) enzyme(s) be more fruitful than “the way the food moves”…..
You’re talking about scientifically illiterate morons, here.
How the food moves is probably an important factor in their line of thinking.
The Grauniad gets it wrong … AGAIN. Microbiologists term mixed populations of bacteria as Flora – not Fauna, which to be correct would be a population of multicellular eukariote life forms. Bacteria are prokaryotes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ-SMCmWB1s.
I am embarrassed to be a human.
I completely understand and sympathize with your comment, Gordon. On some days, WUWT gives good information and a laugh or two; but sometimes, I feel like just standing against a wall and slowly hitting my head against it after reading some of the stuff here from the climate alarmists. LOL!
Yea, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.
Why not just milk kangaroos?
You ever get kicked by a cow while trying to milk her ??? Now, just imagine a kangaroo kick !!
Exactly right, I got a chuckle imagining some “green” idiot getting a government grant to try it!
Apart from the fact they’re marsupials and don’t produce milk that way?
The Welsh experiments on cows led to a spin-off company, Mootral, which drew on a small amount of government grants supposedly aimed at changing the climate. Mootral went into liquidation after the grants dried up with no marketable product available after the methane scare collapsed in hysterical laughter.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/wales/2009/green_wales/8395202.stm
https://companycheck.co.uk/company/06616065/MOOTRAL-LIMITED/companies-house-docs
EAT MOR CHIKIN!
We are told that before the Europeans arrived, there were eleventy billion bison on the plains of North America. Now, they have been mostly replaced by a similar number of cattle.
Yet somehow bison farts had nothing to do with Earth’s methane problem.
Sorry, for a minute there I was looking for logic. Never mind.
Did no one tell you that Bison farts were responsible for the melting of the Laurentide ice sheet? I have it here, somewhere in my notes under climate history rewrites by the warmists.
We don’t really know, for a fact, that bison burps/farts were (and are) hazardous; we haven’t compared them with kangaroos’ specific gaseous ejections yet, and until we do we are just speculating.
Perhaps Big Green can spend a few dollars of its tens of billions to look into that speculation?
Or would this fall under the “lets not look at something that might challenge the paradigm (even though that’s our job)”.
BTW, found this after my response. Hey, if you can’t trust Penn State…:
Overall, methane emissions from bison, elk, and deer in the pre-settlement period in the contiguous United States were about 70% (medium bison population size) of the current emissions from farmed ruminants in the U.S.;
http://extension.psu.edu/animals/dairy/news/2011/wild-ruminants-burp-methane-too
I’m not saying its not insignificant. I’m saying that I’d be suspicious of any study that doesn’t take into account that comparison.
Sorry, just the bean counter in me, and having to explain the difference between “gross” and “net” to over-educated bosses.
Meanwhile back in the real world, the climate doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about methane. But I suppose these “researchers” aka “scientists” gotta eat.
Now wait a minute. There’s lots of rats out there, and probably a very similar number of rats’ patooties. Surely all patooties are suspect until proven innocent.
Bruce Cobb, somewhere your grant awaits.
Kangaroo Farts: A Great Green Disappointment
Kangaroo Farts??? Science hits a new low.
Smell wise, maybe.
But I see your kangaroo farts and raise you…bee tongues:
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/09/24/climate-change-shrinking-bees-tongues-scientists-say.html