Dinosaurs’ Gaseous Emissions Warmed Earth?
Giant sauropods produced huge amounts of greenhouse gases, study suggests.Charles Choi
for National Geographic News
Published May 7, 2012Dinosaurs may have helped warm ancient Earth via their own natural gaseous emissions, a new study says.
Living about 150 million years ago, giant plant-eating dinosaurs called sauropods were ruminant, meaning they had a digestive process that gave off large amounts of methane—a potent greenhouse gas even more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
Utter flaming stupidity. Methane quickly oxidizes to CO2 and H2O in the atmosphere. The amount of greenhouse gas emitted is identical whether a leaf falls to the ground and rots, or if it is digested in an animal’s stomach. The CO2 then gets absorbed back into growing vegetation.
These morons should probably learn how to balance an equation.
Additionally, the absorption bands of methane completely overlap with H2O. Methane (at 0.000002 mole fraction) is only a significant greenhouse gas in the absence of water vapor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaNr0Qq5txM&feature=relmfu
Methane is never a significant GHG:
http://globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-1103-post-10140.html#pid10140
sauropods….the worlds first ethanol powered Prius
HA HA!
Maybe this question has been answered elsewhere, but how do these researchers know how much dinosaurs farted?
LOL they don’t Greg…………
You don’t have to know when you’re a warmist; newspapers will fall all over themselves printing anything you’ve said.
On the other hand, be a skeptic and they will rip you to shreds no matter how much evidence you have. Pravda all over again; but with a hundred names.
It doesn’t make any difference. Ultimately the carbon goes into the atmosphere as CO2 and gets photosynthesized back into plant matter.
Ok I went back and read the article – that thing belongs in the Onion.
“To estimate how much methane sauropods emitted, the scientists guessed that there were roughly ten sauropods per square kilometer (0.4 square kilometer) of vegetated land.
The team’s analyses of modern ruminants suggest a sauropod might give off about 4.2 pounds (1.9 kilograms) of methane daily. A U.S. cow, by comparison…”
So the scientists guessed at the number of sauropods – then they compared them to modern ruminants (so dinosaurs are just like cows…of course they are /sarc). From these suppositions, really just groundless guesses based on fertile imagination, some quantity of methane is now guessed at; and of course it heats/cools/kills/destroys by some other imaginary process within the carbon cycle…
Onion. This belongs in the Onion.