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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Ahah! It's all you meat eaters and milk drinkers who are causing  
global warming!


Climate Connections
In a Cow's Stomach, Novel Approach to Warming

Listen to this story... by Christopher Joyce

Nearly one-third of gases produced in New Zealand come from animals,  
like this sheep.
Momatiuk - Eastcott/Corbis

About one-third of the greenhouse gases produced in New Zealand come  
from animals such as sheep and cows.

Morning Edition, June 19, 2007 · Most of the industrialized nations  
of the world have agreed to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases  
coming from power plants and factories.

But in New Zealand, one-third of these warming gases come from  
animals, in the form of methane. So researchers are trying something  
unique to lower New Zealand's greenhouse-gas hoofprint: They want to  
change what goes on inside the stomachs of millions of sheep and cows.

Just outside the town of Palmerston North is the Taraua Wind Farm,  
where hundreds of turbines sit on a ridge overlooking the city. The  
wind farm is a solution to some of New Zealand's problems with  
greenhouse gases. But the real problem is right underneath the  
turbines: the sheep and cows that produce methane.

Harry Clark, an animal scientist for AgResearch, is working on a  
project that tries to reduce methane emissions from ruminant animals.  
Clark spends much of his time in a shed among a few dozen cows and  
sheep at Massey University.

These animals don't know it, but they have a gas problem.

Methane warms the planet 20 times more than carbon dioxide. A  
ruminant animal creates methane when it digests food in its rumen — a  
part of its digestive system that works like a fermentation tank.

The rumen is overrun with about 400 kinds of microbes, which break  
down whatever the animal eats. One of these microbes specializes in  
making methane.

"And that methane, then, is either burped out or it gets absorbed  
into the bloodstream, and then breathed out through the lungs," Clark  
explains.

Ninety-five percent of the methane comes out of the animal's mouth,  
going up into the atmosphere, and warming the climate.

Scientists suggest that putting a stop to the gas problem could be as  
simple as getting rid of the microbes. Harry Clark's colleague, Ron  
Reimus, says they can't see any reason to keep those methane microbes.

"We feel that because they're not absolutely required for survival,  
that you could get rid of them," Reimus says.

One strategy used is to genetically engineer the microbes so they  
won't make methane. Another is to give the sheep and cows some type  
of feed that the bugs won't like.

The rest of the story is at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11170158