Reuters: Wooly Mammoth Dung Speeds Global Warming

Reuters: Wooly Mammoth Dung Speeds Global Warming

By Warner Todd Huston (Bio | Archive)
September 17, 2007 - 01:04 ET

Now, you’re gonna read that headline and laugh imagining that I must surely be employing the best hyperbole. Reuters can’t possibly be touting a story that says wooly mammoth dung could be making global warming worse… could they? I am sad to say that they are, indeed, making this claim in a story on the crackpot theories of a Russian “scientist.”

I know, I know. It seems like an entry from “The Onion” news satire website, but it isn’t. Reuters gives us the pooper scoop in “Mammoth dung, prehistoric goo may speed warming,” posted on the 16th.

Sounding like a bad copy of an old Cheech and Chong skit, “scientist” Sergei Zimov grabs some wooly mammoth dung, puts it to his face and proclaims, "It smells like mammoth dung." Reuters gives him the space to revel in his crappy theory that this millions-year-old, melted mammoth dung is speeding globaloney.

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But Zimov, a scientist who for almost 30 years has studied climate change in Russia's Arctic, believes that as this organic matter becomes exposed to the air it will accelerate global warming faster than even some of the most pessimistic forecasts.

"This will lead to a type of global warming which will be impossible to stop," he said.

Falling back on the “cow flatulence” theory of globaloney causes, this Russian theorist imagines that “methane gas” will be released by the melting of the ice and the returning to the air of wooly mammoth dung that was once seemingly forever frozen in the permafrost.

Why all that darn poop didn’t cause global warming THEN but will NOW doesn’t seem to come up in the story, but there ya go… or there the mammoth went… er sumpthin.

Naturally, our so-called scientist is still trying to destroy our economy with the Kyoto Protocols, a failed treaty filled with precepts that even countries that signed onto it cannot meet.

"If you don't stop emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere ... the Kyoto Protocol (an international pact aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions) will seem like childish prattle."

Sadly, Reuters finds other crackpots in the scientific community that might be willing to sign onto this foolishness.

It might be easy to dismiss the 52-year-old, with his beard and shock of wavy hair, as an alarmist crank. But his theory is grabbing attention in the scientific community.

Yet, even Rueters notes that the UN, no slouches for globaloney alarmism, cannot find any widespread melting permafrost.

A United Nations report in June said there was at yet no sign of widespread melting of permafrost that could stoke global warming, but noted the potential threat.

So much gas to spew, so little time.

From cow farts to wooly mammoth poop, the globaloney alarmists seem to be apt to saying anything to scare us into torpedoing our economy while letting worse polluters like China entirely off the hook.

“Smells like mammoth dung,” indeed.

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Wonder how mammoth dung burns

September 17, 2007 - 01:24 ET by Lame Cherry

I recall an expedition which actually found the last mammoths on an island up north which died out about 1400. They weren't that big of critters without food up there, but were more like burro sized creatures.

In knowing that along with calculations a bit of mammoth dung mathematics seems in order with a modern happening. Buffalo in their several million numbers used to dump piles of chips onto the plains which burnt quite well and were preserved as they were dry like wood so they made nice ember fires to cook on.

The problem with Siberia is like the arctic it is wet and been wet for a great number of years. Mammoth numbers never were in the multi millions and as they needed green growth to eat that means when they pooped their poop would naturally decompose unlike the buffalo dung.........which if you notice there are not piles of buffalo dung on the plains yet no more than cattle poop, because there is a neat little golden fly which breaks it down with all the matter during the wet cycles.

The arctic has always been a wet region, so there is no possible way tons of mammoth sewage are floating around in rafts under some ice field just waiting to flatulate a Venus warming trend upon earth.

Having just met a very nice Russian teacher at a university, I will refrain from calling all Russians kooks as she is a very nice person.........but this Zimov must have been smoking the same hashish Al Gore was 30 years ago of the Russian strain as they are both hallucinating as there is not greenhouse gas and there is no mysterious mammoth poop in the arctic.

If there was I would lead an expedition to mine the stuff as put into pellets one could make a fortune selling it to snow bound folks to heat their homes........as Billy Dixon said, "There was nothing more cheery than coming in from buffalo running and seeing the glowing red fires of buffalo chips knowing good company and food were waiting".

Strange how an American like Dixon could always see the good in things and these crazy cranks can always see the doom in things which do not even exist.

*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS

LC, I had a Seminole Indian

September 19, 2007 - 23:38 ET by MikeB

LC, I had a Seminole Indian tell me (with a strait face, no less) that the plains indians didn't have any tobacco, so what was smoked in the peace pipes was ... yep - buffalo poop. I guess when they took a hit and said, "Man, this is some really good sh**!" they knew what they were talking about.

"A communist is someone who reads Marx. An anti-communist is someone who understands Marx." Ronald Reagan

So, thawing mammoth crap is going to accelerate GW.

September 17, 2007 - 02:14 ET by Dave R

LMAO-Me thinks perfesser Zimov needs to start spendig less time above the Arctic Circle, as his brain has clearly frozen.

Next thing you know this nutjob, in an effort to explain why Mars is warming, will probably issue a paper suggesting mammoths once roamed there.

And I'm quite sure that the Reuters people will be there to publish every last word of it, too.

"I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!”- Rick Roberts

Well I always thought this

September 17, 2007 - 04:39 ET by mlong

Well I always thought this Global Warming stuff was alot of crap.

"If the mothers ruled the world there would be no god**** wars in the first place." Sally Fields

Yea Mothers like Susan Smith and Andrea Yates.

"Why all that darn poop

September 17, 2007 - 06:18 ET by chessplayer

"Why all that darn poop didn’t cause global warming THEN"

Probably because it froze solid very quickly.

mammoth poop freeze

September 17, 2007 - 06:53 ET by SportPolitics

" Mammoth numbers never were in the multi millions and as they needed green growth to eat that means when they pooped their poop would naturally decompose unlike the buffalo dung"

Mammoths stem from an ancestral species called M. africanavus, the African mammoth. In the early Pleistocene, about 1.8 million years ago, M. meridionalis took advantage of low sea levels (during an Ice Age) and crossed into North America via a temporary land bridge across the Bering Strait. The southern mammoth then radiated throughout North America. In the Middle Pleistocene, a new North American species evolved, the imperial mammoth, M. imperator (though some question whether M. imperator is a legitimate genus). Then, in the Late Pleistocene, the Columbian mammoth, M. columbi (also known as the Jefferson mammoth, M. jeffersoni), appeared. Its range covered the present United States and as far south as Nicaragua and Honduras.

Back in Eurasia, another species of mammoth, the steppe mammoth (M. trogontherii), lived from 200,000 to 135,000 years ago. And later in the Pleistocene, the woolly mammoth (M. primigenius), which incidentally was the smallest of the mammoths, made its debut.

With the advent of another Ice Age and low sea levels lasting from 35,000 to 18,000 years ago, woolly mammoths were able to enter North America via a new land corridor across the Bering Strait. Woolly mammoths’ southern migration extended as far south as present-day Kansas.

Dwarf forms of mammoth are known from fossils found on islands: M. exilis from California’s Channel Islands stood only about four to six feet at the shoulder."

So basically : If mammoths were similar to elephants in their eating habits, they were very remarkable beasts. Consider the following facts about modern elephants:

Spend 16 to 18 hours a day either feeding or moving toward a source of food or water.
Consume between 130 to 660 pounds (60 to 300 kg) of food each day.
Drink between 16 to 40 gallons (60 to 160 l) of water per day.
Produce between 310 to 400 pounds (140 to 180 kg) of dung per day.

Since most mammoths were larger than modern elephants, these numbers must have been higher for mammoths!

From the preserved dung of Columbian mammoths found in a Utah cave, a mammoth’s diet consisted primarily of grasses, sedges, and rushes. Just 5% included saltbush wood and fruits, cactus fragments, sagebrush wood, water birch, and blue spruce.

They ate "greens" - not seals under snow and ice.

We need to find the dangerous piles of frozen polar bear poopy that has never thawed.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/mammoth/about_mammoths.html

I guess the scientist needs to take a healthier whiff of the mampie.

You have raised an even

September 20, 2007 - 14:36 ET by dscott

You have raised an even more inconvenient question, if Mammoths ate grasses and migrated to the far north like the caribou, does it not stand to reason it was warmer then than now??? If the caribou have survived to this point in time, why didn't the Mammoths? Surely, it would have been far easier for the ancient indians/eskimo to hunt caribou than mammoths.

dscott's postulate: The degree to which someone exaggerates or deceives is inversely proportional to the merit of the advocated position.

I saw a great documentary

September 17, 2007 - 06:26 ET by Nortonalec

on the Discovery Channel last night called "How the Earth was Made" which has the theory that we are in-between ice ages, and that humans might raise the temp of the earth a little, but it will not be able to stop the next ice age.

Nortonalec

Dinasour Flatulence

September 17, 2007 - 07:01 ET by ricklail

I read a little blurp in Uncle John's Bathrooom Reader about a study published in 1991 on dinasour farts. Seems the authors, Simon Brassell, Karen Chin and Robert Harman, concluded that because dinasour farts caused the temperature to rise it led to the ablity of man to survive.

Has anyone seen or heard of this study?

A bonafided and certified member of the beer guzzling, NASCAR watching middle class.