Reuters: Wooly Mammoth Dung Speeds Global Warming

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.

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.