The Dinosaurs... uh... Ate Themselves to Death

And you thought American obesity was bad.

According to a Fortune article on CNNMoney.com, meat-producing animals accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the vehicles we love to drive around, 18% to 13%.

Now, if you have seen any meat lately, you looked at it as pretty inert.  It just sits there until you put it on the grill or something equally hot.  It's not doing anything, like jogging and breathing out CO2 (which is why some tree-huggers refuse to jog at all and many hold their breath while sleeping; anything to delay the Armageddon of Global Warming).  So, can beef consumption actually be good?  Global Warming-wise, that is.  (Your arteries are on their own.)

And what do dinosaurs have to do with any of this?

Almost all really tasty meat comes from animals that are called ruminants.  These are not so much animals who sit around pondering the onset of Global Warming as animals who keep chewing their food while the others ponder. Why that matters is not clear, but what happens to part of the green stuff they over-chew is well known to scientists and people who used to smoke around cows:  Methane production.

Methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2 and, of course, can blow up in your face, and apparently in more ways than one.  Cows are the best example, because chew food for hours and emit methane--as well as CO2 when they breathe--from both ends.  While this efficient for the cow, it is lousy for the environment.

Don't feel bad about eating beef, though, because the cow is pretty much done with its methane emissions by the time you get your NY Strip or pot roast on your fork.

Which brings us to the dinosaurs.  Not the steak part, but the ruminating.  Most dinosaurs were vegetarians and some probably ruminated for days, too.  Tyrannosaurs are exempt from this discussion because they were the ones eating dinosaur steaks.  But can you imagine the methane coming from a plant-eater like a Titanosaur, which was the size of your house.  If you have a three story house, two family rooms and a pool.

Not to mention the smell (which we delicately avoided until right now).  They must have cranked out methane like crazy, eventually executing themselves, and the poor blameless Tyrannosaurs, with their own Mega-Global Warming.

Who needs a comet punching out Mexico when you've got a malodorous sky full of methane?  It would be Global Warming on steroids with no Al Gore to shout from what he thought was a rooftop.  Like he could be heard over all the munching and more munching.  Thank God dinosaurs didn't smoke.

Is there a lesson here for humans?  It can't be that driving is bad, since a cow with gas is worse than a Camry with gas, if less likely to accelerate.  Eating beef is okay, since it's methane days are over and being a vegetarian may not be wise for humans any more than cows.  You don't have to worry about being a dinosaur at all, except on a national or papal basis.

Perhaps, in the end--and pardon the expression--it would be best to avoid ruminating about Global Warming. Or, at least, making a big stink about it.