Monday, September 12, 2011

Fossil Flatulence

I know I have been intolerant and ranted here about creationism and the people who believe in that theory, but recently I have come around to thinking that they may have a point. I admit that I might have been hasty in my criticism and also too quick to make fun of them and their ideas. I should be more thoughtful and weigh the evidence carefully before rushing to judgement.
One of the ideas that creationists bandy about in tandem with the "young Earth theory" is that global warming is not due to human activity. Since they believe that dinosaurs and humans occupied our planet at the same time, clearly they might be right.
One of the most potent greenhouse gases is methane, a gas found in flatulence. Humans (with the exception of a few people I know) do not generally produce all that much of this gas. The occasional hiss and squeak in faculty meetings, for example, could not possibly create more than a few cubic centimeters of global warming gases even if the meeting goes on for hours and Prof. K. is in attendance. A jumbo-jet full of gassy seat cushions would not equal the output of even one cow.
It is a well-known fact that flatulence and burps from cows contribute to global warming, but in a world that is only about 6000 years old, this can only be a minor factor. On the other hand, dinosaurs must have been around with humans AND cows for a long time in the early years of our planet, even surviving the flood of Noah's ark fame. A large cow, weighing in at about one ton, is estimated to produce about 1000 liters of heat-trapping methane and other gases per day!
Dinosaurs, on the other hand, could be as large as 50 or even 100 tons!
Tyrannosaurus Rex, for example, weighed in at about 7 tons. It's diet consisted largely of meat which it consumed in large gulps without proper chewing. Not chewing your food thoroughly can result in flatulence and other bowel problems such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome. For T-Rex this ill-mannered way of eating necessarily put a lot of the food-processing responsibility on its digestive tract, resulting in copious amounts of greenhouse gases being vented into the atmosphere. The IBS must also have put it in a cranky mood. The appearance of a cranky and gassy T-Rex must have been a real scare for the people of the time!
Consider also a large plant eating dinosaur such as a sauropod which could weigh as much as 100 large cows and probably produce 100 times as much gas! Imagine, one animal spewing out 100,000 liters of gas a day! It would be eligible for membership in OPEC. The sauropods are thought to have traveled in vast herds, much like cattle today, eating enormous amounts of vegetation (probably becoming real pests for people and their farms) and farting up a storm. Clearly their flatulence would have been a much more potent influence on global warming, not to mention the dangers of having them around open campfires where humans were trying to cook their food. A passing herd and its accompanying cloud of gas could result in a phenomenon not unlike a fuel-air explosive. I am surprised we have not found large scorched areas in the sedimentary record, but maybe they remain to be discovered by scientific investigators from the creation science organizations.
As ancient records show, the dinosaurs disappeared from the planet before recorded history. There are pictures of crocodiles in Egyptian art, for example; they were even considered gods, but none of T-Rex. So we know that the dinosaurs were gone before humans learned to write and draw. There are no cave drawings of the dinosaurs either. We can be relieved, therefore, to know that the global warming that was accelerated by their various gases will also drop off in the years ahead. Unless, of course, too many humans like Prof. K. come to inhabit our small, blue world.

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