AP FACT CHECK: Unraveling the mystery of whether cows fart By CALVIN WOODWARD and SETH BORENSTEIN an hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Let’s clear the air about cow farts.
In the climate change debate, some policymakers seem to be bovine flatulence deniers.
This became apparent in the fuss over the Green New Deal put forward by some liberal Democrats. More precisely, the fuss over an information sheet issued by the plan’s advocates.
With tongue in cheek or foot in mouth, depending on whom you ask, the statement’s authors said that despite the plan’s proposals for strong limits on emissions over a decade, “we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.”
Airplanes don’t fart. But cows?
Exasperated by merciless mocking from Republicans on this matter, Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan lectured the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, on the floor of the chamber last month.
“The Republican majority leader said that we want to end air travel and cow farts,” Stabenow said. “By the way, just for the record, cows don’t fart. They belch.”
The Associated Press surveyed global experts on global warming on this question, as well as an author who wrote the definitive science book on gassy animals, which comes with funny pictures.
___
THE FACTS: Cows fart. That contributes to global warming. But cow burps are worse for the climate.
“Cows are pretty disgusting eaters, with methane coming from both ends,” said Christopher Field at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “But most of it comes from burping.”
Field cited the “classic quote from the technical literature” on the topic: “Of the CH4 (methane) produced by enteric fermentation in the forestomach 95% was excreted by eructation (burp), and from CH4 produced in the hindgut 89% was found to be excreted through the breath.’”
In a nutshell, belches are bad news.
At Tuscia University in Viterbo, Italy, environmental scholar Giampiero Grossi said methane emitted by ruminant livestock accounts for about 5.5% of the greenhouse gasses that come from human activity. More than 70% of livestock emissions are from cattle, he said.
“Ruminants are a significant source of methane,” which traps more heat than carbon dioxide but doesn’t last as long in the air, said Kristie Ebi, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington in Seattle. “The belches have to do with digesting their food” in the stomach compartments, not intestines, and that fermentation produces methane.
Warming from the burning of fossil fuels is roughly 10 times to 17 times greater than warming caused by livestock burping and farting, Field said.
GASEOUS POLITICS
................................................
WHAT FARTS, WHAT DOESN’T?
“Does It Fart?” a book by Dani Rabaiotti of the Zoological Society of London and Virginia Tech conservationist Nick Caruso, answers the question it poses about dozens of species.
Millipedes fart, no doubt discreetly.
Several species of herring communicate with each other that way. If you startle a zebra, says the book, it will fart with each stride as it runs away. Flatulence signals a baboon is ready to mate.
For the Bolson pupfish, found in Mexico, it’s fart or die. They feed on algae that make them buoyant, easy prey near the surface. Farts sink them to safety. Similarly, manatees may let loose when it’s time to dive deeply.
Whale farts are, of course, epic.
Birds and most sea creatures don’t. Clams clam up, though they’ve been known to throw up.
The jury is out on spiders: More research is needed. ...........................................................
And for the record, says this authority on the animal kingdom’s ruder moments, “Yes, cows do fart.”
Has anyone done a study of how often and how much AOC farts?
Would that be brain farts ?
We could come up with a hierarchy of worth for all living creatures, based on their flatus quotient.
here's a flatulence article from 2007. Admittedly, it's a little outdated, but I thought it might interest one of you, maybe two....maybe not...
Flatulence expert defines 'normal' output rate
So you think your husband's a little too adept at playing the colonic calliope? Wish your sleep wasn't interrupted by a fusillade of flatulence?
Well, if you think you've taken up residence in Beantown but he insists his output is normal, you can both at least take heart from the fact that debates like yours are raging all over.
You both should know this as well: Whether it takes the form of stealth bombers or noisy bottom burps, flatulence is a normal byproduct of the human body. Everybody farts, multiple times throughout the day and night.
But the whens and the hows can turn a basic bodily function into an inconvenient, unpleasant or downright embarrassing occurrence. And that leads some people to question what is normal and whether there's any way to turn down the tap, as it were, on the frequency, noise or odour quotients.
The fact of the matter is that while humankind has learned how to split the atom, manipulate genes and travel to the moon, it doesn't know all that much about how to reduce the production of natural gas.
"I know a lot about gas,'' says Dr. Michael Levitt, the American gastroenterologist who has unravelled much of what is known about human flatulence.
"I really can't treat anybody.''
Levitt is a veritable gas guru, a leading expert on the underappreciated field of flatus -- intestinal gas that escapes via the southern route. He admits his unusual expertise has put his three kids (one of whom is economist and "Freakonomics" co-author Steven Levitt) through expensive universities.
Levitt has gone to extraordinary lengths to plumb the mysteries of flatulence. He's captured farts in specially made Mylar pantaloons, measured the cocktail of gases they contain, even conducted a study devised to get to the bottom of what may be the most contentious question in the field: Which gender emits the smelliest farts?
So what have he and others learned about the fine art of flatulating?
It's a pretty common occurrence. Studies in which volunteers tracked their gas passage suggest people fart 10 to 20 times a day, with some hitting the 30, 40, even 50 mark, says Levitt, who is with the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minn.
An Australian study that followed a group of men and women for a couple of months concluded men let rip on average 10 times a day, while women lag with eight emissions.
But producing less gas may create another problem for women -- and the people around them. Levitt's research suggests women's flatulence is more ... aromatic.
The study was the first ever attempt to provide an objective evaluation of the odour of flatus, Levitt explains. Volunteer judges, blinded to the identity of the generating gender, were asked to rank the potency of the end product.
Volunteer producers -- primed by a diet of pinto beans -- farted into aluminum bags via a rectal tube. The contents of the bags were measured for volume and for sulphur concentration. (Sulphur gases give farts their foul odour.) Syringes full of gas were withdrawn from the bags and wafted by the nostrils of the unfortunate judges.
“Sometimes I was just writing a lot for the audience,” Benny says. “I knew well what they wanted to read. Even if I didn’t believe it.” Benny Johnson ["BuzzFeed Benny"]
"It’s a movement comprised of Americans from all races, religions, backgrounds and beliefs, who want and expect our government to serve the people, and serve the people it will." Donald Trump's Victory Speech 11/9/16
INSIDE EVERY LIBERAL IS A TOTALITARIAN SCREAMING TO GET OUT -- Frontpage mag