Norway: Are flatulent cows a real climate issue?

The Norwegian PM is clearly a fanatic that has not only lost touch with common sense, but is questionably grounded to reality.

 

If the future of the world hangs in the balanced based on the number of times cows fart, then we might as well resign ourselves to Armagadeon.

 

I think the Prime Minister is more full of hot air than the Norwegian cows are.

In the UK the number of winter related deaths (hypothermia - flu - respiratory) has fell by nearly 6,000 people a year.

That's for an average 5'f (2'c)  increase in the winter months.

And were using less fossil fuel to heat our homes !

In 1814 wine producers in Northern England abandoned growing grapes because the climate was getting colder.

I'll be happy when we get back to growing grapes here again.

 

In January 2014 China had a quarter of all its territory under a cloud of smog.

That's 600 million people affected. And no cows to take the blame.

Sadly, common sense and science knowledge don’t appear to be requirements for achieving high office. Solberg’s nonsense brings to mind a U.S. president who considered ketchup a school-lunch vegetable and told a campaign audience that "Trees cause more <http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pollution> pollution than <http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Automobile> automobiles do." On the other hand, Solberg’s not the inventor of the cow fart theory…search the internet and you’ll find that it’s a widely-held belief in quite a few countries. And you know “it must be true, because it’s on Google.”

I've heard that cows have as many as 4 stomachs.

So I suppose that's to be expected after eating all your greens !

Yes, GarryRF, they do have a compartmentalized stomach designed to allow them to graze quickly if they need to, then carefully chew and digest their cud when they've time to ruminate.

 

One might argue that a cow is a near perfect biological machine.  We know they are useful to humans because of the milk, cheese, butter and meat they provide, but that's not the point.  They are vegetarians and drop back on the pastures they graze their waste nitrogen, a wonderful fertilizer.  And they exhale lots of carbon dioxide.  The grass they eat loves carbon dioxide as it's a major plant food and needed for photosynthesis.  That photosynthesis yields more grass and the cycle happily continues....until a politician sees a way to tax the process.