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Norway: Are flatulent cows a real climate issue?

As world leaders gather in Paris for a world climate conference, Norway struggles with a possibly related issue—or at least one the Prime Minister believes is related. 

 

Prime Minister Erna Solberg (photo above) has managed to offend her country's agricultural sector by claiming that one of Norway's best strategies for improving the climate would be to control farting by cows. “It is such that Norwegian cows fart too much, so to speak. Transport and agriculture are the largest areas outside of the quota-obliged sectors. We must make cuts that make a difference here at home," she told a VG interviewer.

 

The agricultural industry was quick to retort, and the remarks have been the subject of a good deal of joking and derision, including the (sorry, Norwegian-only) video available at the link below.

 

Ann Furuberg, head of the national farmers' association, told VG that “For tens of thousands, perhaps millions of years, we have had ruminants on Earth. If their emissions are so dangerous, surely it would have led to catastrophe already...This is not about innocent animals farting, it is about us burning oil for production and transport. Oil is the true climate challenge."

 

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The best part of every trip is realizing that it has upset your expectations

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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.

Twitter: @DrFumblefinger

"We do not take a trip, a trip takes us".  John Steinbeck, from Travels with Charlie

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.

 

Chinesesmog

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.

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Last edited by GarryRF
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.”

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.

Twitter: @DrFumblefinger

"We do not take a trip, a trip takes us".  John Steinbeck, from Travels with Charlie

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