[mandaladon]

We're going bankrupt and liberals are worried about farting cows?

[ArmstedFragg]

Do they make Beano in cow size?

[Russ]

I worry more about farting liberals. How much methane do they produce in a day??

[mandaladon]

Since nobody is going to re-engineer the ruminant digestive tract anytime soon, the solutions are limited: stop eating meat or at least eat other kinds. (A 2010 study from the Science and Environment section of the Library of the U.K.'s House of Commons reported that a pair of Australian biologists have recommended eating marsupials instead of livestock, since kangaroos and their kin produce almost no methane when they digest.) But there's one more answer too: reformulate the diet of the animals themselves. If you change what goes in, you should be able to change what comes out....libs will soon propose a tax on cow fart emissions or something similarly insane.

[Peter from Rutland]

I really want to swear loudly and profusely right now.

STOP FEEDING THEM CORN! COWS WERE NOT MEANT TO EAT CORN!

Cows eat grass whether its alive or dead. If they do that they will not fart.

THIS IS SO SIMPLE EVEN A TWO YEAR OLD CAN FIGURE IT OUT!

Thank you, I feel better now.

[Jack Hammer]

If the worst thing in the world these morons had to worry about were farting cows, they could consider themselves very, very lucky.

[GeronL]

These people are truly insane.

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[The Great RJ]

Imagine the size of dinosaur farts...now we have the answer why they died out. The dinosaurs were victims of their own flatulence which caused fatal climate change.

w To save the planet from a similar fate, we need a massive new government program to subsidize Beano for livestock herds and fund it with a flatulence tax on beans, sauerkraut, cauliflower, cabbage and other gas producing foods.

[therightliveswithus]

Where is this going to end?

[Brad from Tennessee]

Let’s not put all the blame on the Animal Kingdom. The human digestive process puts a variety of gases into the environment.

http://www.heptune.com/farts.html

[Nepeta]

This is irrational.

I wonder if the author wears leather shoes?

Or considered that the silage making process generates gasses?

Or reflected upon the population of wild herbivores on earth?

[Marty62]

In 2010, the U.N. proposed a global levy on livestock’s methane emissions, a measure that was promptly — and unavoidably — dubbed a fart tax in the press. A similar surcharge was proposed in the U.K. three years earlier, and farmers howled — though it’s arguable that this is one case in which the tax collector would dread an audit even more than the taxpayer.

Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/03/30/silence-the-cows-and-save-the-planet/#ixzz1IfiuNQSg

All insanity starts at the U.N.

All those third world cattle raisers are in for a shock.
But the obvious answer is that the British no longer want to be taken serious on ANY issue.

[MIchaelTArchangel]

Hey, I’m doing my part. I am eating them as fast as I can.

[SteveH]

Must ... refrain ... from ... making ... Gloria ... Steinem ... joke ...

... NOW ...

:-)

[AnotherUnixGeek]

According to one Danish study, the average cow produces enough methane per year to do the same greenhouse damage as four tons of CO2. The average car, by contrast, produces just 2.7 tons. Multiply that by the planet's 1.5 billion cattle and buffalo and 1.8 billion smaller ruminants and you have the methane equivalent of two billion tons of CO2 per year.

The American plains were once just one vast herd of bison, covering what are now several states. There are estimated to have been between 60-100 million bison just in the mid-19th century and the number before the arrival of Europeans was certainly higher. The current US cattle population is about 90 million. There are certainly fewer large ruminants on the North American continent than there were in, say, 1400, and far fewer than there were in the Pliocene era. If methane emissions are a problem, it's a problem the Earth seems to have been dealing with successfully for thousands of years without the hysteria of the enviro-cultists.

[dps.inspect]

A good novel called “The Facade” by Mike Heiser is a sci-fi thriller which includes as part of its plot, cow flatulence. The book is based on real possibilities that the US government has been hiding UFO evidence and uses global warming as a ruse to hide its deeper secrets. The cow flatulence issue was hyped as a major cause for GW and as a pretense to enact other clandestine activities... an intriguing read.

[count-your-change]

“The Silence of The Cows”, coming to a field near you and sponsored by Beano!

[newzjunkey]

The methane escapes from the cud chewing, not from the other end.

[itsahoot]

Flatulent cows are not a laughing matter.

Ronal Reagan was pilloried for saying this.

[familyop]

"According to the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), livestock account for about 4.5% of all of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions."

I had a grandmother who farted so much, she squeaked when she walked. She also identified herself as being very British. Maybe the Brits should have a look at their grandmothers and stop obsessing on cattle. Hmmm...though, there might be a reason for that after all.