This article starts out so hilariously that I almost posted in the Laughter section. The latter part of it does give some very good information.
Wooly Mammoth Dung Speeds Global Warming… Give me a Break!
Now, you’re gonna read that headline and laugh imagining that I must surely be employing the best hyperbole. Reuters can’t possibly be touting a story that says wooly mammoth dung could be making global warming worse… could they? I am sad to say that they are, indeed, making this claim in a story on the crackpot theories of a Russian “scientist.”
I know, I know. It seems like an entry from “The Onion” news satire website, but it isn’t. Reuters gives us the pooper scoop in “Mammoth dung, prehistoric goo may speed warming,” posted on the 16th.
Sounding like a bad copy of an old Cheech and Chong skit, “scientist” Sergei Zimov grabs some wooly mammoth dung, puts it to his face and proclaims, “It smells like mammoth dung.” Reuters gives him the space to revel in his crappy theory that this millions-year-old, melted mammoth dung is speeding globaloney.
But Zimov, a scientist who for almost 30 years has studied climate change in Russia’s Arctic, believes that as this organic matter becomes exposed to the air it will accelerate global warming faster than even some of the most pessimistic forecasts.
“This will lead to a type of global warming which will be impossible to stop,” he said.
Falling back on the “cow flatulence” theory of globaloney causes, this Russian theorist imagines that “methane gas” will be released by the melting of the ice and the returning to the air of wooly mammoth dung that was once seemingly forever frozen in the permafrost.
Why all that darn poop didn’t cause global warming THEN but will NOW doesn’t seem to come up in the story, but there ya go… or there the mammoth went… er sumpthin.
Naturally, our so-called scientist is still trying to destroy our economy with the Kyoto Protocols, a failed treaty filled with precepts that even countries that signed onto it cannot meet.
“If you don’t stop emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere … the Kyoto Protocol (an international pact aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions) will seem like childish prattle.”
Sadly, Reuters finds other crackpots in the scientific community that might be willing to sign onto this foolishness.
It might be easy to dismiss the 52-year-old, with his beard and shock of wavy hair, as an alarmist crank. But his theory is grabbing attention in the scientific community.
Yet, even Rueters notes that the UN, no slouches for globaloney alarmism, cannot find any widespread melting permafrost.
A United Nations report in June said there was at yet no sign of widespread melting of permafrost that could stoke global warming, but noted the potential threat.
So much gas to spew, so little time.
From cow farts to wooly mammoth poop, the globaloney alarmists seem to be apt to saying anything to scare us into torpedoing our economy while letting worse polluters like China entirely off the hook.
“Smells like mammoth dung,” indeed.
A reproduced report from 16 Jan 2006 on this:
SIBERIANS SHIVER IN RECORD COLD
Record low temperatures were felt in western Siberia over the weekend, with temperatures in the Tomsk region reported at minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit and lower. “This morning people felt Arctic weather,” a local meteorologist told the Interfax news agency Friday. A state of emergency was declared in the Tomsk region, where at least one man died because of the cold and hospitals treated dozens of people daily for cold-related health problems, while public transportation and electricity supplies were disrupted, The Moscow Times reported Monday. In the Novosibirsk region, temperatures fell to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit — the lowest in 100 years. In the city of Krasnoyarsk, celebrations for the Russian holiday known as Old New Year’s Eve were canceled Friday after temperatures were also predicted to fall to minus 40. In the Komi-Permyatsky autonomous district, where temperatures were as low as minus 49 Fahrenheit, 85 people — mostly preschoolers — were evacuated from a settlement after a heating system serving 600 residents failed, Interfax reported Saturday. There was some good news, however: Scientists in the Tyumen region said the thousands of school closures across Siberia would reduce the spread of an expected flu epidemic among schoolchildren.
So what is going on? Simple: Siberia is affected by a regular climate cycle called the Arctic Oscillation. So its temperature can vary considerably from year to year. There is no evidence of an overall change beyond the changes due to the oscillation.
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