Global warming, whether real or imagined, has, if nothing else, stirred heated debate, scientific discussions, frightened people to death, is blamed for nearly everything under the sun and of course, being America, the butt (you’ll have to excuse that pun to follow) of many a good joke.
I read a few days ago about how moose are causing quite a stir in the country of Norway, more in a moment. In this profession, I read accounts of some of the most bizarre events, some of the most ridiculous comments and also some of the most hilarious things one could imagine and thank God I do. Readers are always keeping me abreast of things happening in their areas and on occasion I even get the heads up on some great opportunities to print some humor…..and thank God I can.
Faithful reader Richard Paradis the other day sent me a link to the story out of Norway about moose and global warming. As I said, I had seen the story several times and was waiting for the right opportunity to write about it and make commentary.
Back to the moose’s hot air story. Spiegel Online International carried this story and no, it wasn’t in the comics section but listed under “Global Warming Fears”. It seems that moose in Norway, I suppose to only name one particular region of the world, are farting and burping so much they are contributing to global warming.
The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year — equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.
Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.
Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway’s technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year.
Bacteria in a moose’s stomach create methane gas which is considered even more destructive to the environment than carbon dioxide gas. Cows pose the same problem (more…).
Norway has some 120,000 moose but an estimated 35,000 are expected to be killed in this year’s moose hunting season, which starts on September 25, Norwegian newspaper VG reported.
Perhaps the best part of the story, one in which I am sure was not intended to be a part of the moose farts one, appears in a photograph just to the right of this article. Which by the way is a good lead in to my article.
According to this story, moose emit methane gas from their stomachs that get expelled through the natural process of farting and belching. It also says that moose do this enough in one year to equal the emissions generated from an automobile that travels 13,000 kilometers. I think that’s 9,000ish miles. That’s a lot of farting and burping.
But if we are to blame moose for global warming in this fashion, then I say there are far many more eligible targets to point a finger at (or pull a finger at) when it comes to polluting our atmosphere. Take for instance the city of Washington, D.C. Once you factor in the total number of politicians and all those directly and indirectly linked to the work they do, I think it would be safe to say that each senator and representative contributes the equivalent of 15,000 road miles of air pollution each year just in the talking they do around the D.C. area alone.
When you take this time of year with the same pundits jockeying for position in a presidential campaign, that amount of harmful gases increases exponentially. Imagine the hot air being exuded from the mouth of Barack Obama in the above photo. That is only one politician at one moment in time. Get my point. And people are wondering why this has been an usually hot summer across most of the U.S.
I don’t think we should be worrying about a few thousand farting and burping moose when the world is full of farting and burping, hot air politicians lying and cheating their way to job security.
On a positive note out of Florida, with the announcement from Howard Dean that he will not allow the electoral votes of Florida to count in the upcoming primary election, the summer heat should be cooling very soon. Not much burping and farting will be taking place down here for awhile.
Tom Remington
