Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Sounds good to me ....

From today's news http://www.news.com.au/weird-true-freaky/culling-farting-feral-animals-could-curb-carbon-pew-says/story-e6frflri-1225891569720

Culling farting feral animals could curb carbon, Pew says

CULLING the feral animals that burp and fart their way around Australia's outback could eliminate billions of tonnes of carbon emissions, an environmental group says.

A study commissioned by the Nature Conservancy and the Pew Environment Group has found that 9.7 billion tonnes of carbon is stored in the nation's central forests, grass and woodlands.

But through better land management, such as culling wild animals, reducing wildfires, limiting tree clearing and allowing vegetation to regrow, another 1.3 billion tonnes of carbon could be stored by 2050 - the equivalent of taking 7.5 million cars off the road every year for the next 40.

Pew spokesman Barry Traill said a program of culling feral camels was already underway, but needed to be extended.

"When feral animals belch they release methane, a particularly noxious greenhouse gas, and every single camel or water buffalo releases the equivalent of around one tonne of carbon dioxide each year,'' he told reporters in Canberra.

"When you've got hundreds of thousands, in some cases millions, of these feral animals, it's a very large amount of pollution each year.''

Dr Traill said the practical and inexpensive measures should be part of all political parties climate change policies.

"This is not theory, these are not some new ideas which need ... more science, this is work that is being done right now,'' he said.

"If we expand it across much greater areas of the country we will get those inexpensive savings.''

Australian Greens senator Christine Milne welcomed the study, which pointed to potential emissions reductions of 5 per cent by 2030.

"We need substantial investment in techniques to measure terrestrial carbon and in helping the stewards of our land - indigenous people, farmers, land care groups - to make the changes needed to tap the huge potential that is there,'' she said.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good grief, you guys have your own Al Gore.

By what means do they propose to "cull" these animals?

Skul

Don said...

Next they'll suggest that overweight people should be culled as well...

*rolls eyes*

God save us from the dirt-worshippers.

Suldog said...

I made much the same point (jokingly, of course) in a blog post from earlier this year...

http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com/2010/01/moo.html

Old NFO said...

Ridiculous... What's next, 'culling' the cows because of their Methane output? And oh yeah, HOW are y'all going to cull them? The gov't took away your guns???

Crucis said...

Geez! How about you cull some eco-idiots and ship them off to some mid-pacific isle. They can inter-breed themselves into extinction and quit bothering the rest of us.

Else, stake them out on an anthill.