Who Goosed the Moose?

In today's so-called news, the AFP reports from Oslo that a grown moose annually belches out more methane than the CO2 emissions of a round-trip flight from Oslo to Santiago, Chile!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070822/sc_afp/sciencenorwayclimate;_ylt=AoQ2dldm5IEmWlyIhmLmEpsDW7oF

Apparently, this comes as breaking news that eating grass as the staple of one's diet creates flatulence and intestinal distress. With 140,000 head of moose in Norway alone, that's some serious gas! Of course, this gas contributes to the global warming frenzy yet the article cautions against killing off the flatulent forest critters as they serve a purpose in Nature. Ya think?!?!?! But wait, moose have been around far longer than the demonized internal combustion engine so why are we looking at them? Why did we look at cattle last year? Why do we only address the non-issues? China and India are the scourge of the planet with their lack of environmental controls, yet they get a pass. But 140,000 moose and their off-gassing is of concern.

Here's my latest dilemma: we won't seek oil, wind, or water power in certain areas because of the potential impact on surrounding wildlife. Perhaps a migrating crane will be minced in a windmill, or a rare woodland mouse would fall into an oil rig, or the occassional salmon could not swim to its native water to spawn. Yet one would think that all of these critters, at one time or another, would (let's call it for what it is) fart. Yes, fart. Woodland critter toots. My dog produces toxic flatulence that could kill a herd of moose yet thus far, no one has sought to measure it. I hypothesize that if I could bottle that stuff, I'd have enough to power my gas grill for several years of grilling moose porterhouse. So, if reducing the methane output of a few critters could ebb the global warming tide, then perhaps we should make a happy trail of dams, wind farms, and oil rigs from Key West to ANWR. In the meantime, gas prices fall 50% and more cars are on the road. The economy booms resulting in more expendable income resulting in more travel. Voila!! More deer are hit by motorists and more birds are sucked into jet engines! Net/Net, right?!?!

What puzzles me though is how these moose toots are causing the polar ice caps to melt on Mars. Did they somehow get captured in the tiny electronics of the Mars ROVER and have been unleashed on an unwitting and defenseless planet??!! Or maybe, just MAYBE, global warming is a pile of moose poo. Not that the globe isn't getting warmer - I just spent a few days in the Gulf of Mexico and could never tell a difference when I relieved myself in the water. That's warm, friends. Likewise, driving my big Diesel SUV home on Tuesday, with only one of eight seats occupied, it was 99 degrees outside. I smiled to think that I did my part to contribute to global oceanic pee water. Damn the torpedos and the glaciers! I can't afford waterfront, so I will facilitate it coming to me. Or perhaps the reason I cannot hear my bedtime friend George Noory on the AM dial at midnight is that increased solar activity is messing with my trusty AM signal as well as warming the third rock from the sun. Not to mention the first two and the fourth.

But, if the global warming clerics are so right about this, then surely they're right about evolution and it's cousin "survival of the fittest" too. As such, should the critters that are supposedly threatened by our dams, oil rigs, and windmills not be capable of adapting to these new "threats" to their well-being? If not, why not? Surely if humanity (can I still use that term since it has the word "man" in it?) can adapt and change and cause the entire globe to change in a mere 100 years, then the animals can change too, right?

All this thinking has made me hungry for some baked beans and cabbage! But gosh, what happens when the Oslo scientists realize that high fiber diets in humans create methane?

Shhhhh.