Did you know that stomach gas from farm animals makes one fourth of all the world's greenhouse gasses? All farm animals eat grass, hay, and seed and digesting all these plants creates a gas in animal stomachs called Methane. Cattle, sheep, chickens, pigs, and horses all "fart" Methane gas - but not Kangaroos!
Anyone who has spent time on a farm knows that farm animals do a lot of farting. Methane gas is a greenhouse gas and one of the greatest threats to global warming and climate change.
Kangaroos may hold the key to this greenhouse gas problem. Scientists like Dr. Athol Klieve in Queensland, Australia have found that kangaroos have a special bacteria in their stomach that does not produce methane during digestion. Scientists in Australia are working very hard to find some way to introduce this bacteria as microbes added to feed grain for other farm animals. They hope that by getting this bacteria into the stomachs of sheep, pigs and cows, that this will help reduce greenhouse gases. But the scientists say nothing about what Kangaroo farts smell like.
Recently, scientists working to reduce greenhouse gasses from farm animals have discovered that adding curry and koriander to the diet can reduce animals methane gas production by as much as 40%. But getting cows, pigs and sheep to eat curried feed may not be so easy. Even if this could be done, it may prove an impossible solution because it would also change the taste of the meats we all enjoy eating. An easier solution would be for all of us to eat less meat and more fruit and vegetables.
If we all cut down our meat-eating just a bit, it would make us more healthy and it would help slow down global warming and climate change. It is estimated that if the people in North America alone could reduce their intake of meat by only 10%, it would considerably reduce health care costs due to obesity, heart disease, Diabetes, and colon cancer. It would also free-up enough agricultural land to grow food enough to feed 1 billion people! Food for thought and just one more way to reduce Global Warming.
Climate change will not go away just because some rich guys say it is happening. NASA photographs clearly show the northern ice cap and the Greenlandic Ice Sheet are melting at an alarming rate in summers. This not only increases the amount of fresh water in the oceans and changes currents, but is also causing a long list of other environmental problems.
The US uses 1/4 of the world's fossil fuels and has only 3% of the world's population. Its industry is dragging its feet in what could be the next great global industrial boom, renewable energy technologies, EU, Japan, and China are all waking up to the need for a balanced energy policy with a blend of oil, coal, wind, and solar, and are upgrading their grid net efficiency and capacity to phase out atomic power, which has become so risky that private insurance companies will no longer take on a nuclear policy.
The dynamic US industrial base could jump in and join the next great global industry E.T. or Energy Technology. It will be bigger than “I.T.” quotes a 2007 study conducted by the Renewable Energy Policy Project and released by the Blue-Green Alliance (a team project of the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club). This study reported that getting just 20 percent of U.S. electricity from wind and solar power by 2020 would create 820,000 new high-wage jobs at more than 42,000 companies across the USA. The country that creates the most E.T. companies will enjoy more economic and political power, and have rising standards of living. Why is this not happening? Maybe because some one is making a great deal of money keeping things just as they are.
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