World quickly dropping battle on catastrophic cow farts as a result of they’re so highly effective
The world is rapidly losing its war on catastrophic cow farts.
Levels of methane in the atmosphere have rocketed to an 800,000-year high, warn bovine bottom burp boffins.
They’re begging for immediate action against parping livestock and landfill sites in a desperate bid to stop greenhouse gases from running out of control, fuelling global warming.
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Methane is now surging rapidly after levelling off in the early 2000s. Euan Nisbet, a gas professor at Royal Holloway, said: “Methane keeps on rocketing upwards. The global methane pledge is looking increasingly precarious and increasingly important that we do it properly.”
Atmospheric concentrations of the powerful gas soared over the past five years at their fastest rate since records began in 1983.
Prof Rob Jackson, of Stanford University added: “Methane is a climate menace the world’s ignoring. Emissions from all sources – cows, fossil fuels, landfills and waste – keep rising globally, and concentrations are rising faster than ever.”
(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
The four regions to blame for the monster methane boost are China, south Asia, southeast Asia and the Middle East. Europe has actually boasted a decrease.
Prof Nisbet added: “If Europe has managed to bring them down without trashing the economy, the US and China should be able to do the same thing. There’s something optimistic here.”
It comes after boffins worked out how to fiddle barley’s DNA to slash methane levels in cow booty burps. Scientists have developed gene-edited crops which could cut fart emissions by up to 20%.
Meanwhile another tactic could involve plying the farmyard trumpers with pills to tame their toxic let-offs. The tablets would be 60 times cheaper than other efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, experts say.
The Green Alliance also said the cost would only add half a penny to a pint of milk. Senior policy analyst Liam Hardy added: “Methane suppressants are a simple, cheap solution.”
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