By Tim Sanders

I am a humor columnist, but I believe I still qualify as a journalist, sort of. And one of the duties of an actual journalist is to study the extensive body of scientific knowledge currently available and comment on news that affects the safety and well-being of his readers.

Whether they want to hear it or not.

This week we shall discuss a growing environmental hazard which, if it hasn’t already affected you personally, soon will. Yes, I refer to bovine flatulence.

That’s right, mankind is now officially on notice. We are in danger of seeing our natural habitat destroyed by (forgive my indelicacy here) cow farts.

According to a Dec. 11 report in India’s New Kerala News (Motto: We offer online news AND Bhadrak Mukesh speaking in broken English through your telephone receiver with technical support, HAHA.):

A recent study has revealed that cow flatulence is to a great extent responsible for global warming and the greenhouse effect.

British researchers have found that bovine emissions account for about one million tons or roughly 36 percent of the UK’s methane emissions ...

Methane has been described by the United Nations as 23 times more "warming" than carbon dioxide ... A UN report has also revealed that: "Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems."

If you’ve been watching cable news, or paying attention to the late night comedians, you are at least vaguely aware of the problem. You’ve probably also heard that the UN now agrees that worldwide, bovine flatulence is more damaging to our atmosphere than all the emissions from autos, trucks, airplanes, and factory smokestacks combined. And I’m sure that if you are like me you’ve asked yourself some critical questions. Such as:

1. Why isn’t this Rogaine working? and

2. Hip-hop be damned, where are The Four Tops when we need them?

Sorry, I drifted off subject there. The questions I refer to are:
 

1. How did those researchers gather their data?

2. Is anybody doing anything about the methane problem? and

3. What can I do?

Well, there have been several methods of data gathering reported. In New Zealand, for example, scientists have measured the methane clouds above cattle herds while drifting over them in (seriously) hot air balloons. In Great Britain they’ve donned protective masks and raincoats and stationed themselves with hand-held meters at the business end of gassy cows. In the United States, the preferred method involves very sensitive, state-of-the-art digital methane monitors placed in strategic locations near large herds of gas-producing ruminants–on Capitol Hill, for example.

If you worry that no one is doing anything to solve the methane problem, you should know that even as cows all over the world are passing huge quantities of deadly gas, the United Nations Security Council is busy passing something too. What they are passing are strongly-worded resolutions advising cows across the globe, from Albania to Zaire, in the clearest language possible (you try translating MOO into Swahili), to cease and desist. And if those resolutions have no effect, I am confident that the UN will vote, and agree to pass even more strongly worded resolutions. And although the organization has been somewhat ineffective in dealing with the ongoing Mideast turmoil, nuclear proliferation and international terrorism, I have every reason to believe that the worldwide cow-farting threat is something the United Nations is well-equipped to handle.

And yes you, as a non-bovine human, can do your part. Or not do your part, if you prefer. Methane is methane, after all. And if all humans were as large as cows, you can only imagine how gassy and warm our little planet would be by now. And even though most of us are a bit smaller than our bovine counterparts, we should keep our eyes open, and our noses in the air, so to speak. Consider the following AP article provided by CNN online, and dated December 6, 2006:

Flatulence on plane sparks emergency landing
 

... An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence, authorities said.

The Dallas-bound flight was diverted to Nashville after several passengers reported smelling burning sulfur from the matches, said Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority. All 99 passengers and five crew members were taken off and screened while the plane was searched and luggage was screened.

The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal a "body odor," Lowrance said. She had an unspecified medical condition ...
 

I have no idea how many matches the lady on the plane struck, but I do know that she was courting disaster. Even as kids, my friends and I knew that mixing methane and matches was a recipe for disaster. I knew a boy, once–we called him Rex the Human Blowtorch–who burned himself badly in a controlled scientific experiment involving methane and matches. Had those alert passengers not reported their flatulent fellow passenger and her matches, the whole plane could have gone up like a Roman candle.

It’s not too late to save our planet, but it will require diligence and discipline. If we stay away from things like pinto beans and cabbage, and if we encourage our cattle to do the same, we may all escape the horrific specter of UN intervention which awaits us just over the horizon.

If you think there's unrest in the international Hereford community now, just imagine the maelstrom that would result if the UN were forced to impose silage sanctions.