Aussie feral camel
Not much anyway, according to a bizarre ‘study’. Can you believe this stuff?
‘Our results suggest that the methane emission of Australia’s feral camels corresponds only to 1 to 2% of the methane amount produced by the countries’ domestic ruminants and that calculations of greenhouse gas budgets of countries with large camelid populations based on equations developed for ruminants are generally overestimating the actual levels.’
Just when you might have thought reality couldn’t be left any further behind by ‘greenhouse gas’ obsessives…
Paper: ‘Methane Emission by Camelids’
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0094363
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
“Methane emissions from ruminant livestock have been intensively studied in order to reduce contribution to the greenhouse effect. . . . . However, hardly any quantitative methane emission measurements have been performed in camelids.”
This IS a joke right?
[reply] It ought to be, but no – it’s what someone thinks passes for science these days.
Candidate for an Ig-Nobel award?
And of course the methane they produce converts to co2 which feeds the plants they eat, its a closed loop, so ruminants are not net contributors to global warming. However, I’m not sure the same can be said of co2 alarmists in view of all the hot air they spout.
Ah, yes, warmists merely ASSUMED that camel farts are just as methane-rich as those of cattle and sheep, as is pointed out later in the paper. On this basis only, knowing that they probably wouldn’t get away with eliminating en masse farmers’ livestock, they decided camels were fair game and consequently recommended an Aussie-wide cull in order to save us all from global warming. I expect a peer-reviewed paper is currently in the run-up to publication suggesting that all climate ostriches and headless chickens should also be wiped out in order to facilitate the smooth transition to effective climate change mitigation policies.
This is much worse, er worser, then we thought! Increased CO2 means increased biomass production, the world is greening. Increased rotting biomass means more methane and CO2 production. Finally, a real, positive feed back, mechanism. pg
Comedy scriptwriters must be in despair. How can they hope to compete with the truth when it looks like this?
As an aside, the Australian camel population is the largest disease free camel population in the world. They are highly prized in the middle east for this reason.
[reply] see link
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/7040840/Saudi-Arabia-rides-to-the-rescue-of-Australias-loathed-feral-camels.html
I assume the taxpayer picked up the tab for this BS…
[reply] …or CS in this case 😉
My brethren have been around for hundreds of millions of years and yet you “Johnny Come Lately” humans presume to judge us. What hubris!
You simpletons imagine that CO2 and CH4 are “Potent Greenhouse Gases”. What a load of camel flatulence!
In the lower atmosphere of all planets the temperature gradient is equal to -g/Cp regardless of whether the dominant mode of energy transfer is radiative or convective. Consequently the composition of the lower atmosphere does not affect surface temperature significantly.
What matters is the local pressure, so on Earth the temperature falls by one degree Centigrade for every 100 meter increase in elevation.
gallopingcamel says:
May 1, 2014 at 4:46 am “In the lower atmosphere of all planets the temperature gradient is equal to -g/Cp”
That alone should demonstrate the “GHG” is a farce. The only “greenhouse effect” is the atmosphere in total, regardless of it’s composition. pg
[reply] yes, it’s that Standard Atmosphere thing
We’ll get those pesky camels one way or another:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2617201/Camels-certainly-source-deadly-SARS-like-virus-spreading-Middle-East.html
[reply] We can’t blame the Australian camels, they’re disease free
I do not not think our camels are a problem, they are highly prized in the middle east for being fast, thus good in camel racing, it would seem they are also pretty and oft entered in the most beautiful camel contests. That last statement may seem to some to be fanciful but beautiful camel contests
in the M.E. can have big money prizes.
Exporting camels is a big money earner for us in OZ. Kangaroos on the other hand are in plague proportions and if they fart I would welcome a cull.
The headline grabbing advice to avoid camels in the Middle East (seriously, how are the populace expected to do that?!) is exactly the same type of knee-jerk reactionary pronouncement based on ‘science’ that implicated Aussie camels in global warming. Most previous studies have found camel MERS to be ‘almost’ genetically identical to human strains.
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2013/12/nearly-identical-mers-cov-strains-found-camels-humans
Apparently, this new study finds an identical strain in humans and camels from nasal swabs, but it’s important to realise that there are several other MERS strains in camels and even these researchers are cautious to point out that ” these findings support the PLAUSIBILITY [my emphasis] of a role for dromedaries in human infection.”
http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/3/e01146-14.full.pdf+html
Another study found a 100% match for MERS coronavirus in bats. Bats have been identified as the reservoir species in many other zoonoses.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1112929432/coronavirus-bats-genetic-match-human-mers-082213/
Furthermore, the WHO found that 75% of cases of MERS involved human to human transmission.
http://www.emro.who.int/media/news/mers-developments.html
I’m afraid this is increasingly typical of the way science is used to justify action on the ground these days, from pandemic avoidance measures to mitigation of man-made global warming.
Wayne Job, that sounds like a cue for an inappropriate Rolf Harris joke, but I’ll leave that for someone else.
More likely that the camels were infected from their close proximity to humans! 😉 pg