Mammoth dung, prehistoric goo may speed warming

[jpak]

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL1076886120070917

DUVANNY YAR, Russia (Reuters) - Sergei Zimov bends down, picks up a handful of treacly mud and holds it up to his nose. It smells like a cow pat, but he knows better.

"It smells like mammoth dung," he says.

This is more than just another symptom of global warming.

For millennia, layers of animal waste and other organic matter left behind by the creatures that used to roam the Arctic tundra have been sealed inside the frozen permafrost. Now climate change is thawing the permafrost and lifting this prehistoric ooze from suspended animation.

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[damntexdem]

1. I tell you, we have to do something about these mammoths!

they're just a bunch of old farts, anyway.

[Eugene]

2. Next paragraph: "faster than even some of the most pessimistic forecasts"

Phrases like that are showing up an awful lot.

[XemaSab]

3. Apparently they haven't spent any time in the E/E forum....

:P

[babylonsister]

4. Hmm. Just how much mammoth dung has he smelled? nt

[Dead_Parrot]

5. Shit happened. nt

[Maraya1969]

6. Hard to believe it still has any smell after thousands of years.

[hootinholler]

7. It, and its methane have been frozen for thousands of years.

Mammoth meat has been eaten after recovery from glacial ice, so why not poop smells?

-Hoot

[Maraya1969]

9. ICK n/t

[Javaman]

8. People worry about climate change, I worry about when the siberian

permafrost melts and releases all that methane. That will make CO2 look like a walk in the park.

[emmadoggy]

10. Oooh, goody! It'll be the fart smelled 'round the world!!

:nuke:

[BornagainDUer]

11. It could be alot worse...

If the Clovis hunters hadn't wiped out the mammoths! :crazy: