RE: Methane production

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@umd.edu>]

> From: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu] 
> On Behalf Of Phillip Bigelow
>
> Good points.
> Furthermore, why didn't the near extermination of the North 
> American Bison also produce a mini-cooling event?  There were 
> tens of millions of bison roaming the Great Plains, and 
> within 50 years their numbers were reduced to a few hundred 
> animals in Yellowstone Park.
> 
> The number of cattle that "replaced" them was only a 
> miniscule percentage of the original number of bison.
> 
> Ironically, according to climatologists, the Earth was coming 
> *out* of the Mini-Ice Age around the time that we were 
> beginning to "cleanse" the bison from the prairies.
> 
Not that I buy the megafaunal methane hypothesis (at least as currently
formulated), one observes that the decline of methane production by Bison
bison would have occurred during a time that the greenhouse gas production
of a certain primate's technologies were beginning to greatly increase, and
this could have offset it.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu   Phone: 301-405-4084
Office: Centreville 1216                        
Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
Fax: 301-314-9661               

Faculty Director, Earth, Life & Time Program, College Park Scholars
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite/
Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park Scholars
http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc
Fax: 301-314-9843

Mailing Address:        Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                        Department of Geology
                        Building 237, Room 1117
                        University of Maryland
                        College Park, MD 20742 USA