Oh, waiter? Belching bovines, Batman! Seven hundred thousand dollars in federal tax money to study burping cattle? Really? As a friend of mine just remarked, “Meanwhile back at the ranch I am looking for loans to send my kid to school.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. “Cows emit most of their methane through belching, only a small fraction from flatulence,” said the project’s principal investigator, Ruth Varner of UNH’s Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space. Pass the Lea & Perrons. Instead. The Manchester Union Leader reports that we are going to fund nearly three quarters of a million dollars in research to the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH to study burping cattle. While I enjoy a belching bovine as much as the next guy, would we not be better off putting a cork in that project for a decade or so just to see how it all, well, works out in the end? Oh, I can hear the naysayers: “How many more must perish before this great nation of ours recognizes our grievous irresponsibility in this matter as we pass gas to the generation of our great grandchildren?” Pass the Lea & Perrons. Indeed.
