When everything is proof of climate change, warmists enlist even dinosaurs in their cause. You see, Mother Gaia, the being known as the earth on which we crawl, has been here before. Two British professors, Dr Wilkinson and Prof. Ruxton, aver that sauropods of the Mesozoic Era, 150 million years ago, could have broken wind to the extent of "around 472 million tonnes of methane per year." And as we all know, methane is a super-climate-change gas, 20 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

Doubt me? Just check it on the handy-dandy Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator, brought to you by our government, operating through its Environmental Protection Agency. The calculator "may be useful in communicating your greenhouse gas reduction strategy, reduction targets, or other initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions." There are caveats, however: "Please note that these estimates are approximate and should not be used for emission inventory or formal carbon footprinting exercises." In other words, use the calculator for press releases, journalism, and other propaganda exercises but not for actually convincing the EPA that you don't need to buy credits to offset your emissions.

But to get back those "472 million tonnes" that the sauropods unleashed on Mother Gaia each year. The precision of that figure is astounding. By contrast, the professors' estimate of ruminant methane production in today's world is somewhere between 45 and 90 million tonnes per year. In other words, in the here-and-now, the world we actually live in, where the data is close to hand, the professors can throw out only ballpark numbers rounded off by a factor of 2. Yet for Mother Gaia of 150 million years agone, they blithely offer "around 472 million tonnes." Should it read something like "between 4 million and 400 million tonnes"?

I mean, calculating the density of sauropods per square kilometer of earth's entire surface at the end of the Jurassic Period would have to involve a small number of known knowns but many more known unknowns and even more unknown unknowns. Dr Wilkinson and Prof. Ruxton, however, have it figured out pretty much down to the sauropod's patoot. It's not the AGW deniers who are creating skepticism about science but scientists like Dr Wilkinson and Prof. Ruxton.

Henry Percy is the nom de guerre of a writer in Arizona. He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com.