I read the article in Current Biology and it is frankly a simple exercise in extrapolating that apparently no one thought of doing before. But as flatulence is funny, it comes into the news media headlines where the message becomes...let's say, somewhat blurred. The study makes no conclusion concerning the methane contribution to climate or climate change or extinctions. As well it should not. Information is not available to support such. Authors do suggest that with these herbivores and other possible sources duing dino-times, methane could have been as high as 6 ppm. Now, that is a lot, and one could put it into current climate models and some climate would result. But they didn't do it. We might guess though, that a subset of the media will respond that scientists are goofy, waste money on whatever, and that climate models are hereby proven to be bunk. All that has happened before. So while we can all get a laugh, for me it is also rather sad. Anyway, Sauropods were replaced by shorter-necked Titanosaurs towards the end of dino times. So it was the Titans who were extinctified by the impact event (or whatever else contributed to the 65 MYA extinction). Then mammals were free to evolve out of their previous rat niche, and...things happened, and you arrive at today. Science and fart jokes. Ecce homo.
Science has lost respectability,due to climate science. Climate Scientists are below ambulance chaser lawyers in regard to respectability. Half the population think climate scientists are liars the other half arent too critical . Spend $100 Billion in the USA for global warming cheerleader science ,and this is what you get.Studies of dinosaur farts and a hockey stick. That $100 billion could have saved a lot of lives around the planet.$100 billion could have given clean air and water to a lot of needy people.
