Watch: Cool innovations to combat global warming (including one that involves gassy cows)
Rising temperatures may disrupt human life more thoroughly than any government policy can.
Increases in the concentration of greenhouse gases, fuelled by human activity, have most likely messed up the planet, causing global temperatures to rise at an alarming rate.
However, there may be ways out. The video above lists several innovations that can help fight global warming. The first of these deals with gassy cows. Yes, indeed.
Don’t look now, but one of the gases that cows produce a lot of as part of their digestive process is methane.
A greenhouse gas – which increases temperatures – emitted by natural formations like wetlands as well as human activities like coal mining, landfilling and livestock farming, it doesn’t survive in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide does, but is better at trapping heat.
Now, researchers at Argentina’s National Institute of Agricultural Technology have come up with an inflatable backpack to prevent the methane from a cow’s digestive processes from getting into the atmosphere.
The bag is connected to a tube running into the cow’s stomach, so that it can collect the gas. “It’s kind of adorable in a very weird way,” as the video puts it.