Scientists have underestimated just how much livestock feces and gas have contributed to global warming, a new study contends.
In the study posted Friday in the journal Carbon Balance and Management, researchers from the Department of Agriculture, the Joint Global Change Research Institute and the Department of Energy discovered previous estimates of methane emissions from livestock were off by more than 10 percent.
Forbes noted methane gas is a natural byproduct of digestion, made by that microbes in an animal's gut that breakdown and ferment the food eaten — and a principle component of farts.
It's also 85 times more powerful in trapping heat within Earth's atmosphere than carbon dioxide — which is usually given the principle blame for global warming, Forbes reported.
Led by USDA plant physiologist Julie Wolf, the researchers looked at the data underpinning an old estimate of the effects of methane, realizing some dated back decades — and didn't take into account changes in land and animal use.
The figures that served as a basis for the 2006 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were off by 11 percent, the researchers determined.
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