Humans have no doubt contributed to climate change, but one of the biggest culprits is actually the methane released by cows. Researchers at Argentina’s Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria (INTA) want to harness that methane as a clean, renewable form of biofuel – by having the cows wear fart-collecting backpacks.

To collect the methane, a tube is inserted into the cows’ rumens (an interior part of the digestive system) and routed up to the gas-catching backpacks. Each cow produces somewhere around 300 liters of methane per day, which the researchers say could provide enough energy to operate a refrigerator for an entire day. After the gas is collected, it is purified and condensed to create usable biofuel.

There are some ethical dilemmas at play in this plan since the collection tubes are inserted through the cows’ skin using a local anesthetic. However, this measure may be acceptable and even necessary if it makes a significant change in the amount of harmful gasses that are released into the atmosphere. The method not only stops the methane from being released into the environment, but also provides a clean and renewable source of energy for nearly anything that requires fuel to operate. However, we hope that a far more humane method can be developed to eliminate the need for an intrusive and painful tube sticking through the side of the cow’s body.

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Did you think global warming was all about sunny winters and the death of natural ski slopes? There’s actually much more to it than that. According to a new study, melting polar ice and growing oceans may actually cause a significant shift in the Earth’s tilt in the next century. Scientists estimate that Greenland’s melting ice is already causing Earth’s axis to tilt by approximately 2.6 centimeters a year, and the rate of change may speed up significantly in the near future. Moreover, oceans which are getting warmer because of increased greenhouse gases may also have an effect on the planet’s tilt.

As greenhouse gases increase, the oceans absorb more and more heat, causing the water to expand. And as the water gets warmer, more of the ocean is pushed onto the shallower ocean shelves. This move affects the distribution of weight on the planet and, understandably, has some subtle effects on the Earth’s spin. It’s only expected to shift the poles by 1.5 centimeters per year, which shouldn’t be enough to induce any sudden, drastic climate changes.

So what does all of this science really mean for us? Well, scientists are keeping an eye on axis shift because it could, a few centuries in the future, accumulate to the point that the climate does change drastically. The end result will likely be an increase in the Earth’s rotation rate, the full effects of which are yet to be seen. But for the doomsdayers out there who are convinced the axial shift is changing so fast that it’ll bring about the end of the world: sorry, not this century.

The post Tilt-a-World: Global Warming Could Shift Earth’s Axis first appeared on Gajitz.