Cows and sheep contribute about 18 percent of the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet -- more than cars, planes and all other forms of transportation put together. Scientists are busy finding ways to turn this smelly problem into a solution. They've already developed a method for extracting methane from cow excrement and converting it to a biogas fuel that's of sufficient quality to be fed into a standard natural gas pipeline.
Harnessing cow farts as a fuel source might be tricky, but it isn't inconceivable, either. In Argentina -- a major beef producing nation where the collective herd of 55 million cattle outnumbers the human population -- researchers have developed a special bovine backpack that captures a cow's emissions via a tube attached to the cow's stomach, and discovered that the animals produce between 800 and 1,000 liters of gas each day. A single cow can heat your house all winter long ----- and give the children something for 'show and tell.'
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