Why Norway is melting

Now that the EU is up in arms about cow flatulence as a cause of global warming, I'm afraid there's a grave risk that people will simply ignore the newest threat to climate stability -- namely, moose flatulence.

I tell you this based on a story in the Norwegian news source Aftenposten (hat tip: fee simple), which reports:

The country's so-called "King of the Forest" hasn't been widely viewed as having any really nasty personal habits, surely none that could be considered an environmental threat.

But now some researchers linked to Norway's technical university (NTNU) in Trondheim contend that moose are responsible for tons of gas emissions a year through their frequent burping and, well, farting.

This is potentially a severe threat to our national security, as this TOP SECRET transcript that arrived over the transom indicates:

Natasha: Look, Dahlink, it's moose and squirrel.

(She and Boris watch Rocky and Bullwinkle through a spyglass.)

Rocky: Hokey Smoke, Bullwinkle! We're in real trouble now!

Bullwinkle: Pffffffft!!

Boris (to Natasha): Hoo boy, I can feel it getting hotter already.

To give you an idea of how serious a problem this is, Aftenposten writes:

The research web site http://www.forskning.no/ has calculated that the annual gas emissions from a moose are equal to those from an individual's 36 flights between Oslo and Trondheim.

A grown moose will burp and pass so much methane gas in the course of a year that it amounts to 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide emissions.

Newspaper VG reported that a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit the same.

The good news is that this article suggests that moose flatulence is a problem only in countries that use the metric system. My personal car drives in miles, not kilometers.

The bad news is that even though it's therefore the Europeans' metric moose that will create a dangerous number of kilometers of global warming, the Euro-trash will simply blame it on the United States, when actually they should blame it on the dog.

It really worries me that the only obvious solutions appear to be genocide of the moose population or massive "moose offsets." Me, I'm going to cancel my 36 flights from Oslo to Trondheim, wherever that may be.

And when I'm awarded my Nobel, I'll just have to do it by teleconference.