MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB

If I had a better (or even any) filing system, I would not have lost the letter from a Canadian reader who took me to task about ter-mites' flatulence [AtE Aug 88]. So I must report from memory that he objects to the termites' winds being compared to the CO² produced by fossil fuel burning, because the former is a normal part of the presently ongoing carbon cycle (eating carbohydrates and digesting them), whereas burning fossils presently releases carbon dioxide that was absorbed millions of years ago.

I think he has a point, but not much of one. For one thing, I did not claim that the present warming trend is caused by termites, but merely wanted to show the relative importance of CO² sources: if fossil fuel burning amounts to 1/10^th of termites' gas emissions, it cannot be earth-shaking.

However, let me make the point more cleanly using the methane (also a "greenhouse gas") belched by ruminating animals, in par- ticular cattle. Unlike termites, cattle hasn't always been there, but has been introduced by man. And in Western countries (if not throughout the world), their numbers have been growing far faster than the human population. Methane would account only for 20% of the Greenhouse effect as compared with 50% for CO², but I take it for granted that cows outbelch the gassing termites hoofs down. And whatever the reasons, the methane concentration in the atmosphere, which was more or less constant over 27,000 years (as determined from air bubbles in glaciers) has doubled in the last 100 years. ["Doubling of atmospheric methane supported," Science 11/23/84, pp.954-5.]

Apart from providing an example of a man-made (or man-intro-duced) CO² source more ample than fossil fuels, the point once again unmasks the social engineers in environmentalist garb. Eat-ing beef is clearly a luxury more easily renounced than the energy produced by fossil fuels¾especially for the "disadvantaged minorities." So why are the Environmental Defense Fund and similar impostors not filing suit to exterminate all cattle?

Because they need the greenhouse effect only for crusading against technology and industry, and they can't present Mary as a corporate pig for having a little lamb. (It didn't ruminate, but still produced CO² from grass that would otherwise have absorbed it.)