Burpless sheep??

An uncharacteristically short and focussed post today, prompted by an item in today's news about research into reducing the amount of greenhouse gas produced by sheep.

Enquiring minds want to know ...

1. Who thought up this project, and did they manage to submit the funding proposal with a straight face?

2. Did anyone do any sums?

   "Agriculture produces about 16 per cent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions and two-thirds of that is methane produced by farm animals ... Cattle produce about 70 kilograms of methane a year and sheep produce about one-tenth of that."

3. Let's see ... 2/3 of 16 is 10.6666. So sheep produce much less than 1% of the greenhouse gasses in the country. Anyone want to guess the percentage produced by, oh I don't know, cars and factories, to choose two non-sheep things at random?
4. Do they seriously expect to devise a genetic strategy based on a mere 200 samples?
5. What sort of a surname is Goopy anyway?
6. Would a real scientist say something like "I don't know if you have ever been inside a sheep's tummy, but it's the most fascinating part of the ecology," ("tummy"?, "ecology"?)
7. What scientist refers to pathogens as if they are people: "we're trying to get a handle on who the organisms are"?

No, I think it's pretty obvious that this "research" is merely a sham, and that these are not scientists at all, but an alien life force whose first step in world domination is to occupy the largely empty heads of sheep.

Don't say you weren't warned.