Flatulence Threat

(Fox News) - Monday we told you that the European Union considers flatulence from cows and sheep to be a grave threat to the planet because of its contribution to global warming. Now the U.N.'s climate change panel says rice farming is a main cause of rising methane emissions.

A molecule of methane is 21-times more potent than a molecule of carbon dioxide as a heat trapping gas. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that while carbon dioxide represents 70 percent of the warming potential in the atmosphere — methane is at 23 percent and rising.

But more than two billion people rely on rice as a dietary staple — and one of the authors of the U.N. report acknowledges that people in the developing world have to think about food production before they worry about climate mitigation.