"A bunch of bosh," is what one professor is calling another professor's idea that human-caused climate change didn't begin with the Industrial Revolution or internal combustion. It began, according to University of Virginia professor emeritus William Ruddiman, when people burned entire forests to plant crops, and when they first planted methane spewing rice paddies 5,000 or more years ago.

Ruddiman's bosher is Wallace Broecker, a professor at Columbia University. Broeker said he's worried that the idea of pre-modern people as massive carbon emitters could turn into an argument that the modern world need not worry so much about its own pollution. He thinks Ruddiman's approach could be used as a dodge by opponents of legislation aimed at curbing global warming.

"I get really upset with him," was Broecker's stinging response to the publication of Ruddiman's latest article in a scholarly journal hardly any of us has ever heard of, much less read. The battle of ideas was reported on in a story in yesterday's Washington Post. The story, by staff writer David A. Fahrenthold, is here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/27/AR2009092701949.html?sub=AR

Kind of gives a new/old meaning to the phrase, "It's academic."

The sale of Pilgrim's Pride to Brazil's mega-meat JBS SA operation, with $28.7 billion in world-wide sales, is creating nervousness throughout the poultry industry. Not to mention the thousands of Pilgrim's Pride employees and contract growers who are dependent on the company for their paychecks and the loan payments on their chicken houses. Lancaster Farming Virginia correspondent Andrew Jenner took a look at the possible sale, which would have to be approved by shareholders, regulators and the bankruptcy court overseeing Pilgrim's Pride's attempts to free itself from Chapter 11. Jenner's story is in our current edition.

Corn. Just give them a some corn. All they want is a little corn.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1921973