Eric Worrall mistakes native cattle breeds for mutants @wattsupwiththat

Eric Worrall is someone who Anthony Watts uses to fill his daily quota of denier nonsense at WUWT. Mostly his "guest articles" are short and silly. Take today for example. Eric is equating two cattle breeds from India with deliberately bred featherless chickens (archived here). I expect cattle breeds is a topic dear to the heart of Eric "eugenics" Worrall.

Eric knows which buttons to press to get the WUWT-ers all a go - mix guvmint with money and CO2 and scientists and Paris and toss in a mutant and Bob's your uncle:

Meet the Mutants – the latest Government effort to defeat Climate Change
It would be wrong to think that the governments of the world are solely focussed on reducing CO2. Just in case the Paris conference fails to deliver, our selfless government scientists are spending your money, exploring a diverse range of strange mutant varieties of every day farm animals, to ensure world stays fed in the midst of soaring temperatures.

Thing is, the dwarf cattle he wrote about aren't mutants.

Eric read an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about how dairy cattle owners in India are looking for ways to combat heat stress in their herds. One suggestion is to shift to breeds that are more heat tolerant, namely Vechur and Kasargod cattle, which are smaller in size than ordinary cows. Eric Worrall thinks they are mutants. He's got it back to front. These small cattle native to India would probably be regarded as less "mutant" than other more common domestic cattle that have been selectively bred over centuries and then cross-bred. There are more articles about Vechur cattle and Kasargod cattle. From the Sydney Morning Herald article: "Dwarf cows, on the other hand, appeared to carry a "thermometer gene" that allowed them to better tolerate high temperatures, researchers said."

In Australia, heat stress is a problem too. See the Cool Cows articles from Dairy Australia. Heat can kill cows just as it can kill people.

From the WUWT comments

Like I've said before, WUWT is just a notice board where people post their random denier "thoughts". They may or may not relate to the topic of the article.

Someone pointed out to Pamela Gray that strawberries and peaches aren't animals:

July 1, 2015 at 5:41 pm
Animal engineering has such a long successful history.
Bulldogs who can no longer birth their big-headed pups.
Toy white poodles that are now dumb as a post.
Animal skin and eye cancer because we don’t like dark colored animals (how stupid is that!).
Inbred diseases because we want the perfect example of a species.
Honey bees that aren’t so sweet because we want more honey.
Tasteless strawberries and peaches because we don’t want bruised ones shipped from far away places.
The list goes on.

No-one pointed out to her that the very same "animal engineering" brought the Friesan and the Holstein and the Labrador and the Kelpie and the Thoroughbred and the Burmese and.... Not to mention the plant engineering that resulted in bananas and grapefruits and tomatoes and lettuces and carrots and strawberries and peaches she buys at the Farmers' Market.


Alan Robertson is disdainful of agricultural researchers and extension officers. If he were a farmer he'd be labelled the laggard, or late adopter (or the never adopter) and would probably use maximum tillage and spray irrigation and forget about soil conservation:

July 1, 2015 at 5:36 pm
If any of these ideas can fill a niche and can be used to meet demand and create wealth, then go for it. Hair brained ideas in the real world either fall apart or make something out of nothing, all the time. These ideas aren’t part of the real world, but are coming from academia, so if past is prologue, their chances of viability are slim without further rifling through the pockets of taxpayers.

fossilsage says the tigers are the problem in India anyway, so why worry about heat stress in cattle.

July 1, 2015 at 5:42 pm
In India the issue is Tigers. Doesn’t much matter what kind bovine genes you try to stack up against that.

Speaking of tigers, papiertigre used the article to post a "thought" about the hot weather:

July 1, 2015 at 5:46 pm
The weather girl blew the forecast again. They called for between 105-109 for today in Sacramento. Here it is 5:42 and the thermometer hasn’t reached 100 yet.
A piddling 98 degrees. Day after day it’s the same thing. Make a forecast, predicting doom as per the prevailing political position, spectacularly fail, but never revisit the blown call.

u.k.(us) posts the same thought that enters his or her head whenever he or she visits WUWT:

July 1, 2015 at 6:47 pm
Eric Worrall says:
“It would be wrong to think that the governments of the world are solely focussed on reducing CO2.”…………
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Wrong is the wrong word, it doesn’t capture the extent of the assumed gullibility of the unwashed masses.