Posted on 02/20/2005 9:45:38 AM PST by Libloather
Do cows and tennis balls boost global warming?
February 21, 2005
Cows and sheep grazing in fields, joggers' shoes or even refrigerators could all be targeted under a new United Nations pact meant to rein in global warming.
The Kyoto protocol, which came into force last week, is an attempt to put the brakes on a build-up of heat-trapping gases that many scientists fear will trigger more heat waves, droughts and floods and could raise global sea levels by almost a meter by 2100.
And tennis balls may be an infinitesimal part of the problem.
Kyoto focuses on cutting carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars that are widely blamed as the biggest contributor to nudging up world temperatures.
The 141-nation Kyoto pact, weakened by a United States pullout in 2001, will also seek to limit a cocktail of five less common gases found everywhere, from cows' stomachs to aluminum smelters and from car tires to household refrigerators.
``There's been much less attention to these other gases even though some of them are very powerful in their greenhouse gas effect,'' said Bo Kjellen, a former Swedish climate negotiator now at the British Tyndall Centre environmental think tank. ``A major problem has been that it's more difficult to calculate their effect on the climate. There will have to be much more focus on these gases in coming years.''
One of the gases, sulfur hexafluoride, is estimated to be 23,900 times more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, according to the United Nations climate change panel.
Hexafluoride is used to give bounce to some sports shoes, tennis balls or car tires.
The European Union has draft legislation to outlaw some of the gases, forcing the industrial sector to make upgrades costing hundreds of millions of euros.
``Most countries are not doing enough to control these gases,'' said Mahi Sideridou of the Greenpeace environmental lobby in Brussels, saying that the EU plans are a lowest common denominator.
Outside the EU, many countries have no legislation on many of the gases, viewing them as harmless or the best available.
Under Kyoto, developed countries will have to cut their overall emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.
US President George W Bush withdrew in 2001, saying Kyoto was too costly and wrongly excluded developing countries from the first round of targets. Bush doubts whether scientists know enough about the climate to warrant Kyoto-style caps.
In 2001, carbon dioxide accounted for 83.6 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions from human sources, followed by methane at 8.7 percent and nitrous oxide at 6.1 percent, according to official US figures.
The other gases - sulfur hexafluoride, perfluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons (HFC) - made up the remaining 1.6 percent.
Concentrations of some of the trace gases, albeit tiny, are rising.
Methane concentrations have risen by about 150 percent since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.
Farmers worried about global warming may have to get used to phrases like ``manure management'' and ``enteric fermentation'' - the latter referring to how methane is produced in the stomachs of livestock like cows and goats and expelled.
Changes in diet or in fertilizer use can help cut livestock emissions. Methane is also released from sources such as rice farming, rotting vegetation and coal mines.
Kjellen said the non-carbon dioxide gases would become more important in coming years when backers of Kyoto seek to encourage developing countries, where energy use is less intensive and agriculture more important, to sign up from 2012.
``Some of the main problems relating to methane are linked to the developing countries - rice fields in India, cattle and so on,'' he said.
Some developed countries have big farming sectors.
Methane from livestock is the biggest source of greenhouse gases in New Zealand, where 49.2 percent came from agriculture in 2002, more than from energy.
The world is sharply divided about how to axe some of the non-carbon dioxide gases.
Some, including those used in refrigerants, were introduced as substitutes for gases that were banned after they were found to be destroying the ozone layer, which helps shield the planet from damaging solar radiation.
The EU, for instance, wants to phase out use of HFC 134a, the refrigerant universally used in car air conditioners. The United States, for instance, does not favor some of the HFC substitutes because they are flammable.
BTTT!!!!!!
i think we should all print out a copy ofthatstory fro ma couple of months ago that said the biggest polluter in washinton state for last year was mt saint helens it released twice as much pollution as every single industry in the state combined
Methane and CO2 also come from all the rotting vegetation in all those protected national forests.
CO2 is also released from every fermented beverage (beer, wine, champagne, etc.) and also from baking breads using yeast.
Methane and CO2 are also released by the waste products of humans.
We just need to kill every living thing on the planet, stop all brewing and fermentation and bread baking and the problem will go away.
Environmentalists hooted when Ronald Reagan claimed — wrongly — that trees produce more pollution than cars. But right now, the biggest single source of air pollution in Washington isn't a power plant, pulp mill or anything else created by man.
It's a volcano.
Since Mount St. Helens started erupting in early October, it has been pumping out between 50 and 250 tons a day of sulfur dioxide, the lung-stinging gas that causes acid rain and contributes to haze.
Those emissions are so high that if the volcano was a new factory, it probably couldn't get a permit to operate, said Clint Bowman, an atmospheric physicist for the Washington Department of Ecology.
All of the state's industries combined produce about 120 tons a day of the noxious gas.
The volcano has even pulled ahead of the coal-fired power plant near Centralia that is normally the state's top air polluter. In the mid-1990s, when the facility's emission rate was about 200 tons a day, regulators pressed for $250 million in pollution controls to bring it down to today's level of 27 tons.
Government doesn't wield much power over a volcano, though.
"You can't put a cork in it," said Greg Nothstein, of the Washington Energy Policy Office.
Because the area around St. Helens is so sparsely populated, officials say they haven't heard complaints about respiratory problems linked to the emissions. But if the volcano were right next to Seattle or Portland, some of the most sensitive residents would probably feel the effects, said Bob Elliott, executive director of the Southwest Clean Air Agency in Vancouver.
"We are very fortunate, in terms of the impact on human health, that Mount St. Helens is pretty remote."
Italy's Mount Etna can produce 100 times more sulfur dioxide than Mount St. Helens — and sits in the middle of a heavily populated area. The volcano spawns acid rain and a type of bluish smog that volcanologists call vog, which can affect large swaths of Europe, said Terry Gerlach, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist who studies volcanic gases.
Kilauea Volcano on Hawaii's Big Island churns out 2,000 tons a day of sulfur dioxide when it's erupting, creating an acid fog that damages local crops. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines blew out so much of the gas that the resulting haze spread around the globe and lowered average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere by nearly one degree.
Some localized impacts are probably occurring on a much smaller scale near St. Helens' crater, Gerlach said.
"If you were to go and collect rainwater just downwind of the volcano, I suspect you would see some acid rain."
Worldwide, sulfur dioxide emissions from volcanoes add up to about 15 million tons a year, compared to the 200 million tons produced by power plants and other human activities.
While the fraction due to volcanoes is small, it can have an impact, Gerlach said.
"You can't call it trivial, compared with human activity."
Volcanic gases bubble out of magma as it rises to the surface, and the amount and type of emissions depend on the chemical makeup of the molten rock. In addition to sulfur dioxide, volcanoes also release smaller amounts of other noxious gases, including hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen chloride.
And they churn out large quantities of carbon dioxide. Though not considered an air pollutant, carbon dioxide is the so-called greenhouse gas that's primarily blamed for global warming.
Compared to man-made sources, though, volcanoes' contribution to climate change is minuscule, Gerlach said.
Mount St. Helens produces between 500 and 1,000 tons a day of carbon dioxide, he estimates.
Nothstein, of the state energy office, says the Centralia coal plant puts out about 28,000 tons a day. Statewide, automobiles, industries, and residential and business heating systems emit nearly 10 times that amount.
On a global scale, the difference is even more dramatic, said Gerlach, who often gets calls from power-plant operators and oil-company executives who believe nature is just as responsible for global warming as man. His answer always disappoints them.
"I tell them the amounts don't even come close and I usually never hear from them again."
Worldwide, people and their activities pump 26 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, he said. The total from volcanoes is about 200 million tons a year — or less than 1 percent of the man-made emissions.
The irony of being surpassed by a volcano on the state's pollution source list hasn't escaped the folks at the Centralia power plant, owned by the Canadian firm TransAlta.
"I hope they're going to call Mother Nature and have her put some scrubbers on there," joked company spokesman Richard DeBolt.
In a way, that will happen, said Bowman, the Ecology Department atmospheric scientist.
As wet winter storms sweep through the area, the rainwater acts as a natural scrubber, washing the sulfur dioxide from the air.
And once the volcano stops erupting, the gas emissions will vaporize — but geologists say the current lava flows could continue for months, or even years.
Here's a link for a plethora of Common Sense articles on C02 etc.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/climatechange.html
If cows start playing tennis, we're really in trouble!!!
No, we stop eating beef, that's what.
Wait a minute... I thought greenhouse gasses were supposed to paradoxically make the temperature go UP!
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