We're off the hook!
Posted on 01/13/2006 9:26:17 AM PST by Abathar
German scientists have discovered a new source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change.
The culprits are plants.
They produce about 10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.
The scientists measured the amount of methane released by plants in controlled experiments. They found it increases with rising temperatures and exposure to sunlight.
"Significant methane emissions from both intact plants and detached leaves were observed ... in the laboratory and in the field," Dr Frank Keppler and his team said in a report in the journal Nature.
Methane, which is produced by city rubbish dumps, coal mining, flatulent animals, rice cultivation and peat bogs, is one of the most potent greenhouse gases in terms of its ability to trap heat.
Concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere have almost tripled in the last 150 years. About 600 million tonnes worldwide are produced annually.
The scientists said their finding is important for understanding the link between global warming and a rise in greenhouse gases.
It could also have implications for the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for developed countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
Keppler and his colleagues discovered that living plants emit 10 to 100 times more methane than dead plants.
Scientists had previously thought that plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen.
David Lowe, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, said the findings are startling and controversial.
"Keppler and colleagues' finding helps to account for observations from space of incredibly large plumes of methane above tropical forests," he said in a commentary on the research.
But the study also poses questions, such as how such a potentially large source of methane could have been overlooked and how plants produced it.
"There will be a lively scramble among researchers for the answers to these and other questions," Lowe added.
"There will be a lively scramble among researchers for the answers to these and other questions," Lowe added."
The scramble will be how to get the funding to prove somehow that we have casued the plants to do this as a response to something humans have done. /sarc
We must have a war on all plants, now!
Burn them all before they get us!
There is no stopping until we have complete eradication!
This is Scrappleface right...or the onion?
We're off the hook!
bump
It's that damn Clean Air Act letting in more sunlight.
But they have done it to themselves. By insisting on saving trees and planting more and more "green space" areas,the treee huggers are contributing mightily to "global warming".
The irony is delicious.
EXCELLENTE!!!!! This means I can till my yard under and pave it with green macadam so I don't have to mow anymore.
YIPPEE!!!
Of course, this could also be a hoax perpetrated by nature on the enviro-wacko Chicken Littles, too. Seems no matter what they do, they just can't find enough ways to circumvent . . . . . . . NATURE!!!!!
Vegetarian Ping
Ronald Reagan was right, trees do cause pollution. Also, in another study recently it came out that trees absorb heat and cause more global warming.
I am going to make my wife throw out all those house plants she has been growing for years.
SO, in otherwords, Deforestation will combat Global Warming. Let the paving begin!!!
It's "The [Next] Day of the Triffids"!
We've got to kill the rainforests before they kill us!
When I read this article yesterday, Reagan was who I thought of. Other then smog, trees wick a lot of water vapor into the air, which is the strongest greenhouse gas.
Tax 'em.
Well, there's also another possibility - maybe vegetarian food will become cheaper ...
Obviously, there are too many trees. Mankind has overplanted and the obsession with "greenery" is causing global warming. Vegetarians are destroying our planet!
The quickest way to end Global Warming is to pave the Amazon.
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