Posted on 01/11/2006 8:22:53 PM PST by Serious Capitalist
Scientists find plants cause global warming 12 January 2006
LONDON: 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 per cent 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 per cent 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.
LMAOROF!!!!
Cow farts, too. Save the planet, eat a hamburger.
Ronald Reagan knew this 25 years ago.
Reagan was right when he said trees cause pollution.
I shot my philodendren this afternoon.
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So much for saving the rainforest. What will Sting do now??? |
We need to destroy the rain forests in Brazil.
"There will be a lively scramble among researchers for government grants to find answers to these and other questions."
Clearly, plants must be eliminated.
I am not an environmentalist by any means, but while this is true, it is also true that the rainforests are important in helping limit the emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere. Without the rainforests, global warming, if not just a natural cycle (or even if it is), could be more enhanced than with the trees.
Bet ya didn't kill it w/one shot ... heh heh heh...
He said not only because meat is bad for you but the raising of cattle is bad for the planet what with cow flatulence in the Ozone and the clearing of plains for the raising of cattle.
"What are you doing to help the environment?"
"I'm eating the cows......
but I'm only one man."
-Ron White
Dyslexic envirowackos confuse break wind with windbreak.
This is too funny!
There are two reasons the liberals are responsible for this:
1. They are all vegetables--at least their intellect only rises that high.
2. They all create huge amounts of methane every time they oopen their mouths to say "...I think..." that is their intellectual flatuence. Or to paraphrase the Reverend Jesse, : "..I have a brain, it makes methane."
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