Plants Produce Methane

CelticCoder writes "With wide implications in the fight against global warming, Phyorg.com is reporting that plants naturally produce methane. Since methane is twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat, are efforts to fight global warming by planting forests actually harming the environment?"

Comments

Much ado about very little

[drakewyrm]

Could plants be producing that much methane? It seems to me that if they needed to look that closely to prove that plant were producing methane at all, than the levels in question would not be that significant.

I don't mean to undervalue their research; it's actually quite fascinating that plants do this. However, I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion that plants cause global warming.

Re:Much ado about very little

[Feanturi]

They say they hadn't looked at it before because it had been assumed that the presence of oxygen is supposed to mean you can't get methane, and since we know plants put out oxygen it was perceived to be a waste of time to investigate.

But I too am skeptical that this contributes to global warming. Now, IANAGWKMAP (I am not a guy who knows much about plants) but they mention in the article that carbon dioxide is worse than methane (methane is in second place) for global warming. Plants take in carbon dioxide. I wonder how much? If it's the same amount or more compared to the methane they apparently emit, then more green still means less global warming. So how much CO2 does the world's biomass remove from the atmosphere annually? Answer that question and you're done figuring out whether more plants are a problem or not.

We have a minimal understanding of nature

[jgardn]

I think this is yet another nail in the coffin of the we-are-causing-global-warming-so-stop-driving-now crowd.

We understand so little about weather and the atmosphere and global warming and our sun that to think that we even have an idea of how to reverse the process if it is happening to a significant degree, or to think that we even understand what is really causing it, is absurd.

This is the old blind men and the elephant story. One person thinks it is a spear. Another, a snake. Another, a tree. Another, a whip. Except this elephant is so large and so complicated that even with all of our eyes open and all of our technology looking into it, we still can't figure it out. One group says the earth is cooling. Another, warming. Another, it was too cold now it is coming back to normal. One group says we should stop burning fossil fuels. Another says we should stop burning fossil fuels uncleanly. Still others say that it doesn't matter how much or little CO2 we put out in the atmosphere, the earth tends to absorb it. Others say that the US is the cleanest country in the world because we allow market forces to handle the management of the environment, so we shouldn't regulate it at all but let people choose what they want to do or not do to protect it.

The weather is something beyond our understanding, so it's best that for right now, we attribute it to an Act of God. When we can understand enough about it that we can get an accurate picture and draw conclusive---and correct---results, then we can start taking responsibility for it.

Thank you sir, your check is in the mail!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I've heard that story before. Interestingly, the oil companies, during the 70s, tried a similar tactic to avoid making unleaded gas, funding various scientific studies, questioning the evidence, saying that it wasn't possible, it would destroy the economy, and otherwise spreading all manner of confusion.

The trick is to figure out who the blind folk are (Michael Crichton, famous science fiction author), any "scientific" reports written or edited by oil lobbyists, vs. the 99% of top scientists who *agree* on global warming.