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Biotech Science

Plants Produce Methane 77

Posted by samzenpus from the what's-that-smell dept.
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?"
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Plants Produce Methane More

Plants Produce Methane

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  • That is, even though methane is 20 times more potent at trapping heat, will enough of it be produced by the forests we plant to top the amount that carbon-dioxide is trapping?
    • I was at a presentation a couple of months ago where one of Environment Canada's senior climatologists made the observation that CO2 is the second most powerful greenhouse gas, and methane is the third. The most important (in terms of affecting the atmosphere's ability to retain heat) is water vapour.

      This sits well with anyone who has ever spent a winter in the Canadian prairies. Cloudy nights are "warm", say -5 degrees C, whereas clear nights are cold, like -25 degrees C.

      So we have to ban that dihydr [dhmo.org]

    • While it is true that on an absolute basis, methane is the second largest contributor to climate change, it has a very low global warming potential compared to most other GHGs. Even so, CH4 is 21 times as potent as CO2. So, if the CH4 to CO2 proportion (tons CH4 emitted:tons CO2 stored) from a tree (over its lifecycle) is greater than 1:21, then trees are part of the problem (rather than part of the solution). According to Tufts: a tree stores 671 lbs of CO2 over its lifetime (presumably, lifetime exclud

  • Nature (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Original Nature paper http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7073/fu ll/nature04420.html [nature.com]

  • Much ado about very little (Score:3, Insightful)

    by drakewyrm ( 573759 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2006 @08:33PM (#14450735) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • From the article:
      In terms of total amount of production worldwide, the scientists' first guesses are between 60 and 240 million tonnes of methane per year. That means that about 10 to 30 percent of present annual methane production comes from plants.

      10 to 30 percent is a substantial fraction. Even if they're high by a factor of two, that's 5 to 15 percent, which is still substantial.
    • 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.
      • Misc. tidbits after grepping my mind and flipping though my library:

        Plants are, afterall, what gave us an oxygenated atmosphere in the first place (well, a large part was done by their ancesotrs the blue green algae). Methane is more absorbant but less stable than CO2 (carbon dioxide is an incredibly stable molecule thermodynamically, and the methane autooxidizes). Plants produce oxygen and CO2 as well (they burn sugar they produce with photosynthesis during the day when resting at night (no sunlight)... wh
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      •   Naturally occurring or not, nothing says humanity has to survive it. You may be missing the point.

            The cause to limit Global Warming is based on the threat to survival, not simply because its "unnatural"...perhaps you'd like to try living in a wild new climate - there are plenty to practice in.

          Anyway, the question is moot. That era is now.

        • The cause to limit Global Warming is based on the threat to survival, not simply because its "unnatural"...perhaps you'd like to try living in a wild new climate - there are plenty to practice in.

          I for one can't wait to see the day of man end. I imagine my bandwidth will increase by at least a magnitude of 2, latency should drop way down, and no more peak hours. I'll never get another spam or sales call. Hell, I may never have to see another advertisement again! Microsoft will cease to be an evil c

      • so first you say that GW is "100% a natural effect of our environment" and then you say that mankind speeds it up. so i guess it isn't 100% natural then, is it?
      • Yeah, and mountains are proof that pyramids are natural occurrences.
    • I think it is telling however that this completes a cycle where water and carbon dioxide turn into oxygen and methane which when theres fire turn back into carbon dioxide and water.
  • So the add-on questions would have to be: how much methane is released by these plants, which plants are they, and how much could be cut down by removing them and planting others?
    • Try reading the article.

      In terms of total amount of production worldwide, the scientists' first guesses are between 60 and 240 million tonnes of methane per year. That means that about 10 to 30 percent of present annual methane production comes from plants.

      The largest portion of that - about two-thirds - originates from tropical areas, because that is where the most biomass is located.

      Those three sentences pretty much answer all of your questions. Given the last sentence, one can infer that all plants rele

  • What he neglects to mention... (Score:5, Funny)

    by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2006 @08:38PM (#14450753) Journal
    The summary neglects to mention that the plant studied had beans for dinner that night.

  • Plants a small piece of the pie (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shihar ( 153932 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2006 @08:40PM (#14450760)
    The biggest problem with plants is that they don't do much to get rid of CO2. They just store it for a few years and to a limited extent return it to the ground. While planting more plants is unlikely to hurt things (even if they release trace amounts of methan), they do not solve the core problem. The core problem is that we are taking massive quantities of old organic matter and burning it. When we burn organic matter that has not been in the ecosystem for millions of years, we add substantial amounts of CO2 (among other things) into the atmosphere. There are other things that add green house gases that we have absolutely no control over, like volcanoes. Throw in potential effects that the sun might be having, and plants really become only a tiny slice of the pie for good or for ill.

    Honestly, I think the solution in the long term is technological in nature. 5 billion people are on their way to consuming as much as the 1 billion biggest consumers. In a utopia, we might be able to convince the big consumers to stop consuming that those who currently consume little to carry on not consuming. We don't live in that ideal world.

    The solution is for the technologically advanced and rich nations of the world to work like hell to make the industrial revolution that the other 5 billion or so people are about to go through is cleaner then the one the Western world already had. There is no policy that can stop what is going to happen. The only hope that we have is to apply technology to mitigate and reverse the damage that has and will continue to be done.

    I am not suggesting we blast pollution into the air because it is a lost cause. I am suggesting that in addition to taking restraint steps where we can, we work our hardest to find real solutions that are compatible with first world style living and environmental concerns. The sooner we recognize that as a species we WILL consume more as time goes on and recognize that the solution is two parts technology and one part restraint, the sooner we will find solution to these very real problems.

    • The biggest problem with plants is that they don't do much to get rid of CO2. They just store it for a few years and to a limited extent return it to the ground. While planting more plants is unlikely to hurt things (even if they release trace amounts of methan), they do not solve the core problem. The core problem is that we are taking massive quantities of old organic matter and burning it. When we burn organic matter that has not been in the ecosystem for millions of years, we add substantial amounts of

  • making fun of us.

    "Those silly humans, they treat global warming by fighting fire with fire"
  • As disturbing (and academically interesting) as it is that plants help contribute to potential global warming in one way even as they relieve it to a moderate degree in another... does this really change how we deal with the warming problem that much? Practically speaking this mostly just discredits the positive role of plants in controlling CO2 emissions. The heart of the problem with our rising methane, etc. levels in the atmosphere comes from human industry and ruminant agriculture. A 10-30% methane cont
    • does this really change how we deal with the warming problem that much?

      Uhhh, I wasn't aware that we were dealing with the warming problem. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will do nothing to stop global warming. That's the nature of a greenhouse, you point light at it and it will trap the heat. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions just stablizes the rate at which the heat is trapped. It doesn't decrease that rate and it doesn't reduce the heat that has already been captured.
  • 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! (Score:1, Insightful)

      by 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 *agre

      • the 99% of top scientists who *agree* on global warming.

        Seeing as how all believers judge a scientist's worth by whether or not he agrees with global warming, you can just go ahead and claim "100% of top scientists". We really don't expect anything better out of your crowd...

        And when are the oil companies going to pay ME for writing this stuff? I've been buying their gas for years now...
        • Seeing as how all believers judge a scientist's worth by whether or not he agrees with global warming, you can just go ahead and claim "100% of top scientists". We really don't expect anything better out of your crowd

          Ok, how about we define scientists as...

          the American Association of State Climatologists
          or
          the American Meteorological Society
          or
          the American Geophysical Union
          or
          the Geological Society of London
          or
          the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
          or
          the Brazil National Academy of Science
          or
          the Canada Nati
    • The weather is something beyond our understanding, so it's best that for right now, we attribute it to an Act of God

      Hah! After your second sentence I was thinking - I bet this guy believes in intelligent design, and then whammo!
    • 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.

      And we seeing people have been telling you for years it's global warming.

      • Except you yourself haven't seen any part of the elephant. What research reports have you studied?

        Here's the parts of the elephant I haven't seen yet. Maybe you "seeing person" know the answers. Tell me, what percentage of the earth's temperatures are we measuring at any one point in time? How much of the temperature throughout earth's history do we know, and within what error range? When we talk about "average temperature" what do we really mean? The average of all measurements or the average of all temper
    • Congratulations on being the first completely stupid idiot I have spotted so far this year. I'm obviously not spending as much time on slashdot as I used to.

      Get this: there is a broad and deep consensus among the international scientific community that global warming is both real and largely responsible for the climate change we are now seeing (and which - thank God for irony - seems to have it in for the biggest atmospheric carbon emitting country in the world).

      It is only the rich US elite and a few paid l
      • You are demonstrating why ad-hominem attacks are fundamentally weak. Whether I am male or female, black, white, red, or yellow, whether I am married or single, old or young, smart or stupid, and dare I say, Democrat or Republican, is completely irrelevant to the arguments I make. You are in the business, I assume, of trying to convince others of your point of view. Try to be more persuasive.

        When you start your arguments with "My opponent is a fool", you are suddenly no longer arguing a counterpoint, and you
        • Regarding global warming - I doubt anybody has the time or inclination to bring the 25 years of painstakingly collected evidence round to your house and spoonfeed it to you. Go see for yourself. By this point anybody who *still* doesn't get it is either just not actively looking in any scientifically reputable place and getting their information only from state-sanctioned or corporate-establishment-managed sources, or else they have seen the data and are just too conceptually disabled to draw the obvious co
          • I have research the global warming issue, carefully and studiously. There are not answers to most of the questions I pose. It's sad really. They are very basic questions. I can tell you all about the fundamental theories of physics and how they work in a matter of minutes. But you cannot, in thirty minutes time, answer a single of my simple questions. Isn't that odd?

            25 years is not enough data to make any determinations, especially data collected so poorly and used so poorly.

            We are not collecting enough dat
        • Tell you what, I will give you this one thing:

          Ice carries various substances suspended in frozen bubbles and in solution. Some of those substances can be used to date the ice fairly accurately. And some of those substances are greenhouse gases like CO2. Deep cores of polar ice have revealed the concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide at various points in the past.

          Now Google for the following terms: polar ice cores CO2 OR "carbon dioxide".

          The top link:

          http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Pla n [daviesand.com]
          • Interesting. Go re-read the second and third paragraph. Here it is in layman's terms.

            We don't know whether greenhouse gasses cause global warming, are an effect of global warming, or just happen to rise and fall together. We don't know how much the greenhouse gasses actually caused the earth to warm or cool, or how much was due to changes in the orbit or changes in the sun. But we're just going to pretend that greenhouse gasses are causing it because, hey, that's what everyone else is saying and we don't w

            • 1. This is a summary not an original paper, if you want discussion of methodology and estimated accuracy & precision then go to the original sources and follow-up papers. It's in appropriate to pick holes in the methodology when you need to be reading something else entirely to get the facts on that.

              2. This is a balanced scientific report. The paragraph you pointed out just shows honest scientists doing their job. They are not attempting to explain the mechanism, only reporting the basic data in a way t
              • That's the problem: THE ACTUAL RESULT HAS NO ERROR BARS. Who's being intellectually dishonest, the scientist who fails to disclose the error in their results, or the critic who questions them? Why do you think it is that physicists can explain the mass of an electron to a very high degree of precision, when leading scientists in the environmental movement had a major shift from global cooling to warming 30 years ago? Why do you even believe people who claimed that humanity would be wiped out 20 years ago wh
                • > I'm being factual and honest. It's you who won't see the obvious facts.

                  Your asserting that doesn't actually make it true. Your paranoid remarks about the motivations of some nebulous group of scientists are subjective and lacking in any real content. Your point about error bars: the comparison with fundamental phhsics is spurious because we *need* to know the mass of the electron to an astounding degree of accuracy, but with this ice core data even an error of a few percent would hardly invalidate the
                  • What exactly is the error in their reading? You say a few percent. Then why do the numbers disagree so much with other experiments trying to find the same data? Why do we see a period where the numbers vary almost 2 degrees C? If we discovered that, and the error was assumed to be 2%, well, then something has gone terribly wrong. There is some assumption being made that is not correct and it must be discovered and replaced with a more correct assumption.

                    My comparison to the mass of an electron is that when
                    • 1. Ask the residents of New Orleans if climate change is bad.

                      2. We know that greenhouse gases will cause global warming. The question would have been how much and how fast. However we have been overtaken by events. Totally apart from the ice core data we have measurements of ocean temperature over a period of time, and we also have data on ice melting at the poles. We know the oceans are warming up. A reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which are substantially larger than anything before industrial civil
                    • 1. Ask the residents of New Orleans if climate change is bad.

                      The hurricanes weren't caused by global warming. No scientist is saying that. In fact, if I recall correctly, meteorologists said the exact opposite after the hurricanes hit.

                      We don't understand exactly how the global temperature affects the number of hurricanes produced each year and their severity. We do know that corrupt governments that waste the taxpayer's money intended to reinforce ancient levies do cause major disasters, however.

                      Concerning

                    • Why is the US hooked on oil? Because it is the only natural resource that can power the engines of economy. Can you name any other substance that is naturally occurring that when delivered to the furthest corners of the nation still deliver more energy than it cost to deliver? Only oil, coal, and a few other substances can do this, but oil is far better than the others, and far cheaper to refine to the highly energy-dense gasoline our cars use. Any country that wants to have televisions, cheap food, and the

                    • What does this have to do with my original point, which was that I can't find any real evidence of global warming, just a bunch of shoddy reporting on incomplete research articles?

                      I am not in the oil industry, but from what I can tell (ANWR) the lack of oil has more to do with the US government forbidding the extraction of newly found oil sites and less to do with there actually being less oil. In fact, I've read several articles saying that some oil sites in Louisiana have filled up again, and they are ext
                    • I dont get my information from the mass media, not without corroborating it from more reliable sources.

                      That crackpot theory about oil not being a fossil fuel smells like horseshit to me. The Russians are always at this crazy stuff. Twenty years ago you would have been all about how full of crap they were. But its the same crazy shit now that it was back then.
  • Kill all the plants! Burn the forests! Bulldoze greehouses! We have to destroy them before they kill us! Huh? What do you mean we need them to survive? Man, they're evil! Didn't you hear, they cause GLOBAL WARMING!!!1
  • "Honey, it wasn't me! I swear it was the rotodendren!"
  • The Amazon rainforest, sometimes referred to as the Lungs of the Earth, uses more oxygen than it produces. Rotting trees and plant products requires a large amount of oxygen.

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