morganism
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Plants making methane !
didn't know this, and fungi too...
http://m.phys.org/news/2014-06-methane-source-greenhouse-gas...
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Texium
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That can't be good! Unless it could somehow be harnessed, although that would be quite doubtful, and probably not very helpful.
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Tsjerk
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Why can't this be good? Organisms have been doing this since the beginning of live. They just discus the mechanism by which it may happen.
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Zyklon-A
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Well methane is a greenhouse gas. Thus potential global warming increase. That's my guess of why zts16 said it can't be good.
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Brain&Force
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It depends on the abundance of the plants in question: cattle, for instance, are a major contributor to global warming because they're EVERYWHERE. A
lot of the problem isn't the methane itself, it's the eventual oxidation to carbon dioxide.
At the end of the day, simulating atoms doesn't beat working with the real things...
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Texium
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Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html
And yes, cattle are definitely a lot more worrisome than the plants are. I was just kinda joking about that. And their manure is too, particularly
when not managed properly.
[Edited on 6-28-2014 by zts16]
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HeYBrO
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[rquote=336099&tid=31023&author=Brain&Force A lot of the problem isn't the methane itself, it's the eventual oxidation to carbon
dioxide.[/rquote]
methane is ~20 times more potent as greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide which mega sucks. And if that is not scary enough
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_release]check this out[/url]. it'll just be adding fuel to the fire that is climate change...
EDIT: had to turn off bbcode to avoid this:
[Edited on 30-6-2014 by HeYBrO]
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Tsjerk
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Just to put into perspective; without greenhouse gasses earth's average temperature would be well below zero. Water is actually by far the most
important greenhouse gas.
Anything that absorbs infra red is a greenhouse gas.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
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HeYBrO
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Indeed a greenhouse effect is essential to life on earth; however, we are facing the enhanced greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic
greenhouse gases. Anyway, before this becomes a huge off topic debate, the original post is quite interesting.
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