May 16, 2006

THEY DON'T CALL IT THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT FOR NOTHIN' (via Tom Morin):

Plants Bad for the Environment? Celebrities Causing Frogs to Croak? (Steven Milloy, January 16, 2006, www.junkscience.com)

Could it be that celebrities are planting the forests that are causing the global warming that is growing the bacteria that are wiping out the frogs?

Global warming alarmists may be compelled to consider that chain of causation this week thanks to two new studies just published in the Jan. 12 issue of the journal Nature .

In the first study, Max Planck Institute researchers reported their discovery that living plants emit into the atmosphere methane (natural gas), the third most important greenhouse gas behind water vapor and carbon dioxide.

Until this discovery, scientists thought the methane in the atmosphere was largely produced by bacterial processes not involving oxygen. But the Max Planck researchers report that living plants -- two-thirds of which are in tropical rainforest regions -- produce 10 to 30 percent of annual global methane production.

The implications of this study are stunning. Previously, it was thought that the net effect of growing plants was to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, therefore, to reduce global warming. But in the words of New Zealand climate researcher David Lowe, “We now have the specter that new forests might increase greenhouse warming through methane emissions rather than decrease it by being sinks for carbon dioxide.”

The discovery also implies that deforestation -- that is, cutting down trees -- slows methane accumulation in the atmosphere and, as a consequence, reduces global warming.

This is all bad news for the movie and rock stars -- including Leonardo DiCaprio, the Foo Fighters, Dido, and Simply Red to name a few -- who have decided to plant “All Celebrity Forests” in hopes of offsetting their personal carbon dioxide emissions in order to avoid contributing to global warming.

And the news seems to get worse for these so-called “carbon neutral” celebrities.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 16, 2006 11:36 PM
Comments

So let me get this straight. Cutting down the Brazilian rain forest was a good thing, so when the whackoes forced us to stop destroying the earth's major oxygen producing area, it was a bad thing because it accelerated global warming.

Whoa . . . and to think of all the sleep I've lost worrying whether there would be enough oxygen left for my grandchildren to breathe. Hello REM sleep tonight.

Posted by: erp at May 17, 2006 3:44 PM
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