Out of step?

In a paper published in Nature, scientists in Germany have reported the apparantly surprising finding that plants produce methane even when there is plenty of oxygen present, not just when they decay (see Plants revealed as methane source on the BBC website). According to this:

The possible implications are set out in Nature by David Lowe of New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, who writes: "We now have the spectre that new forests might increase greenhouse warming through methane emissions rather than decrease it by sequestering carbon dioxide."

If this turned out to be true, it would have major implications for the rules of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which allows countries and companies to offset emissions from the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil by funding the planting of new forests or the restoration of deforested areas.

Now, if I was obsessed by conspiracy theories, I would be tempted to say that this startling discovery was now going to be picked up by climate change activists to discredit the idea of "carbon sinks". Although their deep gloom about the imminent destruction of the environment by evil humans is real enough (to them), they really don't want to see any possible solutions which don't make the perpetrators suffer. Planting trees as carbon sinks is seen as an easy way out, letting big "pollutors" off the hook.

On the other hand, this shows how easy it is to think we understand what's going on. If a significant percentage of atmospheric methane is a product of normal plant growth, that makes the centrally planned dictates of the Kyoto protocol an even blunter instrument than we all thought.

Fortunately, the article ends on a note of reason:

In fact, of course, trees are neither good nor bad. They are just there, and if they are producing methane now they always have been in natural conditions.

The study highlights, however, the extreme complexity of the relationship between the biological processes of the Earth and the chemistry of our atmosphere - and how much there is yet to discover.

How true.