Will Farrell to earth

[911teo]

I hope this has not been posted before.. If it has I apologize.

I thought it was one of the funniest videos I have seen recently

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/002648.html

[kach22i]

I've not seen that one before, seen the one where a horse scares him - funny.

Hows this for odd?

Plants adding to global warming, study says
Warmer temperatures could boost methane production

`Finding is pretty astonishing,' U of T botany prof says
Jan. 12, 2006. 01:00 AM
PETER GORRIE
FEATURE WRITER


Could living plants be contributing to climate change?

Yes, say scientists from a prestigious German research institute. But if that's so, they say, it's likely only because humans are pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

For the first time, scientists have found that living plants emit large quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, says an article published today in the science journal Nature.

"The finding is pretty astonishing," says Malcolm Campbell, an associate professor of botany at the University of Toronto. "It's almost one of those findings that you wish wasn't true."

While the study generates far more questions than it answers, it raises the possibility that climate change will feed upon itself: If warmer temperatures, higher concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, or other changes boost plants' methane production that, in turn, would speed up the cycle.

Carbon dioxide is the most common of the gases that trap the sun's heat in the atmosphere, but the "greenhouse" effect of methane is 25 times stronger, Campbell says.

"Wouldn't it be horrible if higher carbon dioxide levels actually contributed to higher methane levels. Then you'd get a really big snowball effect."

It has long been known that dead plants — in places such as bogs, where there is no oxygen — generate methane as they decompose. But it was assumed none came from living plants, even though satellites have observed large methane clouds over tropical rainforests.

But in the new study, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg found live plants do emit the gas, even in normal, oxygen-rich surroundings.

The scientists' "first guesses" are that these plants produce 60 to 240 million tonnes of methane a year, or up to 30 per cent of the world's total emissions.

The main sources come from man-made activities — such as decaying garbage, flatulent cattle, decomposing matter in rice paddies, and mining operations. These have doubled methane concentrations in the atmosphere over the past 200 years.

Since living plants have covered the Earth for millennia, until now, they've amounted to a constant background.

However, the man-made emissions could be creating conditions in which these plants generate more methane, Campbell says.

The researchers found that living plants emit 10 to 1,000 times more methane than dead material.

But they acknowledge they don't know how or why live plants produce the gas, or — apart from observing a "drastic" increase with more sunlight — what might cause that production to go up or down.

They "assume that there is an unknown, hidden reaction mechanism, which current knowledge about plants cannot explain — in other words, a new area of research for biochemistry and plant physiology," states a summary of the study.

We have a 200-year record of the man-made sources of methane, but not of emissions from plants, Campbell says.

Experiments will be needed to determine the impacts of temperature, greenhouse gas concentrations and other variables such as fertilizers and water.

[kang]

This is good too:
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/002644.html