Surprise! We thought trees emitted methane, but instead they absorb it… (What else don’t we know?)
Karri Forest, Western Australia
By Jo Nova
Quick! Set up a trillion dollar market and figure out the science later
We got it wrong for so long
Methane is supposedly 80 times more powerful as CO2 over the short term, and we are already feeding our cows seaweed and dubious additives like Bovaer® to reduce it, and we’re trying to make steaks in labs, and create burgers out of crickets. But it turns out, the experts were wrong, yet again, and trees are absorbing more methane than they emit. So just like that, there is a major new sink to remove methane from the air, and it’s been there all the time.
The funny thing is that for years everyone was measuring the air at the bottom of the tree trunk and finding methane emissions, but when Vincent Gauci et al measured 1 – 2 metres further up the tree, not only did the methane emissions shrink to nothing, the gas started to disappear from the air around the trunk. Apparently bacteria under the bark were dining on the methane.
The team looked at trees in Brazil, Panama, United Kingdom and Sweden and estimate that all the worlds trees might already be absorbing as much as 50 million tons of methane, about as much as” is coming out of all the worlds landfill sites”, or roughly equivalent to half the worlds cows.
Scientists got this wrong, every way they could
https://joannenova.com.au/2024/12/surprise-we-thought-trees-emitted-methane-but-instead-they-absorb-it-what-else-dont-we-know/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=surprise-we-thought-trees-emitted-methane-but-instead-they-absorb-it-what-else-dont-we-know