Alternate Title: Silent But Deadly SpringWell, we can collectively start feeling less guilty over all the CO2 we keep pumping into the atmosphere that contributes to climate change. In fact, this news may leave you laughing.
After years of pointing the finger at cows for the copious volumes of methane tooted from their derrieres (a byproduct of cellulose's long, slow trip through a ruminant digestive system), scientists have found that mussels, marine worms, freshwater snails and other aquatic invertebrates have been found to squeeze-out nitrous oxide--commonly referred to as laughing gas.
So what? Well, nitrous oxide also happens to be a little talked about greenhouse gas. Yes, that happy gas you huff at the dentists office--and that made Dennis Hopper so creepy in Blue Velvet--behaves just like its more familiar gassy cousin CO2 in the ability to trap heat in the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide emissions are known to come from agricultural and industrial activities, as well as during combustion of fossil fuels and solid waste. But this recent research by scientists at the Max Planck Institut and Denmark's Aarhus University uncovers a previously unidentified though potentially massive source.
As it turns out, benthic invertebrates apparently emit nitrous oxide farts when nitrate is present in the water. And where does the nitrate come from? Well, here is where we should start feeling guilty again. Increased use of nitrate-rich fertilizers on land for agriculture and landscaping means that higher levels of nitrates are being washed from the soil into rivers, lakes, and aquifers. These nitrates can also concentrate in coastal waters as well.
As nitrate pollution continues to rise, so too will nitrous oxide production--further adding to greenhouse gas loading of the atmosphere. I bet Al Gore didn't factor invertebrate farts into An Inconvenient Truth. If there is an upside to this, I suppose at least we'll all have smiles on our faces as we bear witness to our warming Earth.
3 comments:
I had laughing gas once. I had to get some dental procedure done, and at one point it involved cauterizing some portion of my mouth. I tell ya, that was funny. Nothing like laughing at the smell of your own burning flesh. They had to stop and calm me down so I wasn't moving so much...
Hmm, if you think laughing gas is funny you should first ask David after the dentist. :)
I always knew the mussels were up to no good. No class whatsoever. You'd never catch a scallop farting out global warming, no sirree.
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