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New Source of Greenhouse Gases Confirmed


Claire.

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Oh great — scientists just confirmed a key new source of greenhouse gases

Countries around the world are trying to get their greenhouse gas emissions under control — to see them inch down, percentage point by percentage point, from where they stood earlier in the century. If everybody gets on board, and shaves off enough of those percentage points, we just might be able to get on a trajectory to keep the world from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius above the temperature where it stood prior to industrialization.

But if a new study is correct, there’s a big problem: There might be more greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere than we thought. That would mean an even larger need to cut. The new paper, slated to be published next week in BioScience, confirms a  significant volume of greenhouse gas emissions coming from a little-considered place: Man-made reservoirs, held behind some 1 million dams around the world and created for the purposes of electricity generation, irrigation, and other human needs.

Read more: The Washington Post

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13 hours ago, Clair said:

Oh great — scientists just confirmed a key new source of greenhouse gases

Countries around the world are trying to get their greenhouse gas emissions under control — to see them inch down, percentage point by percentage point, from where they stood earlier in the century. If everybody gets on board, and shaves off enough of those percentage points, we just might be able to get on a trajectory to keep the world from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius above the temperature where it stood prior to industrialization.

But if a new study is correct, there’s a big problem: There might be more greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere than we thought. That would mean an even larger need to cut. The new paper, slated to be published next week in BioScience, confirms a  significant volume of greenhouse gas emissions coming from a little-considered place: Man-made reservoirs, held behind some 1 million dams around the world and created for the purposes of electricity generation, irrigation, and other human needs.

Read more: The Washington Post

This should come as no surprise.  Those of us who fish or boat in man-made reservoirs are familiar with methane bubbling up from deposits of dead leaves on the bottom.  Researchers have long been studying Arctic lakes for this; it is only expected that they would get around to reservoirs sooner or later.

AND:  had these reservoirs never been built, those leaves would have fallen on land and decayed into CO2 decades ago.  This source may not yield a net gain in CO2 emissions in the long run.  Some serious research on the carbon balance of these deposits is needed before we panic.

Doug

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