Leña al fuego

En un reciente artículo en la revista Nature, un grupo de científicos europeos ha descubierto que las plantas producen metano en condiciones normales. ¿Y qué? Pues resulta que el metano es uno de los principales gases del llamado efecto invernadero. Esta "fuente de metano" todavía no se había tenido en cuenta en los modelos de cambio climático y ha levantado olas de pesimismo entre los expertos, ya que: si las plantas emiten metano, y estas emisiones aumentan con la temperatura, el cambio climático actual se incrementará con un bucle de realimentación imposible de parar.
La editorial de la revista Nature no es muy alentadora:

«It is too early to say exactly how the revelation might influence predictions for future climate change, but it's unlikely to be good news. The fact that plant methane emissions rise with temperature, and that plants are likely to grow faster in a warmer climate anyway, could lead to a big rise in methane emissions from natural sources, says Johannes Lelieveld, an atmospheric researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany.
The finding also restricts our options for reducing methane emissions, he points out, because measures such as growing rice in drier fields are likely to prove less effective than had been thought. "If natural greenhouse-gas sources are greater than we thought, the scope for climate politics becomes narrower," he says. "You wouldn't cut down forests just because trees release methane."»

Ver además:
- Global change: A green source of surprise (Nature)
- Sceptics forced into climate climb-down (New Scientist)
- Guide to facts and fictions about climate change (The Royal Society)
- Las plantas producen metano (BBC Ciencia)