What’s your guess?
Rivers may be a significant source of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, scientists now find.
Their calculation suggests that across the globe the waterways contribute three times the amount of nitrous oxide to the atmosphere as had been estimated by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations scientific body charged with reviewing climate change research.
They found that the amount of nitrous oxide produced in streams is related to human activities that release nitrogen into the environment, such as fertilizer use and sewage discharges.
“Human activities, including fossil fuel combustion and intensive agriculture, have increased the availability of nitrogen in the environment,” said Jake Beaulieu of the University of Notre Dame and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati, Ohio, and lead author of the paper published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Well, you know, I can kinda go with some of this. So, what’s your solution, alarmists? Stop growing food? Go back to “all natural,” which produces a fraction of the amount as modern methods? Of curse, there is a bit of a problem with what they are pushing, namely, that nature has always produced copious amounts of nitrous oxide, in the atmosphere, the oceans, and the soil.
There there is that word “suggests,” a word that scientists constantly use in science….wait, they don’t? It’s used more in government and psychology, and other soft disciplines. Actual science is about hard facts. Like surveying a whopping 72 streams in the US, then making a huge pronouncement.
