Experts (IPCC) Target Rice As Climate Culprit

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-asia/2007/may/01/050107453.html

As delegates to a climate conference here debate how to reduce greenhouse gases, one of the problems - and a possible solution - lies in the rice fields that cover much of Thailand, the rest of Asia and beyond.

Methane emissions from flooded rice paddies contribute to global warming just as coal-fired power plants, automobile exhausts and other sources do with the carbon dioxide they spew into the atmosphere.

In fact, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting this week in Bangkok concludes that rice production was a main cause of rising methane emissions in the 20th century. It calls for better controls.

"There is no other crop that is emitting such a large amount of greenhouse gases," said Reiner Wassmann, a climate change specialist at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.

<more>

[tularetom]

1. See I read that sorta different

I thought that the experts were blaming a certain incompetent lying bushco official for climate change. I'd find it hard to believe because she's so fuckin stoopid she'd have trouble changing a light bulb let alone the climate.

[NNadir]

2. Well, we could cover the rice fields with solar powered Kohl's parking lots.

That should fix things.

I have a better idea: Let's put a big tent over the rice fields, collect the methane, separate it out, burn it is a 12 megawatt power plant and consume all of the energy it produces with big websites entitled "Giant renewable energy tent produces 12 Megawatts of electricity. (Thailand)."

If we fill one natural gas tanker with this, send it through the Panama Canal and up the coast of the US as far as it will go, we could have a big headline reading "Renewable Biogas Powers Maine!"

As for the people who eat rice, they can screw off, all two or three billion of them. It's not about them, it's about renewable energy.

And here I was thinking that the main cause of climate change was the indiscriminate dumping of dangerous fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere on an annual tens of billions of tons scale.

[gravity]

3. When it comes to feeding your family and climate change

Your family always wins.