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Reducing Methane
11/12/2002
Listen in RealAudio 
Methane is second only to carbon dioxide in its contribution to global climate change. Hi,
I'm Bryan Yeaton and in today's installment of our global climate change series Margaret
Landsman reports on ways to reduce methane emissions in the atmosphere.
Since the industrial revolution concentrations of methane have been increasing at a rapid
pace. It's really efficient at trapping heat in our atmosphere, more than 20 times better
than CO2. Scientist Patrick Crill, who's director of the Institute for Earth, Oceans and
Space at the University of New Hampshire, says there's hope.
PC: I think that it is amenable to mitigation.
Why? Crill says that it's cost efficient to industries to reduce methane emissions. Rice
cultivation is one example. When the organic matter decomposes in flooded rice paddies,
methane is released. It accounts for 17 percent of the gas attributed to human activities.
New methods of growing rice mean less methane and more rice.
PC: The old-fashioned way of growing rice was in flooded environments so that the fields were
flooded through most of the period of growth and production. Whereas now, they're managing
irrigation much more efficiently. You only irrigate at certain times during the life cycle of
the plant and you can still have very high grain yields, and at the same time, manage those
reduced emissions to the atmosphere.
There are also projects to make energy by capturing methane from coal mines and landfills.
There's research on changing the diet of cows from releasing methane into the atmosphere from
their digestion. Crill says that methane reduction is easier to tackle in the short run than
CO2.
In Concord, New Hampshire, I'm Margaret Landsman.
Our series on Global Climate Change is supported by The New England Science Center
Collaborative and the Roy A. Hunt Foundation.
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