Written by: Beck
The ultimate Catch-22 for environmentalists:
acid rain combats global warming. Yeah, you read that right.
Acid rain is the result of industrial pollution, which causes rainwater to carry small quantities of acidic compounds such as sulfuric and nitric acid...
Methane is thought to account for 22 percent of the human-enhanced greenhouse effect. And microbes in wetland areas are its biggest producers. They feed off substrates such as hydrogen and acetate in peat and emit methane into the atmosphere.
Global warming itself will only fuel the production of methane as heating up the microbes causes them to produce even more methane. But the new model suggests that sulfur pollution from industry mitigates this.
This is because sulfur-eating bacteria also found in wetland regions outcompete the methane-emitting microbes for substrates. Experiments have shown that sulfur deposits can reduce methane production in small regions by up to 30 per cent by activating the sulfur-eating bacteria.
So raise your voices and spread the world: We The People demand more acid rain now! Yank the sulfur scrubbers out of those smokestacks pronto before any more harm is done! Do it...
for the children!