Don’t Laugh at Laughing Gas
Tuesday, 19. February 2008, 15:10:27
Nitrous oxide (N2O) - maybe better known as laughing gas - is 310 times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide (CO2). Nitrous oxide is mainly emitted by farmed soil and intensified by fertilisers, because fertilisers feed bacteria in the soils that produce nitrous oxide. It accounts for 9 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. Agriculture accounts for around 70 per cent of N2O emissions. Wastewater treatment where the greenhouse gas is produced from micro-organisms is another significant biological source of N2O. Nitrous oxide’s longevity in the atmosphere provides a potentially more damaging legacy than CO2.
Launched on Friday 22 February 2008 farmers, food suppliers, policy-makers, business leaders and environmentalists are joining forces to confront the threat of the ‘forgotten greenhouse gas’ by taking part in an influential new forum called the Nitrous Oxide Focus Group at the British University of East Anglia (UEA).
Atmospheric concentrations of nitrous oxide are rising by about 0.25 percent every year. It is one of six greenhouse gases controlled by the UN's Kyoto Protocol. Scientists needed a better understanding of enzymes and bacteria in the soil that generate nitrous oxide when they feed on fertilisers.
The launch of the new Nitrous Oxide Focus Group is accompanied with publishing of new research on an N2O-generating enzyme from a widespread soil bacterium: ‘Defining the proton entry point in the bacterial respiratory nitric oxide reductase’ by Flock et al. in the Journal of Biological Chemistry on 15 February 2008. (Originally published In Press as doi:10.1074/jbc.M704615200 on 3 December 2007)
• http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/47005/story.htm
• http://www.physorg.com/news122550641.html
• http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/nitrous_oxide_forgotten_greenhouse_gas_no_laughing_matter
• http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/abstract/283/7/3839
Launched on Friday 22 February 2008 farmers, food suppliers, policy-makers, business leaders and environmentalists are joining forces to confront the threat of the ‘forgotten greenhouse gas’ by taking part in an influential new forum called the Nitrous Oxide Focus Group at the British University of East Anglia (UEA).
Atmospheric concentrations of nitrous oxide are rising by about 0.25 percent every year. It is one of six greenhouse gases controlled by the UN's Kyoto Protocol. Scientists needed a better understanding of enzymes and bacteria in the soil that generate nitrous oxide when they feed on fertilisers.
The launch of the new Nitrous Oxide Focus Group is accompanied with publishing of new research on an N2O-generating enzyme from a widespread soil bacterium: ‘Defining the proton entry point in the bacterial respiratory nitric oxide reductase’ by Flock et al. in the Journal of Biological Chemistry on 15 February 2008. (Originally published In Press as doi:10.1074/jbc.M704615200 on 3 December 2007)
• http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/47005/story.htm
• http://www.physorg.com/news122550641.html
• http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/nitrous_oxide_forgotten_greenhouse_gas_no_laughing_matter
• http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/abstract/283/7/3839
