Among the nuttier things heard from climate activists are claims that point source x, y or z emits copious methane and so we should do something about that since methane is a far more potent GHG than CO2. Rice paddies and cow belches have been cited as intolerable emitters, even though the methane attributed to them would happen even if they didn't exist. It's all just natural anaerobic decomposition of organic matter and will take place so long as bacteria still live, no matter whether they live in wetlands, animal guts or rice swamps.

It's even sillier than that. The numbers have never added up. We don't know where all the methane comes from. We recently learned that trees emit methane, something thought to be impossible, and now this.

A new pathway for methane formation in the oceans has been discovered, with significant potential for advancing our understanding of greenhouse gas production on Earth, scientists believe.

A paper on the findings published in Nature Geoscience reveals that decomposition of a phosphorus-containing compound called methylphosphonate may be responsible for an unexpected supersaturation of methane in the oceans' oxygen-rich surface waters. . .

"This remarkable discovery about methane production where we thought there was none is a harbinger of the ocean's changing biogeochemical nature," says Phillip Taylor, program director in NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences.

Land-based sources of methane production are well known (including extraction from natural gas deposits and fermentation of organic matter), but those sources did not account for the levels of methane observed in the atmosphere, says Karl.

Karl and colleagues became interested in the "methane enigma" and why the surface ocean was loaded with methane, well above levels found in the atmosphere. . .

"When people began measuring methane in the ocean, they found that methane concentrations varied with geographical location and with water depth," says Karl. "The big surprise was that near-surface concentrations were higher than in the atmosphere above--which indicated a local production of methane in the sea. Because methane is produced only in regions devoid of oxygen, and the surface ocean contains high oxygen levels, this was perplexing."

Karl was able to combine 20 years of ocean observing data at the Hawaii Ocean Time Series (HOTS) site called Station Aloha, with new technology that DeLong developed to produce methane in oxygenated/aerobic marine environments.

"This demonstrates the complementarity of different methods and approaches, including oceanography, microbial ecology and genomics techniques," says DeLong. "The growing databases of marine microbial genomic and metagenomic information have great potential to help us link which organisms, and which genes, are responsible for driving important nutrient and other cycles in the sea, such as aerobic methane generation."

Aerobic methane generation is the same mystery than delayed the discovery of methane emissions by trees. No one ever tested for it since it was thought to be impossible.

I think that such mysteries should give us pause as we contemplate various more or less nonsensical feel-good measures in response to more or less poorly understood environmental threats, including climate. We really have no idea what we are doing, no matter what the shrill activists and their potted scientists claim.