Greenhouse Gases: Who's Cheating?

(page 2 of 2)

Methane measurements reveal that some reported emissions are low compared with atmospheric levels, and that purported reductions from capturing methane at landfills are vastly overstated. The track record for estimating carbon dioxide emissions is better, says Tans, "but if emissions cost a large amount of money, I'm not sure that will be the case."

There may be a solution, researchers say: Step up efforts to measure greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, both globally and locally. In the past few years, companies such as Picarro, Los Gatos Research, and LI-COR have developed instruments capable of continuously monitoring concentrations of trace gases in the air. That saves scientists the chore of collecting samples in flasks and bringing them back to the lab for analysis. "The new instruments have been revolutionary, from a science perspective," says biologist Joe von Fischer of Colorado State University.

Von Fischer, who has no financial stake in any of the measuring equipment companies, has used such instruments to find hotspots of methane wafting from the Alaskan tundra. This is helping to address the question of whether Arctic warming will speed up such emissions. Others are monitoring methane from cows and termite mounds, spotting CO₂ plumes from rush hour traffic, or watching to see if CO₂ pumped into the ground will stay there or leak out. "There's only one way to validate what's really happening, and that's to measure it," says Doug Baer, president of Los Gatos Research in Mountain View, Calif.

Scientists' current efforts only scratch the surface of what's needed, however. NOAA's Tans figures a system of instruments capable of keeping emissions reporting honest would be more than 10 times larger than today's monitoring networks and would cost $100 million or more. Right now, that's a tough sell. "Monitoring is science's Cinderella, unloved and poorly paid," laments Nisbet.

That could change as emissions become more valuable, upping the pressure to report them more accurately. Another hopeful development occurred at the Copenhagen climate talks in December, where developing countries agreed to some international verification of their emissions cuts. Such oversight is essential to prevent greenhouse gas emissions from becoming a house of mirrors. Says Doug Rotman, program director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, "To get top-down monitoring will be a struggle, but it is really what we have to do."

With Mark Scott in London

Carey is a senior correspondent for BusinessWeek in Washington.

Business Exchange

Track and share business topics across the Web.