I have my doubts about the science of this article.
It is a good example of why peer reviewed science journals are important.

Without peer review and verifiation all types of goofy ideas get passed around. Many people can not tell the differance between quakery and real science.

Sometimes people have the best intentions, but miss important points.

Rice Farming and Cattle are known to be the predominate CH4 sources. It is going to be tought enought to get people to give up rice and hamburgers.

Each time some person screams, fill in the blank, is causing global warming they devalue the whole issue. This McCully is just trying to drum up publicity for his group.

On www.IRN.org, (International Rivers Network), I gleaned the following:

" Large dams may be one of the single most important contributors to global warming, releasing 104 million metric tonnes of methane each year. This estimate was recently published in a peer-reviewed journal by Ivan Lima and colleagues from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE)."

Note the phrase 'published in a PEER-REVIEWED journal'. It must be true, A., or are some peer reviewed journals more equal than other peer reviewed journals?

Probably should have put a plug in for the IPCC too.

With hundreds of experts reviewing and critiquing the subject, claims about dams producing more CH4 than the original body of water would be checked and rechecked several times to be sure it was correct before publication.

This is why we can be sure that Global Warming is ocuring due to greenhouse gases and what their primary sources are.

The United States would not have signed off on the IPCC report if there was doubt or if the confidence in the finding had been overstated.

Think about it!

Who really believes in conspiracy theories and besides the Kyoto protocal was never signed by the US and will expire anyways in 2012. China is already the largest greenhouse gas emitter and will not be able to claim that they are a developing nation for much longer.

Andrew, you left out huge methane production from living TROPICAL RAINFORESTS but gee that doesn't fit the agenda nor the orthodxy does it?

I'm a DENIER

How could the science support GW when it has no clear understanding of the system as a whole or really of solar output/variances?

Between burning mines in China, dams in China, and moose in Norway - it sounds like any efforts the US makes to reduce CO2 emissions would be lost in the noise.

I read an article last night which projected the US population at over 400 million in 2050 due to immigration. Guess what that is going to do to GHG emissions Mark....

How come literally everything these days, weather related or not (especially catastrophe's) are caused by global warming? And since these things, such as dams, in this story, have been around long before the global warming hoax has been unleashed on us and it's only started to affect weather now? Not just affecting, but bringing us to the end of the world, according to these guys? And none of the lemmings that follow people, like the author of this article, will stand up and question it. It is a religion and more blindly followed than any organized one to date. Let's just say it. That everything affects everything and it's nature!!! Things react to other things and it's been like that since the beginning of time and will until then end of time. And that all this global warming hooplah and hysterics might actually have an adverse effect on the environment. Has any of these geniuses contemplated that? Probably not.

you know with everything surrounding the matter of "global warming" why not just say everything causes it- i get tired of hearing about ridiculous stuff that causes it or results fromt it- but ask yourselfs these things- what about several houndreds of years back when there was no cars-or airplanes-yet there were still periods of warm temperatures and cold temperatures- you talk about climate change- heres my idea of climate change- winter,spring,summer, and fall. also- what i wanted to point out- quite to the contrary- and i can quote this from one of accuweathers own meteorlogists- i asked them what if any kind of coorelation there is to global warming- and tornados- he said and i quote "there is none- and that the fact of the matter is that there are more storm spotters now then say 5,10, 20 years ago" it was something around those lines

Noise indeed. Don't forget Russia, India, Indonesia, Brazil, and others. So while some idiots here in the US and Europe push for wealth redistribution via carbon credits and more taxes the rest of the world continues to pollute endangering 1/4 of all humans. What to do? Do we Nuke them into submission?

Curious how solar irradiance has increased by .05% each decade for the last three decades and it is being dismissed as a cause for GW. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html

That is a .15% increase over thirty years. This may seem insignificant but when you realize that is just over 2 Watts per meter squared every second, one sees tat it is quite significant. There are 254 billion square meters facing the sun at all times. That's an extra 43 quadrillion watts per day. To think that is insignificant is folly.

We have seen temps go up and down at least one degree over the last 10,000 years with CO2 levels steady at 280 ppm and we have seen temps drop by 1 degree or more when Sunspot activity was very low. Which seems to be a better correlation?

I'm not a scientist,but the dam does not make the dead fish or vegetation give off more or less gas. It will give off the gas regardless of the dam. So why does it matter whether it is quick or slow ? This is called junk science!

Hydroelectric dams were never a low emission alternative and should never be thought of as clean, green or environmentally friendly. All that reinforced concrete in construction and pond life will always emit tonnes of gas.

Once a valley is flooded, all the life dry land once supported dies and will decay underwater, this sometimes means entire forests.

The dam changes the way the region deals with decaying vegetation. No longer able to incorporate co2 into soils, soil bound nutrients are washed along with composting surface vegetation and swept by wind and rain into the catchments where it drowns in the man made lake.'

The dam becomes a methane emitter.

Built for just one purpose, evaporation loss is huge along with silt build-up which within a few years reduces the storage capacity and economic viability of maintaining the structure. In times of drought generating ability is reduced and other more polluting methods of obtaining base loads are employed.

Locally generating capacity from our largest HD was down to 10% due to drought but strangely sales of green electricity were not affected and there was no interruption in power supply.

Longterm Drought takes funds away from maintenance programs of HD which will allow the structure to decay until at the end of its working, 70/80 years, life the dam is drained leaving a scar in a mountainous area bereft of top soil that can never be restored.

Massive projects to harness the melt water from Himalayan glaciers are underway from China through to the rainforests of Burma, to drive manufacturing not to reduce emissions. Under Burmese military rule the power generated will not even benefit the Burmese; they are being pushed out of the valleys so that the new energy resource can be sold off to neighbouring countries.

a .15% increase over thirty years.

NGW Steve

The temperature at the earth's surface is about 480K. Heat on the surface is entirely due to solar radiation. Without the sun we would be close to 0K.

A 0.15% increase at 480K == 0.72K, which is greater than the temperature increase which IPCC claims for the last thirty years. I am at a loss to understand why so many AGW proponents are dismissive of changes in solar radiation as a cause of warming.

I've been camping in Canyonlands in the summer when differences in solar radiation between day and night have caused a 70F variance in temperatures over a period of just 12 hours.

Warning - Random and off-topic

I saw a cool sci-fi flick last month called "Sunshine 2007." The theme was a space mission to reignite a dying sun which was making temperatures very cold on earth. Lots of great imagery of the sun. Sort of a cross between 2001 and Alien.

And there are 6.6 Billion humans adding methane to the climatic system daily. Seems as if anything and everything is being identified a cause of Global Warming....30 years ago the fear was the next Ice Age. The world has experienced many periods of both warming and cooling without the benefit of our current technologies, and I suspect it will continue to vacilate between warming and cooling until 30th Century archiologist are sifting the remains of the 21st Century inhabitants to develop insights as to just what went on in the 21st Century.