Of the many flawed things about the 1990s Kyoto Protocol, like exempting China, India and Mexico and letting France and Germany pick the target date (1), one of the biggest flaws may have slipped under the radar: recommending small dams instead of larger ones.

Granted, there wasn't a lot of science in the Kyoto agreement so it's no surprise that the information on dams was wrong also, it still shakes the faith of the public in policymakers and affirms the belief that all of them are instead engaged in the scientization of politics.


(1) 'cause right after the reunification with East Germany, Germany had a whole bunch of emissions-belching World War-II era Soviet factories they could, while France had switched to more nuclear power after that, making it easier to reach their targets.  The US, hijacked by anti-science activists, did not have clean nuclear power, environmentalists had forced American reliance on coal, so a big chunk of Kyoto had nothing to do with the environment, it was plain old economic politics.

http://news.yahoo.com/small-dams-more-dangerous-environment-large-dams-s...

http://water.oregonstate.edu/html/h2osu/201105/Kibler.pdf