A team of German scientists have determined that plants produce massive amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that is believed to be second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on global temperatures:

They produce about 10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. …

“Significant methane emissions from both intact plants and detached leaves were observed … in the laboratory and in the field,” Dr Frank Keppler and his team said in a report in the journal Nature.

Methane, which is produced by city rubbish dumps, coal mining, flatulent animals, rice cultivation and peat bogs, is one of the most potent greenhouse gases in terms of its ability to trap heat.

Concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere have almost tripled in the last 150 years. About 600 million tonnes worldwide are produced annually.

The scientists said their finding is important for understanding the link between global warming and a rise in greenhouse gases.

So even as European countries consistently fail to meet their commitments for cutting carbon dioxide, plants are making certain we keep having warm winters in America. But wait, there’s more!

Keppler and his colleagues discovered that living plants emit 10 to 100 times more methane than dead plants.

Scientists had previously thought that plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen.

Q: What has changed in the last 150 years? A: America has been becoming more green! Yep, the Indians must have known what they were doing when they burned land to clear it for farming.

The answer to stopping global warming is obvious — cut down the rain forests and do more strip mining!