It ain't so GREEN after all

[wdyasq]

Just the facts:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7046

Ron

[newguy]

it seems the eviromentalists are never satisfied

im positive the guy who wrote that article drives a big suv

and probbably isnt trying to cut his power consumption

[LEXX]

I find it hard to believe that the guy who wrote this understands the effect of all the other pollutants in burning oil other than CO2 and methane.  He aloso doesn't take into account the effect of all the heat pollution of an oil fired generator.  I would like to know who funded this study.

LEXX

[drdongle]

What a bunch of hog wash. I dams are problem then so is every lake, river, and ocean decaying organic matter in or out of the water is a natural process that has been going on for BILLION's of years. Some people just have to much time on their hands.

[richhagen]

His argument is that dying plants contribute more greenhouse emissions than would have been emitted by a fossil fuel plant.  He mentions nothing of the fact that if the plants were on land, they would eventually die and decomposed releasing carbon dioxide and methane there as well.  He also does not account for carbon dioxide used by plants living within the created lake.  If we followed that logic to conclusion we would kill all plants on the planet and make sure that none were planted or allowed to live in order to prevent the release of carbon dioxide and methane when they die.  The reality is that on average plants are of benefit to the atmosphere in that they consume carbon dioxide and put out oxygen, and are ultimately the source of most of our fossil fuels.  If there were no plants, we would have no oxygen being produced, and all of the carbon tied up in organic matter would slowly be released to the environment, mostly as carbon dioxide, rendering the planet unihabitable by humans.  My gosh, we had better fill in Lake Superior, think of all that methane going out into the environment.  Rich Hagen

[jomoco]

I too would like to know who funded these fernheaded studies! The tentacles of the oil cartels have so many weak minded scientist' by the throat, that it's obvious they can no longer think straight! Amazing!

jomoco

[dhagerty]

Am I on Candid Camera?  This guy doesn't pass the laugh test.

I"m new to all this alternate energy stuff, but this guy does not get through the "grep -v doof" filter.

[Tom in NH]

It would indeed be interesting to know the funding source of the research. I didn't know a significant amount of greenhouse gasses were produced in reservoirs. I think it has been a selling point for hydro to tout its renewable aspects, but I don't think anyone can make a claim it is green. The construction of reservoirs permanently alters thousands of square miles of habitat. The Moore reservoir near where I live has provided me with many enjoyable days of picnics, paddling, and camping, but when it was built in the 40's it uprooted people's homes and permanently destroyed the finest whitewater rapids on the Connecticut river. That cannot be considered green.

Concerning greenhouse gasses, I have a theory (and would like to know what others think of it) that emissions produced by processes like burning wood and methane generation from decaying plant material have little effect on the carbon composition of the atmosphere. This is because the carbon released from these processes was obtained matter that was living in the very recent past, and that matter drew its carbon out of the atmosphere recently (i.e. within the last couple hundred years). These processes represent a fairly short-term cycle of carbon transfer. In contrast, the burning of petroleum releases carbon that was removed from the atmosphere over tens or hundreds of millions of years. As we deplete the earth's oil reserves, we release all those years worth of carbon and we will have done it in just a few hundred years. That must have a vastly larger impact on total greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. --Tom

[Kevin L]

Or the sun could be just going through its normal 300 - 600 year cycle and we have not been keeping records long enough or accuratly enough to understand that the sun's output will pulsate over time.  Human's are always over estimating their grand impact to the planet without ever fully comprehending that we only occupy less then 2% of the surface, let alone the hundreds of thousands of cubing miles of atmosphere surounding our little old globe.  A solar fart will produce more energy in half a second then mankind can ever hope to convert, let alone enough to cause temperture rise.  Just my opinion.

[rotornuts]

In a sea of counterproductive B.S. meant to create confusion and uncertainty this this ranks high. My only problems with hydro stems from the disruptions to fish habitat and ecosystems associated with resevoirs, how much the levels may fluctuate, displaced area, downstream effects of modified flow rates and the blockage of fish from reaching spawning grounds. As far as the resevoir is concerned it represents a short term damaging effect that will coorect itself over time as the resevoir starts to behave as any lake does(most lakes have fluctuating levels due to spring runoff events). The downstream effects tend to be a result of poor dam engineering and operation and also a lack of appropriate consideration when planning a hydro project.

As for damning hydro and saying a fossil fueled plant would be better, my initial response is unpublishable on this board. All plants release as much or more carbon dioxide as they do oxygen fortunately they consume more carbon dioxide than they release, unfortunately most people don't know that, so it's easy to manipulate info regarding CO2 release in resivoirs by ignoring the CO2 that would have been released anyway. Next we have the issue of methane development, a consiquence of anerobic decomosition as apposed to aerobic decomposition wich would have occured on a larger scale if the area had not been flooded. Both aerobic(with oxygen) and anerobic(without oxygen) decomposition occures naturally in all plant environments above and below water in varying amounts. Up to a certain depth in the water oxygen will exist and under a pile of debris in the forest it may not, so it's safe to say that after a period of normalization the methane production of a resevoir would be similar to that of any normal lake with a seasonally fluctuating level and again the normal level of methane produced in an unflooded ecosystem is likely ignored.

I also find it convenient how it is very, very likely that only the pollutants produced at the fossil fueled plant are measured against the full accounting of the effects of hydro. Mining(especially open pit), oil and natural gas drilling and for that matter plowing a field for agricultural purposes all release both CO2 and methane. Mining, oil and gas are by far the worst offenders and that's even before you look at the refineries and pipelines which have booster stations that typically vent some gas on a constant basis. Do we forget where oil and gas and coal come from? Decomposed organic matter and for thousands of years anerobic decomposition yeilding fully or near fully decomposed matter that releases staggering amounts of carbon and methane when re-exposed to oxygen.

Anyway I'll file this b.s. along with the damaging effects of wind farms.

Fools will find this report though and scream it from the hilltops  which is unfortunate.

P.S. Climatologists have may ways of determining the earths past climate other than the written word of man. Core sampling of glaciers is one example.

[tecker]

 There's know way the amount of Carbon released by a hydro plant will equal the carbon released from a coal fired plant . He has no figures or graphs . This is a poor tech . Methane is out there and is never considered when flooding occurs but there again no graphs or references . You can bet your bottom dollar he has a grant from someone.This is the type of stuff that investment companies use to gain an audience from investors and if the payback is good the money moves from hydro to coal because coal fired startup is many times faster.

[N9WOS]

Philip M. Fearnside, the one the article is referencing,

is biased to one type of ecology.

He spends most of his research on forested areas.

If you look at the range of his articles, then it will become clear.

He loves researching rain forest!

Anything that may impede on a forest based ecosystem,

will get a bad rap from him.

He rips apart farming for hurting the environment.

(Most farmland was forest at one time.)

He rips apart managed or selective logging.

(It doesn't cause deforestation "per se" but it

shouldn't be allowed as far as he is concerned)

And he goes after hydropower.

(You have to flood precious forest land

to get that lake bed, which is a no no.)

You should be noticing a pattern forming. :-)

He is a classic definition of a tree huger.

The people on this board that burn wood,

better not let him see it, or you will be in hot water. :-0

I wonder what his take on PV power would be?

You know how much land all those PV panels will be taking up?

Land that could have trees on it..........

So PV is not environmental friendly you know!!!!!!!!  :-p

[drdongle]

Nooo PV is Baaaad it blocks the sun from the little critter on and on the ground............

[TomW]

Doc;

Yeah and lets not forget the "fact" that a PV panel and battery bank took more energy to produce then it will ever produce

Cheers.

TomW

[jomoco]

Beware my friends, when I tried to send an E-mail to the editor of that magazine regarding their ridiculous findings in their story, I found that I couldn't do so without giving them a complete list of personal information on myself before doing so. I smell something rotten about the whole set up!

jomoco

[RatOmeter]

Required info:

Name

Address

Country

Email

nothing too sinister there.  Who says you have to use your real name anyway?

[jomoco]

I thought about listing a phony name and address,but decided not to even but my toe into their polluted waters.

jomoco

[N9WOS]

The environmentalist have already been there, and done that a long time ago. Back when I was a little runt, I was keeping track of a particular project that I was fascinated with.

I have forgotten the name of the company, and the environmental organization, long ago, but I remember what happened.

The company was going to go into solar power in an industrial scale. They was going to go with a mix of PV, concentrator based steam, and closed loop systems. The reason I kept track of it is the fact that I was always fascinated with large scale industrial systems when I was a child. Drive by a refinery, power plant, or substation, and I was glued to the window, looking at all those fancy pipes wires and big heavy things. So I read every news paper, or publication that mentioned anything about the project.

They was basically going to flatten large sections of bare desert, and cover it in glass and steel. Until........ Some environmental organization started yelling that they was going to destroy the habitat for a small beetle, and I never seen anything about the project since. They killed it on the spot.

Think of the state that solar power could have progressed to by now, if they would have kept their nose out of it. The money spent on that project could have easily exceeded all the money that has been spend on solar research since then.

But all is not lost. I am starting to see some of the technologies being put back into development the last two or three years. Some of the same ones that were abandoned when that group of environmentalist started the "protect the desert" campaign. But the time that has been lost is priceless.

Of course, when it comes time to put the money where your mouth is, and start covering large sections of the planet with solar power, someone will certainly pop up again and try to stop it.

[domwild]

The gases produced by a hydro dam are low in comparison to the gases produced by

all the rotting seaweed along our shore lines.

[Chiron]

Another Environut not letting small things like facts and honest research taint his conclusions.

Nuf sed

[LEXX]

Hmmm, I'm not sure where you got the 2% thing but I do know that in many countries of the world we have changed and are using almost all of the available land.  The oceans are not exempt either, look at the grand banks, the amount of cod there used to be able to stop ships (sail equiped, not engine equiped) now the cod is on the brink of extinction.  Matbe you meant that we occupy 2% of the world with our houses, highways, parking lots, refineries, shopping malls, etc?  You couldn't mean our farms, open pit mines, fisheries, wind farms (no offence), etc.  3% of the world (entire world, not just land) is farm land, hell, we use over 350,000 acres of land just for the cultivation of cocain!  I know, farm land is good, it is a plant and therefore is part of the ecosystem, the difference is that we take the plant elsewhere, eat it, vacate it, then it goes to some treatment plant and never returned to the soil that made it, it is not a sustainable system.  We are changing this planet and we are changing it in a hurry, solar farts or not.  

LEXX