Suprise: Now Hydroelectric Dams Are Also Causing Global Warming

Thought those were eco-friendly and all, as they create energy by natural water power without burning a thing.

But they are burning things. They're burning fish into methane, it turns out.

nternational Rivers Network executive director Patrick McCully today told Brisbane's Riversymposium rotting vegetation and fish found in dams produced surprising amounts of methane - 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide.

"Often it's accepted that hydropower is a climate friendly technology but in fact probably all reservoirs around the world emit greenhouse gases and some of them, especially some of the ones in the tropics, emit very high quantities of greenhouse gases even comparable to, in some cases even much worse than, fossil fuels like coal and gas," Mr McCully said.

They're not pro-enviornment-- they're just on the other side. Anti-energy, anti-civilization, and ultimately anti-human, that is.

They remind me of the priggish scold Orfamy Quest in the Philip Marlowe book The Little Sister.

Orfamy: "I don't think I'd care to employ a detective that uses liquor in any form. I don't even approve of tobacco."

Marlowe: "Would it be all right if I peeled an orange?"

And this seems to be becoming a hardy perennial -- a British yachtsman who wanted to demonstrate dramatically that the Arctic is melting and now clear for sailing is trapped in arctic ice.

posted by Ace at 03:06 PM

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