Green Groups Are Divided Over Hydroelectric Power

This is a typical refrain from the greenies: they Demand clean, renewable energy to replace the Evil fossil fuels. But, it’s in theory, because, when it comes time to actually build it, they, at best, waffle

Green Groups Are Divided Over a Proposal to Boost the Nation’s Hydropower. Here’s Why

America’s hydropower industry is hoping to reestablish some of its former glory by making itself central to the nation’s transition to clean energy—and it’s turning to Congress for help.

The era of big dams arguably ended long ago. At one point referred to as “white coal,” hydropower was once a major source of electricity around the country, with the United States building more than 150 dams on the Columbia, Missouri and Colorado River basins in the 30 years following World War II. But today, hydropower provides just a small fraction of the nation’s electricity and is quickly being outpaced globally by its clean energy rivals in new development.

Now the industry, with help from a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers, hopes to change that trend. They argue that hydroelectric dams can provide the kind of steady flow of power that’s needed to provide stability and reliability to the energy grid, especially on cloudy days and windless nights. (snip)

A growing body of scientific evidence has found that dam reservoirs are a significant source of carbon emissions—particularly methane, a potent greenhouse gas that’s roughly 80 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 20-year time period. Those emissions are the result of organic matter, including vegetation, dead animals and even fertilizer runoff, piling up in large quantities behind dams and decomposing in the reservoirs.

Oh, for goodness sakes. It’s always something with these people.

One reservoir that’s being planned for construction in California would essentially have the same carbon footprint as 80,653 gasoline-fueled cars on the roads, one recent analysis found. Many environmentalists have also condemned hydropower because the dams often cause irreparable harm to the animals living in the rivers and have even contributed to the extinction of entire species.

These wackos want Everyone Else to simply live with no power.

As Congress weighs the hydropower bill, it underscores an increasingly complicated debate, which has splintered many green groups and climate hawks who, for years, have fought on the same side. For now, the increasingly urgent need to address climate change, as well as the mounting evidence of hydropower’s carbon footprint, appears to be only complicating that discussion further.

Crazy.

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14 Responses to “Green Groups Are Divided Over Hydroelectric Power”

  1. Elwood P. Dowd says:

    Mr Teach: Oh, for goodness sakes. It’s always something with these people.

    But then Mr Teach responds to his own whine!!! And cogently!!!

    Mr Teach: As Congress weighs the hydropower bill, it underscores an increasingly complicated debate, which has splintered many green groups and climate hawks who, for years, have fought on the same side. For now, the increasingly urgent need to address climate change, as well as the mounting evidence of hydropower’s carbon footprint, appears to be only complicating that discussion further.

    Issues are complicated!!!

    • James Lewis says:

      Dear Elwood:

      It isn’t complicated. These idiots, and the people who support them, want the world to return to an agrarian existence where all the streams are lemonade, power is clean because it’s produced from Unicorn farts and people die at age 40, or less, because of disease and malnutrition.

    • alanstorm says:

      Issues are complicated!!!

      …but Jeffty is simple.

      • Elwood P. Dowd says:

        Oh, Stormy, bring back that sunny day!!

        BTW, are you the same Stormy that Trump fucked and paid off?

        • James Lewis says:

          Dear Elwood:

          So you have no answer.

          And I give myself points for not using the perfect response to your slimy insult.

          • Elwood P. Dowd says:

            Lewis,

            I’m sure Stormy appreciates your defense. What are you going on about now? An answer to what? Your silliness?

            Idiots such as you, and those that “believe/feel” as you? You refuse to understand that greenhouse gases are causing global warming. You refuse to understand that these issues are not simple. Instead you talk about unicorn farts and lemonade springs.

          • James Lewis says:

            Dear Elwood:

            CO2 follows warming, so it is not the cause. It is the result, As to the insult:

            “BTW, are you the same Stormy that Trump fucked and paid off?”

            No, but I have heard that it was your….

            Oh, never mind. Pick whatever relative you want.

          • drowningpuppies says:

            https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_yahoo.gifhttps://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_yahoo.gifhttps://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_yahoo.gif
            Bwaha! Lolgf https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_cool.gif

  2. Wylie1 says:

    America needs to know who is funding opposition to every form of energy production. China maybe?

  3. drowningpuppies says:

    Funny how reality and economics eventually bite them in their “green” asses every time.
    https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_yahoo.gif

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-to-expand-fossil-fuel-project-gavin-newsom-said-he-was-fully-committed-to-shutting-down/ar-AA1g7pBJ

    #GlobalBoiling
    Bwaha! Lolgf https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_cool.gif

  4. Dana says:

    New evidence suggests McDermitt Caldera may be among the largest known lithium reserves in the world

    Of course, the conquered Indians Indigenous Americans don’t want the site mined at all!

  5. Elwood P. Dowd says:

    Three points.

    1. “New evidence suggests McDermitt Caldera…”

    Suggests??? Suggests??? How dare they “suggest”!! It should be easy to prove if there are significant lithium stores there.

    2. Lithium Americas Corporation made the “discovery”. Follow the money.

    3. Who is objecting to the mining? We know it’s not the conquered conservatives.

  6. James Lewis says:

    Dear Elwood:

    I seek but to educate you.

    The so-called Native Americans came across the Siberia-Alaska land bridge and filtered down and across the continents. Among the things they are noted for is human sacrifice, slavery and cannibalism. Their societies/cultures ranged from hunter gather tribes in the north to feudal kings and peasants groupings in the central and south.

    Everything was cool until the southern Europeans arrived. The southern Europeans were aggressive, had better weapons, including germs that the NA’s had never been around before. The result was conquest, settlement and a feudal society based on what they had in southern Europe resulting in land owners with peasants huddled around the Catholic Church. But the NA’s were better off. No slavery, no cannibalism and no human sacrifice.

    Basically, nothing has changed to the south. They have gone from weekly revolutions to establishment of failed socialism experiments…Venezuela doesn’t have toilet paper or antibiotics and Honduras is the murder capital of the world. Their exports are bananas and people…..who have flooded into America to the tune of 11 million or so. When called out they riot and fly Mexico’s flag and demand the right to vote. They seem determined to establish what they, or their parents, fled from. Poverty, chaos, crime and dictatorship.

    Later the northern Europeans arrived to the north. They were no better to the NA’s than their peers to the south. But they did have one thing the southern Europeans didn’t have. Budding democracy. They had the Magna Carta. The powers of kings were finite and the people were to have a voice.
    “We the people….” Became real.

    None of this is pretty. The NA’s lost. What the Europeans found were people who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, defend the land that they had taken from the previous owners.

    We now find ourselves on the same page that was the Aztec’s. Do we want to defend and hold this land, this civilization, or do we want to surrender to the flood of people from the south and the flood of Muslims Obama and Hillary imported from the east?

  7. JimS says:

    Uhhh…. even without the dams, that organic matter is going to fall into the river and decompose… or fall onto the ground and decompose. Either way you get methane. At least if it’s underwater, it can dissolve. Anyway, I thought most of the good hydro sites were already being used.

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