• Only a third of world’s great rivers remain free flowing, analysis finds
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/08/only-a-third-of-worlds-great-rivers-remain-free-flowing-analysis-finds Only a third of the world’s great rivers remain free flowing, due to the impact of dams that are drastically reducing the benefits healthy rivers provide people and nature, according to a global analysis. Billions of people rely on rivers for water, food and irrigation, but from the Danube to the Yangtze most large rivers are fragmented and degraded. Untouched rivers are largely confined to remote places such as the Arctic and Amazonia. The assessment, the first to tackle the subject on a worldwide level, examined 12m kilometres of rivers and found that just 90 of the 246 rivers more than 1,000km (621 miles) long flowed without interruption.
Friendly reminder that Dams are terrible for the environment and should not be considered a green alternative energy.
Hydro and Nuclear are the best answers we have right now. Nothing else can come close to matching their scale of generation while also managing the same zero CO2 emissions.
Nuclear is great. But dams require you to physically destroy the environment in order to create a reservoir. Examples like the Belo Monte create massive amounts of power, but they had to forcibly relocate people, and the rivers it destroyed were the only natural habitat for some Amazonian fish, plus hundreds of kilometers of flooded forest. The Belo Monte will extinct species in the wild by design. One such species is the Zebra Pleco, who's entire existence on earth will be home aquariums because of this dam. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/The_Belo_Monte_Dam_-_the_costs.png Of course, this is an extreme example, and there are locations where dams probably don't do all that much damage. Texas has a lot of man made lakes for drinking water which might as well be hydro. (They aren't) Dams need special consideration before being built as an alternative energy. We try to reduce emissions to avoid mass flooding, relocation, and habitat loss in the future. Dams have potential to cause mass flooding, relocation, and habitat loss by design.
Thriving wildlife in rivers is crucial to keeping water clean but freshwater habitats were found to be the hardest hit of all the ecosystems, with wildlife populations having plunged by an average of 83% since 1970 due to dams, overuse of water and pollution. Ouch.
Dams may have a net zero CO2 emissions while operating, but their damage to the hydrological cycle creates a an environment where less CO2 is absorbed, or in the worst case emitted by decaying plant and animal matter as water and nutrients no longer travel downstream. Riparian areas lose plant cover, aquatic organisms no longer having the required amount of water and nutrients die off, the body of water itself becomes less resilient to harmful changes. Changes in evapotranspiration changes the local climate, destabilizing the whole river ecosystem from dam to tributary. All of this contributing to overall CO2 increase passively (stunted producer growth: less CO2 absorbed), or actively (decaying organisms releasing CO2 into the air).
At this rate through the process of gradual elimination we will come to the conclusion of: "Recent scientific study has determined that sitting on a wooden chair and doing nothing other than inhaling every 15 seconds is the only human activity not damaging to the environment, shifting the body to a different position however still is"
wooden chairs lead to deforestation gotta sit on the floor
Don't we exhale Carbon Dioxide though?
CaRBoN DiOxIdE is plant food
I always thought that Dams where a eco friendly way of using rivers This has genuinely come as quite a shock..
its probably because the tone of what you originally wrote makes it sound like taking care of the environment is an inconvenience. it wasn't a good joke
I think we could tell you were joking, but the crux of the joke implied you thought that it's not worth thinking about the environment anymore because there's nothing we can do about it unless we cease to exist. I'm not trying to be an arsehole here, but it maybe doesn't help that the way you write your posts sometimes makes it sound like you're making a verbose speech about single-handedly invading a country whilst channelling Jordan Peterson because of the verbose drama contained in them.
I did not even remotely intend that meaning and I placed great care in ensuring that the joke was as innocent as possible and did not imply such things. The far more likely explanation is that I am irrationally disliked. No one ever gives me the benefit of the doubt and always automatically assumes that I say the worst possible thing or the exact opposite of what I actually said. The lesson to be learned here is that I basically cannot say anything that is even remotely politically serious in nature without being universally hated for it. Bear in mind that incidents like this happened repeatedly for no reason whatsoever. I have shit charisma when it comes to discussing serious political topics, I am always perceived as a malevolent asshole.
Reading the joke, it just isn't funny dude. This isn't some conspiracy about you, it's just not funny.
No it definitely is, the reaction was completely disproportional.
Okay guy. I'll tell you as someone who gets a fair amount of shit from the community on this site in general. No, it's not about you.
I sincerely apologize for any irritation or inconvenience that i may have caused by my post and I fully retract everything that I said.
I can't tell if you're being serious, my apologies. If you are, I don't know who you are, but even I simply read your 'joke', processed it with little more than a nose exhale, and moved on to the next post. It just kinda wasn't funny. Don't take it personally.
None taken, sorry about that.
Overuse of water and pollution seem pretty big factors to lump together with dams
But remember, Man has no impact on Nature and the Earth is just going through one of its phases, like my son who liked goth stuff but now works at a Dollar Tree like a good boy!
You don't need to apologise for your posts like that. I understand ratings can sometimes affect people personally but we've all made posts that aren't well-received in the past. I get the impression you're maybe letting negative feedback affect you too much. I don't think you should worry about going back to all your posts in a thread and editing them just because somebody didn't like your joke. I've told jokes on here before that are stupid and I will generally leave them up so my idiocy can be witnessed by all and because it's not worth the stress in my life to be concerned about it. I'm saying this as somebody who has sometimes been in a similar position to you: please don't worry too much about how people respond.
Thanks, you rock!
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