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You call that a disaster? What about that Chinese dam failure in the 1960s? OK, I'll go look for a reference... so it was the Henan Province dams, 1975. Tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands dead, millions or tens of millions affected in one way or another, whether made homeless or without fresh water, etc. Kept secret by the Chinese government for something like 20 years.

http://www.irn.org/basics/ard/index.php?id=050915t umbling.html
http://www.probeinternational.org/tgp/index.cfm?DS P=content&ContentID=13831
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan

You're right. It's a characteristic response for activists: go for the biggest. It helps them get the media exposure they need to 'raise the public's awareness'. And it can be quite effective for their process:

1. Find a cause
2. Pick a high-profile target
3. Make some noise
4. Cause a change.

It's unfortunate most folks get lost between steps 3 and 4 (I suspect there's some ??? and Profit! going on), but a few changes do come about occasionally.

McDonalds, Nike, Starbucks, Walmart, and now Google will continue take the heat from concerned student groups.

Nuclear power plants are far, far less polluting than coal-fired plants, and they conveniently store *all* of their pollution in spent fuel rods rather than tossing it willy-nilly into the atmosphere.

And those fuel rods still need to be stored somewhere, millions of years and not the 10,000 the government says, before they aren't dangerous. And disposal of them is just one of the ways the government subsidizes the nuclear power industry.

Hydropower is even less polluting than that, but it commits the blaspheming act of *altering the environment to satisfy human needs*, an unforgivable crime in environmental circles.

Hydro power can does do that but it also can do much more. Because of China's Three River Gorge Dam millions are being forcibly relocated. Dam projects in India are forcing others to be relocated as well. The World Bank which finances or financed many dams has found that they can have significant social impacts. Dams may provide benefits, the WB admits however without proper provisions being made, these dams can also cause considerable damage to upstream and downstream ecosystems.

Environmentalists go on and on about "alternative" sources of energy, conveniently ignoring the fact that it isn't possible to power the entire economy on solar or wind, nor is it practical in many places

You're right, there are places solar or wind isn't possible but where one isn't the other may be. Where neither are feasible there are other possibilities, clean coal perhaps being one. Biodiesel and hydrogen may work as well. While it may be some years before hydrogen and fuel cells are ready, biodiesel is here now. Rudolph Diesel designed his diesel engine to run on most any vegetable and seed oil. On his Iron Mountain Estate Henry Ford designed and built a car that both used hemp in it's construction and was fueled by methanol made from hemp.

solar cells have an extremely dirty and poisonous manufacturing process, something greenies never seem to think is worth mentioning

This is something I've been thinking about for some tyme, but I have yet to come to any conclusion. Maybe the waste from the manufacture of PV cells can be used as input for another manufacturer.

Hell, even wind power is being blasted by some environmentalists because wind farms occasionally kill birds.

Older wind genies earned the rep for killing birds, however many of those spun relatively fast whereas new wind genie designs are proving to generate as much power at slower blade speeds than older ones and at slower speeds birds aren't at as high a risk of being killed. Other measures are being taken to reduce the hazzard to birds as well. There's also the NAMBY factor.

And if there were a true 'free market' in power generation, the plants would be even cheaper. And less safe, as well. But certainly cheaper than an equal power production capacity in gas, oil, or coal. Transportation savings alone would be enormous.

Even if they do prove safer, the new designs may not necessarily be cheaper. By the reckoning of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which has just produced a new analysis of the economics of nuclear power*, the capital cost for today's nuclear designs runs at about $2,000 per kW, against about $1,200 per kW for coal and just $500 per kW for a combined-cycle gas plant. History also suggests that not everything goes as planned when turning clever paper designs into real-life nuclear plants. What is more, the debts of any new plants, unlike the debts of existing plants, will not be written off. In fact, the t

Being as rampantly anti-american as i am (aka liberal) i welcome a future challenge to american political/economic hegemony. But looking at China's environmental history as evidinced in this book, including the mass devastation that occured in the three gorges dam project and the fact that China has allowed for themselves to become a major tech dumping ground for the worlds unwanted 386s and floppy drives and the like as became big news over two years ago. Perhaps this isnt the best thing for China and the worlds environmental health. Lets hope China's future bring both technological revolution and acknowledgement of environemtal respect!

And your point? We could build the world's largest dam if we were so inclined -- but most dam building in the United States was stopped due to the environmental damage that it causes. Have you read about some of the health and environmental impacts of the Three Gorges dam? It's an impressive engineering feat to be sure but nothing I'd want in my backyard. How many species will be wiped out by this monstrosity? How many people will be displaced?

Is that really something that China should be proud of?

The Three Gorges Dam is a disaster. Frankly, even the Hoover Dam isn't all roses. Large dam projects flood huge areas of land, eliminating entire ecosystems, displacing large numbers of people, destroying archaeological evidence, and submerging economically productive land. There's something to hate for everyone, whether liberal or conservative. Check out the ecology of the Colorado River sometime. Interestingly, the things can even increase CO2 concentrations by flooding green areas. The effect can be quite substantial.

There are also practical difficulties, like the buildup of silt (which always seems to happen much faster than anyone anticipates) and the costs of construction and maintenance (they aren't as cheap as one might expect).

Are they better than fossil fuel plants? Probably. Personally, I like them a lot more than nuclear plants (largely for economic reasons). But I just can't find it in me to be happy about their construction.

A quick and dirty summary of the downside of dams can be found here, though a quick Google search will reveal many more pages for and against.

What is NOT fiction is that not many people seem to like the Kurds. Interesting thing is that it seems that the Kurds are not liked by almost EVERYONE. Even Winston Churchill authorized the use of Mustard Gas against the Kurds.

Turkey already has troops in Northern Iraq (buffer zone) to hold back the Kurds. The current U.K. government is pushing for the 'Ilisu Dam' project in Turkey which will be devastating to the Kurds, many of their villages and their culture. If the Kurds were in Afghanistan, we would have been bombing and sniping the Kurds - for apparently a large portion of the fundamentalist Kurds are Bin Laden supporters, regardless of the fact that they are fighting along side U.S. troops for now.

This whole thing is a big mess.

--jeff++

I wouldn't be so sure. When I lived in Sri Lanka many people were upset with the US over our support for the Mahaweli Dam. The project caused havoc and difficulty which some people blamed on America.

FYI, the link I provided could be about as biased against the project as one could be but seems to be the only thing with even basic facts.

Hydro is considered by environmentalists to be the single dirtiest power generation technology ever devised. Upstream from a dam, it displaces large areas of land for reservoirs and causes methane emissions (greenhouse gasses) from the rotting vegetation trapped under surface of the reservoir. Downstream, it causes massive ecological damage in the form of erosion caused by holding back sediment; changing river temperature; depleting groundwater; changing flow patterns (which threatens estuary ecology); and stopping flooding (necessary for healthy floodplain ecology).

Fish can't swim upstream or downstream past dams.

Hydro is also extremely dangerous. Large numbers of people are regularly killed by dam failures, and there are two dams in the U.S. which could each nearly instantly kill 200,000 people.