The presence of methane in the atmosphere will largely be driven by the temperature which is predominantly drive by carbon dioxide. If we wait to deal with carbon dioxide until methane "becomes a problem" it will already be too late, which may in fact already be the case anyway. We are only now on the cusp of warming resulting from human introduction of hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide over the last century given the inertia of the system. With increasing global mean temperatures in the past decade at record levels now in the system, its much like an unstoppable freight train. We will experience a system crash, the only questions now are how fast will be continue to accelerate the train and just how massive a crash is it going to be. A rise of only 80 ppm carbon dioxide ended the last ice age, Humans have added about 120-140 in the past 100 years, so its certainly going to be bad. As a biologist studying the trends and effects on marine environments, I predict an end for humans somewhere between 200-300 years out if we stay on the current course.
Your analysis is flawed as you are assuming that the effects of increase will be strictly economic or "uncertain". The primary influence will be environmental, essentially making it near impossible to grow food in 200-300 years. Soils will be too hot and dry and little freshwater will be available in most continental interiors More and more people will depend on the fewer and fewer areas that will support crop production and control of these will become more contentious than is presently the case for oil reserves. There is no longer any question of preventing "uncertain suffering in the future". What we currently know of the physics, climatology, and biology is that these are more certain every day and really have been predicted now for decades by the most knowledgeable of observers.
The reality is that we need emergency legislation to curtain burning of fossil fuels yesterday. Every day we wait will probably mean millions of deaths in a few hundred years. People are already dying in massive numbers as the effects of global warming grow more severe. Its just that no one wants to do a scientific accounting of this inconvenient truth.
That not really true yes. Although methane is about 37 times more potent a green house gas than carbon dioxide, the concentration in the atmosphere is still so very small that the effect of carbon dioxide predominates. However, as more clathrates sublime that probably won't be true in 100-200 years time given its ultimate effect on forcing.
If you look at the recent coring data its abundantly clear that carbon dioxide increases preceded both warming and methane ending the last ice age, which is what you would expect if carbon dioxide provides the trigger. This is precisely what is being seen now. Methane is only now starting to outgas excessively in the permafrost and under the Arctic ocean as the temperatures have warmed sufficiently enough to start the sublimation process of existing methane clathrates. The problem now is that as carbon dioxide continues to climb there is no way to reverse the cocking the trigger on the clathrate gun. By letting carbon dioxide rise, we are effectively pulling the trigger.
The really scary thing is that from the onset of the height of the last ice age to its end carbon dioxide only increased carbon dioxide concentrations went from about 220-300. Whereas, within only the past 100 years we have gone from about 320-almost 400 and are on track to reach 500 by the end of this decade at current rates of accumulation. This is about 1000 times faster than the spike seen in the Middle Eocene Thermal Maximum, the most rapid rise in temperatures recorded in prehistoric times. This means that we are already experiencing the warmest climate in recorded history and we have problem even though we have not yet begun to feel the full effects of the amount of carbon dioxide that has recently accumulated. If you think it got hot in West Texas last year. Just wait a few years and it will be that way in Kansas City far to the north.
When one realizes that the past 15 years have produced all the top 10 warmest years and now the first quarter of 2012 is the hottest on record once again (by >5F), there's little or no point at further debating if there is global warming, only the question now is what are we going to do about it, other than face almost certain extinction within 200-300 years time?
In the area the array is to be built there are no hippos. In fact there is very little water or anything other than vast, relatively flat, arid open spaces.
Why do seemingly educated people find the need to make up imaginary problems when they are not even there?
I live in Mississippi. Even as a Caucasian, I am thinking of emigrating to South Africa because it would be a step up, especially if Mr. Etch-A-Sketch gets elected. I know it to be a far friendlier place than Mississippi and in many ways far more civilized.
There are practically no townships of any kind even for the locals in the area the facility will be built. This is a total red herring that is being brought into a scientific discussion merely to introduce fear as a factor for making a technical decision.
As the World Cup Soccer Championship that took place in Cape Town and other cities demonstrated, that fear simply isn't rational. Yes, there was violence against foreigners, but it was primarily directed at Zimbawians, who have been displaced by turmoil there. This is a situation not at all dissimilar to the way Mexican and other Latin Americans entering into the US are treated, who resent their presence because they purportedly "steal jobs". The South African government moved quickly to address the problem. Unlike we Americans with our own similar problem, yet no one would claim that the US isn't a fit place to do astronomy or science.
Actually, much of the 3.4% growth comes from agricultural exports, in particular some of the nicest wines in the world. A good "champagne" for only $3 US that is comparable to those in France isn't such a bad thing as even the French will tell you.
It would seem to me that the world scientific community would do well to see this built in South Africa as it would broaden the base for scientific infrastructure and bring yet another government into a stronger appreciation of the role of science and scientific infrastructure to diversifying and improving economies. Sure one can always find one more reason to build one more facility in an already developed country, but will it have as big an impact on the growth of world science? Surely, there is a role for the Australians to play if it turns out that their proposal is not the one with the greatest technical merit. The scientific community does itself a tremendous disservice when it resorts to playing politics with science. It should be precisely the kind of thing that scientists of all stripes everywhere do everything they can to avoid.
As an American who has a considerable interest in South African politics and as visited on many occasions, I would say it is not only incompetent and corrupt, but no where near so as say in the US, where money and politics mix in much larger volumes and in much more corrosive ways. For example, South Africa doesn't have a vulture capitalist running for president nor large corporations and PAC's of unregulated cash defining their electoral system.
I totally agree. There are tough neighborhoods and there is plenty of poverty and crime, but the place is beautiful, the people friendly, even I might add to me as a white American from Mississippi visiting the townships, and there is much good science going on there. Their national fish collection in Grahamstown, which I am familiar with, is one of the leading research facilities of its kind in the world.
I hope the astronomers can get their act together here. By adding an excellent facility in South Africa, they increase the strength of world science infrastructure a great deal by developing another major player. Surely, there must be an important role Australian astronomers can play in this project without necessarily hosting the facility. Build that role into the project and get on with it rather than going the US supercollider route and ultimately destroying the project entirely.
So what is the alternative? A privatized system will only increase the ruthless efficiency by which others can mine your life for personal gain, with no "checks and balances" at all.
Just why do you think "privatization" is always the preferred answer given by the GOP establishment. They want not only to govern you. They want to own you as well. Just be thankful that democrats are so disorganized. In MIchigan the GOP now rules by fiat and where they have dispensed even with the charade of counting votes.
You have to put this into context. This is just Orin Hatch's idea of a jobs project for Utah. Its not as if the NSA has any idea or really cares what they are going to do about knowing that your teenage daughter has just admitted that she has a crush on little Billy to her friends and a hundred zillion other pieces of useless information. Its only when they privatize the system to maximize the profits for a few "businessmen" that we really have to start worrying, since then they will impose an expensive mandated vaginal probe to take control of the situation, thereby adding shareholder value.
The GOP recognizes this and that is why they have a plan. There plan is to make government so dysfunctional for all but the very wealthiest that suicide will seem like an attractive alternative to all but the 1%, who will then inherit the earth. They are too timid and ashamed to actually admit that this and thus as Jesus noted, meek shall inherit the earth.
Actually, if folks who are really worried about this kind of spying, then there is a very simple antidote that would bring any such system to its knees no matter how computationally efficient. Simply make more than 50% of all your electronic communications consist of 128 bit encryption of totally random words sent to totally random recipients. Given the the exponential nature of the computational time required to decode even a small fraction of the entirely random messages, the entire project could be rendered totally useless by flooding it with totally random information. Just make sure that you respond to all your totally random email from your friends by issuing a totally random response so as to mask your communications among friends.
Of course the cost of such a solution is likely to be the collapse of the internet and one heck of a bill from your internet provider, but hey, what price freedom.
"I suspect it would be a rare male who has not at least **thought** about sex with under-age girls."
That's why what our society needs in the next revolutionary version of the iPad/iPhone is a miniaturized version that can be directly implanted in the neocortex so that it can immediately zap offending neurons, which do not conform to the parameters established by the social control app, not to mention prevent its users from even thinking about buying anything not purchased directly from the Apple/Corporate Store.
By our rationale all human actions are illegal, since those who structure their actions in order to avoid doing something illegal are guilty of "structuring" and must be sent to jail.
While I totally agree with you that many countries, particularly several in northern Europe are "better" in many measured dimensions given many different optimality criteria than the US, I think that the problem is more general. The perceived need for governments to spy on others and their own stems from a recognition, often not all together conscious, that humans in order to survive and maintain a perceived social order have to exert some form of control over other humans. The reality is that, depending upon what aspect of the social order to the extent that one could even describe it as order, some humans can be incredibly destructive as they seek to create their own "new" order. As population pressures create ever more need for social stability to avoid the chaos caused by the unworkable situation where everyone has perfect freedom to "do their own thing", there is a relentless push to create order, some aspects more destructive to individual liberties than others. Humans can not escape this circumstance but seem condemned to ultimately destroyed by it. We simply don't know how at the level of the entire population to give away our freedoms so as to be able to assure that we can keep most of them. You can think of the NSA and other like organizations as representing the failure and inefficiency of humanity to address this weakness in human biology that will probably inevitably doom us as a species.
Probably our only hope is that ultimately all information so gathered by such organizations will become public in their entirety so that humanity can find a conscious, rational basis for actually controlling the more social and environmentally destructive forms of human behavior. Given the average intelligence of the average human and given the size, complexity, and dynamic nature of the problem and its consequences, this seems like wishful thinking. Consequently, despite very rational choice by some, human extinction doesn't appear to be anything we will be able to avoid.
To provide online and written help targeted specifically at teachers. Everyone seems so busy selling product, whether it be computers, testing, software, etc. they tend to forget that there are humans, who must actually use this stuff to make it work.
"But quite a bit has been learned about managing the resource properly and the fact that healthier hatchery stock is wiping out the sickly wild runs argues for that success."
Wild stocks are far healthier than hatchery stock because they are genetically adapted to their specific habitats. Hatchery stock show very much reduced genetic variability and survival rates of hatchery reared young are lower than in wild stock, and much more susceptible to disease when it does enter hatcheries, because most individuals are genetically more alike. Hatchery stocks tend to be poor in percentage of returns because of lower vigor of young for some species have the potential to create havoc through interbreeding that can lower the success of wild stocks. There are actually very few wildstocks of salmon left on the planet that have not had their original genetics contaminated by non-native stock.
Now it certainly is true that all stocks are under threat in part to rising water temperatures, changes in food ability associated with habitat degradation, but, however, you cut it, more dams will only dramatically increase these problems.
The problem of course lies not in the 19th century physics and engineering, but rather the 19th century accounting of all the environmental costs (to people).
Sounds like it will work out as well as Arizona selling its State Capital only to buy it back. Might want to ask Jan Brewer how much she saved doing that.
Don't forget to add in the cost of the fishery you just destroyed and all the fishing tackle, and boats and other fishing gear, and that will never be sold, motels rooms not occupied, camping equipment not sold, restaurant meals not purchased, etc., unless of course you are just another one of those businessmen planing to pass those costs on to someone else and pocket the difference.
"Fracking, natural gas, and, if you have the political will, nuclear. That's the answer."
If you go the natural gas route, better plan on hoarding food as global mean temperature are already set to rise at rates that will make it extremely difficult to grow food crops. In just 100 years time given pre-XL pipeline projections of addition of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will see places like Kansas City, near the heart of the wheat belt, will see temperatures exceed 100 F more more than 100 days out of the year. Little wheat will be grown there as soil temperatures will simply be too high. Farmers in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississpppi, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, the Carolinas will have even less time.
In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh). This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W).[1] The potential for renewable energy is: solar energy 1600 EJ (444,000 TWh), wind power 600 EJ (167,000 TWh), geothermal energy 500 EJ (139,000 TWh), biomass 250 EJ (70,000 TWh), hydropower 50 EJ (14,000 TWh) and ocean energy 1 EJ (280 TWh).
Consequently, replacement of fossil fuels by solar alone will be sufficient to quadruple levels of 2008 energy consumption. So the real question is not whether or not we can maintain a standard of living as seen in Somalia. Rather it's more of a question of what kind of waste of energy we can do without. With regard to that, you point is well taken.
When one considers that just adding the amount of carbon into the atmosphere that will be created and turned into carbon dioxide by the ill conceived mining of Alberta tar sands and their subsequent transfer via the proposed and now partially approved XL pipeline project will likely raise the global mean temperature about 5-6 degrees on its own over the next hundred years, another perhaps more important question to be asked beyond energy costs and energy production is will most of humanity be able to afford the very limited amount of food that it will still be possible to grow as temperatures in places like Kansas City exceed 100 F for more than 100 days out of the year as are currently expected given pre-XL pipeline projections over the next 100 years? Not having enough energy will for most will be the least of our problems.
The good news is that there will be many extremely well-fed fat cat fossil fuel company execs and their families that can be consumed at least in the initial days of the worldwide famines that are almost sure to come is soils dry way too much to support primary food production in a few hundred years time.
Migrations are hardly the problem. Most migratory fish species have seen their populations so thoroughly decimated that most are less than 90% of their original population sizes. The fact that "no loss of fish" has occurred may only reflect that most of the damage has already been done and this will make it permanent. With viruses and global warming taking out salmon stocks at a rapid rate, most people will simply adjust to the unavailability and high prices for those few species, which can still support fisheries. The bigger problem is the destruction of reproductive and feeding habitat that it caused by dramatic changes in flow volumes and speed, which directly or indirectly affect the amount of sediment load.
"Personally, I think the environmental problems of dams are overstated,"
Obviously, you don't know much about fish biology. Dams have the capacity to take out entire species and have done so on multiple occasions. Some of the larger dams, such as the Three Rivers Georges dam in China and the anticipated completion of the damning of the Mekong River have already wiped out hundreds of species, and even cut productivity of many marine species by half or more. This happens because primary productivity and fish reproduction is strongly affected by even small changes in flow and current speeds as it dramatically changes the amount of suspended materials which can either serve to provide nutrients or smother habitat in excessive silt loads. When one considers that 50% of all protein consumed by humans is in the from fishes, this is a very big impact indeed. If damns take out only about 5% of all protein, millions of people can be expected to starve to death, without an alternative source of protein. Consequently, you may have a lot of angry people soon knocking on your door for restitution, not to mention thousands of very unhappy fishermen and businessmen who depend on healthy recreational and commercial fisheries as well.
Slashdot Mirror
The presence of methane in the atmosphere will largely be driven by the temperature which is predominantly drive by carbon dioxide. If we wait to deal with carbon dioxide until methane "becomes a problem" it will already be too late, which may in fact already be the case anyway. We are only now on the cusp of warming resulting from human introduction of hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide over the last century given the inertia of the system. With increasing global mean temperatures in the past decade at record levels now in the system, its much like an unstoppable freight train. We will experience a system crash, the only questions now are how fast will be continue to accelerate the train and just how massive a crash is it going to be. A rise of only 80 ppm carbon dioxide ended the last ice age, Humans have added about 120-140 in the past 100 years, so its certainly going to be bad. As a biologist studying the trends and effects on marine environments, I predict an end for humans somewhere between 200-300 years out if we stay on the current course.
Your analysis is flawed as you are assuming that the effects of increase will be strictly economic or "uncertain". The primary influence will be environmental, essentially making it near impossible to grow food in 200-300 years. Soils will be too hot and dry and little freshwater will be available in most continental interiors More and more people will depend on the fewer and fewer areas that will support crop production and control of these will become more contentious than is presently the case for oil reserves. There is no longer any question of preventing "uncertain suffering in the future". What we currently know of the physics, climatology, and biology is that these are more certain every day and really have been predicted now for decades by the most knowledgeable of observers.
The reality is that we need emergency legislation to curtain burning of fossil fuels yesterday. Every day we wait will probably mean millions of deaths in a few hundred years. People are already dying in massive numbers as the effects of global warming grow more severe. Its just that no one wants to do a scientific accounting of this inconvenient truth.
That not really true yes. Although methane is about 37 times more potent a green house gas than carbon dioxide, the concentration in the atmosphere is still so very small that the effect of carbon dioxide predominates. However, as more clathrates sublime that probably won't be true in 100-200 years time given its ultimate effect on forcing.
If you look at the recent coring data its abundantly clear that carbon dioxide increases preceded both warming and methane ending the last ice age, which is what you would expect if carbon dioxide provides the trigger. This is precisely what is being seen now. Methane is only now starting to outgas excessively in the permafrost and under the Arctic ocean as the temperatures have warmed sufficiently enough to start the sublimation process of existing methane clathrates. The problem now is that as carbon dioxide continues to climb there is no way to reverse the cocking the trigger on the clathrate gun. By letting carbon dioxide rise, we are effectively pulling the trigger.
The really scary thing is that from the onset of the height of the last ice age to its end carbon dioxide only increased carbon dioxide concentrations went from about 220-300. Whereas, within only the past 100 years we have gone from about 320-almost 400 and are on track to reach 500 by the end of this decade at current rates of accumulation. This is about 1000 times faster than the spike seen in the Middle Eocene Thermal Maximum, the most rapid rise in temperatures recorded in prehistoric times. This means that we are already experiencing the warmest climate in recorded history and we have problem even though we have not yet begun to feel the full effects of the amount of carbon dioxide that has recently accumulated. If you think it got hot in West Texas last year. Just wait a few years and it will be that way in Kansas City far to the north.
When one realizes that the past 15 years have produced all the top 10 warmest years and now the first quarter of 2012 is the hottest on record once again (by >5F), there's little or no point at further debating if there is global warming, only the question now is what are we going to do about it, other than face almost certain extinction within 200-300 years time?
In the area the array is to be built there are no hippos. In fact there is very little water or anything other than vast, relatively flat, arid open spaces.
Why do seemingly educated people find the need to make up imaginary problems when they are not even there?
I live in Mississippi. Even as a Caucasian, I am thinking of emigrating to South Africa because it would be a step up, especially if Mr. Etch-A-Sketch gets elected. I know it to be a far friendlier place than Mississippi and in many ways far more civilized.
There are practically no townships of any kind even for the locals in the area the facility will be built. This is a total red herring that is being brought into a scientific discussion merely to introduce fear as a factor for making a technical decision.
As the World Cup Soccer Championship that took place in Cape Town and other cities demonstrated, that fear simply isn't rational. Yes, there was violence against foreigners, but it was primarily directed at Zimbawians, who have been displaced by turmoil there. This is a situation not at all dissimilar to the way Mexican and other Latin Americans entering into the US are treated, who resent their presence because they purportedly "steal jobs". The South African government moved quickly to address the problem. Unlike we Americans with our own similar problem, yet no one would claim that the US isn't a fit place to do astronomy or science.
Actually, much of the 3.4% growth comes from agricultural exports, in particular some of the nicest wines in the world. A good "champagne" for only $3 US that is comparable to those in France isn't such a bad thing as even the French will tell you.
It would seem to me that the world scientific community would do well to see this built in South Africa as it would broaden the base for scientific infrastructure and bring yet another government into a stronger appreciation of the role of science and scientific infrastructure to diversifying and improving economies. Sure one can always find one more reason to build one more facility in an already developed country, but will it have as big an impact on the growth of world science? Surely, there is a role for the Australians to play if it turns out that their proposal is not the one with the greatest technical merit. The scientific community does itself a tremendous disservice when it resorts to playing politics with science. It should be precisely the kind of thing that scientists of all stripes everywhere do everything they can to avoid.
As an American who has a considerable interest in South African politics and as visited on many occasions, I would say it is not only incompetent and corrupt, but no where near so as say in the US, where money and politics mix in much larger volumes and in much more corrosive ways. For example, South Africa doesn't have a vulture capitalist running for president nor large corporations and PAC's of unregulated cash defining their electoral system.
I totally agree. There are tough neighborhoods and there is plenty of poverty and crime, but the place is beautiful, the people friendly, even I might add to me as a white American from Mississippi visiting the townships, and there is much good science going on there. Their national fish collection in Grahamstown, which I am familiar with, is one of the leading research facilities of its kind in the world.
I hope the astronomers can get their act together here. By adding an excellent facility in South Africa, they increase the strength of world science infrastructure a great deal by developing another major player. Surely, there must be an important role Australian astronomers can play in this project without necessarily hosting the facility. Build that role into the project and get on with it rather than going the US supercollider route and ultimately destroying the project entirely.
So what is the alternative? A privatized system will only increase the ruthless efficiency by which others can mine your life for personal gain, with no "checks and balances" at all.
Just why do you think "privatization" is always the preferred answer given by the GOP establishment. They want not only to govern you. They want to own you as well.
Just be thankful that democrats are so disorganized. In MIchigan the GOP now rules by fiat and where they have dispensed even with the charade of counting votes.
You have to put this into context. This is just Orin Hatch's idea of a jobs project for Utah. Its not as if the NSA has any idea or really cares what they are going to do about knowing that your teenage daughter has just admitted that she has a crush on little Billy to her friends and a hundred zillion other pieces of useless information. Its only when they privatize the system to maximize the profits for a few "businessmen" that we really have to start worrying, since then they will impose an expensive mandated vaginal probe to take control of the situation, thereby adding shareholder value.
The GOP recognizes this and that is why they have a plan. There plan is to make government so dysfunctional for all but the very wealthiest that suicide will seem like an attractive alternative to all but the 1%, who will then inherit the earth. They are too timid and ashamed to actually admit that this and thus as Jesus noted, meek shall inherit the earth.
Actually, if folks who are really worried about this kind of spying, then there is a very simple antidote that would bring any such system to its knees no matter how computationally efficient. Simply make more than 50% of all your electronic communications consist of 128 bit encryption of totally random words sent to totally random recipients. Given the the exponential nature of the computational time required to decode even a small fraction of the entirely random messages, the entire project could be rendered totally useless by flooding it with totally random information. Just make sure that you respond to all your totally random email from your friends by issuing a totally random response so as to mask your communications among friends.
Of course the cost of such a solution is likely to be the collapse of the internet and one heck of a bill from your internet provider, but hey, what price freedom.
"I suspect it would be a rare male who has not at least **thought** about sex with under-age girls."
That's why what our society needs in the next revolutionary version of the iPad/iPhone is a miniaturized version that can be directly implanted in the neocortex so that it can immediately zap offending neurons, which do not conform to the parameters established by the social control app, not to mention prevent its users from even thinking about buying anything not purchased directly from the Apple/Corporate Store.
I have seen the future and its all in my head.
By our rationale all human actions are illegal, since those who structure their actions in order to avoid doing something illegal are guilty of "structuring" and must be sent to jail.
Enjoy your incarceration you criminal.
While I totally agree with you that many countries, particularly several in northern Europe are "better" in many measured dimensions given many different optimality criteria than the US, I think that the problem is more general. The perceived need for governments to spy on others and their own stems from a recognition, often not all together conscious, that humans in order to survive and maintain a perceived social order have to exert some form of control over other humans. The reality is that, depending upon what aspect of the social order to the extent that one could even describe it as order, some humans can be incredibly destructive as they seek to create their own "new" order. As population pressures create ever more need for social stability to avoid the chaos caused by the unworkable situation where everyone has perfect freedom to "do their own thing", there is a relentless push to create order, some aspects more destructive to individual liberties than others. Humans can not escape this circumstance but seem condemned to ultimately destroyed by it. We simply don't know how at the level of the entire population to give away our freedoms so as to be able to assure that we can keep most of them. You can think of the NSA and other like organizations as representing the failure and inefficiency of humanity to address this weakness in human biology that will probably inevitably doom us as a species.
Probably our only hope is that ultimately all information so gathered by such organizations will become public in their entirety so that humanity can find a conscious, rational basis for actually controlling the more social and environmentally destructive forms of human behavior. Given the average intelligence of the average human and given the size, complexity, and dynamic nature of the problem and its consequences, this seems like wishful thinking. Consequently, despite very rational choice by some, human extinction doesn't appear to be anything we will be able to avoid.
To provide online and written help targeted specifically at teachers. Everyone seems so busy selling product, whether it be computers, testing, software, etc. they tend to forget that there are humans, who must actually use this stuff to make it work.
"But quite a bit has been learned about managing the resource properly and the fact that healthier hatchery stock is wiping out the sickly wild runs argues for that success."
Wild stocks are far healthier than hatchery stock because they are genetically adapted to their specific habitats. Hatchery stock show very much reduced genetic variability and survival rates of hatchery reared young are lower than in wild stock, and much more susceptible to disease when it does enter hatcheries, because most individuals are genetically more alike. Hatchery stocks tend to be poor in percentage of returns because of lower vigor of young for some species have the potential to create havoc through interbreeding that can lower the success of wild stocks. There are actually very few wildstocks of salmon left on the planet that have not had their original genetics contaminated by non-native stock.
Now it certainly is true that all stocks are under threat in part to rising water temperatures, changes in food ability associated with habitat degradation, but, however, you cut it, more dams will only dramatically increase these problems.
The problem of course lies not in the 19th century physics and engineering, but rather the 19th century accounting of all the environmental costs (to people).
Sounds like it will work out as well as Arizona selling its State Capital only to buy it back. Might want to ask Jan Brewer how much she saved doing that.
Don't forget to add in the cost of the fishery you just destroyed and all the fishing tackle, and boats and other fishing gear, and that will never be sold, motels rooms not occupied, camping equipment not sold, restaurant meals not purchased, etc., unless of course you are just another one of those businessmen planing to pass those costs on to someone else and pocket the difference.
"Fracking, natural gas, and, if you have the political will, nuclear. That's the answer."
If you go the natural gas route, better plan on hoarding food as global mean temperature are already set to rise at rates that will make it extremely difficult to grow food crops. In just 100 years time given pre-XL pipeline projections of addition of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will see places like Kansas City, near the heart of the wheat belt, will see temperatures exceed 100 F more more than 100 days out of the year. Little wheat will be grown there as soil temperatures will simply be too high. Farmers in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississpppi, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, the Carolinas will have even less time.
In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh). This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W).[1] The potential for renewable energy is: solar energy 1600 EJ (444,000 TWh), wind power 600 EJ (167,000 TWh), geothermal energy 500 EJ (139,000 TWh), biomass 250 EJ (70,000 TWh), hydropower 50 EJ (14,000 TWh) and ocean energy 1 EJ (280 TWh).
Consequently, replacement of fossil fuels by solar alone will be sufficient to quadruple levels of 2008 energy consumption. So the real question is not whether or not we can maintain a standard of living as seen in Somalia. Rather it's more of a question of what kind of waste of energy we can do without. With regard to that, you point is well taken.
When one considers that just adding the amount of carbon into the atmosphere that will be created and turned into carbon dioxide by the ill conceived mining of Alberta tar sands and their subsequent transfer via the proposed and now partially approved XL pipeline project will likely raise the global mean temperature about 5-6 degrees on its own over the next hundred years, another perhaps more important question to be asked beyond energy costs and energy production is will most of humanity be able to afford the very limited amount of food that it will still be possible to grow as temperatures in places like Kansas City exceed 100 F for more than 100 days out of the year as are currently expected given pre-XL pipeline projections over the next 100 years? Not having enough energy will for most will be the least of our problems.
The good news is that there will be many extremely well-fed fat cat fossil fuel company execs and their families that can be consumed at least in the initial days of the worldwide famines that are almost sure to come is soils dry way too much to support primary food production in a few hundred years time.
Migrations are hardly the problem. Most migratory fish species have seen their populations so thoroughly decimated that most are less than 90% of their original population sizes. The fact that "no loss of fish" has occurred may only reflect that most of the damage has already been done and this will make it permanent. With viruses and global warming taking out salmon stocks at a rapid rate, most people will simply adjust to the unavailability and high prices for those few species, which can still support fisheries. The bigger problem is the destruction of reproductive and feeding habitat that it caused by dramatic changes in flow volumes and speed, which directly or indirectly affect the amount of sediment load.
"Personally, I think the environmental problems of dams are overstated,"
Obviously, you don't know much about fish biology. Dams have the capacity to take out entire species and have done so on multiple occasions. Some of the larger dams, such as the Three Rivers Georges dam in China and the anticipated completion of the damning of the Mekong River have already wiped out hundreds of species, and even cut productivity of many marine species by half or more. This happens because primary productivity and fish reproduction is strongly affected by even small changes in flow and current speeds as it dramatically changes the amount of suspended materials which can either serve to provide nutrients or smother habitat in excessive silt loads. When one considers that 50% of all protein consumed by humans is in the from fishes, this is a very big impact indeed. If damns take out only about 5% of all protein, millions of people can be expected to starve to death, without an alternative source of protein. Consequently, you may have a lot of angry people soon knocking on your door for restitution, not to mention thousands of very unhappy fishermen and businessmen who depend on healthy recreational and commercial fisheries as well.