Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Dams 'contribute to global warming'

I'm trying to not comment on climate change froth and bubble, but I couldn't resist this story: Dams 'contribute to global warming'.
International 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.
I'm sure that some devoted climate change alarmists will start ad hominem attacks on Mr McCully, but this is a very interesting piece of research. They estimate that one third of global methane production is from dams! Perhaps we should be looking at other ways of storing water? (huge plastic bottles for instance?)

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