5 ms·

The Sierra Club is a horrible organization founded by a horrible person (Muir). Their opposition to zero carbon energy projects such as hydroelectric and nucle

The Sierra Club is a horrible organization founded by a horrible person (Muir). Their opposition to zero carbon energy projects such as hydroelectric and nuclear have served to increase our dependence on fossil fuels.

azlev 3y ago
Not every hydroelectric project is zero carbon. Big lakes inside amazon forests (as an example, I'm brazilian) cause a huge carbon footprint due devastation, rotten submerse wood, and also bring uncertains. Also, those damns were designed to extract water from a fragile environment. Those huge projects bring a lot of uncertain too.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Mercury build up is also a know and awful issue about hydroelectric dams. This has become a big issue in the north in Quebec: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/world/canada/clean-energy-dirty-water-canadas-hydroelectric-dams-have-a-mercury-problem.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/world/canada/clean-energy...
  - hinkley 3y ago
    We are doing something fundamentally wrong with sediment management in dams. Practical Engineering talks about how dams cause erosion downstream because the suspension capacity of the water is not occupied with material from upstream, and nature abhors a vacuum. We need some way to continuously siphon sediment and expel it with the exhaust from the hydro and overflow pipes.
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      One of the more terrifying things about the destruction of the dam over the Dnipro in Ukraine is thinking about what will be in the clouds of dust that are going to blow off the bottom of that reservoir.
      - hinkley 3y ago
        I feel like the UN is going to ratify some new rules of engagement when this is all over. I don't know about for dams, but definitely for nuclear facilities.
        cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        We are talking about the same UN where Russia has veto power on the security council?
        hinkley 3y ago
        I wonder how much longer that’s going to last.
- hinkley 3y ago
  It's probably more accurate to say that most of the zero carbon hydroelectric that can be built already has been (and some of the not so neutral ones as well). That was the conclusion I came away with years ago when I wanted to know more about the topic of both why we weren't building new and why we were breaching old. So even looking at the average footprint of existing projects will steer you wrong because most new ones will drag us back to the mean, which is pretty bad.
koheripbal 3y ago
There is even some evidence that these organizations have had covert support from the Kremlin for the purposes of domestically sabotaging US/UK/EU energy production.
lake-view 3y ago
What did John Muir do for you to label him a "horrible person"?
- nasmorn 3y ago
  He just wishes that those pesky redwoods were all gone
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  All I can find is that he made a few racist remarks as a young man, although it seems like he was less racist than the average white person in America (eg was not a fan of slavery, and he wrote at length about how regardless of the color of your skin we're all alike in the ways that matter)
  - hinkley 3y ago
    johnmuir.org's defense of John Muir is not a racist is pallid by modern understandings of the definition of wilderness. https://johnmuir.org/native-americans/ https://johnmuir.org/native-americans/ > Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than birds and squirrels.” As author Kenneth Brower says, “It is time for those of us who know wilderness, and who understand the idea of it, to wrest that idea back from its hijackers, a coterie of academics and historians too clever by half and stuck too long at their desks. We need, first, to reestablish what wilderness isn’t, because it isn’t what they say it is. No wilderness advocate–not Muir or anyone else–ever said wilderness means no people. Seasonal visitation by humans does not disqualify a place as wilderness, nor does subsistence use of it.” This is the faintest of praise. Even in 2014 when Brower wrote this, this thinking was on the way out (Tending the Wild, 1st edition, October 2013). There were already substantial questions being asked about this sentiment. To think of them as benevolent visitors is still eurocentric thinking. They weren't visitors, to be tolerated. They were stewards, whose ancestors were materially responsible for everything you saw in those woods. I sound like I'm demonizing Brower, but that's not my thrust. My point is that it's 2023 and their defense, which started as a refutation of a July 2020 article, is still using statements from 2014, which I find damning.
- 3y ago

azlev 3y ago

Not every hydroelectric project is zero carbon. Big lakes inside amazon forests (as an example, I'm brazilian) cause a huge carbon footprint due devastation, rotten submerse wood, and also bring uncertains. Also, those damns were designed to extract water from a fragile environment. Those huge projects bring a lot of uncertain too.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Mercury build up is also a know and awful issue about hydroelectric dams. This has become a big issue in the north in Quebec: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/world/canada/clean-energy-dirty-water-canadas-hydroelectric-dams-have-a-mercury-problem.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/world/canada/clean-energy...
- hinkley 3y ago
  We are doing something fundamentally wrong with sediment management in dams. Practical Engineering talks about how dams cause erosion downstream because the suspension capacity of the water is not occupied with material from upstream, and nature abhors a vacuum. We need some way to continuously siphon sediment and expel it with the exhaust from the hydro and overflow pipes.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    One of the more terrifying things about the destruction of the dam over the Dnipro in Ukraine is thinking about what will be in the clouds of dust that are going to blow off the bottom of that reservoir.
    - hinkley 3y ago
      I feel like the UN is going to ratify some new rules of engagement when this is all over. I don't know about for dams, but definitely for nuclear facilities.
      - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        We are talking about the same UN where Russia has veto power on the security council?
        hinkley 3y ago
        I wonder how much longer that’s going to last.
hinkley 3y ago
It's probably more accurate to say that most of the zero carbon hydroelectric that can be built already has been (and some of the not so neutral ones as well). That was the conclusion I came away with years ago when I wanted to know more about the topic of both why we weren't building new and why we were breaching old. So even looking at the average footprint of existing projects will steer you wrong because most new ones will drag us back to the mean, which is pretty bad.

koheripbal 3y ago

There is even some evidence that these organizations have had covert support from the Kremlin for the purposes of domestically sabotaging US/UK/EU energy production.

lake-view 3y ago

What did John Muir do for you to label him a "horrible person"?

nasmorn 3y ago
He just wishes that those pesky redwoods were all gone
Rebelgecko 3y ago
All I can find is that he made a few racist remarks as a young man, although it seems like he was less racist than the average white person in America (eg was not a fan of slavery, and he wrote at length about how regardless of the color of your skin we're all alike in the ways that matter)
- hinkley 3y ago
  johnmuir.org's defense of John Muir is not a racist is pallid by modern understandings of the definition of wilderness. https://johnmuir.org/native-americans/ https://johnmuir.org/native-americans/ > Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than birds and squirrels.” As author Kenneth Brower says, “It is time for those of us who know wilderness, and who understand the idea of it, to wrest that idea back from its hijackers, a coterie of academics and historians too clever by half and stuck too long at their desks. We need, first, to reestablish what wilderness isn’t, because it isn’t what they say it is. No wilderness advocate–not Muir or anyone else–ever said wilderness means no people. Seasonal visitation by humans does not disqualify a place as wilderness, nor does subsistence use of it.” This is the faintest of praise. Even in 2014 when Brower wrote this, this thinking was on the way out (Tending the Wild, 1st edition, October 2013). There were already substantial questions being asked about this sentiment. To think of them as benevolent visitors is still eurocentric thinking. They weren't visitors, to be tolerated. They were stewards, whose ancestors were materially responsible for everything you saw in those woods. I sound like I'm demonizing Brower, but that's not my thrust. My point is that it's 2023 and their defense, which started as a refutation of a July 2020 article, is still using statements from 2014, which I find damning.
3y ago