2 responses to “News & Links:
Monday, December 4, 2023”

1. 

   johnthebasket

   12/05/2023

   It's all supposed to be clean: Nuclear power: very few (but very long-lasting byproducts; fossil fuels: scalable house-to-house but non-renewable on a large scale and the pollution will kill us; hydro-electric: clean, with the water cycle as an everlasting power source but . . . the dams have killed off fish populations around the world for a hundred years and more. Locally, the Pacific salmon run has already been significantly reduced.

   Here's what my old Seattle buddy Bruce Brown did about it. He wrote a book about the migration patterns of Pacific salmon and noted that the species was being fairly quickly killed off by hydroelectric dams. His book, Mountain in the Clouds, which he was working on when he and I were sailing and drinking beer in Seattle in the 70s, was published in 1995. The book, which was well-reviewed by both the popular and academic press, combined with action by Pacific Northwest environmental groups, started a long process which resulted in the removal of four dams on the Elwha River beginning in 2011. By 2012, Elwha Dam, the largest of the four dams on the river was demolished, allowing the salmon to begin to search their ancestral memories to find the spawning grounds from which they had been denied access for exactly 100 years. In the years that followed the removal of the four dams, a few salmon, then more and more salmon returned to the Elwha spawning grounds after a 100 year absence.

   I didn't do anything with regard to the book except talk with Bruce and mostly listen to his crazy idea of writing a book which would take down four century-old dams. The book is now 30 years old, and there is a whole lot of work left to be done. The salmon migration is considerably older and now partially restored, thanks to a lot of people raising hell and a guy writing a book.

   John

   Reply
   1. 

      Doug Holland

      12/05/2023

      Excellent work by your buddy.

      In high school they showed us a propaganda film about fish-ladders built so the spawners could get past the dam, which at the time I thought solved the problem, but obviously didn't. I don't know why — maybe most of the fish reject the fake waterway, or maybe most of the damns don't have the ladders, or probably both.

      I also have no answers on nuclear vs hydro vs solar wind whatever. Nuclear is, as it's said, a crazy way to boil water but it requires stability that won't exist.

      Reply

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