51–60 of 148 posts
Gross. Dams are renewable energy, but they’re not “clean” energy. Their environmental catastrophes both upstream and downstream. The world will be a better place when we abolish dams and replace them with actually clean energy.
I’m predicting an airforce action on the dam. PRC or Russia will veto anything from the UN Security Council. Mark my words. EDIT: as in veto any UNSC response to the strike
There are a couple of reasons this is unlikely to happen. A. The dam already contains more than 4.9 billion cubic meters of water. That along with the wet season rain will mean breaching it will result in catastrophic flooding of Sudan which will result in death and loss of arable land. Each day that goes on, the water level is increasing, after a some time, Egypt itself will face flooding. B. Egypt has powerful mili…
To put this into concrete terms: the Renaissance dam is 476ft tall. According to Wikipedia[0], non-nuclear bunker buster bombs are limited to a penetration depth of ~20ft of reinforced concrete, which would barely dent a dam this size. Even the USAF would have a hard time destroying this dam from the air.
To provide the HN audience with a single data-point from Ethiopia. * More than half of Ethiopia's 110 million people have no electric power. * Almost all of Ethiopia is under some level of food stress. * The Nile basin contains some 11 countries * More than 80% of the Nile waters come out of Ethiopia * Some 70% of the rivers in Ethiopia are parts of the Nile basin * Out of these countries, only Egypt and Sudan use th…
> More than half of Ethiopia's 110 million people have no electric power
Might be true but it is a wide problem and have a root causes that not all belong to the current issue, maybe you forget you are currently in a civil war with army have actions that are war crimes.
>More than 80% of the Nile waters come out of Ethiopia
Nile river is historically and from legal perspective an international river not an Ethiopian property. Violating this always comes with consequences.
>* Out of these countries, only Egypt and Sudan use the Nile river for irrigation and power generation.
This a complete bold lie usually spread by people who try to misrepresent the problem. Here is a Wikipedia page the list all of Ethiopian dams for various function like irrigation and hydropower generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dams_and_reservoirs_in_Ethiopi...
>This happened due to Colonial era agreements in which great Britain (Then ruling Egypt) brokered agreements which "gave" Egypt usage and veto rights. but it was not consulted by the British and is not signatory to the agreements. And It was fighting to maintain its independence against Europe so it had little power to spare for water politics at the time.
There are two points not just one. But these Colonial era agreements are the same which gave Ethiopia benishangul-gumuz (which belonged to Sudan at this time) was between British and Ethiopian emperor also. Also, all treaties was with Ethiopia being independent and took even land from Sudan. The other point if you are just saying we were forced to do so. Okay lets go back to revise all this era agreement and give benishangul-gumuz back to Sudan (it is the area where the dam built) and let's revise everything. This is literary what international laws' violation means. If you just rely on the fact the can ignore it doesn't expect people who will get hurt to act and even attack you. When US get an existential problem with USSR have nuclear missiles nearby in CUBA didn't buy the argument that cuba can do whatever it wants.
>* In 1959, The Sudanese and Egyptians governments met and awarded each other 18.5 billion cubic meter of water and 55 billion cubic meters of water respectively. Again ignoring the other Nile basin countries, including Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia....
This is an agreement about how they share their mutual share, notice that this agreement didn't violate the previous agreements from the colonial era.
> Egypt is unfortunately threatening us with war if there is a drop in their water share
Maybe because 10 years of negotiating that they provided Ethiopia with time it kept wasting until they do whatever they want and putting existential treat to its people. Ethiopian actions are the root cause of the instability. Bold lies that Ethiopian keep pushing publicly is one reason of escalations, a couple of months ago the Ethiopian PM claimed that there are no soldiers from Eritrea joining the attack on tigray area then when the truth comes he was forced to say it. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-conflict/ethiopi...
>I am an Ethiopian, and I realize that Egypt relies on the Nile. As far as I can see, public opinion here (to the extent I see it) is not about depriving Egypt of water and life, it's about living a life of dignity. It's about a fair and equitable use of the water
The problem was never that Egypt opposing to building the dam which almost get built. It is how long does it take for fill the dam and make it longer so that it reduce its negative effect and have enforceable agreement about the dam which Ethiopia spent 10 years of negotiation denying. Don't talk on "not about depriving Egypt of water and life"
>Again, unfortunately, Egypt is signing military deals with Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda in what is perceived here as an intimidation campaign
What is the problem of doing this? Ethiopia have troops from Eritrea helping them to attack innocent people and troops in Somalia which used to intervene in their domestic affairs. Can you call this a hostile action in the region?
Last thing I want to add is to please read the "Treaties affecting Nile water use" section of the Wikipedia article you linked because it will tell you about the misinformation in the parent comment.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-10/ethiopian...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a couple of reasons this is unlikely to happen. A. The dam already contains more than 4.9 billion cubic meters of water. That along with the wet season rain will mean breaching it will result in catastrophic flooding of Sudan which will result in death and loss of arable land. Each day that goes on, the water level is increasing, after a some time, Egypt itself will face flooding. B. Egypt has powerful mili…
> C. The renaissance dam is a gravity dam. Giant concrete structure. It's not going to be easy to destroy. To put this into concrete terms: the Renaissance dam is 476ft tall. According to Wikipedia[0], non-nuclear bunker buster bombs are limited to a penetration depth of ~20ft of reinforced concrete, which would barely dent a dam this size. Even the USAF would have a hard time destroying this dam from the air. [0] ht…
I’m predicting an airforce action on the dam. PRC or Russia will veto anything from the UN Security Council. Mark my words. EDIT: as in veto any UNSC response to the strike
There are a couple of reasons this is unlikely to happen. A. The dam already contains more than 4.9 billion cubic meters of water. That along with the wet season rain will mean breaching it will result in catastrophic flooding of Sudan which will result in death and loss of arable land. Each day that goes on, the water level is increasing, after a some time, Egypt itself will face flooding. B. Egypt has powerful mili…
I don't understand what this means.
The article mention : "Egypt fears its supplies will be reduced during the time it takes to fill the 74-billion-cubic-metre capacity reservoir." From information that I can find, the filling can take up to 7 years !
Also to put things in context, if they rename Egypt to Nile: The Country , it would be more accurate. Egypt is a country of 100 million people, all of them living next to the Nile or in its delta. It's unbelievable how much Egypt is dependant on Nile for its existence. Any disruption in Nile will have severe negative effects on the lives of 100 million people and be an existential threat to Egypt. Just take a look at…
Your own heat map shows that this isn’t the case - they also live on the coast.
Egypt's problem is population growth: https://www.populationpyramid.net/egypt/2026/ And in particular their fertility rate, which remains stubbornly high at 3.33 children per woman. A popular meme has been that as countries and people get richer, they have fewer children. But, that is not occurring in Egypt, which is about twice as rich as India or Bangladesh, but has about 50% more children. Really, its just Egyptia…
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...
To suggest this implies some cultural resistance to reducing fertility seems to be fundamentally flawed.
It also doesn't really work like that - even countries with a culture that involves favouring large families see fertility rates drop as they develop.
This is not a "meme", but a simple observation from data that show that it has happened consistently to every developing country - including Egypt. What you can not do is assume it will happen at the same rate everywhere.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This shouldn't be voted down into oblivion. Some truths are uncomfortable to hear, but that doesn't make them less true. When I was in Egypt, everywhere I looked I saw signs of overpopulation and an idle, largely uneducated workforce standing around half the day in bread lines kilometres long.
It's getting downvoted because it's blatantly racist. How else do you interpret this but racism: > Earth is not gaining much by having millions of Egyptians - just increased resource degradation EDIT: It also says the reason for Egypt's higher fertility rate is Islam, while comparing it to Bangladesh, another Muslim country. So it's not like the comment is racist but insightful if you ignore racism. It's racist and n…
While the way it is phrased might not be perfect what they are saying still holds true. According to them Egypt has a very low scientific output, far lower than it should have.
Of course scientific output isn't everything. These Egyptians might be using the water and resources for something else other than science. But none the less, from a global standpoint that doesn't help "us", as in the world as a whole.
If the water was redirected to other nations these nations might increase their scientific output more than that of Egypt goes down, which means it's an overall win for humankind.
To address your second point about religion: Is it really? A lot of religions advocate for having many children. Christianity as well. While of course it isn't the only factor studies[1] show that religious people have more children.
So let's recap:
* The commentor claimed that the water might be more use to humankind as a whole if it is directed to another nation that might raise their scientific output more than that of Egypt will lower. This is questionable because it doesn't take into account other factors like production of goods. But in general it holds true, humankind as a whole gains the most by having water used as effectively as possible
* The commentor claimed that high birth rates are a result of religion. Once again this isn't a black/white matter. Religious people do have more children. Islam or Christianity, it doesn't matter. As such I would not call this in any way racist or islamophobic, though of course we are missing sources to know if this is actually the case. It might be or it might not be, but claiming it is definitely not the case and pulling the racism card is even more nonsensical as it discredits a possible, though not validated, option for why birth rates are high.
[1]: https://www.acsh.org/news/2016/07/20/religious-people-really...
Egypt's problem is population growth: https://www.populationpyramid.net/egypt/2026/ And in particular their fertility rate, which remains stubbornly high at 3.33 children per woman. A popular meme has been that as countries and people get richer, they have fewer children. But, that is not occurring in Egypt, which is about twice as rich as India or Bangladesh, but has about 50% more children. Really, its just Egyptia…
This shouldn't be voted down into oblivion. Some truths are uncomfortable to hear, but that doesn't make them less true. When I was in Egypt, everywhere I looked I saw signs of overpopulation and an idle, largely uneducated workforce standing around half the day in bread lines kilometres long.
I hesitate to call it a lie, because it could simply be that they have not looked up the numbers. But it is questionable when they took time to look up a population pyramid but neglected to look up the actual fertility rate over time which would have immediately invalidated the central pillar of a comment that then went on to assign blame for a falsehood.