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Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years

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Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years

#61

Post by phaemon »

wolco2 wrote: post #31
margalabargala wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You realize in 600ad the temp was a 1 hotter than today. No, I've done a fair amount of research into the historical climate of the PNW and I've never heard that before! Do you have any journal articles so I can read more about it?

Of course: https://www.history.org.uk/primary/resource/3865/anglo-saxon...

Your source is a "Reference guide for primary", it clearly states "Europe's average temperature", and grapes have been grown in Britain continually from the Roman occupation up until WW2.

Global temperatures were not warmer in the past, because there was less energy retained due to lesser amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years

#62

Post by ghaff »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #9
killjoywashere wrote: post #5

Readers may also find this review of methods of building salmon-friendly dams interesting: https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/pdf-content/mf...

We must learn to live with hydro power and dams. It’s such an incredible and clean source of energy. It’s low maintenance and has a high duty cycle, with only nuclear being a more consistent. Dams are also how many parts of the US irrigate crops for our food.

A number of the big hydro dams in the West are very much a mixed bag. Glen Canyon should probably never have been built and fortunately the Redwall dam in the Grand Canyon was never built. Quite a few dams in New England have come down in recent years.

Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years

#63

Post by intrepidhero »

rhodozelia wrote: post #35
intrepidhero wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also provides a fantastic balancing reserve for all the wind and solar generation in the region. Downstream survival rates for juvenile fish are in the high 90s for all the dams on the lower Columbia. [1] Grand Coulee produces more energy than any hydro project in North America so I expect it's worth keeping around even if we have to make some modifications to improve survival rates on the upper Columbia. [1] https:/…

Survival rates are high going downstream, can the salmon get back upstream or are there no fish ladders past some point?

The big dams on the upper Columbia do not have fish ladders. Although Grand Coulee did have one during construction. I've been looking for data on survival rates for upstream fish... but a brief search hasn't turned up the data I was looking for.

Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years

#64

Post by fractallyte »

fractallyte wrote: post #55
macinjosh wrote: post #41

I don't really care. Environmentalists will never happy until the world's population is so low that they feel like 'nature' is unaffected by humans. In reality that means they want the world to themselves and anyone with any other interests to be plant fertilizer. There haven't been a specific kind of fish there for _eighty_ years and it hasn't impacted human life so why do we need to spend tax dollars to have them t…

Take a look at this: https://imgur.com/gallery/9v4HV2p There are nearly 8 billion humans on Earth. Can you see the disparity? And here is a slice of the result: https://xkcd.com/1338/ If you feel like learning more about „The Great Forgetting“, read this: The Once and Future World, by J B MacKinnon ( http://jbmackinnon.com/books.html ). Contact me if you want the ebook.

I'm curious why someone would downvote this. Care to write a proper reply instead? I'm stating facts - why do you disagree?

Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years

#65

Post by rmah »

lumberingjack wrote: post #33
bb88 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Idaho we have Red Fish Lake, named after the sockeye salmon that would congregate there, often turning the lake red due to their numbers. In 2019, only 18 salmon returned to the lake. Further 4 dams in the Snake River are not used for hydro power, nor are they for flood control. They were used to try to make Idaho a major sea port -- despite the fact that Idaho is several hundred files from the ocean. https://disc…

Chop down 98% of american indigenous forests to make room for homes, drain all the wetlands in socal for gold miners. But all no we can't have clean power cus of some fishis that my tribe that originally owned that land didn't even care about.

There is more forest cover now in the US than in 1900 [1]. While a lot of "old growth" is indeed gone, the idea that the US has been deforested is not really correct. Moreover, vast areas of the east coast has been returned to forest from what was farmland in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Overall, generally speaking, the ecological condition of the continental US is probably better today than at any time in the past century.

[1] https://mff.forest.mtu.edu/TreeBasics/PICs/Trends03.jpg

Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years

#66

Post by rmah »

oppenh3imer wrote: post #36
lumberingjack wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chop down 98% of american indigenous forests to make room for homes, drain all the wetlands in socal for gold miners. But all no we can't have clean power cus of some fishis that my tribe that originally owned that land didn't even care about.

We have programs for both reforestation and for wetland preservation. With any conservation proposal, one must weigh the pros and cons. In this case it is true that hydropower is cheap and clean. However, the negative externality of destroying the salmon run is much more than "some fishis" that some Indian tribes cared about. Aboriginal annual salmon catches have been estimated at over 10 million pounds for year. On…

10 mil pounds of salmon is about $30mil worth of salmon a year at today's retail prices. And more salmon would depress those prices. Economically speaking, the entire aboriginal catch is a drop in the bucket and not worth the benefit of a single dam.

For comparison, the US alone currently harvests 100's of mil pounds of salmon a year. Alaska alone produces 500mil pounds last year (and this was the lowest in decades). Norway harvests around 3 BILLION pounds of salmon a year.

Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years

#67

Post by rmah »

fractallyte wrote: post #64
fractallyte wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at this: https://imgur.com/gallery/9v4HV2p There are nearly 8 billion humans on Earth. Can you see the disparity? And here is a slice of the result: https://xkcd.com/1338/ If you feel like learning more about „The Great Forgetting“, read this: The Once and Future World, by J B MacKinnon ( http://jbmackinnon.com/books.html ). Contact me if you want the ebook.

I'm curious why someone would downvote this. Care to write a proper reply instead? I'm stating facts - why do you disagree?

I suspect it's being downvoted because the pixel resolution on the various species included have little to do with how healthy their populations are or are not. For example, it's simply impossible for large predators like tigers to exist by the billions. In short, the presentation is a pure play to emotions with little regard to any actual facts.

Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years

#68

Post by smegger001 »

igorstellar wrote: post #47
tima101 wrote: post #45

I live not far from where Columbia river comes out to US from Canada, in US portion of Selkirk Mountains. This is north of Coulee Dam. It's good that salmon can come into this area but smelter from Trail, BC has been polluting upper Columbia river for about hundred years. With chemicals and smelter sludge. Fish is not edible, sand is black from sludge. Salmon may have reached upper Columbia river, but water in that p…

How nuclear waste leaves power plant? I always was under impression the core is heavily isolated and water is just cooling or used for turbines.

Hanford predates commercial nuclear power this is manhatten project era site. they made the plutonium for trinnity Nagasaki and they really didn't know much about how to handle radio active materials back in the early 40's. Hanford the idea was hey this stuff is dangerous lets through it in the vat of other dangerous stuff* we need to get rid of.

* other dangerous stuff being fun things like mustard gas and nerve agents

This was supposed to be cleaned up purified put into safe modern radioactive waste containment vessels and stored deep in Yucca mountain until the NIMBY folks got involved.

Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years

#69

Post by 908B64B197 »

tima101 wrote: post #45

I live not far from where Columbia river comes out to US from Canada, in US portion of Selkirk Mountains. This is north of Coulee Dam. It's good that salmon can come into this area but smelter from Trail, BC has been polluting upper Columbia river for about hundred years. With chemicals and smelter sludge. Fish is not edible, sand is black from sludge. Salmon may have reached upper Columbia river, but water in that p…

BC claims to be extremely environmental but they have a really poor track record with polluting waterway.

The Columbia river is one instance. The strait of Juan de Fuca is another [0]. The citizens of Victoria only stopped dumping raw untreated sewage in it earlier this year!

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-crd...

Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years

#70

Post by erichocean »

fractallyte wrote: post #55
macinjosh wrote: post #41

I don't really care. Environmentalists will never happy until the world's population is so low that they feel like 'nature' is unaffected by humans. In reality that means they want the world to themselves and anyone with any other interests to be plant fertilizer. There haven't been a specific kind of fish there for _eighty_ years and it hasn't impacted human life so why do we need to spend tax dollars to have them t…

Take a look at this: https://imgur.com/gallery/9v4HV2p There are nearly 8 billion humans on Earth. Can you see the disparity? And here is a slice of the result: https://xkcd.com/1338/ If you feel like learning more about „The Great Forgetting“, read this: The Once and Future World, by J B MacKinnon ( http://jbmackinnon.com/books.html ). Contact me if you want the ebook.

> There are nearly 8 billion humans on Earth.

Yes, and there's roughly a quadrillion Cyclothone on Earth, a vertebrate fish with 13 species. [0]

That's 1,000,000 billion fish vs. 8 billion humans: the fish are winning the population game, and it's not even close.

Furthermore, human population projections cap us out around 15 billion in the next century because birth rates go down as population increases—we are naturally self-limiting, like every other species on earth.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclothone

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