Sung Li Kim said:

Sea kitties? Well, the Vietnamese would have not much trouble with that… maybe they can get in on a nascent industry!

Treating animals like pets and elevating them to human levels of concern is something that is basically reserved for societies where the people live well enough to not have to worry about whether they or their animal gets food and such. The industrial west is where poodles have their own beds and cats are given radiation therapy for cancer. I’m sure most of the working stiffs in harder up places would laugh even harder at this whole idea.

        DV82XL said:

First off hydro isn’t particularly green, nor is it necessarily greenhouse gas free, although the latter is more true in the tropics than in North America. Big hydro projects can do massive damage to the environment in their immediate area, and damage the hydrology of an area several times larger

Well, that depends on the project. Hydroelectric can be damaging, but it can also be part of a well planned water management project to reduce flooding dangers, improve navigation, increase irrigation etc etc. It all depends on how well planned it is and whether the enviornmental damage is understood and considered acceptable given the benefits.

Now as for greenhouse emissions, this again depends on the circumstances. If it’s an issue of filling a desert canyon like with the hoover dam, then there’s not much biomass there to rot. you’re right that the tropics are what have the real problem. The other thing is that once a hydro plant is built, the damage in terms of causing biomass to rot is done and so taking down the dam solves nothing and could make the problem worse.

Existing hydroelectric facilities are basically greenhouse gas free, since most have been around for decades. And at this point one has to wonder whether the damage of removing them would be greater than continuing to use them. Take down a dam that has been there for decades and you’re exposing a huge muddy flat and killing all the underwater life that has come to the area over the time the dam was there.

I’m generally all for the use of hydroelectric to the maximum extent it can be while maintaining reasonable enviornmental impacts and economics.

        Bruce said:

I think we should still take a second look at some of these dams we constructed, and see if they are really better to leave them there or allow the river to flow naturally. On the other hand, it is green house free gasses, and according to you guys replacing those dams with solar and wind is hard (or, as you claim, impossible) so I have mixed feelings.

First off hydro isn’t particularly green, nor is it necessarily greenhouse gas free, although the latter is more true in the tropics than in North America. Big hydro projects can do massive damage to the environment in their immediate area, and damage the hydrology of an area several times larger.

The only thing that hydro has going for it is that to date it is the only form of renewable energy that can assume base-load, and who’s output is reasonably predictable. However the usual issues of transmission from currently unexploited systems (mostly in the Far North) that plague other renewables are in force as well.

Knocking down dams wholesale is probably not posible even if electric power can be had from other sources, as most if not all major hydro projects are also water-management facilities, and that function will not go away.

        Jason said:

I agree with you that PETA are idiots and this is just stupid beyond belief.

However I would disagree that fish are not that smart. My wife and I keep tropical marine fish and seahorses and they exhibit some surprisingly intelligent behaviors.

We did have a sea horse that would lie on the bottom of the tank looking dreadfully ill when she was hungry so people would come over to the tank to check on her and then we would start doing the “food dance”.

Well, like I said, fish are an enormously diverse group of organisms and there are some that show some pretty descent intelligence. In general, those which are individual or in small social groups tend to be smarter than those that swim in schools. Heard animals tend to be pretty individually dumb because in such species individual intelligence can actually be more of a problem than a help. They just need to follow the group. There is ’swarm intelligence’ in the larger group, but that’s different.

But by and large, I don’t tend to see fish as being the smartest animals. It all depends on context, but all things considered, ‘intelligent’ in the greater animal kingdom tends to be considered high in groups like Primates, some marine mammals, pigs, a few species of birds etc.

I suppose it depends on your standard. But when I think “Intelligent Animal” I think of a chimp that can be taught to do basic math.

However I would disagree that fish are not that smart. My wife and I keep tropical marine fish and seahorses and they exhibit some surprisingly intelligent behaviors.

We did have a sea horse that would lie on the bottom of the tank looking dreadfully ill when she was hungry so people would come over to the tank to check on her and then we would start doing the “food dance”.

We also used to have a Coris Wrasse that figured out that if he followed our sleeper goby around (a fish that sifts the sand on the bottom of its enviroment for food. We used to bury his food in the gravel at the bottom of the tank so he could sift and enjoy it) he would start sifting over food and then would chase the goby off and dig the food up himself. Of course this same wrasse used to take prawns out of our moray eels mouth (and would have these funny v-shaped bite marks periodically) so maybe not so bright.

And our fish do tend to have names