Video of China

[Devil]

Nothing whatsoever to do with Cyprus, but some of you may like to see a bit of the Yangtze and one of its major tributaries, as it was before the Three Gorges Dam flooded everywhere to a depth of 180 m.

This video is the first ever where I've added a few snatches of voiceover commentary. I'm not an actor, but I think this may be better than subtitles. Comments (positive or negative) would be welcome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du5KktqktQM

[jagwheels]

Devil I am not sure where your question leads but believe this is your first attempt to post videos on CL so well done for that. Dams are an obvious necessity but with many unfortunate consequences. To me it's a question of how well those consequences are managed. What are your own thoughts?

[Devil]

Well, I could comment on your question at length, but I'll try and summarise my thoughts:

1. Large dams, such as the Three Gorges, cause immeasurable damage to the environment in a hundred ways, not to mention human suffering.

2. Large dams block the flow of silt to the 'rice-bowl' flood plains and farmers now have to use chemical fertilisers, causing rice prices to rise. The lack of silt is causing riverine damage as far away as Shanghai.

3. The silt stays behind the dam and has to be dredged.

4. The dam prevents the migration of fish and dolphin species (the last Yangtze dolphins were seen about 2006), needed for spawning

5. The human element of >1 million displaced, including farmers who lose fertile land for rocky soil higher up

6. China needs power. 23 TW capacity is more than 12 times the juice likely to be generated by the proposed UK Hinkley Point Station. The alternative may be typically 30-40 coal-fired stations with all the concomitant human suffering, not to mention greenhouse gas emissions.

On balance, I reluctantly think 6. above may be a slightly better option than 1-5 together.

That having been said, I'm scared that a major landslide in the reservoir could cause a tsunami that could overflow the dam and cause literally millions of deaths in Yichang and down as far as Wunan. The Three Gorges are friable rock in a seismic zone.

Chinese geologist and environmentalist Fan Xiao says the recent quakes that struck central China’s Hubei Province in Zigui county — “the first county of the Three Gorges Dam” due to its proximity to the project site — signal that the seismic threat posed by Three Gorges Dam is at its most critical stage now. Reservoir-induced seismicity (RIS) is most likely to occur within a few years, even a decade after initial filling of a dam reservoir to its highest level, due to the time it takes for reservoir water to penetrate deep into seismic faults and fissures before it triggers seismic activity. A 2010 study revealed seismic monitors around the Three Gorges Dam reservoir and in Hubei Province registered 3,429 earthquakes between June of 2003 (when inundation of the reservoir began) and December 31, 2009: a 30-fold increase in seismic frequency over the pre-dam period.