The Belo Monte Dam has won.

Started by Raiden, March 07, 2015, 09:09:13 PM

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Raiden

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/16/belo-monte-brazil-tribes-living-in-shadow-megadam

From the end of the article:

"Environmentalists say the Belo Monte case also highlights the importance of preserving indigenous territory which is home to the last good forests in Brazil. But under existing circumstances, the tribes who have long been the staunchest forest guardians are losing land, culture and the will to resist.

'Belo Monte is gradually weakening them. It's very sad to see. We've been fighting together for 30 years, but now they are succumbing to drugs, drinking and prostitution,' said Antonio Melo, of the Xingu Vivo anti-dam campaign. 'Dilma says the dams produce cheap electricity, but the cost is paid here in the destruction of the environment and the destruction of people's lives.'"

It's over.

Nobody really did anything about it, and the tribes who will be affected the greatest have been weakened too much to be able to fight.
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Vawmataw

They will wake up when they will inevitably lose money.
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Raiden

Quote from: Vawmataw on March 07, 2015, 09:45:30 PM
They will wake up when they will inevitably lose money.

You're absolutely right; and in more ways than one:

- Brazil is in the midst of a severe drought right now, and there is substantial evidence that the drought has been caused by the loss of trees. The reason why the Amazon basin formed the way it did (vast tracts of rainforest, even far away from the coast) is because the large trees release water into the air via transpiration from their leaves; the larger the tree, the more water is pumped into the air, so because the surface area of the leaves on large trees, the largest trees "pump" the most water into the air. If you have a lot of large trees in the center of a landmass, they can form a positive feedback loop, and generate their own clouds and rainfall from the sheer amount of water released from the leaves. By flooding a vast tract of forest and stopping up the hydrology of the Xingu, they're probably going to make the drought worse.

- The dam will never generate as much electricity as the president is saying it will; she's flat-out lying about that. Because of the seasonal changes in water levels for tropical rivers, Belo Monte will generate larger amounts of power during the wet season, and then generate very little power during the dry season, because of low flow. The actual yearly power generated will be far lower than what has been promised

This will inevitably come back to bite the president in the ass, but I'm not sure it matters; the damage has been done.
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Tìtstewan

In capitalism, you can (often) win only if you have much money and good lawers/lobbyists.

Massive Corruption Scandal Implicates Brazil's Amazon Dam Builders

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archaic

Not only does this project provide several jobs during construction, but perhaps as many as five or six ongoing operation and maintenance positions too.
And being placed in pristine virgin rain forest, it will therefore be the largest employer in the area.

Too bad for the other 7bn+ folks who happen to live on the same planet.


:'( :'(

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Raiden

Quote from: Tìtstewan on March 08, 2015, 05:14:34 AM
In capitalism, you can (often) win only if you have much money and good lawers/lobbyists.

Massive Corruption Scandal Implicates Brazil's Amazon Dam Builders

Whoahoho!

I really hope that turns into something. It's down to the wire, and if the dam can be stopped before it is completed, the site could be remediated (though it would take a lot of work at this point...)
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Rotobull cz

You don't have to study economy at university to know very important but very simple relation:
Money -> Power (and Power -> Money).
It's really simple, but it's very important. You can't buy a true love for money, but you can buy politicians, whole media (<-they're scared of some of the big players/it's just not lucrative for them to tell people about some of the really important things), officials, lawyers (you can rather hire these ones), police (this often goes through a "good relationship" with politicians), academicians...
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Tsanten Eywa 'eveng

Sad news indeed :(
I really hoped they could maybe either stop the project or change the design of the dam. Can't they just recreate it into turbines instead? You know, that it was shown in Jim Cameron's documentary on his visit to Brazil, in that Message from Pandora documentary video?

Vawmataw

Nobody paid the company to stop it.
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Rotobull cz

And you know why? Because nobody would give them so much money... I would give it to them, so I could save at least a bit of Mother's beauty and wealth and pull them back, but I don't have so much... :(
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Tìtstewan

Don't forget that there is not only business, there is also some political aim to show the world that Brazil has also some industries and this would not solve the problem to get energy for the companies and people there.

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Rotobull cz

#11
Yes, that's very favourite argument, people will get work. Maybe they will, but not for long... It's not a solution for local unemployment. And the environmental damage? If it will work, it will be there for a long time. And then? Let's just say, that the environmental succession will take a lot of time. Because these corporations often don't care, what damage their activity will cause to the environment and how long the environment will be coming back to its original balance. The most important thing is a bigger turnover. Anything new...



Political aim is secondary. This is just some kind of benefit, building of the object will bring. It's just a feed for media and the mouths of politicians.
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Raiden

Quote from: Tìtstewan on April 01, 2015, 04:59:57 PM
Don't forget that there is not only business, there is also some political aim to show the world that Brazil has also some industries and this would not solve the problem to get energy for the companies and people there.

Indeed.

1) The president and Eletrobras (the energy company building the dam) both lied about the power output that the dam would provide. They calculated the maximum capacity of the dam to push water through the turbines, using dams like the Bonneville dam (which, coincidentally, is where I get most of my electricity from) in Oregon. There's a really big problem with that; Brazil has a moist tropical climate, but tropical climates are known for highly seasonal rainfall, which means that the dam will probably never see the kind of output they claimed it would have. Furthermore, the dam will trap sediment and any dead vegetation in the current from upstream, and this will accumulate and form an increasingly deep bed of sediment at the base of the dam. Guess what? This is a rainforest; there's going to be a lot of dead leaves in the water, and in order to keep the dam from becoming a stagnant cauldron of mud, they would need to dredge it frequently, and even more frequently if they hope to get any kind of decent power output from it.

2) Brazil is in the middle of a drought. It is very likely that Brazil actually caused the drought by damaging the rainforest beyond it's ability to help stabilize precipitation, via the "biotic pump":



What this image is saying is that there are so many large trees over the amazon basin that they actually make their own clouds and their own rains, which acts as a buffer during the dry season; the portion of Africa that occupies the same latitude as the amazon basin is a desert with some tropical savannah ecotopes showing up further south. The Amazon will literally begin an irreversible transition in this direction if deforestation continues, and it will happen far too quickly for the majority of the animals and plants to adapt, resulting in the potential loss of entirely family-level groupings of organisms, such as bromeliads, bolitoglossa sp. salamanders, and most of the dendrobatids (poison dart frogs). Brazil has caused this drought by destabilizing the biotic pump, and by trapping more water behind an artifical barrier and drowning the forest behind it, they will probably make the drought worse.

3) Biodiversity should never be treated as expendable for the sake of industry. Biodiversity protects humans from disease, provides healthy soil for growing food plants, and gives us clean air and water. Aside from that, what does it mean about humanity if we literally throw animals and trees and entire animal communities and even ecosystems into the stinking maw of industry for our own benefit? Are we incapable of attaining empathy for other living things if they do not directly support our personal wealth? I know I'm not like that, but unfortunately many of the people in power globally are.
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Rotobull cz

What is good for humans is irrelevant. Corporations and their politician friends don't care about Nature, they don't care about any creatures (including humans) or their rights... Natural Laws don't interest them...
Natural diversity is truly important thing and humans should never cause damage to it... And there are more things that humans shouldn't do.
And yes, in Brazil there are seasonal tropical rainforests. So potencional building of a dam should be much more considerated.

It's much more complicated, but simply put, humans should let Nature work. She's doing Her job in the best way.
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CyanRachel

Irayo nìtxan, Raiden, for explaining all the above. It puts a lot into perspective. What's happening to the rainforests is nothing short of tragic, and we will all pay the price for it in the end.  :(
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Wind12

I've been seeing the stories of the drought in Brazil, and this is just horrible, ET is a very efficient way to put moisture into the air, and here in Missouri you can tell the effect off having all the green and growing cornfields in the summer that help cause humidity that often beats the humidity along the gulf coast during that time of year, There is really nothing I can say that can capture the magnitude of what they are doing  >:(

Rotobull cz

#16
Sorry. I've made a mistake. In Brazil, there is seasonal tropical forest. That's the name of the biome.

Yes, it's horrible.
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