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Comment by soperj | Hacker News Reader

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balbina_Dam

"As a result of the methane released from its vast reservoir, proportional to its output, the Balbina Dam emits ten times more greenhouse gases than a coal plant."

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That’s extremely misleading to the point of being false. The dam is creating zero carbon and Methane breaks down to CO2 which is then counted as part of its global warming impact on some timescale.

When you remove the dam the total global warming impact from all the methane produced over a ~100 year lifespan quickly goes to 0. That doesn’t happen from a coal power plant.

~100 years still too late. In 2050 we already risk catastrophic impacts if we keep business as usual.

It began operating in February 1989 making it 35 years old and thus it’s currently adding in effect 1/8th the net methane as year one and that keeps dropping every year. As only ~13% of the methane it released 35 years ago is still around.

We can reduce atmospheric methane by a trivial amount if we removed it early, but it would currently be replaced by fossil fuels a net loss for the environment.

This is going to depend very heavily on where the dam is placed. Balbina is particularly bad because it sunk a ton of organic material with a bunch of acreage taken up.

Almost a worst case for a dam really.

Yes he is using as an example what is probably the most inefficient dam in the world.

I don't know that the dams in Canada are any better in terms of sunk organic material Williston reservoir in BC and the Manicouagan Reservoir are nearly as big and they didn't clear either of them. The Smallwood Reservoir is 3 times the size of Balbina's.

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