Tuesday 25 June 2013

Did you hear the one about the fish and the ladders? You will Google

This will help YOU.


When we were kids we learned about snakes and ladders, but now there is a joke passing around Asia about the fish and the ladders.


The governments of Laos, Thailand, China, Cambodia, Vietnam and Burma are telling this joke about fish climbing ladders, and so many people think it is so funny that they have made a huge bet on witnessing this amazing feat. They have bet almost all of the  South East Asian ecology and the lives of the humans, fauna and flora that are dependent on it, against many thousands of fish climbing ladders.

A bet on fish climbing ladders

 In order to prove this bet on fish climbing ladders, they need to construct the ladder. And obviously there must be water at both the top and the bottom of the ladder, so some sort of dam is needed. And coincidentally, this will allow the pro-ladder group to add to  the pot a bet that electricity can be generated from fish climbing ladders.

This is the present situation with the logic of our governments and NGOs that support them. They are not even prepared to give one minute of their time to investigate the possibility that dozens of hydro electric dams may be obsolete before they become operative. 3000mw of dams have been built in the last ten years, and another 3000mw are currently under construction. According to Wikimedia "
An additional 134 projects are planned for the lower Mekong, which will effectively exhaust the river’s hydropower generating capacity. (Does that mean the water stops flowing?) The single most significant impact – both now and in the future – on the use of water and its management in the Mekong Region is hydropower. Meanwhile, drought is common.

Three Gorges Dam

The poor fish look like having to climb several ladders in one journey. Another possible  factor in the bet is that there have been some suggestions that the huge Three Gorges Dam in the Upper Mekong Basin may not be as safe as hoped. If and when that breaks, there is a possibility that other dams may be destroyed, yet the engineers continue as if nothing was known about this. They prefer to listen to the people with the money that has a hero on every note - the world's greatest ever one man contribution towards human extinction! 

I suppose too many jobs with rich pickings are at stake for any sense to be demonstrated. The demand for electricity is increasing in these rapidly developing countries, and the current "best solution" involves the huge gamble described above.

Gag Order

Personally I would think it's a far better bet that the Patents Office in America will be forced to release the gag order on 6000+ patents  relating to the production of energy in a far less destructive manner.

This kind of upside-down logic is applied by every government of every nation, one way or another. Did we really give them the right to do that to our planet? If we did, we must be very stupid people.

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." Friederich Nietzsche "
Please do not forward to disinterested parties.


If you need confirmation of any of this stuff, I give lessons on "How to Google" at 3.30 pm.every second Tuesday afternoon, and I hereby confirm the promoting of Google from noun to verb, as in "You will Google".

Who knows maybe the fish ladders will work, but that's not really the point, is it?

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