Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Indian tidal power plant to threaten tigers - critics

"Tigers in the world's largest reserve for the big cats are threatened by Indian plans for a tidal power project that will only provide electricity for a few thousand families, scientists and critics said on Friday."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060630/india_nm/india257614_1

Interesting in that I recently saw a documentary on the tigers of the Sunderbands as being the last enclave of man-eating tigers. Will man's lust for power destroy the remnants of this unique population?

Hopefully the "tide will turn" or if not, then I guess we'll "wave" them goodbye...

Lovely. Making light fun of the demise of the tiger.

Will the world really miss the man-eating tigers of the Sunderbands? I wonder.

I will.

But surely such politically charged spin-doctoring as "man-eating" is inappropriate as part of a serious discussion.

Last time I checked ... The tiger's are no where's close to evening the score.

These tigers are truly "man-eating". No joke, they are the real thing. According to the documentary I watched, they take dozens, if not hundreds, of lives annually in the Sunderlands. It's no spin-doctoring, these tigers actually stalk and kill humans and eat them. It's a major problem in the Sunderlands. The native population is very superstitious and they hold all kinds of ceremonial blessing rituals to (hopefully) appease the tigers before they go in there fishing and hunting.

Ok ... Tigers 200, Humans 200,000

Leave the tiger's alone.

If the humans were not running amok overpopulating the place they wouldn't be encroaching on the tiger's territory.

We take the food out of their mouths and then get upset when they attack. Sounds more than a bit hypocritical to me.

Dan, so does what you write. Easy to be sitting pretty in the affluent USA with easy access to contraception etc. and tell people in India, "Stop breeding and running amok will you and just let the tigers eat you when you go out hunting to feed your families."

Blacknad.

Nothing hypocritical here. India has a very decent reproductive health system when it is not being attacked by the holier-than-thou Bushies trying to push their imbecilic abstinence only program.

And I feel the same way about American's and the wolf, and many other similar situations. Consider, for example, how predators are fairing in Europe?

Do you think we should try to reconstitute the tiger's from stored DNA samples in 100 years when India becomes a first-world country?

Dan wrote: India has a very decent reproductive health system when it is not being attacked by the holier-than-thou Bushies trying to push their imbecilic abstinence only program.

India does not provide across the board access to contraception and as powerful as Bush is, we can't lay it all at his feet.

"One of the most important challenges in bettering the adolescent reproductive health
situation lies in meeting their unmet need for contraception. While the total need for
family planning among married adolescents in India is 35 percent as compared to 64
among all women in the reproductive age group, the percentage of demand satisfied is
only 23 among the former as compared to 75 among all women. The future situation of
adolescent reproductive health seems to be bleak unless focused attempts are initiated to
cater their needs. The unmet need among adolescents is very high (27 percent) as
compared to all women (16 percent). Even when we have observed that the use of
contraception among teen-agers is very low, their demand for spacing (which is
preferable) is 31 percent of which is only 5.6 percent is met by any facility available
through government or private facilities in the nation.
As contraceptive use is important for a better reproductive health in adolescent years
(when pregnancy and child birth should be avoided as far as possible), the paper tries to
examine the factors associated with contraceptive use in India. Logistic regression
analysis shows that the most important variables affecting contraceptive use among
adolescents are education, age at marriage, media exposure, standard of living and
experience of physical violence. Those who are literate have chances 1.7 times higher to
use contraception, those married after completing 18 years have a lesser chance to use
contraception, those with some exposure to media have 1.8 times higher chance to use,
those from high standard of living strata have 1.7 times higher chance to use, and those
have had experience of physical violence have 1.2 times chances higher compared to
others."

http://iussp2005.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=51720

Blacknad.

Good question. The DNA banks will certainly have their work cut out for them. Problem being that we have wrecked the habitat of so many creatures that the task will be like painting the Forth Bridge.

'Frozen Ark' to save animal DNA

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3928411.stm

Hehe. As for painting the Forth Bridge:

"While the expression 'like painting the Forth Bridge' was once used for a never-ending task, modern technology may have rendered it obsolete as the coating now used is glass flake epoxy paint which is usually used on oil rigs."

It took a whole year to cover all 400,000 square metres with paint and the painters would just begin again at the other end.

Also 79 people died whilst constructing the bridge.

And Six and a half million rivets, weighing 4,200 tonnes, were used to make the bridge.

We don't build 'em like we used to.

Blacknad.

Blacknad,
thanks for the clarification. I was wondering about your statement on painting the Forth bridge. Now I understand.

Amaranth

Blacknad wrote:
"India does not provide across the board access to contraception and as powerful as Bush is, we can't lay it all at his feet."

And if that is true how is that is the tiger's fault?

Blacknad wrote:
"Good question. The DNA banks will certainly have their work cut out for them. Problem being that we have wrecked the habitat of so many creatures that the task will be like painting the Forth Bridge."

Precisely. We can't and shouldn't use a small amount of human misery as an excuse. After 10,000 years we've not solve simplistically simple problems. Any reason to believe we will do better in the future based on past results? If we wait that long the only life form left on the planet will be cockroaches and crows.

Blacknad wrote:
"We don't build 'em like we used to."

Get into Burford and take a look at Wysdom House. Not the outside ... the floors on the 2nd and 3rd. No they don't make them like that any more. ;-)

San Francisco is developing a tidal wave power facility under the Golden Gate Bridge. I wonder how its going to turn out?

Go through the report-- "Joing the Dots", then talk about tigers in India. If "people versus parks" ? and its inevitable corollary, "people versus tigers" ? is one contentious point of the debate around conservation in India today, the report finds extremely sensitive deliberations upon this issue in the past.

Link for the report...

http://projecttiger.nic.in/TTF2005/executive_summary.htm

http://projecttiger.nic.in/TTF2005/contents.htm

hey i think that you should all be nice and that obama should tell india to leave the dam tigers alone.Because i love tigers and i dont want them to get hurt.Do u understand or no?

Well, at least it's not fossil powered or nuclear. I mean it does suck, but we are a highly evolved highly infectious organism that is apparently here to devour everything and destroy ourselves, our species and everything else arguing over inane questions of our own importance and why we do the things we do.

We, as a species, are incapable of consensus of any topic. For every bit of knowledge, belief, fact or hypothesis. So in my opinion I'll argue that as Tigers do not live in the sea, there Should be no threat to them from a tidal power plant. I would bet however, on certain interests manipulating common sense and acceptable building practices to pit animal conservationists against clean energy advocates, to muddy the deal and make the whole development process drown in an ironic battle between the 'Goodies' if you get me.

I know that it sounds fairly conspiratory, (I so can't spell), but there are many precedents to support my claim.

On the topic of endangered species killed due to renewable energies:

http://essexcountywind.wordpress.com/2008/06/09/green-power-is-black-hole-for-rare-eagles/

On the topic of Government blocking Wind farms for no real reason:

http://www.anthonyalbanese.com.au/file.php?file=/news/MMDHMJFAQHQXYRGHTBGRWYIB/index.html

one of many problems (in my view) in Australia is that in order for the officials in power, in the highest positions to feel better about the fact that they are the democratic rulers of well, us, they have to puppy up to real players like China and America, the World Bank, the RBA, the UN, America, India, The UK, Japan, Canada, America and Indonesia (although the latter is probably more due to fear). Our whole economy is based on how much any of these countries like us at any given point in time.

So my point is, how many of those countries could stop trading commodities like energy, raw materials and ego swelling medals of self importance? (how many of these contries can tolerate anothers' 'free energy'?)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=aBfCd1SbxXN8&refer=uk