Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b95js Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T04:12:20.271Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hydroelectric dams in Brazilian Amazonia: response to Rosa, Schaeffer & dos Santos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2009

Philip M. Fearnside
Philip M. Fearnside
Affiliation:
National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA), Caixa Postal 478, 69011–970 Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, Fax: +55 92 236 3822
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In a critique of my paper on ‘greenhouse’ gas (GHG) emissions from Amazonian reservoirs (Fearnside 1995), Rosa et al. (1996) suggest that I have reached overly pessimistic conclusions because the reservoirs on which my calculations are based are unrepresentative and because methods based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) global warming potentials (GWPs) are unfair for comparing hydroelectric and fossil fuel options. I rush to defend my analysis.

Type
Comment
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 105 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brazil, , ELETRONORTE (1988) Usina Hidrelétrica Kararaô, Efeitos e Programas Ambientais: Sintese. Centrais Elétricas do Norte do Brasil S.A. (ELETRONORTE) and Consórcio Nacional de Engenheiros Consultores S.A. (CNEC), São Paulo: 28 pp.Google Scholar
Bultman, J.D. & Southwell, C.R. (1976) Natural resistance of tropical American woods to terrestrial wood-destroying organisms. Biotropica 8: 71–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearnside, P.M. (1987) Summary of progress in quantifying the potential contribution of Amazonian deforestation to the global carbon problem. In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Biogeochemistry of Tropical Rain Forests:_Problems for Research, ed. Athié, D., Lovejoy, T.E. & Oycns, P. de M., pp. 75–82. Universidade de São Paulo, Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura (CENA), Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil.Google Scholar
Fearnside, P.M. (1989) Brazil's Balbina Dam: environment versus the legacy of the Pharaohs in Amazonia. Environmental Management 13: 401–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearnside, P.M. (1992) Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Carbon Emissions and Sequestration in Forests: Case Studies from Developing Countries, Volume 2. (LBL-32758, UC-402.) Climate Change Division, Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC and Energy and Environment Division, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL), University of California (UC), Berkeley, California, USA: 73 pp.Google Scholar
Fearnside, P.M. (1995) Hydroelectric dams in the Brazilian Amazonia as sources of ‘greenhouse’ gases. Environmental Conservation 22(1): 7–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lashof, D.A. & Ahuja, D.R. (1990) Relative global warming potentials of greenhouse gas emissions. Nature 344: 529–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosa, L.P. & Schaeffer, R. (1995) Global warming potentials: the case of emissions from dams. Energy Policy 23: 149–58.Google Scholar
Rosa, L.P., Schaeffer, R. & dos Santos, M.A. (1996) Are hydroelectric dams in the Brazilian Amazon significant sources of'greenhouse’ gases? Environmental Conservation 23: 2–6.Google Scholar
Setzer, A.W. & Pereira, M.C. (1991) Amazonia biomass burnings in 1987 and an estimate of their tropospheric emissions. Ambio 20: 19–22.Google Scholar
Seva, O. (1990) Works on the Great Bend of the Xingu – A historic trauma? In: Hydroelectric Dams on Brazil's Xingu River and Indigenous Peoples, ed. de, L.A.Santos, O. & de Andrade, L.M.M., pp. 19–35. Cultural Survival Report 30, Cultural Survival, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.Google Scholar