Major dam failure in China

[PandaBear]

One thing is for sure they failed to track weather and to lower water levels before heavy flooding in upper level.
This is extremely important in areas that get heavy rains and those surrounded by mountains where snow melts and water level can rise quickly. The dam had to have emergency water discharging provisions in its design and tested on regular basis.

True, but this CAN be a political nightmare if they do this. As I have said earlier, you are basically picking winners and playing god on who would be impacted, and they have populations who were there for centuries if not longer in the same region (villagers), long before governments were overthrown every several hundred years let alone the in power today.

It is not like in the US where most of the lands ownerships are recent and you can just tell the owners they have to move and sell due to eminent domain. A lot of the attitudes are "the clan" own this place since several hundred years ago, even if some of them die in a flood there will be remaining members to rebuild the place and carry on the family name. The emotional baggage to sell the ancestor lands and relocate is huge (think Native American reservation).

A couple years ago they flood a low ground near Beijing. It was a heavy but understandable decision because common sense would say it is better to flood 600k villagers than a capital of a nation that house 22M. But this is not as black and white between a 200k rural town vs a 2M medium size city.

 

[Snagglefoot]

That is actually misleading. Most of today's Great Wall was actually build during the Ming Dynasty, so the "nice" part of it was build 682 years ago. Still durable but not 24 centuries durable.

Ok, call it 682 years old!

 

[Cropduster172]

So did climate change cause something like 700 government built apartment buildings to collapse in Venezuela too?

And a building in Manhattan that's collapsing as I write this?

 

[Snagglefoot]

Regarding civil engineering failures, there are huge numbers of them out there, and designing earthquake proof 25 story buildings would be a major effort, but dumbing it down and saying a modern concrete building design had no rebar in the concrete is not very plausible and of course would be totally negligent. We need more close up photos of the structures. I don’t believe you could get a concrete tower to 25 stories without rebar. The city of Calgary has plenty of 25 story buildings constructed of reinforced concrete. They all contain rebar.

 

[SC Maintenance]

The Anchor Lake dam on the Mississippi just about failed a few weeks ago. Took some extraordinary measures to divert the water under It somehow I believe to keep it from failing.

We have lots of marginal dams in the USA. The army corps somehow manages to juggle the water around and keep them from failing. Like the guy with the spinning plates.

 

[ripcord]

More likely corners were cut by using substandard concrete mixes and too little rebar and steel reinforcement or low quality metals.

 

[benjamming]

Just a friendly public service announcement. Browser plugins/extensions are a thing. I am currently running one called AI Channel Blocker which at least removes some AI content from YT. Unfortunately AI channels on YouTube are like cockroaches and they pop up faster than the block list can be updated, but it does cut down on it a lot.

Which one of these is that?

 

[dubber09]

Ok, call it 682 years old!

According to some researchers the way the wall is constructed indicates it was built by people on the North side of it to protect them from Southern neighbors; that means the wall wasn't built by Chinese.

 

[Snagglefoot]

True, but this CAN be a political nightmare if they do this. As I have said earlier, you are basically picking winners and playing god on who would be impacted, and they have populations who were there for centuries if not longer in the same region (villagers), long before governments were overthrown every several hundred years let alone the in power today.

It is not like in the US where most of the lands ownerships are recent and you can just tell the owners they have to move and sell due to eminent domain. A lot of the attitudes are "the clan" own this place since several hundred years ago, even if some of them die in a flood there will be remaining members to rebuild the place and carry on the family name. The emotional baggage to sell the ancestor lands and relocate is huge (think Native American reservation).

A couple years ago they flood a low ground near Beijing. It was a heavy but understandable decision because common sense would say it is better to flood 600k villagers than a capital of a nation that house 22M. But this is not as black and white between a 200k rural town vs a 2M medium size city.

Good points. I recall someone at Bittog said " China has a billion people" The truth is that China has 1.4 Billion people. He was out 400 million people. His rounding error was more than the ENTIRE population of the USA which is currently 340 million people. Managing that many people is an incredible task.

 

[QwikKota]

Looks like an earthen dam covered in a very thin layer of concrete. Not acceptable for that much water.

 

[ripcord]

Which one of these is that?

I don't use Chrome except as a fall back when something doesn't work as expected in a more security/privacy focused browser.

It looks like the one I have been using has a different title in the chrome store.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/aiblock-for-youtube/opehoedgoiggiecjdlmmgjgdegjgoaim?pli=1

 

[Pew]

Regarding civil engineering failures, there are huge numbers of them out there, and designing earthquake proof 25 story buildings would be a major effort, but dumbing it down and saying a modern concrete building design had no rebar in the concrete is not very plausible and of course would be totally negligent. We need more close up photos of the structures. I don’t believe you could get a concrete tower to 25 stories without rebar. The city of Calgary has plenty of 25 story buildings constructed of reinforced concrete. They all contain rebar.

It looks like there was some rebar, but nothing compared to the amount we would have here.

https://apnews.com/article/earthqua...ld-buildings-6ef83f995a311c03dbbbba413d046fa5

Does Venezuela get a lot of quakes that require earthquake fortified buildings? I'd assume that if they do not, then their building codes for quake-proof buildings would be as robust as a high-rise in our Midwest. Two back-to-back 7.5 and 7.1 quakes is dangerous in all cases.

 

[TCL]

they'll figure it out. they got the resources to build underwater war islands I mean the country used more cement in the last 20 years than America has used in 150 years.

They actually have changed the wobble of the earth..slightly.

 

[Oliveoil2]

Ripcord is just trying to be helpful, and you're not listening.

As I thanked ripcord I’ll thank you too and say I am listening. I will not mention climate change, as it relates to natural disasters, ever again.

 

[Owen Lucas]

1000's dead likely, but we'll never know the real numbers. Supposedly China's population is way less than 1B, some estimates are around 500MM and it has been harder to determine since a lot of the data/metrics are no longer released to corroborate the 1B+ population claim.

 

[CleanSump]

On the other hand, the Great Wall of China was built 24 centuries ago and with a bit of maintenance looks pretty good.

Part of it was, and still is, just a pile of dissolved mud brick and filler until recently.
Andin 200 BC or so when construction was first started, there were only nomadic tribes to the North. Certainly the Xiongnu, the Khitans, and the Jurchens weren't building walls to keep the Chinese out. The Northern empires were raiding into what is on the South side until the Mongols finally breached it and overan modern day China.

 

[SC Maintenance]

1000's dead likely, but we'll never know the real numbers. Supposedly China's population is way less than 1B, some estimates are around 500MM and it has been harder to determine since a lot of the data/metrics are no longer released to corroborate the 1B+ population claim.

China's own offician statistics were revised down by about 100M a few years ago - all under 30. The provinces were transfered money based on births for things like schools and such, and hence fudged the numbers for years.

500MM seems sort of unbelievable, so I wouldn't go that far. However given there birth rate is now around 1, and 2.1 is replacement, I know what there population will be in 40 years.

If your not familiar with Peter Zeihan, he called this 20 years ago. Worth the 5 minute watch:

 

[danstraylee]

About half of YT suggested videos on my feed are AI slop with thousands of likes and views, and excited comments.

That is 100% the fault of the viewer. You can disable virtually all of AI content and other nonsense you don't want in the YT settings.

I'm a commercial free subscriber to YouTube and YouTube TV. I was grandfathered in with a one time fee lifetime subscription that also included YouTube Music.

 

[ripcord]

That is 100% the fault of the viewer. You can disable virtually all of AI content and other nonsense you don't want in the YT settings.

I'm a commercial free subscriber to YouTube and YouTube TV. I was grandfathered in with a one time fee lifetime subscription that also included YouTube Music.

Yep. I run unlogged in on YT but don't ever see ads there due to ad blocking browser plug-ins. The DNS based filter in my IPFire firewall does a pretty good job of blocking ad servers in general, too.

 

[Snagglefoot]

One thing bout the Venezuelan earthquakes. There were two seperated quakes of over 7 magnitude, on two separate faults and possibly those two faults were in separate directions. Mods, here are two screen shots of what has been posted in Wiki has gives a quick run down.