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Three Gorges Dam under strain, millions evacuated


GRHorn

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Funny, just did the San Antonio to Vegas move/drive with the son in late September as he was Changing bases.  I've done the Hoover dam visit before (pre 9-11 when they showed you more behind the scene stuff I believe), it's pretty damned cool.  We hit Sedona, and the Grand Canyon on that last run.

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Took this pic in the bowels when we toured pre 9/11


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8 hours ago, woohorn said:

"When the Three Gorges Dam was built, 39 trillion kilograms of water from the Yangtze River built up behind it to 175 meters above sea level. This altered the Earth’s moment of inertia changed ever so slightly, causing the rotation to move more slowly. This is the same principle behind why figure skaters tuck in their arms to spin faster.

NASA has calculated that the dam only slows the rotation by 0.06 microseconds, which is six hundredths of a millionth of a second."
 

Something, something,...."Your Mom" joke ...

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17 hours ago, Hefeweizen said:

And regarding 100 year events.  It’s a misleading nomenclature because really we’re looking at percentage probabilities.  In addition, you’re looking at an area and a temporal distribution.  The worst flooding we’ve seen, like Houston, is a combination of the amount of rainfall and where it falls.  We design for a 1 percent event, over 24 hours, generally.  Does it mean those can’t occur more often?  Obviously not.  In addition, climate change is resulting in new data which shows extreme events may be larger than previously thought.  So the one percent rain depth in Austin went from 11 inches to about 13.5 in 24 hours.  That’s a big change. 

That's not even the complete picture.  A 100-year event is the 10th biggest year in 1,000 years. 

But there's usually not a spread of completely random events.  5 of the events might have all occured within a single decade because of some larger contributing event. 

So it's generally lower than a 1% chance of occuring on a given year, but might be much much higher during a contributing climate event.

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On 7/19/2020 at 10:46 AM, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I’m purely relying on opinions and writings of others, but I’ve heard commentators talk about how the first 30-40 years of the Chinese communist rule has shaped construction and why it’s failing. It’s all about initial appearances and meeting schedules. Quality and ongoing maintenance are low considerations. Let that be someone else’s problem.

Raising issues is a problem for anyone in a bureaucracy but becomes toxic in a country with such deep bureaucracy.

even if modern China is trying to become more responsive to problems, earlier regimes drove home the message to not identify problems.

I could be wrong, but with covid, I got the impression that the local leaders underestimated/refused to listen to the docs, then when shit blew up, they tried to cover it up from their superiors/outside world, rather than try to address the actual problem.  They did not seem to care much about the actual problem itself, but more about making sure they didn't take the fall for it.

And this is what a lot of friends and a family member who have traveled to China for business have observed.  The bureaucracy drives everything.

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4 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I could be wrong, but with covid, I got the impression that the local leaders underestimated/refused to listen to the docs, then when shit blew up, they tried to cover it up from their superiors/outside world, rather than try to address the actual problem.  They did not seem to care much about the actual problem itself, but more about making sure they didn't take the fall for it.

You talkin' China or US there?

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51 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I could be wrong, but with covid, I got the impression that the local leaders underestimated/refused to listen to the docs, then when shit blew up, they tried to cover it up from their superiors/outside world, rather than try to address the actual problem.  They did not seem to care much about the actual problem itself, but more about making sure they didn't take the fall for it.

And this is what a lot of friends and a family member who have traveled to China for business have observed.  The bureaucracy drives everything.

When the potential penalties for mismanagement include long prison sentences, no one is going to scream about a problem. Better to ignore them and when the problem becomes inevitable, step out of the way of the hammer that is about to fall. I've worked in companies where this is standard operating procedure, even while top mgmt is stating that the direct opposite is true.

Ultimately a dam system has its limits and if conditions cause it to hit the limits, you need to have methods to release water regardless of the downstream consequences. You can't let the dam itself fail which will create worse downstream conditions. If this was underestimated during the build, then maybe more people need to be permanently moved.

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Conversation in Chinese construction company board room:

"We can't meet our schedule because we can't get enough cement for the concrete!"

"We can meet our schedule and save millions if we use 10% clay in place of cement!!"

"That's a great plan...nobody will every know..........unless.........well, we don't have time to worry about that"

 

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1 hour ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

If this was underestimated during the build, then maybe more people need to be permanently moved.

Oh, there's going to be plenty of people permanently moved underground.  In trees.  On the bottom of temporary rivers.

And I'm sure plenty of officials will also be permanently moved underground.

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15 minutes ago, SquishMitten said:


If slowly damning the water had an observable impact on the Earth’s rotation, I can’t imagine what an abrupt release might do. Are we all going to get flung into space? I’m going to tether myself to some pipes Twister-style just to be safe.

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LOL I thought that that scene was one of the most abjectly stupid things ever to hit the Silver Screen, and kinda dangerous to boot.  Trust me, if you tried to ride out a monster F5 by tethering yourself to something, the winds would slice you in half pretty much like buttah.  Not to mention that no belt would be able to withstand those kind of winds.  And the force of things hitting you would absolutely destroy anything protecting you and also pretty much vaporize you.  Other than that it was accurate.

It's not by coincidence that the only things left after an F5 goes over them are foundation slabs, and often they get pulled up and disintegrated as well.  So do the math.. an F5 will pull concrete from its rebar roots but hey, tie a lil' belt around us and we'll be fine.  Good god what a joke.

That said, I also thought Helen Hunt in the 90's was spectacular and if I did this scene, I would insist on 320 retakes.

Edit: I have naming rights to the "One Bigass Gorge"  for the current area after the dam goes.

Edited by phdhorn
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1 hour ago, woohorn said:

Interesting idea of weighing bridges down. Also shows how much faith they have in their bridge construction quality.
 

i wonder how much that would really help.  wouldn't they be better off throwing that cargo into the water at the base of the piers...

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1 hour ago, woohorn said:

Interesting idea of weighing bridges down. Also shows how much faith they have in their bridge construction quality.

Is this like when you put a bunch of books on top of something you just glued together hoping it stays together?

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6 minutes ago, 1978horn said:

Is this like when you put a bunch of books on top of something you just glued together hoping it stays together?

Except there isn't flood water washing out the foundations of the building under the freshly glued object under the books.  Other than that it's exactly the same concept.

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16 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Except there isn't flood water washing out the foundations of the building under the freshly glued object under the books.  Other than that it's exactly the same concept.

What's the big deal? It just makes the video of the upcoming collapse more entertaining.

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2 hours ago, crash_davis said:

China: The dam did not fail. This is an improvement project. Everything was planned.

COVID population control project was not successful enough, so now they are starting up their spontaneous inland sea creation strategy.  Everything is according to plan!

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On 7/20/2020 at 2:08 PM, JohnLocke said:

Conversation in Chinese construction company board room:

"We can't meet our schedule because we can't get enough cement for the concrete!"

"We can meet our schedule and save millions if we use 10% clay in place of cement!!"

"That's a great plan...nobody will every know..........unless.........well, we don't have time to worry about that"

 

..."and don't call me Surely"

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11 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Huh, just realized from reading the article linked by Parliament that the dam's failure would imperil Wuhan. That's some biblical shit, wash away the origin of the pandemic with a flood?

2020's writers are really swinging for the fences

Does that mean the flood will spread all across the world? God lied to us!

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