26 July 2020

Videos of the day (2) -- the floods in China

Most Americans are hardly aware of the magnitude of the flooding crisis which has overtaken China during June and July.  These two collections of short clips should give you a sense of it.  I assume these scenes are mostly from the Yangtze valley and delta -- but that region is the heartland of the country, containing a third of its population and accounting for a similar fraction of all its industry and agriculture.  Watching these, the extent of the damage to electrical systems, crops, housing, factories, and everything else can well be imagined.

In the first video, 4:57 to 5:45 shows the huge scale of controlled release of excess water through a dam to relieve pressure on it.


The still image on the video below is the Three Gorges Dam, which I discussed here.  To give a sense of scale, the height of this dam is more than half the height of the Empire State Building in New York.

The rainstorms which are causing all this are expected to get even heavier during the rest of July and early August.

8 Comments:

Blogger Mike said...

That's a lot of freakin' water. Thank goodness it's not from global warming... right?

27 July, 2020 00:10  
Blogger Geo. said...

I appreciate your report, which news media has yet announce here. Yangtze is one of the longest rivers on earth and drops from very high elevation to lowlands in less than a mile. There must be tremendous loss of lives and livelihoods.

27 July, 2020 01:26  
Blogger W. Hackwhacker said...

I think of the sights I saw going up the Yangtze several years ago -- the building cranes everywhere, the mountains hemming in the river, the villages moved hundreds of yards up the hillsides and the Three Gorges Dam itself -- and I just feel so bad for the good, everyday people living there. What a terrible misery.

27 July, 2020 05:00  
Blogger Sixpence Notthewiser said...

Most Americans are not aware of anything. Period.
The climate crisis will catch America by surprise, just like the Pandemic did....

I cannot imagine the loss caused by this.

XOXO

27 July, 2020 06:32  
Blogger Ranch Chimp said...

I knew they had many flooding problems in China, but didn't know the extent and the current state of it.The cost of not tackling global warming enough over the years, since they knew about this for a half century, is going to cost even more than the fraction of costs it would have to address this early on. And as long as we keep bailing out and subsidizing these industries, they will not try to improve much. This is a good YouTube channel.

27 July, 2020 07:10  
Blogger dellgirl said...

All the good stuff has already been said by everyone else. I have nothing new or significant to add to the conversation. I’m just saying hi, stopping in to see what's new with you and to show my face. I hope you had a gratifying weekend, wishing you a wonderful week!

Stay Safe, my friend!

27 July, 2020 20:35  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Mike: I'm sure that's playing a big role.

Geo: The US media tend to be rather solipsistic. They don't pay much attention to events overseas, no matter how important, unless they relate to US affairs somehow.

Hackwhacker: That's what happens where there is no democracy. The people never had a chance to stop this thing or change how it was carried out to make it safer.

Sixpence: This is certainly a warning of how bad things can get.

Ranch: China has been doing more to address global warming than the US, not that that's saying much. Now maybe they'll focus on it more.

Dellgirl: Thanks!

28 July, 2020 01:26  
Blogger Ranch Chimp said...

Yes,actually I know about what China has been doing as far as renewables and some of their infrastructure planning concerning energy, I blogged some stuff on that, about them in particular. I was not talking about China, as much as generally about the fossil fuel industries of the globe, being that they themselves, knew of what they were doing, as far as climate change for decades, yet continued to do so, even with warnings from their "own" scientists.It is the companies who shown no regard or respect for anything but business as usual.

28 July, 2020 06:07  

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