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Comment by yingw787 | Hacker News Reader

Apparently there's chatter in recent days on China's internet regarding the Three Gorges Dam, and how it's setting / warping due to reservoir backpressure (pictures in link): https://www.theepochtimes.com/experts-warn-of-chinas-three-g...

Apparently there's heavy rainfall this year. 300-400 million people live below the dam. I'm unfamiliar with domestic travel restrictions within China, but I can't imagine it's gotten better with the ongoing pandemic, so you can't really plan ahead and move out of the way until the rainy season ends.

I want to believe there's something wrong with the camera that made that specific image distorted. Or that the government recognizes the problem and is fixing it. I like it when things are boring.

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It's worth noting that your source, The Epoch Times, is run by Falun Gong and is basically anti-CCP propaganda. I don't trust the Chinese government as far as I can throw them, but getting info from The Epoch Times has the same problem in the other direction.

For what it's worth, that looks like distortion I've seen in other Google Maps images. This South China Morning Post article includes a satellite photo released by the Chinese government to show everything is fine: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3017927/no-p...

That's great, thanks for the better link! The image did look a bit weird to me (I don't think the facility would be usable in that condition), and it seemed a bit incredible that there would be that much settling after only 10 years, but I'm not sure what to believe anymore and it feels like the worse scenario is always the true one. Really glad I'm just being Chicken Little, we have enough stuff to worry about.

> For what it's worth, that looks like distortion I've seen in other Google Maps images.

I'd like to think that I would've noticed before reading your comment but I saw the picture after... it looks pretty obvious though, especially to the right where the distortion follows the stitching line where there is clearly different light.

Even if the distortion were believed to be real, some of the discontinuities in the structure would be so severe as to be catastrophic.

Look no further than the Coca Codo dam that China built for Ecuador. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/world/americas/ecuador-ch... Not only did it basically cost Ecuador any sovereignty it may have had, the project is a complete disaster. Equipment is degrading at 10x its depreciation schedule. The dam has never been able to function at the output levels it promised, and the deaths that have occurred during and after its construction is reminiscent of another massive Chinese construction project, some kind of wall, I think.

Yeah, that’s just a crummy image that looks like it’s been projected onto terrain. You see the same wavy effect on stuff all over google earth, which that appears to be from.

Yep, the issue here is that it's projecting it over the old terrain height maps that were created before the dam was built. In Google Earth Desktop, you can fix this by unchecking "terrain" and can see that the base image is perfectly straight.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Three+Gorges+Dam+Scenic+Ar...

Here's an extreme shot from the edge of the dam. Obviously it didn't deform that much and stay standing.

I don’t think concrete warps like that. If you check out the google satellite image, it really looks like a warped image.

I’d say the dam is fine.

I was about to reply that the same thing happened last year, but then I noticed that your link is also to an article from 2019. I wonder why it's become news again. Maybe because it's the rainy season right now?

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