China on highest flood alert as 38M people evacuated | Hacker News Reader

China on highest flood alert as 38M people evacuated

asia.nikkei.com

63 pointsbhouston48 comments

It is impressive that they were able to evacuate 38m people.

it is hard to imagine where do you evacuate so many people to - temp housing? relatives?

Ghost cities...

China is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to China.

Butchering of Douglas Adams' work aside, it's true, having taken a train a few times across bits of mainland China - it just. does. not. stop. and you can witness constant construction too.

> China is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.

China is almost exactly the same size as the United States.

There's probably more than a few of us on HN from smaller countries who would also find the size of the US mind-boggling.

Especially us from higher latitudes whose worldview is influenced by the Mercator projection.

A useful link that helps with that problem:

https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTYxNDU5OTQ.MzgwMzc5Mg*...

Great site.

Never realized Greenland fits inside the USA. Dragging a country to/from the poles really establishes how ridiculous the projection is.

> Dragging a country to/from the poles really establishes how ridiculous the projection is.

I mean, the pole is an infinitesimal point that _any_ rectangular projection must expand to the size of the equator.

I don't think it's fair to say it is ridiculous - it has pros and cons - with the distortion of areas towards the poles definitely being one of the latter

https://connectusfund.org/13-major-pros-and-cons-of-mercator...

I was not just referring to China's acreage. China is also very big vertically - and this vertical building is not just limited to a handful of cities.

Being originally from Scotland, almost every large country or city is mind-blowingly big as far as I'm concerned :)

Being in Scotland I see that as a feature not a bug ;-)

It is quite eye opening when you hear of name of some "smaller" Chinese city you have never heard of and then go look the population only to find it to be in millions.

And there are 113 cities with more than a million inhabitants in China: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chinas-113-cities-one-milli...

A friend of mine in college was an international student from China. He was from a city I had never heard of and it boasted a population of 7 million people.

Undoubtedly, the United States is huge. But a large chunk of the US (Alaska) is separated from the contiguous landmass. It dilutes the perception of size relative to China.

The melting permafrost of Alaska, Canada, and Russia, are about to become prime real estate in the next few centuries.

I hear this a lot. Is there any reason why people are not scooping up Canadian wilderness properties right now?

Well, it’s not going to become valuable for probably another 6 generations. You’ll be long dead by then, but your great great great great ancestors might benefit from it.

A lot of it is the Canadian Shield - which probably isn't the most desirable property (thankfully):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield

Because climate change isn't going to make the Canadian Shield, and muskeg, any more valuable than it is now.

To put another way, if muskeg were worth using, it would have been used a century ago.

Well, they're going to become vast, mosquito-infested swamps. Whether you regard that as "prime real estate" probably depends if you're an estate agent or not.

China has 60 million empty apartments... The government should think about that.

Isn't China's urbanization rate quiet low at the moment. Better to build some reserve if you need to move people from rural to urban areas. So if you have to move hundreds of millions of people into urban areas its probably a good thing to have some housing reserves build up to facilitate those migrations.

China has been doing that for 3 decades. The target is a 60% urbanization rate. That's why there are so many "empty apartments". Because they are build and it takes a year or two to fill them up, so it looks like they are "empty". I lived in two such developments during the years that I lived in China. It's interesting to see the policies used to fill them. And to come back to the place a year later, when it is crowded.

Most developed nations have like a urbanization rate of at least 80+%. To reach developed nations urbanization rate china would need to move like 300 million people into urban areas, doing some quick maths.

I found this number highly suspect. As they were unable to even cite an official making this claim I'll provide a source that does give a more realistic figure: https://vietnamtimes.org.vn/433-rivers-across-china-exceed-a...

I mean, it's still an impressive number of people... but yeah a lot less than 38M:

So far, floods have affected 37.89 million people in 27 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. As many as 141 people are dead or missing, and 28,000 houses have collapsed.

A total of 2.246 million emergency evacuations have been made, according to Zheng Guoguang, vice minister of emergency management

Both articles mention the 38 million number, I suspect that is the number of people ordered to evacuate their home while the number who have actually evacuated the area is the three million number.

I've worked emergency communications and 911 dispatch during wildfires and a surprising amount of people don't leave their homes during an evacuation order.

My guess is that the region has 38milion. Like, evacuate Texas, but in reality only x million might be on the flood plain.

That would be impressive however it is probably not correct.

Here is state-sponsored Xinhua's coverage of the same story:

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-07/14/c_139209909.htm

China battles unprecedented floods around its largest freshwater lake

Xi is losing the Mandate of Heaven

China can't stop burning coal either, unfortunately they'll just get more of this.

All of us will get more of this and other stuff.

Yes this is true, just some nations contributing a lot more than others.

Yes, but it's complicated - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipVxxxqwBQw

China will certainly stop burning coal when the economics of doing so makes sense to China. How long will that take? I suspect sooner than you might imagine.

Coal is already uneconomic against renewable energy in many scenarios and this trend continues inexorably.

Coal is not only our worst large-scale energy resource in terms of global warming. It also produces local pollution, which disproportionately impacts air quality in Beijing.

The rate of change in China is fast. Following behind other countries, they aim to become the global technology leader.

China has already demonstrated intent and ability to economically dominate high volume technology industries in pursuit of its own interest: LCD panel, solar panel etc. Next comes battery. Currently the most significant constraint on renewable energy deployment.

If things pan out the way I hope, then good for China. And good for the rest of us too.

China has 300-500 additional coal plants currently in construction or planned over the next ten years.

And another proof why nuclear power is the safest form of power generation.

Meh... This anecdotally suggests that hydro is less safe than predicted (vis a vis climate change). There's plenty of similar catastrophes related to nuclear.

Comparing apples to oranges and all that.

Evacuating 38mil is impressive, no less.

There is 3 catastrophes related to nuclear. The only one where radiation actually killed people was Chernobyl. Displacement of hundred thousands, considered contaminated thus excluded by their peers, probably caused more life-years lost than the radiation itself.

The UNSCEAR (GIEC group1 equivalent for radiation) rapport on Fukushima is enlightening.

Nuclear have a lot of drawback too (mining pollution, waste disposal) but is probably the energy ressource that killed the less people/MWh produced, and for sure the one destroying the less ecosystem/MWh.

I used to be anti-nuclear for the wrong reasons until an observation internship in a hospital were i learned how dangerous radiation actually was, but realistically, until a new breakthrough on superconductor is found and allow us a less expensive, more lasting magnetic containment for plasma, i don't see any other energy that can replace coal/gaz.

There were plenty of near misses too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...

If I recall, there were always stories of southern China getting flooded every few decades. Tens of millions would get wiped out and killed by the floods. So, this is a very tragic and cyclic event.

Thus, they were determined to build the great Three Gorges Dam, to control the flooding. And even at the cost, where it would at least hold back the floods for a few decades, then this might be worth it, in order to prevent regular destabilization.

The society could at least grow and prosper for a while. This could buy the society enough time to build other fortifications, or do something to mitigate a future disaster.

These people here live in a flood plain. The water is washing down from the mountains, and the government didn’t build enough flood run off to handle the torrential downpour.

In the future, they should probably build their newer buildings on top of a 10 foot high concrete base. Or build more flood run off channels.

It’s easy to be a naysayer and cast your doubt about something. It’s much harder to actually do the research, and try to engineer something to hold back the forces of Mother Nature, for the greater benefit of their society.

Yeah, as I understand it Banqiao Dam was/is quite similar - it was also necessary in order to prevent much more regular and disruptive downstream flooding, and its collapse was a direct consequence of holding back too much water out of fear of downstream flooding (as well as some unfortunate design flaws). It also served as a water supply. That doesn't stop nuclear proponents regularly pointing to its failure as evidence that nuclear is safer than hydroelectric.

I suspect there might be a bias towards high-profile dam failures in China involving hydroelectric dams because the larger dams obviously get more attention and were also more economically viable to incorporate hydroelectric power into.

Nuclear energy has a very high energy density output, per square footage of the nuclear facility. The highest of all energy generation.

But, the cost appears to be very high. The nuclear reactor, is a very complex system of pipes and pumps, switches and relays, backup systems of backup systems, etc. It’s an incredibly complex way to produce electricity.

It moves around a lot of radioactive water, in its pipes. And then, it has a nasty waste byproduct, which will take 10,000 years to degrade before it becomes relatively safe. This is longer than recorded human civilization. And far longer than any continuous government has existed. And the container holding the waste might actually deteriorate before the waste becomes safe. Thus, the nuclear waste might end up leaking into the ground water, and now poisoning your water supply.

Whereas hydro is relatively safe. You’re just using gravity to spin the generator. Funnel the water rolling down a mountain, and let gravity do its thing. Easy. And no radioactive mess to deal with afterwards.

You can even float some solar panels on top of your dam reservoir, to generate more energy.

The dam will require maintenance of course. You have to clear the silt every few years. And then, you have to upgrade the concrete once every century or so. But, this is probably far easier, than dealing with radioactive waste.

"Looks like we should gotten a different copy of 2020... this one has a virus!"

A wacky year that has thrown a lot at us (and election fun has barely begun)!

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