China's campaign to bulldoze mountains to build cities

Interesting reading, both the article and the various responses across the web. It isn't "new" that mountains erode and become the valley floor, one need only walk along the alluvial fans in Death Valley or any mountain valley to see this happening. There are also examples of sudden changes where large sections of a mountain, in the form of a mud slide, slide into the valley floor below. The claim then that this is 'unnatural' is not supported by the evidence, the tops of the mountains will sink into the valleys, its only a question of time and agency.

So when this occurs naturally, if it is slow enough, it allows for top soil to form, and re-form, as the mountain shifts. If it happens to quickly in nature, or by humans, it results in a lot of exposed rock. However, if you look at the Mount St Helens eruption area, you can see that having these sorts of events (even when they happen naturally) one can reasonably quickly (30 - 50 years) achieve a nominal level of topsoil and a return to fecundity. If humans are the agency for the erosion, they can also accelerate the creation of topsoil by pre-staging components which are normally provided by bacterial colonies. That results in a much faster return to equilibrium. Some examples of humans speeding the recovery can be found in the remediation of various strip mining sites around the world.

Bottom line is that it seems like a lot of work to create flat, and futurely arable acreage but if they have the resources to do so, knowing in advance that is what you're doing gives you a tremendous advantage in building your 'soon to be underground' infrastructure before you cover it up with the material from the mountains on either side.

Isn't this right out of Snow Crash?

Big slowdown at the intersection of CSV-5 and Oahu Road, per usual, only way to avoid it is to cut through The Mews at Windsor Heights.

TMAWHs all have the same layout. When creating a new Burbclave, TMAWH Development Corporation will chop down any mountain ranges and divert the course of any mighty rivers that threaten to interrupt this street plan -- ergonomically designed to encourage driving safety. A Deliverator can go into a Mews at Windsor Heights anywhere from Fairbanks to Yaroslavl to the Shenzhen special economic zone and find his way around.

But once you've delivered a pie to every single house in a TMAWH a few times, you get to know its little secrets. The Deliverator is such a man. He knows that in a standard TMAWH there is only one yard - one yard - that prevents you from driving straight in one entrance, across the Burbclave, and out the other. If you are squeamish about driving on grass, it might take you ten minutes to meander through TMAWH. But if you have the balls to lay tracks across that one yard, you have a straight shot through the center.

I was reading James Rickard's new book "The Death of Money" (he also wrote "Currency Wars") today and he goes into a lot of detail on China's problems (investing in infrastructure that may not be used, not pushing consumer spending, etc.) - a recommended read.

I have been taking a class on Globalization. My gut instinct is both China and the USA face extreme problems, and things are just holding together in both countries.

China already has numerous "ghost cities" that nobody lives in, so this project just seems like an especially environmentally dangerous jobs program: http://gizmodo.com/welcome-to-the-worlds-largest-ghost-city-... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-21/chinas-ghost-cities...

While I agree with the recommendations of the article, I wish it would cover some of the history of US geo-engineering too.

I wonder what concerns were raised when they filled in Back Bay in Boston, or created artificial islands like Balboa Island in Newport Beach.

This has so many unforeseen consequences. Without even going into the environmental impact, it sounds like they have invested nothing in soil engineering. The authors stress the danger of subsidence, but still it is terrifying to think that people are actually going to build buildings on top of this stuff. Imagine a future where no one remembers that this large patch of land was actually created out of nothing and has not been tested by science (much less time) against erosion and seismic activity how many lives could be lost?

"Our lives are spent trying to pixellate a fractal planet."

~A. King in Society

Short-sighted thinking. Environmental and structural concerns aside, what about the irrevocable destruction of natural beauty? When I visited China, its massive rolling hills, peppered with rural farms, were one of the most beautiful natural vistas I'd ever seen.

Hey! We flatten mountains in West Virginia too!

In a country where everything is measured by GDP growth, it isnt surprising.

Mountains actually do affect climate as well...couple with deforestation and making huge dams...

China taking on these large projects that may or may not work out in the future is a good thing for the United States. Otherwise they would be investing all of that into the military and have taken over every country around them already. Let them tear down mountains instead of something else. Sounds good to me. In a million years the terrain will look totally different and what they are doing now may be unrecognizable.

Url changed from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/china-tearing-down-..., which points to this.