73 Replies to “It’s Probably Nothing”

    1. Of course it does. But you weren’t expecting the CCP to inform the public of those readings, were you?

    2. For some reason I would like to see it break. The Chinese government deserves it but sadly many innocents would die. with 1.4 billion … it’s a scratch.

      And don’t think for a minute that the Chinese Government gives a rat’s ass.

      If breaks they could sell that footage to the movie industry for their disaster movies.

  3. It’s made in China with Chinese-produced materials…IT’S ALREADY SUB-STANDARD…then add the fact that contractors were put under the gun (probably literally) to meet production timelines…try to persuade me that shortcuts weren’t taken.

    1. favill…. it’s stupidy like yers that needs to be slapped down.The chinese are very capable of building quality structures, and using quality materials. And the west is just as able to fuck it up as the chinese are.

      1. “it’s stupidy like yers that needs to be slapped down”

        Trust me, slapping down “stupidy” is not a movement you should be encouraging.

      2. If the ‘stupidity slap’ matched your stupidity you wouldn’t stop bouncing for a couple of weeks. the fact is experts told the CCP twice that the dam should not be built. The bed rock below it is too fractured to hold the dam securely. Of course the CPP stupidly asked for a third opinion with an or else clause in the tender. Now the dam has been built and is deforming and the flood gates are open and people down stream are dying.

      3. Like the cheap Chinese shit masquerading as “Ford” parts, that wear prematurely? Cmon NME , they make crap and ship it to Murica, but we never buy it a second time.

      6. I understand that. I also understand that the first Chinese air craft carrier sank when it got out of drydock. And I’ll add that the Chinese people *you’ve* met are not the same as the Chinese people living under the CCP.

    2. Favill: keeping in mind of course that they built it for themselves, and not for export to Canada or the USA.
      I believe the Three Gorges Dam is one of the top engineering marvels in the world.
      I don’t believe it will blow. There is a point however where they may have to let out more water than the dikes downstream can handle. That could spell disaster for those poor folks who wanted a view of the river.

  4. For all the distaste I may have for the Chinese Communist Party, I hope to heaven that dam holds. I simply cannot imagine the scale of the humanitarian disaster with the tens of thousands of innocent Chinese who will die if that thing fails.

    1. If the dam fails the scale of death and destruction may be the saving grace for the rest of us as it may trigger a civil unrest that the communist party cannot contain. The threat that the communist party is displaying in both the Mid-east and Africa that we are all aware of is probably a fraction of what the real threat is.

    2. I think the casualties would be in the millions. If I remember correctly (HA!) there was a graphic about WWII casualties in all theatres and it made mention of the Kuomintang (?) breaching the dikes of the Yellow River to slow down the Japanese advance. The casualties were incredible.

  5. If the dam collapses I hope it’ll at least bugger up a lot of the equipment and infrastructure the Chi Com criminals use in their surveillance state.

  6. Don’t worry, it’s only 25 times the average amount of water that goes over Niagara Falls every second…

  7. There is a simple Beatty to Mechanical symmetry… I find the Inside of a “Cooling Tower” absolutely amazing, IT IS ART….

  8. Its definitely nothing to me if it lets go.
    The Chinese downstream need to drown the Chicoms before I have sympathy.

  10. I’ve come to look forward to SDA dam Saturday.

    Anxiously awaiting comments from those knowledgable in things hydrodynamic and dam engineering.

  12. How anybody can stand looking at the Daily Mail site with all those bloody ads is beyond me.

    1. I arrange envelopes on the screen to cover the ads. It is annoying but it allows me to read if I clench my teach a bit.

  13. I was looking at the deformation in the dam and that should scare the heck out of anyone living below it in the possible flood path.

    1. No kidding!!! That’s NOT normal … and portends TOTAL FAILURE is just a matter of time.

    2. Don’t get too excited about the “deformation” pictures… The ones that show rather alarming deformations are actually artifacts produced by stitching photos together using computer algorithms without human adjustments.

      I doubt that the actual deformations are enough to be visible in a satellite photo (at least the ones that we commoners get to view).

      To see the “real” deformations, you need to find ground level photos along the width of the dam. So far, I haven’t found any that show significant displacements.

      1. I guess it all comes down to who you can believe. If it is still there a decade from now, no problem if not, oh well.

  14. Prediction if dam fails:
    3rd tier commies whose careers have stalled promote themselves to leadership using violence and are forced to play nice with rest of world as they focus on consolidating control over China. Prime Minister Justin Competant calls on new leadership to restore the “legitimate” basic dictatorship.

    Hoping for a slow failure with enough warning for the 500 million downstream to evacuate. I don’t want to see mass casualties, but the world needs an end to the CCP and their regressive ideas for the sake of all humanity.

  15. I don’t think people are thinking this through. The consequences of a collapse would be staggering, not just for China, but rest of the world, too.

    Start off with the possible deaths of hundred of thousands, maybe millions, of human beings. That’s real. I know some people are shallow enough to break out the popcorn, but consider this apolitically.

    Downstream of the dam lies about 25% of China’s arable land. The PRC is a major food importer. If they lose a quarter of their annual harvest, they will have to buy offshore, inevitably and quickly raising food prices everywhere. Here in Canada, food will get more expensive almost overnight; in poorer countries around the world, famine is a very real possibility.

    Cities like Wuhan, Shanghai and Nanjing are a major part of international supply chains. A Three Gorges collapse could easily shred central China’s entire logistic and manufacturing system. “Oh, good!” some will say. Really? Remember, Einstein, a lot of our daily requirements here in Canada are made downstream of the dam. Whether or not globalization is good or bad is subject to debate, but for right now a lot of things you and I depend on just won’t be there and won’t be available for a long time. One source puts an instant drop in global – GLOBAL – production at 15%. When – if – stuff is available, it will of course be far more expensive. That’s your wallet getting hit by a TGD collapse and it would be years for non-Chinese production to pick up the slack.

    And the billions of dollars worth of Canadian exports to China? Less food exports, colour them gone. That’s Canadian job loss right there, on top of the COVID economic issues and low oil prices. Not good for us.

    Worst of all, dictatorships in crisis have many times in history started wars to divert attention from internal problems – think Argentina and the Falklands. Especially given some recent boneheaded speculation about how Taiwan and/or the USA could attack the dam, it’s entirely conceivable that Beijing might try to pull its hungry and traumatized masses together by going to war. Regardless of the outcome, nobody would benefit from that. A war in the South China Sea would at best cause yet more damage to trade and at worst wind up with mushroom clouds.

    The collapse of the dam would be doubleplussungood across the board.

    1. I have to grudgingly agree. As much as the CCP deserves a good bath, neither the the Chinese people or the rest of the world deserve what would happen. On the other hand, what will be will be and all the hoping it does, hoping it doesn’t will not have the slightest influence on the results.

    2. ” If they lose a quarter of their annual harvest, they will have to buy offshore, inevitably and quickly raising food prices everywhere.”
      “And the billions of dollars worth of Canadian exports to China? Less food exports, colour them gone.”

      Who says we’d sell to them? They are BAD ACTORS . They put espionage and double crossing above everything else.
      They purposely spread the Wuhan Batsoup Flu all over the world killing people and wrecking businesses and economies.
      They should be CUT OFF from the civilized world for generations until they mend their evil ways. I hope the dam fails.

      1. “Who says we’d sell to them?”

        Capitalism. That and human decency after the greatest disaster since WWII.

        1. “Capitalism. That and human decency after the greatest disaster since WWII.”

          Far more people were killed in the Chinese Civil War than in WWII. And they were Chinese killed by Chinese.
          Human decency? Seems the Chinese lack it. No, we won’t sell them the rope that they’re going to hang us with.

    3. yes Jack, there is a lot of stupid in here at times, and your post is a breath of fresh air. That some of the IDIOTS in here need to have common sense approach pointed out, speaks volumes as to their IQ level

      1. Please refer to my earlier reply. You aren’t one of SDA’s shining lights and your judgment is meaningless.

        1. I’d pit my intellect against yers any day. In the past fools have made the same mistake you are making, in thinking you know something about me.

          1. Considering you’re a racist and a bigot I question your intellect.
            Actually, I know it’s very minimal.

          2. “Considering you’re a racist and a bigot I question your intellect.”

            Actually he is neither a bigot nor a racist, he is just suffering from a severe case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. You’re on the other side are a worthless piece of excrement who thinks that calling people racist constitutes an argument. FOAD.

    4. Chinas economic beliefs will lead to war eventually. It is the same Marxist fallacy that Hitler and Stalin shared.
      The world needs an internal Chinese crisis large enough for the third tier of leadership to kick off a revolution. The only way to avoid eventual mushroom clouds.

      1. “Chinas economic beliefs will lead to war eventually.”

        Yes. That said, the Chinese have invaded the Spratly Islands and built a huge military base to threaten the South China Sea.
        The Chinese have also been making incursions into Indian sovereign territory and killing Indian troops.
        They spread their corruption everywhere they go. As everyone here knows, they have taken Canadians hostage and are threatening their lives because one of their master spies has been caught and detained in Canada, awaiting extradition to the U.S.A.

    5. Respectfully disagree.
      War is coming with the PRC whether you like it or not.

      Compare all the manufacturing jobs gone for cheap labour from China to food costs rising.
      Jack they want you dead or enslaved. That goes for Jill as well.

    6. Yes … Canada has embedded itself and made itself utterly dependent on Communist China. It’s really sad the once-proud nation has whored themselves out to effing Communists.

      1. Are we that far from the horrors of war that we so lightly step into its inevitability.

        No nuclear armed nations have ever fought a shooting war. Who could call a victory when you’re capital is glowing green glass.

        China needs to be countered and contained until it’s bizarre tyranny breaks. It worked with the USSR. No war there (well a cold one).

        1. On the contrary, not taking it lightly at all. Something like the damn breaking is the only way to avoid it. CCP believes in the same marxist fallacies that lead Hitler and Stalin to war ( they both wanted it and believed it economically necessary for their country ). China happily killed enough of their own citizens to almost equal the population of the US at the time, and don’t seem to care about the environment enough to be deterred by the thought of some radioactive wastelands.

          Don’t compare the situation with China to that of the USSR, they are not making the same economic mistakes that the USSR did, nor the strategic mistakes of trying to export their politics by force. China is much closer to Nazi Germany, where everything is done explicitly for their own peoples interests as defined by the state, and the rest of the world is an afterthought.

          The USSR was also very averse to getting into a real conflict directly as they were quite traumatized by the cost of winning the second world war and made sure nobody forgot (Just before communism fell, my mother acquired a new set of olympic style trading pins commemorating every branch of the military from the second world war, not just army, navy, or airforce, but things like tank corp, artillery, various infantry, different types of ships in the navy, it seemed to still be a national obsession). All China learned from the second world war was what it costs to be weak and occupied, and they plan to be doing the occupying next time around.

          The only hope of avoiding war in the future is for some internal Chinese crisis bad enough to weaken their leadership so that someone decides to stage a coup, and then is willing to play nice and listen to reason while they consolidate power in the new system. There are few things that could fit that purpose. A damn failure right after corona virus might, maybe a global embargo on trade with China (no chance of that happening)… I can’t think of any other things that might be sufficient, but then again, I don’t know all the internal affairs of China.

    8. Quite so, Jack. Wuhan City alone is 10.6 million people, over 1/3rd of the population of Canada. And it is but a fraction of the total population of those in the flood plain of the Yangtze River downstream. Should the dam go, it would be a humanitarian catastrophe unmatched in human history. The collapse of the Banquio Dam in 1975 alone is the greatest energy system disaster of all time thus far with up to 240,000 killed by that catastrophe. It will be as nothing compared to Three Gorges if that dam fails.

      I agree with your speculations about how dictatorships respond to crises. In general they do it badly. Just look at the demented actions of the Argentine generals just before the collapse of their dictatorship. Argentina has still not recovered.

    9. Yup… The ChiCom leadership would go into the –we have nothing more to lose, so let’s make sure our rivals lose a lot too– mode. There is no telling what they are capable of if backed into a no-win corner. Nukes? EMP weapons? Bio-weapons? It could get very ugly in a rather short time.

      As the Hong-Kong’ers say, Do not trust China; China is A$$hole.

    10. Yup… The ChiCom leadership would go into the we have nothing more to lose, so let’s make sure our rivals lose a lot too mode. There is no telling what they are capable of if backed into a no-win corner. Nukes? EMP weapons? Bio-weapons? It could get very ugly in a rather short time.

      As the Hong-Kong’ers say, Do not trust China; China is A$$hole.

  16. If the dam collapses, there will be a humanitarian crisis, and Trudeau will commit billions and billions of our money to help. You know, because “it’s the right thing to do.” Liberal party insiders will then skim off the top of this humanitarian assistance as well, hiring family, friends and supporter companies to administer same. No matter what, we’re screwed again.

  17. I hate to rain on your parades, but that article is using out of date data from Monday to scare you about the dam.

    FEAR PORN.

    Just like the Mass Media are scaring everybody about COVID-19. No, The dam is not going to burst today, and No, the Chinese Coronavirus will not kill all the children / teenagers / young adults / or even all the old fogies.

    Here is the real data on the Three Gorges Dam:
    https://journal.probeinternational.org/reservoir-level-3/

    Yes, there was a lot of water flowing into the 3G Dam reservoir on MONDAY. It was 60,000 cubic meters per second, but by Thursday, the upstream flooding flow rate was less than half that, at 28,200 cubic meters per second. Today the upstream flow is 38,200 cubic meters per second. That is a lot of water, and they are releasing a lot of it, which makes the downstream areas flood even worse.

    The pool level behind the dam peaked at 163-164 meters on Wednesday, and it is slowly going down, and is 161.4 meters today. The maximum pool level is 175 meters, and they fill it to that level from January to May every year, so no it didn’t come close (by 10 meters/ 33 feet) to overflowing.

    The Dam is not about to burst today or tomorrow. China is still suffering from one of the worst monsoons in modern record. There is record and near record flooding in the Yangtze River upstream and downstream of that dam. There is also record or near record flooding in all the other Chinese Rivers like the Yellow River too. India and Bangladesh are also dealing with horrible flooding from this year’s monsoon.

    Unfortunately it looks like the monsoon flooding and the Chinese Coronavirus are not going to bring down the Chinese Communist Party. The “resignation” of President for Life Xi Jinping and the entire Chinese Communist Party is something I would like to see.

  18. I suspect they have dodged a bullet on this, rainfalls in recent days have backed off and the seven day forecast from GFS model (east Asia) looks relatively dry by the summer monsoon season standards. The second week of the outlook gets more active. Could be that they are releasing full-tilt to catch this dry window where the downstream flows won’t be increased from side tributaries.

    I went in hoping to see more rainfall stress on this dam because its failure would be a brake on Chinese military expansionism which we don’t need. As to the civilians downstream, they have a few hours to get out of the way and lots of bikes. As to innocent Chinese, I think they are all in Taiwan, Hong Kong or here by now (and not in all cases either). This CCP reflects a wider mentality that needs correction one way or another.

    Xi could disappear for any number of reasons besides this, he must have made some enemies with his conduct and attitudes. Not that the nicer commies would be any vast improvement but things were going better than this before Xi took over the controls.

    1. “I suspect they have dodged a bullet on this,”

      Just a few tremors and it’ll crumble like a 400year old fortune cookie. Yessiree. No tickie, no washie.

  19. So what if we can’t get some crappy cheap plastic junk from Walmart for a few months. I want this mf’n dam to fail. They have it coming as per what the Chicoms did to my father in Korea on a cold February day, 1951.

    1. If all you can see is ‘crappy cheap plastic junk from Walmart’, you need to go back and do some research. There is nothing more dangerous than underestimating one’s foe. Yes, there’s cheap plastic junk. There’s also clothes, shoes, hardware, a host of sophisticated electronic gear, electric tools and electrical generation equipment in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. This ain’t your father’s China any more, sorry – and thanks for his service; the world owes he and his a large debt.

  20. Not wanting to rain on your parade, pardon the pun, but a dam failure would be of significant benefit to the rest of the world. A loss of 25% of their arable land would cause hardship but the free world would send aid. This would not result in an escalation of food prices across the globe since the average freedom loving taxpayer would not sit still while governments allow living costs and the accompanying taxes to rise to cover the aid. Also a major dam collapse would result in China losing a great percentage of its industrial might that would take years to re-establish in the meantime companies that had deserted nations in favour of cheap Chinese labour would relocate back home. This would be a win/win situation for ever nation in the free world.

    1. “This would be a win/win situation for ever nation in the free world.”

      Yes. China is evil and those who support it are evil.

      1. and the Ooz is stupid, and a typical kristian. Yes Ooz , it’s kristians like you who convinced me to become an atheist. There is a huge difference between China, and Chinese citizens, who have little control over events that effect them. But keep babbling like an idiot, you do provide a little entertainment at times

        1. “Yes Ooz , it’s kristians like you who convinced me to become an atheist.”

          You were always an atheist, and a liar. The Spanish Flu, which killed 100+ million people, was misnamed. It came from China.
          In 1919, China was not a communist country. The Chinese are a toxic culture.

    2. “A loss of 25% of their arable land would cause hardship but the free world would send aid. This would not result in an escalation of food prices across the globe since the average freedom loving taxpayer would not sit still while governments allow living costs and the accompanying taxes to rise to cover the aid. “

      If we have a given amount of food in the world – an amount which now barely suffices to feed the world – and a good portion of it is suddenly washed away, then there will not be enough to continue feeding everybody. X – Y = less than X. That’s not a PhD-level equation. And in times of shortage, prices rise; that’s very basic economics. The only way for the prices not to rise in Canada would be for wage and price controls to be established. There is, to be sure, a Trudeau precedent for that, 1975-78. I think you might want to do some reading to see how that worked out.

      Historically, price controls create two things – shortages and black markets. People with something generally find somebody who will pay them what it is really worth. Those in the queues get to do without. Look at Venezuela for a roadmap on how well price controls work.

      Why would (absent price controls) prices go up? Because there would be *less food* than there was last year. Rather than starve, China would have to pay higher prices to outbid others. (They have the money to do that, BTW.) Now, according to Statscan, Canada imported $24 billion worth of food in 2007 and it’s certainly more now. Think of all the stuff we cannot grow in Canada – fresh fruit and vegetables for most of the year, coffee, tea, chocolate, nuts, many types of shellfish, etc. Yeah, we’re good for wheat, beef, apples and corn, but fancy an orange or a banana once in a while? Get used to a bidding war in Mexico with Chinese purchasing agents. Berries in November? A green salad in March? Marmalade? A chocolate bar? Just a cup,of Timmy’s dark roast? Those New Brunswick coffee plantations are hurtin’ already.

      And our farmers – nobody works harder than farmers. How impressed would they be if the govt barred exports of grain to higher-paying overseas markets to keep bread prices down here in Canada? Trudeau #1 tried that with oil; you need to read up on the National Energy Program.

      The really poor countries in any case are generally not democracies and the poorest people have no say in govt policies. In Canada’s case, our prices would just go up. In a lot of other countries, China being able to outbid on the open market, there would indeed be famine in the poorest nations.

      WRT a powerful citizenry, I wish I had your optimism. IMO, the ‘average freedom loving citizen’ can be bought, tricked or convinced that *anything* is in their best interests, even to the extent of electing a vapid, elitist, “I admire their basic dictatorship” Twinkie to run their country twice in a row.

      x

      “Also a major dam collapse would result in China losing a great percentage of its industrial might that would take years to re-establish in the meantime companies that had deserted nations in favour of cheap Chinese labour would relocate back home. This would be a win/win situation for ever nation in the free world.”

      There’s a reason manufacturing went overseas to use ‘cheap Chinese labour’. It permitted stuff to be made at a price which permitted us here to have very high standards of living. Put simply, stuff made by workers earning $6 a day is cheaper than those made by people earning $16 an hour (let alone $35 an hour + benefits auto workers). We can throw away worn socks and buy new ones because of ‘cheap Chinese labour’ – before that, socks were comparatively too expensive to throw away; Mom (who had probably knitted them in the first place) had to darn them, mend them. Sure, we can move production of everything back here and pay $300 for jeans and $5,000 for a laptop – that is certainly an option. I’m not entirely sure everybody would call it ‘win-win’ however. If Canadians cannot afford all the stuff they want now, how will they be able to afford it when their wages (maybe) increase just a little, but the labour prices to make the stuff they want shoot up ten or twenty-fold?

      And how long would such a homeward relocation of production take? It certainly wouldn’t be overnight. We would have to recreate all the infrastructure and the factories, then train a new generation of workers. It’s entirely possible, but it would cost a huge amount of money and take years. So, even at best, even ignoring prices, there’d be a long gap with nothing.

      I distrust and despise the Beijing dictatorship and will continue my lifelong practice of seeking alternatives to made-in-China, but the fact that the CCP is self-serving and evil does not make a potential catastrophe like the total failure of TGD good. I am happy that things are settling down.

      1. Jack, from Nigeria down, Africa could produce a lot more food stuffs than it does today, same as in parts of south america. So foode shortages can be avoided over time, if out side help steps in to show them how.

        As to the CCP being self serving, didn’t much of the western world ship “production to asia” as a self serving move, and arn’t most governments and people also self severing. In other words they are just your average humans!. And thanks for the well constructed post, they were a pleasant and informative , and thought provoking.

      2. Nice try, Jack, but your arguments, exaggerated as they are don’t stand up in economic reality. Thanks for trying.

      3. You are incorrect on many points.
        First, the cost of labour is becoming an increasingly insignificant amount of the price of a final product. Bangladeshi labourers earn something like $0.50 for an $18 polo shirt. Even if your labour costs were ten times as much in Canada, it would only raise the price from $18 to $22.50, and that’s not including the reduction in shipping, customs, etc., costs. At the same time, those new jobs in Canada would provide new taxes, new personal spending, and less government spending on income support. We already saw THIS EXACT SAME THING happen in the US when Trump instituted his tariffs.

        Nattering nabobs lectured us that prices would rise (didn’t), that no jobs would return to the US (they did), and that the economy would tank (went on a run until Covid). So, with all due respect, I think that projections such as you made are nonsense, and that has been proven in real world experiment.

  21. As much as I would like to see the Chinese Central Committee go down, I cannot wish for this dam collapse. The loss of life and the suffering would be terrible. The Chi-Coms and the Chinese people are not one and the same.

  22. Yawn. Again? Same story. Same comments. When it breaks I’m sure we will all know about it. China can’t keep that secret.

  23. Can anyone cite an example of a large dam that “shifted, leaked and become deformed” and managed to not break from said change? I mean it sounds really bad, but would there be precedent for the claim that it is “safe”?

    1. Some shifting and settling is to be expected and does happen, although more so in earth dams. Leaking is not serious until it exceeds design parameters. Drainage is installed as a dam is constructed so the pressure from leaks / porosity is kept low. Deformed (greater than design allowances) may still be ok … it will likely trigger a retrofit solution or require operating the dam at a lower level.

      For a nearby example, the dam on the South Saskatchewan River (max discharge of 2,000 m3/s for comparison) is still moving, but only a few inches per year. The first 10 years were worrisome (above expected movement) but the 40 years since have been roughly equal in movement to the first 10 so I don’t think Kate is losing any sleep on the possibility of being flooded out.

  24. Even if the dam does not fail in the current deluge, there are significant issues that make its long-term viability questionable. Most important is siltation of the dam impoundment… the river system delivers huge loads of silt into the dam impoundment, and that silt will reduce its holding capacity year after year. At some point the capacity of the dam impoundment reduces to about what it would be had the dam never been constructed.

    Egypt faces that same problem with the Aswan dam.

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