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Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

theguardian.com

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Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#221

Post by dang »

zeveb wrote: post #203
dang wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commenters are required to post civilly and substantively, or not at all. It's bad enough that you are uncivil to your fellow users, and worse that you start religious flamewars. But blaming a million people for their own prospective drowning because you say they're Isis supporters (a ridiculous claim about a group known to terrorize the populations it rules over), and therefore have it coming to them, is far outside…

dang, where is he being uncivil or unsubstantive in the parent post? I simply don't see it. I don't see that he's 'blaming a million people for their own prospective drowning,' but rather blaming a million people for their current government, which is something very different. I don't particularly agree with either his argument or his style of expression, but I believe that he's very much within the norms of HN, and…

> dang, where is he being uncivil or unsubstantive in the parent post? I simply don't see it.

That's because the comment has been edited.

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#222

Post by dang »

Grishnakh wrote: post #196
dang wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commenters are required to post civilly and substantively, or not at all. It's bad enough that you are uncivil to your fellow users, and worse that you start religious flamewars. But blaming a million people for their own prospective drowning because you say they're Isis supporters (a ridiculous claim about a group known to terrorize the populations it rules over), and therefore have it coming to them, is far outside…

Nice that you don't allow different opinions around here. Maybe you should make a FAQ listing which opinions are OK and which aren't. And "religious flamewars"? All I did was point out the reality of religion. My post was civil enough, I called his comment stupid because I misunderstood it. Another poster, far more helpful than yourself, pointed out my error to me.

You don't get to be rude because you misunderstand someone—if that were the rule, we might as well not have it.

> Nice that you don't allow different opinions

Half the people who break the rules here resort to that self-flattering defense (the other half simply correct their behavior), and one needn't read much of HN to see how false it is.

> All I did was point out the reality of religion.

That's what every religious flamewarrer says. You can't do it here.

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#224

Post by dredmorbius »

contravariant wrote: post #212
dredmorbius wrote: post #209

For the nearest comparable disaster, look up the Banqiao Dam Failure, occurring in 1975 in China. It resulted in the deaths of 171,000 people in the densly-populated downstream valley. The circumstances of the failure are themselves instructive. Poor planning, poor design, ignored engineering warnings (and banishment of the engineer in question), inadequate safety presentations, a true monster of a storm (over 1 mete…

>over 1 meter of water in 24 hours That's the first time I've seen rain measured in metres instead of millimetres.

Well, the official reports were in mm. But there were over a thousand of them.

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#225

Post by EdHominem »

Grishnakh wrote: post #167
ansible wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if they want to avoid this, it's up to them to rise up and revolt against ISIS. If they don't, oh well. If you're not willing to fight for your own survival and freedom, then maybe you don't deserve it, and you really have no right to expect others to do the dirty work for you and hand you these things on a silver platter. And these people back in 2003 were asking for the USA-led coalition to invade their own coun…

Unless you're a GOP voter (and not a Trump voter), then it's obvious that in 2003, Iraqis were not asking for their country to be invaded. However, since we made such a mess of it before, what makes you think we're going to do any better with another invasion and setting up another unpopular government? The people in that region don't like the government we set up because the Shias are too powerful; they want a gover…

> The people in that region don't like the government we set up [...]

And they didn't like all those borders we drew for them.

Ungrateful lot, I say.

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#226

Post by ethbro »

avivo wrote: post #168
ethbro wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, crazy idea (and completely inapplicable here, because dictatorship). Is there any government in the word that has an empowered "science" branch of government as a check and balance? I'm not suggesting science is apolitical, but I feel like there's some merit to "We wanted to build a broken dam because {political considerations}, but the {science branch} vetoed it." Kind of like a Supreme Court, except informed by…

I wish! Though implementation would be tricky and might heavily politicize science in a bad way (as opposed to a good way; which could also happen). The closest I've seen anywhere to that is in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. Here's an excerpt from the "Martian Constitution" in the accompanying book "The Martians": """All laws passed by the congress shall also be subject to review by the constitutional and envir…

Good find. I remember the constitution they hammered out in the books was interesting, as there was a lot of Aldo Leopold "think like a mountain" stuff.

(Of course, in the book, they've discovered a genetic repair mechanism that effectively makes people immortal, so I suppose it's still self interest)

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#227

Post by ethbro »

MattyRad wrote: post #164
ethbro wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, crazy idea (and completely inapplicable here, because dictatorship). Is there any government in the word that has an empowered "science" branch of government as a check and balance? I'm not suggesting science is apolitical, but I feel like there's some merit to "We wanted to build a broken dam because {political considerations}, but the {science branch} vetoed it." Kind of like a Supreme Court, except informed by…

That's an interesting thought. I believe the EPA, FDA, OSHA, etc, are supposed to be the quality control science branches of the government. But instead of preventative maintenance, they just dole out fines after some violation.

The problem is that these organizations are headed by appointed politicians. And I've heard in the EPA at least there's an institutional boundaries between researchers (who do science) and administrators (who make decisions). I can try and dig up a citatation if you're interested, but my impression was scientists researchers were encouraged not to become involved in policy decisions.

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#228

Post by burfog »

jballanc wrote: post #26
guard-of-terra wrote: post #25

"pressure on the dam’s compromised structure was building up rapidly as winter snows melted and more water flowed into the reservoir" Do they really have snow worth to speak of in Iraq?

The Mosul dam is on the Tigris river which originates in the Taurus mountains of Turkey. We had a fairly regular winter as far as snowfall goes, but the spring has arrived very early this year.

So this is Turkey's fault. They ought to redirect the river into the Black Sea or directly into the Mediterranean Sea. Other solutions are selling it as bottled water (with a suitably high price: buy this water or the children die!) or boiling it off to cool a power plant.

Re: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people

#230

Post by tdyen »

acqq wrote: post #206
wooter wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i just want to point out that the fail-safe was abandoned due to sanctions against Iraq. I hope people remember things like this when they openly promote sanctions against countries whose leaders we disagree with. We aren't hurting the leaders, we're hurting the citizenry. And we are certainly not bringing them to our side. We are causing real suffering and death of innocent people. for example, clinton's iraq sancti…

Yes. And the sanctions were just one part of all bad things that happened in the area. Also see my other comments here for more on the same subject (like what Madeleine Albright had to say about these dead children). And the "WMD story" was effectively invented as an excuse for the US to start the 2003 war. The war was planned even before G.W. became president (search about the "Project for the New American Century"…

That's a good point you make about US reconstruction or lack thereof. I wonder if any of the Marines on here who were in Iraq could explain why this buffer dam didn't get built? It seems a perfect large scale infrastructure project and it doesn't even have to work much.
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