Tuesday, April 20, 2010
CHINA QUAKE
Chineses State has reported that 300 people died and over 8,000 were found injured in the earth quake that hit east China about one week ago. The people who lived in this area were mostly Tibetean natives that made a living by the rich resources surrounding there land. Officials say that the airport roads were blocked by debris so troops were having to rescue people from the rubble by hand. Officicals also said that they only expect the death tolls to rise as soon as they get the proper equipment to search for the bodies that lay underneath the rubble. I'm guessing with this many already found dead and injured that the abillity for these native people to produce a table lifestyle will make things much harder than they already are as many of those, who are capable of working these lands are wither dead, hurt or homeless. The town was hit by a very large 7.1 earth quake. One thing that does interest me is the true damage it caused compared to the quake in Haiti which was approximatley the same size. The only difference is that Haiti was over populized for the circumfrance that the quake actually impacted. It seems like these villagers were also in a very small zone for high powerful the quake is especially since the towns population reaches 80,000. I'm also curious to see if the U.S. or U.N. will be contributing to any of these relief efforts.You would think that we eventually would be you never know, we are known to spend our money on blowing people up rather than saving them. I leave this blog with a question for you to answer. We have continually been seeing poiwerful storms and natural disasters that used to not show up as often. Do you think that the unpredictable natural occurences we have been witnessing is due to any for of global warming or is this just a natural cycle and people are just freaking out?
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Group Blog April 19, 2010
ReplyDeleteResponse by Paige Blankenbuehler
The first thing that I have to say about this topic is that nature has a devilish way of cleaning things up, what happened in China is an example of survival of the fittest. This is a sad fact but it is well known that China prevails as one of the most over populated countries in the world. There are laws that restrict the citizen's right to reproduce. If the Tibetan village couldn't have foreseen the possibility of a natural disaster then perhaps their misfortune is a product of their ignorance. If they would have set up some sort of protection for themselves then maybe they would have survived the natural disaster.
In response to Ryan's comment about global warming being a contributer to the unpredictable nature of these types of disasters, I say that I refuse to believe that global warming is a driving force in our international weather disasters. Yes- I saw the overwhelmingly popular hollywood film, The Day After Tomorrow, and I thought that it was unrealistic and the scientific claims behind it were a little too hollywood. I would say that the Earth has a cycle; however, if humans are driving ourselves into oblivion then more concrete evidence should be produced before its too late.
This is Courtney.
ReplyDeleteAs a response to Paige's comment about global warming not causing some of the natural disasters we are seeing today I suggest you take the Geology class called Earth Shock, here at FLC. Global warming is in fact, causing more natural disasters to happen, and those often lead to worse disasters. For instance, if there is less precipitation in Colorado (becasue of global warming) the trees will all either get the pine beetle disease, or die from lack of water, and potentially cause a fire. That fire will wipe out all the vegetation, so when it does rain, there will be serious erosion, and it will flood. Do you see how these things connect now? Again, I strongly suggest taking Earth Shock. It was a really easy class, but also very informative.
As a response to your comment about the Tibetians setting up protection for themselves...You need to realize that the Chinese aren't getting along with the Tibetians bacause the Chinese want their land. The native Tibetians are treated terribly, and pretty much ignored when it comes to setting up government infastructure (like apartment buliding that can withstand earthquakes). They cannot create this infastructure on their own because they don't live in a free country like us, where they can go get a job wherever they want. The Chinese make sure these people barely have enough to survive, which makes this earthquake all that much worse.
Moving on now... There are a TON of big dams in China. I have learned this in my Rivers of Thrist EGC class this semester. The reason I mention this is because if one of the dams was cracked from the common earthquakes Chin gets, it could destroy the lives of millions. All the water rushing down the river will inundate the towns and other dams downstream. This happened in the 1970's in China, and it was much more devestating then the earthquake they had last week, I just hope the aftershocks aren't enough, combined with the initial earthquake, to crack a dam.
Here is a link to the biggest dam in the world, the Three Gorges Dam, located in China.
http://www.satellite-sightseer.com/id/2195
This is Courtney, signing off.
Hey, what a great group! You guys actually did the group bit rather than monologues. Congratulations! But then, you've done well with the blog all semester.
ReplyDeleteWow, what a lot of interesting topics. I am interested in the climate change issue. "Global warming" was a bad term, for it allowed refutation to occur based on the temperature outside today!!! Climate change is a better term but still, for me, a murky concept. If one accepts that a significant portion of climate change is caused by us, I wonder two things: what has been the effect of massive clean-up efforts since, say, the 1960s? In the 60s Lake Erie and the Hudson river caught on fire. I lived in LA then and smog was unbelievable. Now people swim in the Hudson and though smog is in LA, you can see the mountains.That has presumably had NO effect. The second thing is the prediction that significant efforts to reduce CO2 emissions would have a negligible effect. If that's so, then our piece of the climate change must be small indeed.
Well, ok, I had to agree with Courtney about the China situation. From mine disasters to the earthquake a couple of years ago where great numbers of schoolchildren were buried in substandard schools to these Tibetan villages where building weak buildings is completely out of the control of the villagers, it's not a matter of choosing or of good evolutionary adaptation. Look at all of us. As individuals, as communities, we have precious little impact on whether our buildings have appropriate earthquake protections in them. Are FLC dorms built to an earthquake code? We hardly know. It's in the hands of the bureaucracy. And that's here, with a tiny and efficient bureaucracy compared to China's legendary civil servant corps.
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