I had never heard of this continuing tragedy before, and it is definitely something that I should have learned before now – and I am 67.

Althought that sounds cruel, I;m sure its considered when talked about by the big wigs. Afterall China has a big population problem, well infact most the world does but. you get the idea..”[/quote]

Ummm, the Chinese government is made up of more engineers than any other nation’s government in the world. (Now I just need to remember what documentary I heard that on…)

A lot of the problems that happen are when that same group of engineers put the concerns of supplying the population over other things, e.g. the environment.

IMHO, levees are the stupidest widespread land management technology on earth. It’s all about instant gratification; nobody who builds them realizes that they are building time bombs. If water has to be held back to make the land inhabitable, perhaps the land ought not be inhabited.”

Man, you called Katrina.

This is so funny, here are my notes copied before reading your post:tens of thousands… crop failures killed as many as a million more…In 1931 He claimed between 850,000 and 4 million lives… just two years later another severe flood killed 20,000…this single act killed another million Chinese… the river again flooded in 1943 and killed millions more.
Since the end of World War II, the Chinese population has doubled and enormous new metropolises have sprung up along the banks of the Huang He.

Yep, so I thought, humm, these people need to
A. Stop breeding; and
B. Pack up and move!

Then I read the other posts about this being fertile ground, poor people, oppression etc. and changed my tounge in cheek original thoughts to practicalities…So, assuming that this hyper fertility (of the land, lol @myself) is actually caused by the very flooding ie: mineral enriched sediment;
would it not be plauseble to mine and evenly distribute the lakes floor accross the flood plain to create greater acerage with highly fertile and useful agricultural abilities? In other words level out the geography to the extent that the river would become a natural irrigation, rather than a reservoir?

Before the ridicule and bitchin starts, please be kind enough to ignore my ignorance as I am not an engineer, scientest or in any way worthy of even guessing on a practical solution. I just like to type. :}

The problem comes not when people choose to take some control of these natural barriers, but when they do so in ignorance of the forces they are dealing with.

Bad luck is no advantage, but informed management could surely help.

This is one area where (local) freedom of speech could help to solve a problem.

I don’t advocate universal free speech in China in the current climate.

Althought that sounds cruel, I;m sure its considered when talked about by the big wigs. Afterall China has a big population problem, well infact most the world does but. you get the idea..

I’m guessing these people live here because they know that even if they were to move 100miles away the floor water could and would still reach them and irrigation would just be that much harder, ” in between floods :)”.

My guess is its better to risk drowning then risk starving to death, afterall if people would just educate their citizens on howto swim I’m sure things be a little bit better.

“Remember children keep your head above the water! this makes breathing a little bit easier.”

Why not just enjoy the content of the article instead of trying to show everyone how “smart” you are?”

That was kind of the point bryon…it was a joke.

The only way this river will ‘stop’ flooding is if it is to let it flood repeatedly. The normal path of a river is a fluctuating channel across a floodplain, and when it is confined, it will simply build itself higher and higher until huge disaster strikes. It’s the same with New Orleans. The city was built in the way of the river, so it was not allowed to fluctuate and evenly build up then entire landscape, in that case a delta, instead only building its own banks higher. When it finally did flood, its elevation caused it to be far more disasterous than otherwise would be expected. New Orleans was below the level of the Mississippi, so it was only a matter of time before it flooded, and it is only a matter of time until it floods again. The Huang He will continue to be a problem as long as humans try not to make it so.

Ha! Anonymous User must be language’s tool because he just used the word “it’s” to denote possession! Haha! “it’s” is a contraction of “it is”!

Why not just enjoy the content of the article instead of trying to show everyone how “smart” you are?