A Drought -- you've got to be friggin' kidding me

I’m with Fox on this one. It is the elephant in the room. It’s not about rainfall or lack thereof. This is purely and simply a case of criminal mismanagement of resources.

Perhaps they should invite this guy over. I’m sure he would be happy to accommodate. I mean it’s not like he’ll be dancing in Arizona. He is going to be right 2 out of 3 times in Taiwan.

Of course this is more like it:

Absolutely F*(*)E)&W@ right on the mark.

But I don’t think we should be too harsh on the guys who think there’s a drought on. It could be they’re in love, like the man in this documentary clip, and they’re thinking, “From where I stand, the sun is shining all over the place!”

I’d rather see it described as an acute water shortage. There is no drought. There is, as Fox has pointed out, plenty of rain. And yet there’s no water. That’s not drought, that’s morons in charge.

That would have been a better choice of words, for sure. But, for better or for worse, in “Taiwanese English” the term is now “drought” - and people from other countries need to understand that it may not mean what it means in their home countries. (It’s the same way as getting used to the idea that a word for potatoes in one country may mean peanuts in another country.)

There is both… :doh: Anyway, Fox started the thread with faulty data and a country-wide generalisation based on one person’s observations in one location - that seems as good as “Fox news” to me…

Wish all answers were so easy. :wink: As it happens, ther is more to the issue…

Fox, that website you quoted is as accurate as CNN’s weather forecasts for Taiwan. May hit something out of sheer luck… I’d still go with local numbers.

Remember Taipei is not all Taiwan. Whoopie doo, we get some rain, mostly in the North, wher ethere is only a reservoir. For all the rain these two days, that gives us 2 meters more of what we had before. What doe sthis mean? It means we get six days of no water reduction. Six days.

We do use a lot of water. We do waste even more. But down South, they really have had a drought: no rain, or not enough. The plains there are our granary and currently, those are the most affected. Just beacuse it is raining in Taipei/Keelung/Muzha doe snot mean we can transport water all the way down there.

I do reccomend to get some buckets out there and gather some rainwater. Even with torrential rains -which would bring a lot of destruction over dry soil- the accumulation of silt in dried out reservoirs means we will still have water cuts. Remember years ago where we had two days without public water every week? We are heading there. And that is so certain all this conversation about whether or not there is a drought is purely academic, as we will have our water rationed, like it or not.

Psst, Icon, the sane water thread is over here A drought? No kidding

This one is being left for the droughters.

Thanks. Did notice two but did not notice the “leaning”. LOL.

Just like toast actually being bread in this country. No, there is no such thing as “Taiwanese English”. There is English (of various native speaking varieties) and then there is something that is wrong. Call it Chinglish or call it plain wrong, but it’s not “English”.

Sigh. Does anyone bother to check some basic facts before they post. It’s not just Taiwan that calls these kinds of seasonal water shortages droughts. So does Vancouver where I come from. We’re one of the rainiest place in Canada but if we don’t get a lot of snow in the winter then we have water shortages in summer. Doesn’t matter how much it rains in the spring, we need the snow melt.

[quote]B.C’s provincial environment Minister Barry Penner advised British Columbians on Monday to brace for possible drought in many areas of the province this summer following two months of unusually warm and dry weather.

Snowpacks in river basins across B.C. are below normal levels and with only four to six weeks of winter remaining, time is running out to make up the difference.[/quote]

Maybe it’s because we have so many Chinese and Taiwanese that we are unsure how to use the language. :unamused:

No, it’s because you’re from a place that doesn’t really experience droughts.

I think a lot of people who’ve been here awhile (obviously not all, but a lot) immediately think of mismanagement when they learn of a public problem. People can offer other explanations, and those explanations may well be given some weight, but the mind tends to gravitate back to the idea of mismanagement. I don’t want to go into the details of why that happens, because it would resemble that griping business that some people find so distasteful.

Yeah, we all use the word wrongly except the Australians. :laughing:

[quote=“Mucha Man”]Sigh. Does anyone bother to check some basic facts before they post. It’s not just Taiwan that calls these kinds of seasonal water shortages droughts. So does Vancouver where I come from. We’re one of the rainiest place in Canada but if we don’t get a lot of snow in the winter then we have water shortages in summer. Doesn’t matter how much it rains in the spring, we need the snow melt.

[quote]B.C’s provincial environment Minister Barry Penner advised British Columbians on Monday to brace for possible drought in many areas of the province this summer following two months of unusually warm and dry weather.

Snowpacks in river basins across B.C. are below normal levels and with only four to six weeks of winter remaining, time is running out to make up the difference.[/quote]

Maybe it’s because we have so many Chinese and Taiwanese that we are unsure how to use the language. :unamused:[/quote]

Well no, we just have people who use the language imprecisely which is why we have such things as context. Besides, this a politician you’re sighting hardly a gate keeper of the proper use of the English language. However, he appears to be talking about B.C. province wide not just Vancouver and there are places in BC that experience real droughts from time to time. I don’t remember Vancouver ever having water rationing, water restrictions but not rationing. I don’t remember ever not being able to take a shower when I wanted to. Your point about rains in the spring being insufficient is correct. Oddly enough a very heavy rain when the reserviour is low usually results in water ristrictions or advisories due to stirring up of sediments.

If Taiwan is experiencing a drought, I guess it’s a socio-economic drought:

drought.si/index.php?page=drought

Sigh again. Come on folks. Do a little friggin reading. How do we define drought?

[quote]The Concept of Drought
Drought is a normal, recurrent feature of climate, although many erroneously consider it a rare and random event. It occurs in virtually all climatic zones, but its characteristics vary significantly from one region to another. Drought is a temporary aberration; it differs from aridity, which is restricted to low rainfall regions and is a permanent feature of climate.

Drought is an insidious hazard of nature. Although it has scores of definitions, it originates from a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time, usually a season or more. This deficiency results in a water shortage for some activity, group, or environmental sector. Drought should be considered relative to some long-term average condition of balance between precipitation and evapotranspiration (i.e., evaporation + transpiration) in a particular area, a condition often perceived as “normal”. It is also related to the timing (i.e., principal season of occurrence, delays in the start of the rainy season, occurrence of rains in relation to principal crop growth stages) and the effectiveness (i.e., rainfall intensity, number of rainfall events) of the rains. [/quote]

Let’s repeat that one line:

So low rainfall in a rainy area that is not sufficient for normal needs is a drought. Like we are having, or close to having, in many places in Taiwan.

drought.unl.edu/whatis/conce … perational

What a strange thing!

I post a quote from a website which is all about drought, and which characterizes, defines, and categorizes drought:

[quote=“Charlie Jack”]If Taiwan is experiencing a drought, I guess it’s a socio-economic drought:

drought.si/index.php?page=drought[/quote]

The whole damn website I linked to is about drought! (Not that I read everything that was on it, or understood everything I read, but I got the gist of it.)

And then you come back with this:

Etc.

I repeat: If you’re the wise, sane one, I wanna be foolish and crazy!

Meanwhile the drought continues.

Wu said the last two days of rain had brought 15 million tons of water to reservoirs in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli, 15 million tons to reservoirs in central Taiwan, around 20 million tons to southern Taiwan reservoirs, and around 9 million tons to Feitsui Reservoir in northern Taiwan.

Fear not you citizens:
As the drought has not yet lifted, Wu said, the agency is planning to do cloud-seeding between May 16 and May 18, depending on the weather conditions.


Welcome back !! :flog:

:smiley: