Are you kidding? In what other country can you be so wrong about so many issues and still not feel the least shame or any need to change your ways? This is the land of opportunity for the scaremonger and conspiracist. [/quote]
Doesn’t matter what Fox is or is not. Fox does not have any hand in any large-scale situation here. Also, if Fox points at a pile of fecal matter and says it’s horses***, and you point out to him that it’s onager s***, and that Fox is chronically getting things like this wrong, and that there’s something wrong with Fox, all that is of little moment to me. I just know there’s something smelly over yonder way. So you can just set me down among Fox’s folk on this one.
The relentless drought continued through out the day today. With rain now having fallen on 63% (230 days) of the days in the last year in Taipei, 46% more than the average number of rainy days (165.5) ( counted those days on CWB from April 2010 to end March 2011).
Benwerrin Road
At Benwerrin Road, the air is still and humid. A few of a million raindrops have fallen. If you could see inside the homes of Benwerrin, this is what you would find: Number 17 is empty. In the kitchen there are two coffee cups, 1 teaspoon, and an open jar of instant coffee. The kettle is on, but has not reached boiling point. At Number 19, the television sends flickers of black and white over the walls. A popular crime show is running. The vacant armchair directly in front on the television has a small indentation, still warm. The crime scene tape, the slick detectives, and the opening credits are played out, unappraised. Across the road, at Number 20, there is a night gown laid out on the master bed. In the en-suite, fingernail clippers rest on the lip of the bath and two fingernails, recently cut, languish near the drain.
Benwerrin Road has eighty-eight homes. All rooms are empty, save Barry McAfee at Number 78, who was not woken as doors slammed and neighbours shrieked. At ninety-five years old, he is not aware that he is the sole occupant of the two hundred and seventy-four bedrooms in his street. There is no-one in the bathrooms, the laundries, the studies. Lights have been left on but there is no-one to illuminate. Children’s beds, still warm, mock home-makers with their barrenness. Books lie on the floor where they have fallen. Walls creak, clocks chime, and phones ring. No-one witnesses their feeble echoes.
The air has changed.
The occupants are found.
Not in their houses, but in their yards and gardens and driveways as they stand and watch the storm that breaks the drought.
I snapped these photos of the drought for those who have no idea what I’m talking about. You are welcome to copy these photos and send them to your family so that they can have a full understanding of the devastation.
Meanwhile elsewhere in the world things are looking more favorable on the drought front with flooding expected sometime in the next 1000 years.
Are you kidding? In what other country can you be so wrong about so many issues and still not feel the least shame or any need to change your ways? This is the land of opportunity for the scaremonger and conspiracist. [/quote]
Doesn’t matter what Fox is or is not. Fox does not have any hand in any large-scale situation here. Also, if Fox points at a pile of fecal matter and says it’s horses***, and you point out to him that it’s onager s***, and that Fox is chronically getting things like this wrong, and that there’s something wrong with Fox, all that is of little moment to me. I just know there’s something smelly over yonder way. So you can just set me down among Fox’s folk on this one.
Sig. No one is disputing that much of the problem is government policy and infrastructure. No one. What we are disputing is the irrational chicken little approach to everything one observes in one’s tiny corner of this little island. “Oh my god, there’s a fire on my street. Taiwan is burning!!!”
This sort of nonsense happens so often on Fcom that this has become as one poster put it, a platform for the expansion of ignorance.
There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. Just admit it when it happens and go on your day. Perhaps even feel grateful someone corrected you on an online chat site so you didn’t make a bigger fool of yourself somewhere important.
I suggest to you that you may well be chicken little. It is raining all the time here in Taipei. I’m not running around screaming drought quite the opposite. I do have my concerns about the quality of water management in a country that has had 230 rainy days in the last year and cries drought. Isn’t that chicken little? I’m confused. It’s only 300 odd km long and 160 or 70 wide. It gets on average 2 to 3000 mm of rain a year sometimes that will fall in a couple of days in some places. It has some of the greatest run off rivers in the world. I read once it has 7 of the top 10 for sediment in the Pacific.
Meanwhile of course the drought continues. Look at this recent photo from Taidong. It has been hit by the worst of the drought.
Fortunately for me, I don’t have a very high horse from which to fall.
Are you kidding? In what other country can you be so wrong about so many issues and still not feel the least shame or any need to change your ways? This is the land of opportunity for the scaremonger and conspiracist. [/quote]
Doesn’t matter what Fox is or is not. Fox does not have any hand in any large-scale situation here. Also, if Fox points at a pile of fecal matter and says it’s horses***, and you point out to him that it’s onager s***, and that Fox is chronically getting things like this wrong, and that there’s something wrong with Fox, all that is of little moment to me. I just know there’s something smelly over yonder way. So you can just set me down among Fox’s folk on this one.
Sig. No one is disputing that much of the problem is government policy and infrastructure. No one. What we are disputing is the irrational chicken little approach to everything one observes in one’s tiny corner of this little island. “Oh my god, there’s a fire on my street. Taiwan is burning!!!”
This sort of nonsense happens so often on Fcom that this has become as one poster put it, a platform for the expansion of ignorance.
There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. Just admit it when it happens and go on your day. Perhaps even feel grateful someone corrected you on an online chat site so you didn’t make a bigger fool of yourself somewhere important.[/quote]
If you represent the wise and sane ones, I want always to be foolish and crazy.
[quote=“Fox”]It is raining all the time here in Taipei. I’m not running around screaming drought quite the opposite. I do have my concerns about the quality of water management in a country that has had 230 rainy days in the last year and cries drought. Isn’t that chicken little? I’m confused.
[/quote]
Did all of Taiwan have 230 days of rain? As Icon showed, Taipei’s reservoirs are in decent shape with over 60% capacity. It’s central and southern reservoirs that are in trouble. What is with you that you can’t understand that it raining in Neihu has fuck all to do with whether reservoirs anywhere in Taiwan get filled? Let me tell you again: rain in Taipei does not fill reservoirs since there are none in Taipei. Rain in Taipei does not necessarily mean rain in Taipei County in the mountains that can help to fill reservoirs. Nor does it mean rain in central and southern Taiwan that can help to fill reservoirs there.
[quote=“Mucha Man”][quote=“Fox”]It is raining all the time here in Taipei. I’m not running around screaming drought quite the opposite. I do have my concerns about the quality of water management in a country that has had 230 rainy days in the last year and cries drought. Isn’t that chicken little? I’m confused.
[/quote]
Did all of Taiwan have 230 days of rain? As Icon showed, Taipei’s reservoirs are in decent shape with over 60% capacity. It’s central and southern reservoirs that are in trouble. What is with you that you can’t understand that it raining in Neihu has fuck all to do with whether reservoirs anywhere in Taiwan get filled? Let me tell you again: rain in Taipei does not fill reservoirs since there are none in Taipei. Rain in Taipei does not necessarily mean rain in Taipei County in the mountains that can help to fill reservoirs. Nor does it mean rain in central and southern Taiwan that can help to fill reservoirs there.
Rain in Neihu means rain in Neihu.[/quote]
In this latest breaking drought related story. It is discovered that in drought stricken Taitung the unfortunate residents had to suffer through only 82 inches of rain in 2010. That was only a little more than double the global average.
Good. Don’t forget your umbrella the sun is pretty harsh out there today. Now we can get on to the real business of drought talk without this constant hindrance. Take that guy dragonbones with you, too. It takes a real man to admit defeat like that.
In front of your eyes is a lake with low water levels.
In 2004 or so, the government released too much water because they expected a big typhoon that did not come.
That was a very scary situation actually since people started to die from poisoning here and there.
Another thought on this water level now is, how about the government released the water because Fukushima rains contaminated it too much?
Does anyone know if water has been released lately?
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.
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… 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. 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.
[/quote]
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…
As it happens, ther is more to the issue…