It is often overlooked that urbanization covers the land with impermeable roofs and streets. So the rain water is prevented from percolating into the earth. This creates paradoxical floods even in cities that are in drought conditions. Any little rain that falls overwhelms the drainage, because it is no longer absorbed into the ground.
There is NO drainage infrastructure! The crooked contractors only put the drainage grills even with the road surface!!!! The ccp officials are so used to getting bribes they don't want to do anything that makes them actually do work...😂😂😂😂
And what they call a village in China is what we call a mid size city in US. No joke, went to “villages” with 300,000 people. Yeah, they called that a village
@@JasperKlijndijk The rate of growth is stagnant but its no way near that you may regard as quickly falling down. Its negative 0.03%. How is that a quick decline? Its not even a single whole percent worth. Statistically It may not even leave the error margin.
There is a similar issue in industrialized West Germany in the Ruhr area, from which black coal had been extracted for a very long time, and in some places it is still ongoing. As a side effect the entire area had to manage just this sinking of the land by a sophisticated water infrastructure, and there are areas in which houses face damages because of the sinking ground. But this makes no headlines, and beyond the local area, in Germany, this remains rather unknown, and I came to know it only when I moved there for some time for a job. This problem is, like in China, 100 years old, and locals are just used to it. With the explanations from this video, I would assume the same problem exists pretty everywhere where heavy industry and/or water supply overused the land beyond repair.
We have a similar problem in Lüneburg, a town near Hamburg. The cause is/was extraction of salt from below the city by washing it out with salt brine (Lüneburg has a 1000 years-old history of salt extraction). Subsidence has largely stopped since extraction has been reduced in the 1980ies but some hot spots still subside, likely driven by rain water.
I think the craziest place this is happening is in Mexico City, where the rate of subsidence is massive and the whole city is built over one of the worst chosen locations for a megacity, a lake.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn so far only the governing/administration body of Indonesia moving the other parts of Jarkata: the education institutions, the industry, the people,... might take even longer and undergo more difficulties
Yea but it was once a brilliant place for a city back when the Aztecs used it properly. The entire point was the water was used to move things through the city. Then the Spanish came and you know the rest. However we can never forget just how brilliant the city design once was
The Aztecs had a prophecy of some sorts that they will have a prosperous capital city on a land where the eagle sits on a cactus eating a snake. They saw it happen at current day Mexico City and it turned out well for them. Then the Spanish came, over population happened and their meticulous city plan was thrown out of the window, burying the lake. But what’s cool about this story is that it was that Aztec prophecy that still is a part of their national flag. 🇲🇽
1:12 San Joaquin Valley, California (in this photo) used to be largely covered by a massive lake (largest west of the Mississippi) and surrounding marshlands, but after we diverted the water to LA and other cities, it became a dry, parched environment. That’s why the ground sank so much. Ironically, after the unusually large rains last year, the farmland where the lake used to be flooded and we got Tulare Lake back for a time.
Germany has also that Problem. But not because the extraction of water but of coal. Some cities in North Rhine Westphalia would be meters deep on the bottom of lakes without pumps running for 24/7 for the next eternity.
No, humans just don't drink that much water. A human drinks what, ~2.5L a day? Meanwhile, a kg of soy needs 2500L to grow. In other words, if you eat 100g of soy beans, that's the equivalent of what you drink in 100 days.
In the suburban area that I live in Colorado, subsidence is connected with the area's past underground coal mining industry. There are fields on which they won't even build roads even though they would help traffic patterns. There are awkward breaks in the pattern of sub division housing for parks and openspace that don't fit in with the aesthetics of urban planning. Some significant parts of a major mall were torn down a few years after construction as the buildings were condemned.
@@PaulSpades Having grown up in a city with a grid - Minneapolis - I conclude you don't know what you are talking about. More lanes don't help traffic, but a better pattern can help.
It is happening everywhere around the world. UK: 1. London: - Subsidence rate: up to 1 mm/year (0.04 in/year) (source: British Geological Survey) - Affected areas: Central London, Lambeth, and Westminster 2. Manchester: - Subsidence rate: up to 2 mm/year (0.08 in/year) (source: British Geological Survey) - Affected areas: City center and surrounding areas 3. Birmingham: - Subsidence rate: up to 1.5 mm/year (0.06 in/year) (source: British Geological Survey) - Affected areas: City center and nearby neighborhoods EU: 1. Amsterdam, Netherlands: - Subsidence rate: up to 2 mm/year (0.08 in/year) (source: Deltares) - Affected areas: City center and surrounding areas 2. Rotterdam, Netherlands: - Subsidence rate: up to 1.5 mm/year (0.06 in/year) (source: Deltares) - Affected areas: City center and nearby neighborhoods 3. Brussels, Belgium: - Subsidence rate: up to 1 mm/year (0.04 in/year) (source: Royal Observatory of Belgium) - Affected areas: City center and surrounding areas 4. Paris, France: - Subsidence rate: up to 0.5 mm/year (0.02 in/year) (source: BRGM) - Affected areas: City center and nearby neighborhoods 5. Berlin, Germany: - Subsidence rate: up to 0.5 mm/year (0.02 in/year) (source: GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences) - Affected areas: City center and surrounding areas USA 1. New Orleans, Louisiana: - Subsidence rate: up to 20 mm/year (0.8 in/year) (source: NASA) - Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Lower Ninth Ward and Metairie 2. Houston, Texas: - Subsidence rate: up to 30 mm/year (1.2 in/year) (source: NASA) - Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Houston Ship Channel and nearby neighborhoods 3. San Francisco, California: - Subsidence rate: up to 5 mm/year (0.2 in/year) (source: USGS) - Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the San Francisco Bay Area and Treasure Island 4. Los Angeles, California: - Subsidence rate: up to 3 mm/year (0.12 in/year) (source: USGS) - Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Los Angeles Basin and nearby neighborhoods 5. Phoenix, Arizona: - Subsidence rate: up to 5 mm/year (0.2 in/year) (source: USGS) - Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Phoenix Basin and nearby neighborhoods 6. Las Vegas, Nevada: - Subsidence rate: up to 3 mm/year (0.12 in/year) (source: USGS) - Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Las Vegas Valley and nearby neighborhoods 7. New York City, New York: - Subsidence rate: up to 1 mm/year (0.04 in/year) (source: USGS) - Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in Manhattan and nearby neighborhoods 8. Chicago, Illinois: - Subsidence rate: up to 2 mm/year (0.08 in/year) (source: USGS) - Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Chicago Loop and nearby neighborhoods 9. Miami, Florida: - Subsidence rate: up to 2 mm/year (0.08 in/year) (source: USGS) - Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Miami Beach and nearby neighborhoods 10. Seattle, Washington: - Subsidence rate: up to 1 mm/year (0.04 in/year) (source: USGS) - Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Seattle Basin and nearby neighborhoods
Houston, Texas has sunk so much over the years, that the city is actually below sea level. The greatest fear is that one of these days, an extraordinary hurricane will push seawater inland, and the water will flood Houston, and they will never be able to get the salt water out.
In the Ruhr Valley (Germany) where I live due to all the coal mining that used to take place the ground has subsided, in some parts especially the north of Essen, Gelsenkirchen and Herne up to 25m. Which is absolutely insane so rivers have been diverted and more than a hundred pumping stations run around the clock to keep the urban environment from flooding since 40% of it now sits below groundwater. At least there isn't much movement anymore now that all coal mines have seized operation.
For the American Cities can't we fix the problem by injecting a chemical with greater mass & smaller laminar flow characteristics under pressure than water 🤔?? Like, say... Canadian maple syrup??
You mentioned synthetic aperture radar. I got a great lecture on this from the great Dr John McDonald, of Donald Detwiler and Associates the satellite technology company. His displays and slideshow showed the results of what mountain ranges look like infrastructure and could even identify the differences in crops from the chaff left behind it, including between legumes and peas. If I was standing on those crops I don't think I'd know the difference honestly. One of the examples he showed of lands in uplift was over volcanic regions where underground magma Chambers were filling or emptying. Amazing accuracy to within an inch
What India needs to do most, along with the rest of Asia, is shift away from rice. It's just too water intensive of a crop. And yet the govt. in India, as elsewhere, actually offers subsidies for rice production instead, which is ridiculous.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn billions of people eat rice; telling them to shift away from rice is as easy as telling billions of meat-eating people to give up eating meat in general secondly, what would be the alternative crop to rice ? it is water-intensive, but it also has high calories yield. what other crop can grow all over Asia and feed as much people as rice ?
@@jayaramnarayanan8752 As I see around my home, All new buildings do seem to have this facility. Ours is from the old era but we are getting it done anyhow.
2:08 the sinking caused by buildings are local, only in the close area to the building. For example, a 100 stories building weighs more or less 50 t/m2 and this is equivalent to remove approx 20m of soil for the basement to build the underground garages and to compensate the building weight. A tall building with underground garajes may compensate the majority of its weight.
Great research. 👏🏼 One question: How huge the sink has to be to be considered a result of excessive groundwater drain? We are seeing a lot of these in India lately. Most of the groundwater is used for farming. The government tried making some laws that would make people use lesser groundwater but it was protested against and now we're seeing a few sinkholes. I think the reason is the same as you explained.
What India needs to do most, along with the rest of Asia, is shift away from rice. It's just too water intensive of a crop. And yet the govt. in India, as elsewhere, actually offers subsidies for rice production instead, which is ridiculous. Of course people will protest at their groundwater use being restricted, so rather just make it so they don't need as much of it as rice demands.
Subsidence can also cause local apparent sea-level trends to greatly differ from the widely advertised (but actually very slow) global rate. However, subsidence isn't always caused by groundwater pumping. Oil and gas extraction can also cause subsidence. More importantly, natural processes, like post-glacial rebound, can cause uplift in some places and subsidence in others. Ironically, Greta's Thunberg's hometown of Stockholm is one such place. Uplift there is about triple the global sea-level rise rate, so the local "relative" sea-level trend at Stockholm Harbour is downward, rather than upward. (It is a minor contributor to their periodic dredging expenses.)
MODFLOW…hmmmm, that gives me pause. Our Host’s “Accuracies vary” refers to the various models to calculate subsidence, and in the case of MODFLOW, that description is an understatement. Keep in mind, good modeling requires good data. Otherwise a result might be garbage in, garbage out. MODFLOW is a finite difference model, not based on the more robust finite element approach. There are various “packages” to expand its capabilities, of which subsidence (SUB) is one. The packages are add-ons, versus inherently integrated calculations. These factors result in limitations to applying the model/packages to some real world situations or generate instability and variable results. While I have not used SUB, I’ve used MODFLOW and a number of the other packages. The use of packages is often problematic. Why is MODFLOW so widely used? Because of momentum and the difficulty in writing a quality finite element model to replace it, which is long overdue in my opinion.
It's hard to make a good model without siginifact investment on survey. At least, here in Indonesia, in terms of cost it's often way cheaper (and reliable) to rely on local wisdom and pure luck. Wish we have something that can map underground veins in 3D cheaper than the cost of digging the ground.
@@bmanpura Aren't there ground-penetrating RADAR and SONAR devices that can map the underground? I remember huge trucks with vibrating plates below them driving around in my neighbourhood because they were looking for oil, but they haven't been back in years...
7:14. I m from hong kong and we do not use groundwater at all as much of it comes from China's water supply and reservoirs in hong kong, so it s kind of strange to see it s on the list and apparently ranked just slightly better than others like shanghai. It would be nice to see tokyo and other global cities for reference, particularly those that do not use groundwater.
You apparently took the whole City Prefecture population for Shijiazhuang. It is in fact 5.090.440 - two times smaller than the District population, still big enough. You can use CityPopulation and other sources to estimate actual built-up population. We have a similar problem in ex USSR particularly in three places - Moldova (there the sinkholes are called Hırtop), Perm land and Donbass region. In Perm land the issue is very unique - salt mining. During USSR, a water grid was indeed constructed at full, but only for European part of the country, and some places of this grid are already being abandoned due to artificial borders. For example, water issues between UZ and TM led to Aral Sea disaster, and in Belarus, the Bug-Desna channel is almost abandoned. In Ukraine, the Dnepr-Donbass channel between Orel' and Seversky Donetz is/was almost at full capacity and needs to be heavily refurbished as this state never bothered to maintain its Soviet infrastructure legacy. In Russia the state of Unified Deep-water Transit System is much better, and the whole european part of the country is linked together. You even can transfer submarines from one sea to another. However, the channel which previously existed in Sverdlovsk region between Kama and Ob' basins is almost abandoned and does not allow for quick transfers of large amounts of water or of vessels from water-plentiful and almost unused Ob' basin to the European part. Same abandoned channel exists between Ob' and Yenisey water basins. If they would be repaired and refurbished, almost 70% of the area of the country would allow for quick fleet and water transfers. China, on the other hand, tries to connect even to the small 'butt-end' of İrtış which starts actually in China before going into what was Soviet territory. It might lead to the decrease of the share of İrtış in the Ob' river basin as a whole.
This video was excellent! Thank you! I've heard of land subsidence issues in some heavily urbanized areas before. I think it might be worthwhile for modern society to look into ways of decentralizing a bit to combat overcrowding, sea level rise, land subsidence, and such. But, that's just my two cents, and it might cause more issues than it solves. I'm not a civil engineer or urban planner, so I'm just speculating. God be with you out there, everybody. ✝️ :)
Regarding the point past 13:20, ground water extraction per se should not result in subsidence IF the natural (and possible human induced) recharge rate is not exceeded by the ground water extraction rate. Subsidence depends on extraction exceeding recharge, which can be seasonally dependent. Yes, too many humans over-extract natural resources…though we already knew that.
Shipping water across vast distances via canals reminds me of a proposed project where Nevada wanted British Columbia to flood most of the Rocky Mountain trench and pipe the water down to the Vegas area. It was of course rejected, not least of all because it would result in a massive waste of water through evaporation, in much the same way that long-distance electricity transmission results in increased bleed-off of energy. These huge mega-projects remind me of a book by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy on the Soviet attempts to "conquer" the Arctic through sheer force of will. There will be costs to this kind of hubris. The lost Aral Sea is a testament to the unintended consequences of playing around with water on this scale.
Three key points that were unmentioned; The quality of China's freshwater is abysmal. Very little of it is fit for human consumption, and a large fraction isn't even safe for agricultural use as it's too contaminated with factory runoff. That puts more pressure on ground water, as fewer surface sources are safe to use. Secondly, is just how inefficient and water intensive Chinese agriculture is. They have low mechanization, and still use gravity surface irrigation. Not to mention how water intensive rice is as a crop in general. Third, The Water transfer project is highly unlikely to actually be able to move as much water as they want, primarily due to evaporation. They built as wide, shallow, relatively slow flowing canal, so a large proportion of the water they direct into it wont actually reach the north. It's a huge expense for a band-aid at best.
hah, I knew it, living in an old mining area there are citys that are like 10m below their old height because of all the water pumped out to keep the mines dry
I know I saw that India was doing double duty on major water canal projects to add solar over them to reduce evaporation. I didn’t notice a single pic here showing similar. I hope they consider it.
Same thing is happening in California; there is a marker of where the land was in like 1900, and now its like a full story or two below that mark. Crazy!
That's not exactly accurate saying the US doesn't invest in water. A poor and corrupt Flint doesn't rep the country. It's certainly not comparable to China level issues with water. Utilities and consumers bear the cost that the 50 billion the US Federal Gov throws back to states.
China is the same size as the US. But a far smaller proportion is arable and liveable. A lot of the western parts can't support a high population density. Yet China has 450% the population of the US. So they have this enormous mass of people, all crammed into their one coastline. Result: overpopulation. There is more people than the land can comfortably support. Solution: a reduction of the population. A group of scientists led by Song Jian calculated that the ideal population for China is 650-700 million. When they announced this in 1980, China's population was already far above that. It was just under 1 billion. Their recommended strategy was a sharp reduction of one-child per 2-parents, maintained for 30 - 40 years, and then raising the fertility rate back up gradually until the population stabilized at around 700 million by the year 2100. Song Jian is still alive today, retired for decades, but this has apparently become official government policy. China has been tweaking their policy to match the calculated numbers since 1980.x
The funny thing is many ppl will scream "climate change" when talking about this topic, but it is really environmental degredation. Most cities were built without taking water pathways and recharge into account. IE Seoul South Korea has a huge problem with flooding when it rains since the low areas were just concreted over. This is a huge problem in most bigger chinese cities as well. Since these issues were planned for in the beginning its almost impossible to fix now.
It remains me of Venice, Italy when they build Venecia Mestre terminals they pump out massive amounts of water and the legacy Venice city started to sink very very fast since then. You mention it fast but it was a huge mistake very expensive to repair now. Pumping the water in now is almost and impossible task. Very interesting video.
@@manitoba-op4jx Have you seen the devastation in the US? Governing is an iterative process, adapting to changes as they happen. No one can predict the future and avoid all problems. From my point of view in the US, China is a marvel of adaptation, productivity, and harmony, overcoming all adversity to thrive and uplift others. My own country doesn't share those ideals.
Could you do a similar video on India , please ? The government of India also once thought of interlinking all the rivers in India but could never move forward with it due to economical & political reasons. A video on the feasibility , and pros & cons of this River Linking project would be really awesome from you.
That river interlinking plan goes back decades. It's been brought up over and over again, and shot down each time. And not just cos of politics or money, even most environmental experts are against it. Though it would be interested to have a video on why though. Anyway, what India needs to do most, along with the rest of Asia, is shift away from rice. It's just too water intensive of a crop. And yet the govt. in India, as elsewhere, actually offers subsidies for rice production instead, which is ridiculous.
Thanks for the video ☺️. Your objectivity is soothing after the rest of the internet has been so diluted with opinions. Don't change please. 🐙 Cthulu approves!
@@danielch6662 Yes it does. Highrise buildings typically need an approval from municipality on its environmental consequences which includes geological study.
If I remember correctly all the water we have pumped out have altered Earth's tilt slightly. It is basically a gigantic spinning top and we remove material from random spots.
Very different subsidence phenomena, but large areas of Europe are suffering from Geotechnical rebound from the kilometres of ice cover during ice age, whole of Britain is tilting back higher NW lifting up lower SE going down line Humber to Sevens mouth. Also the whole of the Netherlands is going down.
I admire your knowledge in every sense. You can explain complex topics in a way that is easy to understand. I thought you were using AI to do it, but long before AI became popular, you were already creating content like this.
This has broadened my understanding of what is causing the increase in flooding across the globe - it's not just climate change. I had no idea that the issue of land subsidence is this serious. Thank you for enlightening all of us again.
California central valley also sinks with great speed. We probably should ban open air agriculture. And move all farm into large factories to better recycle the water used
According to the guy who does the RUclips channel "Serpentza" none of the publicly available water in China is drinkable. According to him even the ground water is too polluted to be safe to drink.
CN grains and cooking oil and drinking water were widely transported in unwashed gasoline and septic tankers. It's safe to avoid even ingredients from CN
he's right no one drinks water from the tap, all my friends who attempted to drink it got sick especially those who didn't boil it. a lot of people also buy water filters for their shower heads, the filters help a lot
And even drinkable water was found to be transported in unwashed septic tank trucks, along with grains and cooking oil transported in unwashed gasoline tank trucks.
This happens on other Countries too, on the zones where Chips are made, also Data Centers and Supercomputers consume a lot of water. But also Plate Tectonics have an effect, that should be taken into account. Also Global Warming, but this phenomenon is mostly to the fact, that we're getting to the middle of the Ice Age, where is very hot, for at least 15-20K years, from there temps are coming down for the next 100K years, until they become hotter; and Earths rotation is slowing down due to Gravitational Friction with The Sun & The Moon, so days become longer and hotter, plus the slow expansion of The Sun, which gets closer to Earth constantly. All these phenomena cause water evaporation, so it's not only water usage
That's a different story and the causes are not man made. The city is built on stilts in the middle of the sea pretty much. Now the sea bed is sinking 1.5mm a year, which is a problem. Add to that the rising sea level due to global warming and you get a disaster in the making. But yeah, it doesn't have anything to do with this topic, as it's not due to ground water or oil extraction
We need a steady state economy. No growth of population, resource consumption and energy consumption. Then we use technological progress to bring our resource usage back to sustainable levels, and then resume a slow rate of growth mapped to rates of technological advancements that allow us to use existing resources more efficiently. Infinite growth in a finite planet is not sustainable and will just lead to greater “negative externalities” over time.
I didn't realise city's like Jakarta were sinking like that. I tend to think of sinking and being only in specific areas which makes them obvious but I didn't realise it happened over very large areas so as to be unnoticeable until somebody puts the changes on a pole like that shot around farm land. I never thought about this in the context of climate change, yes everybody knows Venice is sinking but I had no idea it was a world wide phenomenon
That water transport project is not looking good from what ive heard. Sedimentation is clogging it up and its no more than an ornamental canal with super low capacity
1:05 Land subsidence due to ground water extraction is no joke. That picture showing taken at San Joaquin Valley in Central California is crazy. I had no idea. We humans are taking the ground water out way faster than Mother Nature can put it back. SMH
Ok, but ground water extraction has to be countered by the recharge back into the ground. So, it seems they need to increase their efforts to improve the management of aquifer recharge. Thanks for the very informative video!
Tofu dreg construction techniques leading to shortcuts, skimping on materials and quality, and ignoring feasibility study warnings i.e. just overall poor planning also contribute heavily to China’s largest cities Shanghai and Beijing sinking via subsidence.
I read a bit more about this and found lots of pictures of this happening in California for example, like the pic you show in the beginning. What I don't understand is, why are there not many pictures of things being destroyed? I can hardly believe that the whole valley is sinking perfectly at the same rate and nothing really gets disturbed. That makes no logical sense to me.
not much there at the time, just fields and farm houses and stuff. You can go watch Tom Scott's video from Germany where a town is damaged by sinking ground to see the type of cracking you expect (except in that case i believe it was coal extraction, not water that caused it)
It is often overlooked that urbanization covers the land with impermeable roofs and streets. So the rain water is prevented from percolating into the earth. This creates paradoxical floods even in cities that are in drought conditions. Any little rain that falls overwhelms the drainage, because it is no longer absorbed into the ground.
That's a great point.
Urbanization is a self solving problem in other words
It's not a Chinese problem, I'm thinking it started in the US or Europe
There is NO drainage infrastructure! The crooked contractors only put the drainage grills even with the road surface!!!!
The ccp officials are so used to getting bribes they don't want to do anything that makes them actually do work...😂😂😂😂
"Rain gardens" are becoming more popular exactly because of this - you can even hide them with wooden platforms, if you so desire.
always cracks me up that "small" cities in China have the same population as my entire country
And what they call a village in China is what we call a mid size city in US. No joke, went to “villages” with 300,000 people. Yeah, they called that a village
and yet, china is currently the second most populated country in the entire world. the first place now belongs to india.
Check out how many die in their rebellions, big numbers
@@farhanrejwanand falling quickly.
@@JasperKlijndijk The rate of growth is stagnant but its no way near that you may regard as quickly falling down. Its negative 0.03%. How is that a quick decline?
Its not even a single whole percent worth. Statistically It may not even leave the error margin.
There is a similar issue in industrialized West Germany in the Ruhr area, from which black coal had been extracted for a very long time, and in some places it is still ongoing. As a side effect the entire area had to manage just this sinking of the land by a sophisticated water infrastructure, and there are areas in which houses face damages because of the sinking ground. But this makes no headlines, and beyond the local area, in Germany, this remains rather unknown, and I came to know it only when I moved there for some time for a job. This problem is, like in China, 100 years old, and locals are just used to it. With the explanations from this video, I would assume the same problem exists pretty everywhere where heavy industry and/or water supply overused the land beyond repair.
We have a similar problem in Lüneburg, a town near Hamburg. The cause is/was extraction of salt from below the city by washing it out with salt brine (Lüneburg has a 1000 years-old history of salt extraction). Subsidence has largely stopped since extraction has been reduced in the 1980ies but some hot spots still subside, likely driven by rain water.
I think the craziest place this is happening is in Mexico City, where the rate of subsidence is massive and the whole city is built over one of the worst chosen locations for a megacity, a lake.
Mexico City aka the smog bowl.
Jakarta is even worse. Indonesia is literally moving its capital elsewhere cos of how bad it's got.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn so far only the governing/administration body of Indonesia
moving the other parts of Jarkata: the education institutions, the industry, the people,... might take even longer and undergo more difficulties
Yea but it was once a brilliant place for a city back when the Aztecs used it properly. The entire point was the water was used to move things through the city. Then the Spanish came and you know the rest. However we can never forget just how brilliant the city design once was
The Aztecs had a prophecy of some sorts that they will have a prosperous capital city on a land where the eagle sits on a cactus eating a snake. They saw it happen at current day Mexico City and it turned out well for them. Then the Spanish came, over population happened and their meticulous city plan was thrown out of the window, burying the lake.
But what’s cool about this story is that it was that Aztec prophecy that still is a part of their national flag. 🇲🇽
"The Unbearable Weight Burden of Your Butt"
never thought I'd get called fat by one of my favorite channels.
The least-controversial funny statement in a YT video in a while
Man had no reason to make it personal yet he chose violence.
At least my mom wasn't brought into the issue
@@caiocc12 massive missed opportunity for a timeless Yo Mama joke
1:12 San Joaquin Valley, California (in this photo) used to be largely covered by a massive lake (largest west of the Mississippi) and surrounding marshlands, but after we diverted the water to LA and other cities, it became a dry, parched environment. That’s why the ground sank so much. Ironically, after the unusually large rains last year, the farmland where the lake used to be flooded and we got Tulare Lake back for a time.
Germany has also that Problem. But not because the extraction of water but of coal. Some cities in North Rhine Westphalia would be meters deep on the bottom of lakes without pumps running for 24/7 for the next eternity.
Most ground water extraction is for agriculture and industry rather than for drinking water.
That's because most the ground water is so polluted with heavy metals that it can't be made potable even with filtering
Thanks for regurgitating that information, very useful
most drinking water isnt used for drinking either
thank you dumbo for reminding me that i heard taht at 5:44
No, humans just don't drink that much water.
A human drinks what, ~2.5L a day? Meanwhile, a kg of soy needs 2500L to grow.
In other words, if you eat 100g of soy beans, that's the equivalent of what you drink in 100 days.
In the suburban area that I live in Colorado, subsidence is connected with the area's past underground coal mining industry. There are fields on which they won't even build roads even though they would help traffic patterns. There are awkward breaks in the pattern of sub division housing for parks and openspace that don't fit in with the aesthetics of urban planning. Some significant parts of a major mall were torn down a few years after construction as the buildings were condemned.
Be glad there are no underground fires.
More roads never helps with traffic.
@@PaulSpades Having grown up in a city with a grid - Minneapolis - I conclude you don't know what you are talking about. More lanes don't help traffic, but a better pattern can help.
It is happening everywhere around the world.
UK:
1. London:
- Subsidence rate: up to 1 mm/year (0.04 in/year) (source: British Geological Survey)
- Affected areas: Central London, Lambeth, and Westminster
2. Manchester:
- Subsidence rate: up to 2 mm/year (0.08 in/year) (source: British Geological Survey)
- Affected areas: City center and surrounding areas
3. Birmingham:
- Subsidence rate: up to 1.5 mm/year (0.06 in/year) (source: British Geological Survey)
- Affected areas: City center and nearby neighborhoods
EU:
1. Amsterdam, Netherlands:
- Subsidence rate: up to 2 mm/year (0.08 in/year) (source: Deltares)
- Affected areas: City center and surrounding areas
2. Rotterdam, Netherlands:
- Subsidence rate: up to 1.5 mm/year (0.06 in/year) (source: Deltares)
- Affected areas: City center and nearby neighborhoods
3. Brussels, Belgium:
- Subsidence rate: up to 1 mm/year (0.04 in/year) (source: Royal Observatory of Belgium)
- Affected areas: City center and surrounding areas
4. Paris, France:
- Subsidence rate: up to 0.5 mm/year (0.02 in/year) (source: BRGM)
- Affected areas: City center and nearby neighborhoods
5. Berlin, Germany:
- Subsidence rate: up to 0.5 mm/year (0.02 in/year) (source: GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences)
- Affected areas: City center and surrounding areas
USA
1. New Orleans, Louisiana:
- Subsidence rate: up to 20 mm/year (0.8 in/year) (source: NASA)
- Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Lower Ninth Ward and Metairie
2. Houston, Texas:
- Subsidence rate: up to 30 mm/year (1.2 in/year) (source: NASA)
- Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Houston Ship Channel and nearby neighborhoods
3. San Francisco, California:
- Subsidence rate: up to 5 mm/year (0.2 in/year) (source: USGS)
- Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the San Francisco Bay Area and Treasure Island
4. Los Angeles, California:
- Subsidence rate: up to 3 mm/year (0.12 in/year) (source: USGS)
- Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Los Angeles Basin and nearby neighborhoods
5. Phoenix, Arizona:
- Subsidence rate: up to 5 mm/year (0.2 in/year) (source: USGS)
- Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Phoenix Basin and nearby neighborhoods
6. Las Vegas, Nevada:
- Subsidence rate: up to 3 mm/year (0.12 in/year) (source: USGS)
- Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Las Vegas Valley and nearby neighborhoods
7. New York City, New York:
- Subsidence rate: up to 1 mm/year (0.04 in/year) (source: USGS)
- Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in Manhattan and nearby neighborhoods
8. Chicago, Illinois:
- Subsidence rate: up to 2 mm/year (0.08 in/year) (source: USGS)
- Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Chicago Loop and nearby neighborhoods
9. Miami, Florida:
- Subsidence rate: up to 2 mm/year (0.08 in/year) (source: USGS)
- Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Miami Beach and nearby neighborhoods
10. Seattle, Washington:
- Subsidence rate: up to 1 mm/year (0.04 in/year) (source: USGS)
- Affected areas: Citywide, with highest rates in the Seattle Basin and nearby neighborhoods
good stuff, critical thinking in this comment section is usually lacking
Houston, Texas has sunk so much over the years, that the city is actually below sea level.
The greatest fear is that one of these days, an extraordinary hurricane will push seawater inland, and the water will flood Houston, and they will never be able to get the salt water out.
In the Ruhr Valley (Germany) where I live due to all the coal mining that used to take place the ground has subsided, in some parts especially the north of Essen, Gelsenkirchen and Herne up to 25m. Which is absolutely insane so rivers have been diverted and more than a hundred pumping stations run around the clock to keep the urban environment from flooding since 40% of it now sits below groundwater.
At least there isn't much movement anymore now that all coal mines have seized operation.
For the American Cities can't we fix the problem by injecting a chemical with greater mass & smaller laminar flow characteristics under pressure than water 🤔??
Like, say... Canadian maple syrup??
@@MetaView7dude stop lying, who told you.
You mentioned synthetic aperture radar. I got a great lecture on this from the great Dr John McDonald, of Donald Detwiler and Associates the satellite technology company. His displays and slideshow showed the results of what mountain ranges look like infrastructure and could even identify the differences in crops from the chaff left behind it, including between legumes and peas. If I was standing on those crops I don't think I'd know the difference honestly.
One of the examples he showed of lands in uplift was over volcanic regions where underground magma Chambers were filling or emptying. Amazing accuracy to within an inch
lol it's not often to see "References and sources go here" at 10:34
unfortunate😂
haha yah, i think he missed that
Also the weight of yo mama
@@KitaJabig That's the real reason for subsidence.
Baahahaha
Love that he lets his curiosity lead this channel. Keep it up.
In Bangalore, India, Rain water harvesting for every home is made compulsory. Without it that building does not get building permit.
Because Bangalore drained all of their lakes
What India needs to do most, along with the rest of Asia, is shift away from rice. It's just too water intensive of a crop. And yet the govt. in India, as elsewhere, actually offers subsidies for rice production instead, which is ridiculous.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn billions of people eat rice; telling them to shift away from rice is as easy as telling billions of meat-eating people to give up eating meat in general
secondly, what would be the alternative crop to rice ? it is water-intensive, but it also has high calories yield. what other crop can grow all over Asia and feed as much people as rice ?
Have Bangalore Development Authority really enforced this. They are famous for being so haphazard.
@@jayaramnarayanan8752 As I see around my home, All new buildings do seem to have this facility. Ours is from the old era but we are getting it done anyhow.
Cats? I wonder what the weight of all the cats in China is.
It's probably a bit more than a pound and four ounces
@theorixlux2605 nahh, its definitely more than 3 kilos
Have you seen any cats in china 😂
@@kiwidiesel you're right. All the cats in china probably weigh more than half a kilo
I also wonder how a raven is like a writing desk.
2:08 the sinking caused by buildings are local, only in the close area to the building. For example, a 100 stories building weighs more or less 50 t/m2 and this is equivalent to remove approx 20m of soil for the basement to build the underground garages and to compensate the building weight. A tall building with underground garajes may compensate the majority of its weight.
Great research. 👏🏼
One question: How huge the sink has to be to be considered a result of excessive groundwater drain?
We are seeing a lot of these in India lately. Most of the groundwater is used for farming. The government tried making some laws that would make people use lesser groundwater but it was protested against and now we're seeing a few sinkholes. I think the reason is the same as you explained.
@adityashukla7849 I don't think you can guess based on the size...
What India needs to do most, along with the rest of Asia, is shift away from rice. It's just too water intensive of a crop. And yet the govt. in India, as elsewhere, actually offers subsidies for rice production instead, which is ridiculous. Of course people will protest at their groundwater use being restricted, so rather just make it so they don't need as much of it as rice demands.
Subsidence can also cause local apparent sea-level trends to greatly differ from the widely advertised (but actually very slow) global rate.
However, subsidence isn't always caused by groundwater pumping. Oil and gas extraction can also cause subsidence.
More importantly, natural processes, like post-glacial rebound, can cause uplift in some places and subsidence in others.
Ironically, Greta's Thunberg's hometown of Stockholm is one such place. Uplift there is about triple the global sea-level rise rate, so the local "relative" sea-level trend at Stockholm Harbour is downward, rather than upward. (It is a minor contributor to their periodic dredging expenses.)
You have very interesting subjects for your videos. Keep them coming.
MODFLOW…hmmmm, that gives me pause. Our Host’s “Accuracies vary” refers to the various models to calculate subsidence, and in the case of MODFLOW, that description is an understatement. Keep in mind, good modeling requires good data. Otherwise a result might be garbage in, garbage out.
MODFLOW is a finite difference model, not based on the more robust finite element approach. There are various “packages” to expand its capabilities, of which subsidence (SUB) is one. The packages are add-ons, versus inherently integrated calculations. These factors result in limitations to applying the model/packages to some real world situations or generate instability and variable results. While I have not used SUB, I’ve used MODFLOW and a number of the other packages. The use of packages is often problematic.
Why is MODFLOW so widely used? Because of momentum and the difficulty in writing a quality finite element model to replace it, which is long overdue in my opinion.
It's hard to make a good model without siginifact investment on survey. At least, here in Indonesia, in terms of cost it's often way cheaper (and reliable) to rely on local wisdom and pure luck.
Wish we have something that can map underground veins in 3D cheaper than the cost of digging the ground.
@@bmanpura Do you know about geoprobes? They won’t go through rock, but usually do in alluvium smaller than large gravel.
@@jaymacpherson8167 No, this would be the first time I've heard about it. I'll google it up.
@@bmanpura Aren't there ground-penetrating RADAR and SONAR devices that can map the underground? I remember huge trucks with vibrating plates below them driving around in my neighbourhood because they were looking for oil, but they haven't been back in years...
@@jaymacpherson8167 First time knowing about this! Thank you! I'll look it up on google.
7:14. I m from hong kong and we do not use groundwater at all as much of it comes from China's water supply and reservoirs in hong kong, so it s kind of strange to see it s on the list and apparently ranked just slightly better than others like shanghai. It would be nice to see tokyo and other global cities for reference, particularly those that do not use groundwater.
好像是香港在几十年前经历过缺水时期，所以才有了从内地往香港供水的工程
You apparently took the whole City Prefecture population for Shijiazhuang. It is in fact 5.090.440 - two times smaller than the District population, still big enough.
You can use CityPopulation and other sources to estimate actual built-up population.
We have a similar problem in ex USSR particularly in three places - Moldova (there the sinkholes are called Hırtop), Perm land and Donbass region. In Perm land the issue is very unique - salt mining.
During USSR, a water grid was indeed constructed at full, but only for European part of the country, and some places of this grid are already being abandoned due to artificial borders. For example, water issues between UZ and TM led to Aral Sea disaster, and in Belarus, the Bug-Desna channel is almost abandoned. In Ukraine, the Dnepr-Donbass channel between Orel' and Seversky Donetz is/was almost at full capacity and needs to be heavily refurbished as this state never bothered to maintain its Soviet infrastructure legacy.
In Russia the state of Unified Deep-water Transit System is much better, and the whole european part of the country is linked together. You even can transfer submarines from one sea to another.
However, the channel which previously existed in Sverdlovsk region between Kama and Ob' basins is almost abandoned and does not allow for quick transfers of large amounts of water or of vessels from water-plentiful and almost unused Ob' basin to the European part. Same abandoned channel exists between Ob' and Yenisey water basins. If they would be repaired and refurbished, almost 70% of the area of the country would allow for quick fleet and water transfers.
China, on the other hand, tries to connect even to the small 'butt-end' of İrtış which starts actually in China before going into what was Soviet territory. It might lead to the decrease of the share of İrtış in the Ob' river basin as a whole.
This video was excellent! Thank you! I've heard of land subsidence issues in some heavily urbanized areas before. I think it might be worthwhile for modern society to look into ways of decentralizing a bit to combat overcrowding, sea level rise, land subsidence, and such. But, that's just my two cents, and it might cause more issues than it solves. I'm not a civil engineer or urban planner, so I'm just speculating.
God be with you out there, everybody. ✝️ :)
Regarding the point past 13:20, ground water extraction per se should not result in subsidence IF the natural (and possible human induced) recharge rate is not exceeded by the ground water extraction rate. Subsidence depends on extraction exceeding recharge, which can be seasonally dependent. Yes, too many humans over-extract natural resources…though we already knew that.
They're experimenting on sponge city last I hear, but surface area for water absorption will always be a problem in urban area.
@@bmanpura Yes, we’ve done so much beyond sustainable outcomes.
Shipping water across vast distances via canals reminds me of a proposed project where Nevada wanted British Columbia to flood most of the Rocky Mountain trench and pipe the water down to the Vegas area. It was of course rejected, not least of all because it would result in a massive waste of water through evaporation, in much the same way that long-distance electricity transmission results in increased bleed-off of energy.
These huge mega-projects remind me of a book by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy on the Soviet attempts to "conquer" the Arctic through sheer force of will.
There will be costs to this kind of hubris. The lost Aral Sea is a testament to the unintended consequences of playing around with water on this scale.
Three key points that were unmentioned; The quality of China's freshwater is abysmal. Very little of it is fit for human consumption, and a large fraction isn't even safe for agricultural use as it's too contaminated with factory runoff. That puts more pressure on ground water, as fewer surface sources are safe to use. Secondly, is just how inefficient and water intensive Chinese agriculture is. They have low mechanization, and still use gravity surface irrigation. Not to mention how water intensive rice is as a crop in general. Third, The Water transfer project is highly unlikely to actually be able to move as much water as they want, primarily due to evaporation. They built as wide, shallow, relatively slow flowing canal, so a large proportion of the water they direct into it wont actually reach the north. It's a huge expense for a band-aid at best.
Wow, a China expert experting on China from behind some sort of wall.
@@peanutbutterjellyjam2179 damn don't mass shoot anyone weirdo 😂
Sounds like propaganda😅
Thanks for this info dude
Your math is wrong. The rate of evaporation is far lower than you might think.
Some hugely important information in this. Good work. Liked and shared.
it's also a big problem in the Netherland. The peets in the ground are "rusting" away :(
hah, I knew it, living in an old mining area there are citys that are like 10m below their old height because of all the water pumped out to keep the mines dry
I know I saw that India was doing double duty on major water canal projects to add solar over them to reduce evaporation. I didn’t notice a single pic here showing similar. I hope they consider it.
Same thing is happening in California; there is a marker of where the land was in like 1900, and now its like a full story or two below that mark. Crazy!
That's not exactly accurate saying the US doesn't invest in water. A poor and corrupt Flint doesn't rep the country. It's certainly not comparable to China level issues with water. Utilities and consumers bear the cost that the 50 billion the US Federal Gov throws back to states.
China is the same size as the US. But a far smaller proportion is arable and liveable. A lot of the western parts can't support a high population density. Yet China has 450% the population of the US. So they have this enormous mass of people, all crammed into their one coastline.
Result: overpopulation. There is more people than the land can comfortably support.
Solution: a reduction of the population. A group of scientists led by Song Jian calculated that the ideal population for China is 650-700 million. When they announced this in 1980, China's population was already far above that. It was just under 1 billion. Their recommended strategy was a sharp reduction of one-child per 2-parents, maintained for 30 - 40 years, and then raising the fertility rate back up gradually until the population stabilized at around 700 million by the year 2100. Song Jian is still alive today, retired for decades, but this has apparently become official government policy. China has been tweaking their policy to match the calculated numbers since 1980.x
@@danielch6662yeah that worked out just fine didn’t it……
The aquifers on the great plains are being depleted at alarming rate and it takes thousands of years to replenish them. But Chinabad!
@@volvo245 Who are you arguing with here?
The funny thing is many ppl will scream "climate change" when talking about this topic, but it is really environmental degredation.
Most cities were built without taking water pathways and recharge into account. IE Seoul South Korea has a huge problem with flooding when it rains since the low areas were just concreted over. This is a huge problem in most bigger chinese cities as well.
Since these issues were planned for in the beginning its almost impossible to fix now.
It remains me of Venice, Italy when they build Venecia Mestre terminals they pump out massive amounts of water and the legacy Venice city started to sink very very fast since then. You mention it fast but it was a huge mistake very expensive to repair now. Pumping the water in now is almost and impossible task. Very interesting video.
Water and flood control has always been a major issue throughout Chinese history.
The story of China is the story of water. Dynasties have fallen from draughts and floods, and the regimes attempt to tame it.
The story of Punjab is the story of juice
Droughts
@@manitoba-op4jx THIS^ x1000
@@manitoba-op4jx
Just work is a bit of a stretch, but that is fairly interesting point.
@@manitoba-op4jx Have you seen the devastation in the US? Governing is an iterative process, adapting to changes as they happen. No one can predict the future and avoid all problems. From my point of view in the US, China is a marvel of adaptation, productivity, and harmony, overcoming all adversity to thrive and uplift others. My own country doesn't share those ideals.
Don't know if this makes sense but can ground water consumption add to rising Sea Levels more than the Melting Icebergs ?
Watching these is like going to school again. Why do I do this? Why do I enjoy this? I am 57 years old... BTW, thx for doing these!
Could you do a similar video on India , please ?
The government of India also once thought of interlinking all the rivers in India but could never move forward with it due to economical & political reasons.
A video on the feasibility , and pros & cons of this River Linking project would be really awesome from you.
That river interlinking plan goes back decades. It's been brought up over and over again, and shot down each time. And not just cos of politics or money, even most environmental experts are against it. Though it would be interested to have a video on why though. Anyway, what India needs to do most, along with the rest of Asia, is shift away from rice. It's just too water intensive of a crop. And yet the govt. in India, as elsewhere, actually offers subsidies for rice production instead, which is ridiculous.
Thanks for the helpful and fascinating overview.
Thanks for the video ☺️. Your objectivity is soothing after the rest of the internet has been so diluted with opinions. Don't change please.
🐙 Cthulu approves!
Thanks for reporting on this worldwide problem, I really had no idea.
It could also be ignored or inadequate Chinese building standards.
As a professional hydrogeologist, you've completed a well documented report.
Source ? Proof ?
@@JonySmith-bb4gx Building standards do not cause the average ground level for the entire city to sink. Or not sink.
@@danielch6662 in USA we don't have either and we sink
@@danielch6662 Yes it does. Highrise buildings typically need an approval from municipality on its environmental consequences which includes geological study.
@@JonySmith-bb4gxYea sure USA bad it’s the worst country in the world I get it
love the little bird noises in the background now, gives it a comfy vibe
I dont hear a thing. If this is some sort of gaslighting, congrats its working im going insane
He's not sad anymore❤❤
we 17:23 @@IamNiggler
Do you even Remove Water for Geothermal ?
I thought they would pump water
into the Ground and that gets
Heated. 😅
They’re transporting water by train recently too.
By aircraft also 😂 retarded bots and trolls are funny sometimes
If I remember correctly all the water we have pumped out have altered Earth's tilt slightly. It is basically a gigantic spinning top and we remove material from random spots.
Very different subsidence phenomena, but large areas of Europe are suffering from Geotechnical rebound from the kilometres of ice cover during ice age, whole of Britain is tilting back higher NW lifting up lower SE going down line Humber to Sevens mouth. Also the whole of the Netherlands is going down.
A big issue with the south to north water project is that the water quality is abysmal.
Another brilliant one and I'm half way thru
I admire your knowledge in every sense. You can explain complex topics in a way that is easy to understand. I thought you were using AI to do it, but long before AI became popular, you were already creating content like this.
Using exclusively AI for research is asking for trouble....
AI don't have that subtle, nerdy humor in it!
This has broadened my understanding of what is causing the increase in flooding across the globe - it's not just climate change. I had no idea that the issue of land subsidence is this serious.
Thank you for enlightening all of us again.
California central valley also sinks with great speed. We probably should ban open air agriculture. And move all farm into large factories to better recycle the water used
Fine. Do away with cheap food.
Lol
I just noticed, you speak in a similar tone as Nile Red
Don't know. I'm subscribed to both, and John sounds nothing like Nigel. At least to my ears.
@@danielch6662 not the voice, just the tone
They both speak kinda mono-tone for much of the video
This topic was just on my mind, go figure...
The most common cause of subsidence is poor government planning, regulation, and enforcement.
Trump not wanting to pay taxes,deregulated,MAGA, you think??
You pronounce like a real chinese! Impressive. I didn't know any of this, very interesting!
According to the guy who does the RUclips channel "Serpentza" none of the publicly available water in China is drinkable. According to him even the ground water is too polluted to be safe to drink.
He's right
CN grains and cooking oil and drinking water were widely transported in unwashed gasoline and septic tankers. It's safe to avoid even ingredients from CN
he's right
no one drinks water from the tap, all my friends who attempted to drink it got sick especially those who didn't boil it.
a lot of people also buy water filters for their shower heads, the filters help a lot
And even drinkable water was found to be transported in unwashed septic tank trucks, along with grains and cooking oil transported in unwashed gasoline tank trucks.
@@lynch8067 based on what? And most his points are valid regardless
land subsidence is going to become a massive issue over the next few decades as aquifers across the world are drained
Plus what one does with the water after usage.
This happens on other Countries too, on the zones where Chips are made, also Data Centers and Supercomputers consume a lot of water. But also Plate Tectonics have an effect, that should be taken into account. Also Global Warming, but this phenomenon is mostly to the fact, that we're getting to the middle of the Ice Age, where is very hot, for at least 15-20K years, from there temps are coming down for the next 100K years, until they become hotter; and Earths rotation is slowing down due to Gravitational Friction with The Sun & The Moon, so days become longer and hotter, plus the slow expansion of The Sun, which gets closer to Earth constantly. All these phenomena cause water evaporation, so it's not only water usage
You missed the biggest poster child of them all: Venice, Italy
I don't think that's from ground water extraction.
Also Miami in Florida which now regularly flood to ankle deep during the middle of the day
That's a different story and the causes are not man made. The city is built on stilts in the middle of the sea pretty much. Now the sea bed is sinking 1.5mm a year, which is a problem. Add to that the rising sea level due to global warming and you get a disaster in the making.
But yeah, it doesn't have anything to do with this topic, as it's not due to ground water or oil extraction
The situation in Venice has nothing to do with land subsidence, Venice has always been below sea level
he mentioned venice at 5:10
6:00 if only the US could build the great lakes pipeline... instead we have to deal with water restrictions.
California got the same problem. New York too
all but 5 states, but let’s just name cali and new york. no reason of course 😘😘😘
@@winterwatson6437 whole world sinking because of the globe warming or something
My god. That was the sassiest introduction to a video about a geological event I've ever seen in my life.
The absolute dead pan delivery pushed it over the top for sure 😂
0:30 that is not subsidence. The road is pushed out of the ground.
Fantastic video. Really interesting. Thank you
Shiziajuang is a logistical center, from there the rails go to central asia and europe, and it has lots of car and train industry!
The north south transfer project also evaporates 70% of the water before it gets to it's intended destination.
Thanks. Keep up the good work.
We need a steady state economy. No growth of population, resource consumption and energy consumption. Then we use technological progress to bring our resource usage back to sustainable levels, and then resume a slow rate of growth mapped to rates of technological advancements that allow us to use existing resources more efficiently. Infinite growth in a finite planet is not sustainable and will just lead to greater “negative externalities” over time.
I am certain the government is reducing water consumption as well considering the country even fights food waste in restaurants
I'm more worried about that U.F.O. at 9:52. ha ha.
I didn't realise city's like Jakarta were sinking like that. I tend to think of sinking and being only in specific areas which makes them obvious but I didn't realise it happened over very large areas so as to be unnoticeable until somebody puts the changes on a pole like that shot around farm land. I never thought about this in the context of climate change, yes everybody knows Venice is sinking but I had no idea it was a world wide phenomenon
Haha like your butt. I love when he injects humour into the well researched info
That water transport project is not looking good from what ive heard. Sedimentation is clogging it up and its no more than an ornamental canal with super low capacity
Mind posting a source? The Middle Canal shouldn’t have sedimentation, since it’s pumped uphill…
"Subsidence is a fancy word" 😅
Cap and Trade - we pay more and use less so others can use more and pay less.
Thank you for the awesome video, I really love these ones about water.
1:05 Land subsidence due to ground water extraction is no joke. That picture showing taken at San Joaquin Valley in Central California is crazy. I had no idea.
We humans are taking the ground water out way faster than Mother Nature can put it back. SMH
And it continues to get worse to this day. So much for California being a Mecca for sustainability and the environment.
Ok, but ground water extraction has to be countered by the recharge back into the ground. So, it seems they need to increase their efforts to improve the management of aquifer recharge.
Thanks for the very informative video!
Less burning of forests (both natural and land clearing).
8:02 where is this profile transect on a map?
Too much extraction or sunction of ground water for people consumption at heavy load of infrastracture cause the sinking of land...
0:58 missed opportunity for a "your mom" joke
7:31 Clockie spotted
I'm sure Hank Johnson can explain this. He's an expert on hydrology and geophysics.
Not only the amount and disposition but the quality and usability of water are questionable.
DW channel did a story on it. Far chemicals are going to be a biggie.
Its the lack of strength in its infrastructure and everything else come on the 3 gorges dam is already moving not long now before a catestrophic fail
I always like a nice cold glass of ground water to go with my ground beef.
Isnt a huge part of these collapses due to unsuitable building materials?
Why doesn't Florida, with three coastlines, have ten or more desalination plants?
Very interesting as always, and well balanced.
Love your now regular insert of one or 2 explosive cynical humor sentences 😂👏💪
This is also a problem in Florida 😞
Tofu dreg construction techniques leading to shortcuts, skimping on materials and quality, and ignoring feasibility study warnings i.e. just overall poor planning also contribute heavily to China’s largest cities Shanghai and Beijing sinking via subsidence.
Also north side of jakarta and semarang.
HOLY, I did not know Shijiazhuang had THAT many people.
I read a bit more about this and found lots of pictures of this happening in California for example, like the pic you show in the beginning. What I don't understand is, why are there not many pictures of things being destroyed? I can hardly believe that the whole valley is sinking perfectly at the same rate and nothing really gets disturbed. That makes no logical sense to me.
not much there at the time, just fields and farm houses and stuff. You can go watch Tom Scott's video from Germany where a town is damaged by sinking ground to see the type of cracking you expect (except in that case i believe it was coal extraction, not water that caused it)
Almost no one lives there.
The American Southwest is in a similar bind and is running out of water.
13:17 don't worry, you can't take water out of these aquifers indefinitely because obviously, they are being used faster than they can replenish.
I knew it's a problem, but damn I didn't know how much damage we do.
0:58 missed chance for a yo mama joke
I saw this happen in another video about Vietnam sinking because of the same problem as Taiwan.