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Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’
- 1125 9y agoThe caption of the last image says: "Visitors can tour the system, which cost $2 billion and was completed in 2006." I hope that's just a typo.
- klodolph 9y agoWhat part do you hope is a typo?
- CognitiveLens 9y agoQuick lookup of other sources all state figures between US$2billion and US$3 billion
- sxates 9y agoI initially read that as the tour costing $2 billion. Seems a bit steep!
- segmondy 9y agoIs it? How much have the recent floods experienced in the Americas cost?
- arjie 9y agoWhat is honestly going on in this comment section? First guy is confused by a perfectly good caption saying that the facility cost $2 billion to build and was completed in 2006. And second guy said he somehow thought that meant that taking a tour costs $2 billion (which would be obviously expensive just for a tour). And you have somehow misinterpreted the comment about the tour to be saying that the facility is expensive. Come on, guys. Read before you comment. Jesus.
- twic 9y agoI assume the second person was joking. I have no idea what the first person was concerned about, unfortunately.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sp332 9y agoTokyo has a GDP of $1.6 trillion per year. And they have a lot of expensive property they want to protect from flooding.
- mholt 9y agoYeah I wouldn't want to pay $2 billion for a tour.
- poulsbohemian 9y agoI may not understand the scope of this project, but when I read the $2 billion, my thought was "wow that's cheap!" Consider the Big Dig or the current Seattle tunnel, at $14B+ and $3B+ respectively.
- emodendroket 9y agoTo be fair, nobody would have undertaken the Big Dig if the true cost were known up-front. And a debt that's 200% GDP is a unique circumstance.
- Cyranix 9y agoSimilarly, the cost of Seattle's tunnel was greatly inflated by the little mistake that halted Bertha.
- KGIII 9y agoThe Big Dig may have been closer to the budget, except it kept getting changed. An example would be that they initially planned on shutting down certain routes until a politician decided to announce that traffic flow would not be disrupted. That's great if you're paid to model the traffic but probably not so great if you now have to pay the added expenses.
- dghughes 9y agoBut that indicates the project was not planned well since change requests for such a large project would have been expected.
- jrieirjn8383 9y agoHow does one plan around a politician making it up as they go?
- KGIII 9y agoYou can only plan on so much. Notably: I only modeled traffic. I am not to blame. ;-) (I have used that caveat so many times.)
- mikeyanderson 9y agoHurricane Katrina was estimated to have over $200 billion in losses—if that's true, it seems like there should be more investment in this type of infrastructure.
- r00fus 9y agoWhy? When you can use disaster capitalism and profit on the "volatility" provided by such events?
- jtuente 9y agoThanks, Keynes.
- r00fus 9y agos/Keynes/Klein/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoI've heard it said that in the UK a fatal car crash increases GDP by about £1 million.
- robocat 9y agoReference? A quick skim only showed studies showing cost of each fatality e.g. USD 1.6e6 in US listed here https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812013 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
- 6nf 9y agoI think you mean 'decreases'
- iaabtpbtpnn 9y agoI strongly suspect he does not.
- acabal 9y agoIt's so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems. It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it. In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that things are only going to get worse for them as the years go on. And yet everyone there still drives everywhere spewing carbon into their own air with every trip, public transit is in a poor state, and oil exploitation continues apace. Everyone's OK with spending money and manpower on huge public works projects, but they're not OK with addressing habits and addictions that make the projects necessary in the first place. It's as if our eyes can see the oncoming train just a mile away, but instead of stepping out of the way we want to build a mechanized winch that will temporarily lift us over the train, and hopefully we'll be done building it before the train hits us, and oh yeah, never mind how we're supposed to get down, or the taller train after that one. Why can't we put that money, effort, manpower, and will into actually addressing climate change and make crazy projects like vast man-made Mines-of-Moria-style underground tunnels and huge artificial reservoirs unnecessary? Yes it's a global problem, but solutions to global problems start at home. Throwing our hands up and saying it's pointless until the other guy does something too can't be the way to progress on this issue.
- eliben 9y agoTragedy of the commons - it's a ubiquitous and powerful economic principle.
- danharaj 9y agoThe tragedy of the commons is another name for the failure of private property and markets to account for externalities. For a real theory of the commons without leaving mainstream economics cf. Mary Ostrom's Governing the Commons. Otherwise, all of anthropology.
- nickik 9y agoElinor Ostrom. Nice podcast on some of these things: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/11/boettke_on_elin.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/11/boettke_on_elin.htm...
- NeoBasilisk 9y agoThe US feels more like a third world country in its "response" to climate change compared to countries like Japan
- anon_d 9y agoTokyo is 30% of Japan's population..
- rgrieselhuber 9y agoBetween natural disasters and weaponized weather modification (yes it still sounds crazy but it's becoming increasingly clear that it's a real thing), this is definitely a priority for a country like Japan.
- xeroaura 9y agoI do believe there's a movie coming out with a similar premise of weather modification to control natural disasters gone wrong called Geostorm.
- jpindar 9y agoBoston is too: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2017/09/06/what-a-future-sea-barrier-in-boston-would-look-like https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2017/09/06/what-a-fut...
- foobar__ 9y agoInterestingly, the official website doesn't mention climate change at all, as far as I can see [1]. Instead, it claims that the purpose of the tunnels is to protect the areas surrounding some smaller rivers upstream of Tokyo, which are on flood plains and regularly used to get flooded (no climate change required, just regular rain season/typhoon does this). Now due to urban sprawl more people want to live there, exacerbating the problem and creating the need for this system. I do not doubt that climate change is happening. I just don't like articles with such a clear agenda in the background, especially when the official sources contradict the statements. [1] http://www.ktr.mlit.go.jp/edogawa/gaikaku/intro/01intro/index.html http://www.ktr.mlit.go.jp/edogawa/gaikaku/intro/01intro/inde... (Please correct me if I'm wrong or I missed something.)
- saalweachter 9y agoAlso too, of course you should build your "prevent floods from wrecking our shit" system to handle floods "beyond anything we've seen before". Building it to handle less than what you've seen before would be stupid.
- Armisael16 9y agoThat isn't entirely true. How much is it worth to upgrade from a "once every 500 years" system to a "once every 5000 years" system? If it's more than the expected damages...
- Feniks 9y agoWell if my country floods its all over, considering we're under sea level the water may never leave. And I can imagine Japan doesn't want to risk Tokio.
- saalweachter 9y agoWhen you start talking truly cataclysmic events, the value of the physical infrastructure at risk will be dwarfed by the human lives. In 2016, the assessed value of all real estate in Manhattan crossed the $1 trillion threshold (which of course leaves out the bridges, the subways, the personal property...) At a value of $9.1 million / life, there are $77.7 trillion worth of humans in New York City. If there's a natural disaster which would wipe out the population of New York once every 5000 years, we should be willing to spend $15 billion per year to prevent it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- woodandsteel 9y agoFrom what I understand, Japan thinks the climate is getting warmer due to human action, and serious steps need to be taken to deal with it. I have a question for the global climate change skeptics out there. Are there any major countries in the world besides the US and maybe Russia where the central government agrees with you on what is happening and what to do about it? (If there are give us some links)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoDoes the USA have a central government with a central policy? Obama believed in climate change even if Trump doesn't, most of congress, even on the right, believe in some amount of climate change (e.g. McCain). I'm really at a loss to find that unified anti climate change sentiment in the states. It's more like a democracy where politicians and electorates are allowed to have different opinions.
- woodandsteel 9y agoBy central government, I meant for the US the federal government, and in particular the present administration. My question still stands.
- jessaustin 9y agoWhen I google "china coal power", a confusing set of links appears. Some are certain that coal power plant construction in China has halted or will halt in future, others are not. I suspect reality doesn't match the marketing exactly.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoYour post is misplaced but... China is definitely building new coal plants, just not in every district. Beijing has a ban, for example, but not surrounding Hebei.
- jamesash 9y agoSavannah Georgia is spending over a billion to dredge the harbor to make way for bigger Panamax container ships. Same with Charleston, about 2 billion. My point is that there are a fair number of billion dollar infrastructure projects that fly under most people's radar. Source: today's WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-panama-canals-big-bet-is-paying-off-1507464000 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-panama-canals-big-bet-is-pa...
- tincket 9y agoFukushima Is Preparing for Melt-down(2008) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was happend. Disasters occur at unexpected places.
- ASlave2Gravity 9y agoA little off topic, but the novel Japan Sinks [0] by Sakyo Komatsu is a wonderful insight into Japan and its fears/feelings on natural disaster. Also, more generally, just a really great disaster novel. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Sinks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Sinks
- nexus2045 9y agoEnjoyed the movie based on the novel as well.
- lloeki 9y agoAlso fascinating, Dragon Head[0] is a 10 volume post-apocalyptic natural disaster psychological and survival horror manga worth a read. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Head https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Head