Ladies and Gentlemen,
After large sections of Singapore particularly the Orchard Road shopping area was underwater in record floods on June 16, 2010 after torrential rainfall, the Singapore authorities conveniently blamed some blockage in drains according to the government owned news agency the Straits Times in a story that day, headed "What causes flash floods".
In fact any elementary student of the phenomenon of global warming which is severely impacting Singapore knows this excuse is simply false.
The increased heat in the island atmosphere, caused by global warming and a blanket of concrete jam packed high rise buildings in the island, means the air holds much more water vapour than it otherwise did, causing torrential massive downpours of rainwater in a few minutes or hours, which previously was not the case, making it's quick displacement difficult.
Second, in tandem, the highly heated sea water which surrounds Singapore causes it's volume to expand resulting in even higher sea level rises with sea water further encroaching inland.
This means, in times when the coastal tides are high, with corresponding heavy rain, which by the way is going to become more frequent, no matter what the authorities do, this will not solve the problem of having to discharge the water into the sea. In fact during these times, the flow of water is the other way round, from the sea into the island.
With the entire island only a few feet above water, and especially the commercial and shopping area built especially in low lying areas, I am afraid there is nothing Lee Kuan Yew and his million dollar ministers can do.
One should ask them why they did not think of this in their mad scramble of building construction on the island; a classic instance of an intolerant one party state who think only they know best.
Unfortunately, it is simply too late. You can expect more of these water sports days, for want of a better description, in downtown Singapore on a regular basis, and not freak occurrence once in 50 years as the Singaporean state controlled press would like us to believe.
Gopalan Nair
39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1
Fremont, CA 94538, USA
Tel: 510 657 6107
Fax: 510 657 6914
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
Blog: http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/
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6 comments:
something is definitely not right in Spore. Flood in 2006, 2007, 2009 and now ( 2010 ). I remember some 50+ year ago, there were very frequent floodings - in many parts of the island. Sell your million $ home now or see value come down big time.
Luxurious mansion in Singapore in the exclusive Bukit Timah district.
Facilities include:
8 car parking garage
and
INDOOR & OUTDOOR swimming pool
Renaldi
Abnormal weather around the world. Singapore is not spare, unfortunately for the PAP govt who always delight in criticizing other countries for their failures, but not its own.
Who is going to pay the 6 million dollar water-damage bills.
I remember going to school in the 60s along Bukit Timah Road and finding the roads flooded and impassable despite the huge 6-car wide drainage canal right down the middle. A muddy, overflowing canal was an occurrence you could look forward to every monsoon season due to earlier inadequate system design and investment. Fast forward to today, $2 billion worth of drainage schemes later, and you would have thought those floods a distant memory, wouldn't you? Not so. After decades of being effectively drained they're back with a vengeance: Bukit Timah flooded again recently. (Environment Minister Yaacob Ibrahim foolishly declared it "a once in 50 years freak event", a stick he will now be gleefully beaten with henceforth).
Three whole days after the event, Mr Khoo Teng Chye, CEO of the PUB, finally rouses from his conspicuous silence to declare nervously, "It wasn't our fault, the flood washed debris into a culvert and blocked it"! Erm, yeah right Mr. Khoo, isn't that what floods do? Then in an attempt to spin a negative situation away from responsibility, this government head honcho followed up with an astonishing torrent of laughablly insincere, cliched, discredited management-speak excuses: "we are committed to investigating....it is not acceptable....we want to assure everyone...we take this very seriously...we're taking the necessary measures....blah, blah blah". Typically, the idea of defusing the potential fallout by simply saying, "I apologise. We screwed up, I'm fixing the problem right now" never even crossed his mind. In a single bound he demonstrated all too clearly that LKY's fatuous assertion that mega bucks buys mega talent is, not to put too fine a point upon it, utter bullshit.
PAP will now have to explain away the inevitable flooding, despite the vast investment, in the latter half of 2010 when La Nina, El Nino's wayward sister, is expected to prevail with intense rainstorms a racing certainty. Maybe they'll concede a cockup:
'...Meinhardt Infrastructure, was tasked with diverting Stamford Canal so that a new gleaming shopping mall, 313 Somerset could be built over it. At the same time, engineers had to ensure that the canal remained fully functional, all this while working in busy Orchard Road. The canal is now diverted and integrated into the shopping centre.' - Weekend Today, May 07, 2010
Impossible of course. The Building and Construction Authority has awarded its Design and Engineering Safety Excellence Awards to the engineers so it must be faultless.
Smug arrogance leading to an over-crowded, over-built, over-extended little speck of land straining desperately to digest the effluent of an extra million-and-a-half foreign bodies? Hmmm.....
How come the Minister of Environment is paid so high and not even comment on the recent Orchard Road flooding?
Or they could prepare to wage war to wrestle some major territory outside Singapore when(not if) Singapore is literally drowned by rising sea level an event that I bet the PAP would declare an accomplishment as a city size sea world.
Funny people get second chances in the one party fascist state Sink-apore
Renaldi
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