On Thursday, September 7th, Mexico had a magnitude 8.1 earthquake. Mexico has an early warning system which thankfully gave some people up to a minute warning before the shaking started. It works because the seismic waves from an earthquake travel at the speed of sound, which is slower than our communications systems.
California is developing its own early warning system, with the help of the U.S. Geological Survey (earthquake monitoring agency). Trump planned on shutting down development in an effort to reach a balanced budget, but after many complaints from members of both political parties in California, a congressional committee voted to keep funding.
In addition to having an audible alarm component, the warning system is also expected to stop elevators and open elevator doors, stop natural gas in pipelines, and alert surgeons to stop their surgeries.
This is a news clip from Mexico during the earthquake:
5 comments:
An earthquake warning system sounds quite advanced. I believe it would be helpful because California has a major fault line and we don't know when the next quake will hit. Then again, if the warning system only gives people a minute notice before an earthquake hits, how practical would it really be? Can we really stop all elevators and gas lines in the state within 60 seconds? The concept sounds idealistic. Additionally, the warning would be equipped with audible alarms. But where would the alarm come from? Would it be like a fire alarm or notifications like those we get from amber alerts? Sure, an earthquake alarm sounds cool, but I still have a lot of questions. And if these questions have not been answered, then I do not completely disagree with President Trump for stopping the research.
I have to disagree heavily with Victoria on this issue. The only way a system like this can become more plausible, which would be wonderful considering the aforementioned fault lines we are unfortunately situated near, is for it to receive more funding. Science isn't just a simple process like: Step 1. Give money to researcher; Step 2. Researcher cooks up something super cool and useful; Step 3. Everyone reaps immediate benefits. Science is a gradual but reliable process we can use to increase public health, safety, and happiness in small ways here and there that build up to a greater progression. Researchers need a lot of time and funding to eventually reach the point of developing life-saving devices like these into something more practical, the problem is really just an issue of poor allocation of funds and priorities. Instead of funding wars with several nations, building a costly and likely ineffective border wall, or wasting law enforcement resources on nonviolent drug crimes, that money can and ought to be used to fund scientific endeavors to improve the safety of not only our state or country, but the world at large.
I am wondering why Mexico, a less developed nation than the US, has an earthquake warning system when we don't. I have to agree with Peter. We don't know when the next earthquake will hit, but we know that it is coming. Why not develop a technology that could potentially save lives and that other countries, such as Mexico, has. In they can develop it, then the United States can as well. Additionally, there is an active and functioning earthquake warning system, it means that the technology may not be that hard to replicate, yet alone further develop to make it more efficient. But, I believe that this funding can be concurrent with the rest of the US spending, such as on the protection of its citizens via military, as science projects like these should be funded by the US government to benefit its citizens as a whole.
I think that cutting research in an early stage of development is not a wise decision because it can really impact our society, especially in California. While a mere sixty seconds may seem too short to have any impact, it can be the difference between life and death. Some may think that funding the project is a waste of taxpayer dollars, but like Peter said, we're already wasting money on other ineffective projects. The technology has already proven to be successful and useful in Mexico, so I don't understand how it can be considered idealistic. Why wouldn't it be just as successful and useful here as well?
In a federal system, the national government controls a lot of the funding of lower governments, and it has a say in how states use the money that is handed down to them. Because of this, states and scientific organizations depend on the federal government to tell them whether or not what they are doing is worthwhile, which isn't fair. For one, I don't think people so separated from science are qualified to make decisions about how worthwhile it is, and it's not fair to take away funding from a project because the project doesn't seem plausible without that much funding. Science is not magical and is not capable of producing something out of nothing, and people need to understand this. In this case, the earthquake warning system is as much in defense and infrastructure as it is in scientific research, so cutting it off makes even less sense. Natural disasters can wreak a lot of havoc, and the government should allow funding to mitigate those effects. Perhaps devolution is needed, as different states do have different problems.
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