Not one of you Trumpers on this forum can come up with an acceptable rebuttal.
We have been asking for peer-reviwed opinions from the government, and they have none about the feasibility and effectiveness of the wall.
Here is a professional opinion by a great, well qualified professional, who posted on FB and gave permission to share.
Amy Patrick
January 8 at 9:52 PM
Howdy.
To recap: I’m a licensed structural and civil engineer with a MS in structural engineering from the top program in the nation and over a decade of experience on high-performance projects, and particularly of cleaning up design disasters where the factors weren’t properly accounted for, and I’m an adjunct professor of structural analysis and design at UH-Downtown. I have previously been deposed as an expert witness in matters regarding proper construction of walls and the various factors associated therein, and my testimony has passed Daubert.
Am I a wall expert? I am. I am literally a court-accepted expert on walls.
Structurally and civil engineering-wise, the border wall is not a feasible project. Trump did not hire engineers to design the thing. He solicited bids from contractors, not engineers. This means it’s not been designed by professionals. It’s a disaster of numerous types waiting to happen.
What disasters?
Off the top of my head...
1) It will mess with our ability to drain land in flash flooding. Anything impeding the ability of water to get where it needs to go (doesn’t matter if there are holes in the wall or whatever) is going to dramatically increase the risk of flooding.
2) Messes with all kind of stuff ecologically. For all other projects, we have to do an Environmental Site Assessment, which is arduous. They’re either planning to circumvent all this, or they haven’t accounted for it yet, because that’s part of the design process, and this thing hasn’t been designed.
3) The prototypes they came up with are nearly impossible to build or don’t actually do the job. This article explains more:
https://www.google.com/…/mobile.engi...amp/17599.html
And so on.
The estimates provided for the cost are arrived at unreasonably. You can look for yourself at the two-year-old estimate that you see everyone citing.
http://fronterasdesk.org/…/Bernstein...Trump%20Wall.…
It does not account for rework, complexities beyond the prototype design, factors to prevent flood and environmental hazard creation, engineering redesign... It’s going to be higher than $50bn. The contractors will hit the government with near CONSTANT change orders. “Cost overrun” will be the name of the game. It will not be completed in Trump’s lifetime.
I’m a structural forensicist, which means I’m called in when things go wrong. This is a project that WILL go wrong. When projects go wrong, the original estimates are just *obliterated*. And when that happens, good luck getting it fixed, because there aren’t that many forensicists out there to right the ship, particularly not that are willing to work on a border wall project— a large quotient of us are immigrants, and besides, we can’t afford to bid on jobs that are this political. We’re small firms, and we’re already busy, and we don’t gamble our reputations on political footballs. So you’d end up with a revolving door of contractors making a giant, uncoordinated muddle of things, and it’d generally be a mess. Good money after bad. The GAO agrees with me.
And it won’t be effective. I could, right now, purchase a 32 foot extension ladder and weld a cheap custom saddle for the top of the proposed wall so that I can get over it. I don’t know who they talked to about the wall design and its efficacy, but it sure as heck wasn’t anybody with any engineering imagination.
Another thing: we are not far from the day where inexpensive drones will be able to pick up and carry someone. This will happen in the next ten years, and it’s folly to think that the coyotes who ferry people over the border won’t purchase or create them. They’re low enough, quiet enough, and small enough to quickly zip people over any wall we could build undetected with our current monitoring setup.
Let’s have border security, by all means, but let’s be smart about it. This is not smart. It’s not effective. It’s NOT cheap. The returns will be diminishing as technology advances, too. This is a ridiculous idea that will never be successfully executed and, as such, would be a monumental waste of money. 🤷🏻*♀️
This is set to public. Have a blast sharing it.
Not one of you Trumpers on this forum can come up with an acceptable rebuttal.
Kacper, do you know it was built after the hordes invaded China?
Do you know that it did not prevent later invasions, Kacper?
That is not an acceptable rebuttal.
Then ILA is a fool, but we knew that. Your opinion is not fact. Her credentials are facts, and whereas yours, ILA, do not count, hers does.
Yeah, I know, tough to be you.
WK1 3/28-/4 _Cases 301k--Dead 18.1k Lethality 2.72%
WK2 4/5-/13 _Cases 555k--Dead 22.1K Lethality 3.9%
WK3 4/20-/21 Cases 774k -Dead 37.2K Lethality 4.8%
WK4 4/22-/29 Cases 1M --Dead 58.8K Lethality 5.9%
WK5 5/1-/8__ Cases 1.3M -Dead 75.7K Lethality 6.1%
WK6 5/9-16__Cases 1.4M --Dead 85.8K Lethality 6.1%
WK7 5/17-24_Cases 1.7M - Dead 97.6K Lethality 5.9%
WK8 5/28 Cases 1.7M - DEAD 101.2K - Same
The vast majority of drugs and illegals come through existing entry points. There are 48 entry points and 350 million crossing every year. Want that elusive sense of safety, plug those up first. Allow no entry. Of course, the financial disaster that wiould create would have to be part of the equation. The 48 entry points are essentially holes in the existing walls.The fencing,wall, barrier , technical instryuments, would do nothing to solve any of our real problems, assuming you see drugs and illegals as a big deal.
Even Fox News claims that the wall is going to cost a hell of a lot more than the $5B Trump is pouting about.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trum...a-statistician
I agree in part it should have been planned long ago but it wasn't like much of what our government fails to do.
But the author misses the idea the design is not monolithic - it will be done i sections like it's already being done according to the geography
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