Talk:List of environmental disasters

Nuclear disasters
Re: Windscale/Sellafield: I can find no evidence of "33 deaths" or "destroyed" dairy farms from the fire anywhere in Wikipedia or online. An undetermined number of people were exposed to radiation and it is estimated up to 200 deaths may eventually result from that, but tying specific deaths to these statistical estimates is notoriously difficult, and the original text made it appear as if 33 people died in the fire. Several articles, including Wikipedia's, do not mention any direct deaths. I edited the section to reflect this. Sailboatd2 (talk) 17:44, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Types of environmental disasters
This section comes across as rather confusing. Compare with Natural hazard and Category:Natural hazards and Natural disaster and Category:Natural disasters and also Category:Disasters. I've been cleaning these categories up, and I'm trying to fit this article in somewhere. I've created Category:Environmental disasters to put examples of environmental disasters, and put this article in there. I may also try and rewrite the first section to give an idea of when a normal natural event becomes an environmental disaster. It may be POV, but I've always thought of an environmental disaster as being man-made. Carcharoth 04:22, 10 September 2005 (UTC) Carcharoth 04:26, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Nuclear bomb blasts
Where do the nuclear bombs the US dropped on Japan come into play? --12.220.198.186 00:41, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
 * it was awful for human and environment, why just put on accidental nuclear pollution and not "explicit" ? --Ayanoa 20:54, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Environmental disasters versus Natural disasters
I have edited the page so it only contains disasters that are due to anthropogenic effects on the natural environment. Alan Liefting 06:28, 1 May 2006 (UTC)????

Imagine: the 2 atomic bombings NOT disasters, (READ(short&sweet)
Note: obvisouly, I wanted to edit, but didn't...

There are 2 sides to these bombings, the American side, and the Japanese side.

For the American side, they were not disasters, but actually blessings, and fulfillment of plans that went perfectly.

For the Japanese side, your gut may tell you to quickly say "yes, they were great disasters". OK, go learn some about how they brought the Emperor to surrender, and then by him, the Empire. AND THIS is the key, making it a blessing for both sides. Obviously so for the American side of the issue: it ended the war, and prevented a conquering (raizing) of Japan that would have cost ~3mil. American lives.

But ALSO A BLESSING FOR THE JAPANESE EMPIRE! How?! read: Aprox 3 mil(maybe more) Americans (not to mention casualties of other Allied nations) would have died before Japan capitulated otherwise, but that would have meant, with the Japanese need for suicide in case of anything but victory that, at the very least, 80% (& probably more like 90%) of their population would be wiped out before surrender would have been offered sans the atomic bombings.

Now Japan has a population of some ~125mil people today, I'm ging to venture it was 33-38mil. at the time the allied invasion was to occur.

Simple conclusion: The bombs were a godsend for the Japanese, surrended would not have come ANY OTHER WAY beside obliteration of their people, they suffered only some several 100k dead (perhaps 1+mil. since due to radiation) instead of 20+mil..

20,000,000>1,000,000

Do some research, and see what you think.

Cordially, -Later
 * apart of the political point of there are environmental disaster (for the soil, fauna and flora) with the radioactivity. point. no need to extrapolate or give economical etc point of view; I think these are irrelevant arguments here. --Ayanoa 11:14, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I also agree the above arguments are irrelevant to a discussion of whether atomic bomb detonations were *environmental* disasters. We're not talking about loss of human life, we're talking about environmental damage. From that perspective, clearly disasters. Trevorzink (talk) 04:55, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I think you need a different approach
Whether or not you list nuclear attack on Japan as an environmental disaster has nothing to do with the question if it was a blessing or not, and has nothing to do with the question of whether it was a dissaster for both people and the environment (obviously, it was). The question you should be asking as an editor is what is the objective of this list.

In my opinion, as an editor and as a reader, the objective is to learn about the history of environmental disasters, which brought about and later improved societies understanding of how to continue and live in a productive modern society without damaging the environment in which we live: our planet. Clearly warfare has a huge detrimental impact on environmental systems, and I would say the so far, overall, conventional warfare has and is currently causing more damage than the two atom bombs. I would not list every large war event as an 'environmental disaster', for two reasons:

1. As an editor, this does not archive my purpose and it would be impossible to list even just the big events.

2. As a reader, if I'm on this page -- that's not what I'm looking for.

Also, I would add that some of the other 'items' on the list don't fit, like 'EPA superfund sites' -- it's much too general. I think this should be a chronological list of major events that either captured public and/or political attention, or were of such a scale that they impacted public opinion, policy, and/or scientific understanding. Otherwise, you'll need to include the industrial revolution, every disease that ever plagued humanity, every war and conflict, every single industry, humanity,...
 * I understand your point of view, and that's why I try (to "improved societies understanding of how to continue and live") in the french wikipedia with important dates of ecologism (and sure it's not the same list here).  we try to put the things who really have modified the perception of the human impact on the environment.  in a documentary with hubert reeves, he explains how the "reality" of the bombing have shaped and changed the mentality of physicians, (his colleagues) and furthermore the perception of american people (perhaps later)about the importance of "nuclear power".  it was first hand documented.  --Ayanoa 00:36, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

A problematic page

 * The archiving of this thread by Parsecboy was contested by ImperfectlyInformed.

I have shuffled the page layout around and included more headings. There will be difficulties making a useful, NPOV and balanced list.
 * 1) "environmental disasters" is not clearly defined and suggests a high level of effect especially directly on human life. Should we use "environmental problems", "environmental incidents", "environmental concerns", "environmental issues"? The word disaster is emotive. It is often used in the popular media but it is not the right word to use here.
 * 2) Where do we draw the line for inclusion into this list? I can think of 100's of "environmental disasters" in lil ol' New Zealand that could be included here. Collating the global "environmental disasters" would make the list rather long if the inclusion criteria is set too low.
 * 3) The page can fit in with List of environmental issues by making this page exclusively for specific cases and the environemntal issues page is used to cover the broad topic areas.
 * 4) I have created a wider set of category headings. Some of the entries could easily be in more than one section. How do we decide on whether Minamata disease is an industrial or a pollution disaster? It is in fact relevant to both of these categories.
 * -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 10:21, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Environmental disasters is not emotive, I don't think. It doesn't accurately describe what is in this page, though. Disasters are more sudden, catastrophic events. Concerns, problems, ect. are lingering problems. Disasters will often (always) be followed by problems. Some of these incidents are historical, but the title leads the reader to think that they are current. We might be best off splitting this page into a list of environmental disasters and and list of specific environmental issues. As far as the title, "concerns" feels more emotive to me than "problems". Why not just add the word specific and be clear to the reader? II  | (t - c) 06:28, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose move. Clearly "concerns" is a far broader topic than "disasters". Looking over the article, I do not see any discussion of any of my many environmental concerns, so I would conclude that the article is about calamities, not concerns, i.e. "disasters". 199.125.109.102 (talk) 02:01, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose move, Favor split Splitting this page into a list of environmental disasters and a list of environmental issues seems to solve the problem. I am not so certain that the word "specific" in the title of the potential list of environmental issues adds anything.  What harm is its presence intended to prevent? It would be pleasant if someone would write a "rule of thumb" that could be used by editors to distinguish the two lists. --Bejnar (talk) 20:33, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Note that list of environmental issues already exists. Perhaps splitting this into list of environmental disasters and list of environmental problems would be a better resolution. Problems conveys some specificity as opposed to issues, which are more abstract. Parsecboy said in his edit summary that I pointed out that this page didn't need to be split. But I suggested splitting. II  | (t - c) 08:10, 29 November 2008 (UTC)


 * We need to have an article that is an overview list of env issues (which is currently the List of environmental issues article) and one that is all the specific ones such as those in this page. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 04:02, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * So how about making that page the list of environmental problems page? II  | (t - c) 10:53, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds fine by me. I cannot think of any sort of page name the gives a clear distinction between a page that lists the overview issues and the specific issues (problems). -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:43, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Making this page chronological
Anyone mind if this page is converted to a chronological organization, and a list of environmental problems page is categorized according to type? II | (t - c) 23:36, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorting by chronology and type are both problematice but I think sorting by type as it currently is would be the better option. I would rather not see another page that repeats the info. Ahhh.  An idea! What about a sortable wikitable with a artilce name, type of issue and date columns?


 * As an example:

Two questions
77.42.157.42 (talk) 12:12, 8 June 2010 (UTC) i just read the article and would like to comment and ask few things:

1- in the nuclear section Hiroshima(and nagasaki...) n. bomb are not mentioned, i wondered why since regardless of our political point of view it is, like all the other nuclear incidents, an enviromental disaster; Being intended or not is a different subject. it is not an article of blame or pointing fingers but of clear and full information.

2- if the 11 sept attacks are to be mentioned under human health i think having a point saying that all wars cause human health disaster should be there as well, and while the 11 sept events are a very flagrant example of that you either have to mention them all (in a brief way probably) or just omit them all, but not select some only..

finally i would like to thank wikipedia for such great information on all subjects and the ability for us to discuss and express as well as getting info. 77.42.157.42 (talk) 12:12, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
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Inclusion criteria
This page needs clearer inclusion criteria. Many entries are not clearly disasters, and the linked wikipages do not describe them as such. I suggest that all entries need a ref that describes the subject as an 'environmental disaster'.Dialectric (talk) 15:55, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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