Kip Hansen’s opinion – October 12, 2022
I expect this to be a “biweekly recap” without any certainty that I will be able to sustain the effort – which I admit was stretched quite thinly by the constant commitments of me. I will point out a few false stories about the climate crisis without requiring an entire dedicated essay in each round.
Southwest Asia Monsoon Is Becoming More Unusual and Violent
An easy start, as I covered this in: “Southwest Monsoon – More Unusual?”. Not so. It has always been and has not changed significantly over the past 121 years, Indian governments (also always changing) have kept meticulous records.
Fall allergies are real. And they are getting worse.
If you need to be told that fall allergies are real, you are not a fall allergy sufferer. You can say that this is a Climate Change® story because it has a mandatory preamble that states positively that “Something or condition is undesirable” (whatever one wants, in this case). This is a fall allergy) is “Real” – as always, telling readers this isn’t necessary – no one thinks fall allergies are a hoax.
And why are they getting worse and worse? Climate change! (of course….)
“What many people don’t realize is that allergy seasons have almost doubled and become more intense due to climate change,” said Kenneth Mendez, president and chief executive officer, The Times. of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Higher carbon dioxide emissions spur plants to release larger amounts of pollen, he said. “That’s why allergies are feeling so much worse.”
“And when temperatures are warmer for a long time and the first frost occurs later and later, plants like ragweed have more time to grow and release pathogens,” said Mendez. allergy.”
And let’s not forget the heat island effect, which creates cities (where there are vast fields of ragweed and golden trees). do not grow) warmer for longer.
Really! There is a study! But what the research shows is – be ready for it – “It depends” – on where you live and on the particular year. Some places are experiencing less pollen, some more. See study for details, full text online at link.
Allergy seasons – yes, there are more than one – in the US happens all year – each overlap. Winter is a respite from outdoor allergies, but since we spend more time indoors, winter carry allergies in the house.
Conclusion: Thankfully it has warmed up a bit since the end of the Little Ice Age, atmospheric CO2 has increased and plant life on Earth is doing better. The growing seasons in most regions have been extended, allowing record output of most agricultural crops. This benefit has also helped trees and weeds (“plants we don’t like”) – pollen allergens – also have record yields in some areas.
[Disclosure: The author lives in a part of the United States that regularly makes the Top Ten list of Allergy Capitals of the US. I have not noticed any change in allergy season – it has always seemed ‘never-ending’.]
This story, subtitled: “A disaster that wiped out a decades-long project to bring water via pipeline to Nepal’s capital demonstrates the mismatch between slow efforts funded by donor support and rapid global warming.”
Kathmandu Finally has tap water. After the Climate Catastrophe, It Gone.
If someone needed an example of implementing the “one story, one climate crisis” mantra, this one will do the trick. It is about a flood in Melamchi Nepal’s river valley.
Geologically, the entire river valley is a floodplain, created by repeated floods that have carved out the bottom of the valley. Flooding here is not unexpected and has clearly happened from time to time through the ages.
Below are pictures of the location and condition – after the flood – of the Melamchi Water Supply Headquarters area:
The AGU Blogosphere’s Blog Landslide, Discuss the cause of the disaster and explain the extent of the damage as shown above:”The main location of the project in Ambathan still buried in flood debris several meters deep. …. According to Rajendra Prasad Pant, a spokesman for the Melamchi Water Development Development Board, it is still uncertain when work on debris removal and restoration will begin… According to initial estimates, the project has cost more than 1 billion dollars. Rs. [about £6 million] damage value.” (photo after flood caused by .) https://flyinglabs.org/nepal/).
There has been a disaster, and it will adversely affect, possibly for many years, the water supply project to provide clean water to the city of Kathmandu.
Caused by climate change? No, the main cause is the weather, namely the heavy monsoon rains that occur in Nepal almost every year, as well as subsequent floods in various river valleys in Nepal. Kathmandu Post reports that many Nepalese have died in this flood in the last centuryreports “Flooding in Nepal remains an annual event like this year.”
But this flood not only due to excessive rain, related to the weather, but due to a special case:
“Understanding this disaster, which we know was caused by a landslide dam failure, is difficult during monsoons, when cloud cover makes satellite imagery difficult to obtain. …. but it seems the interpretation that a landslide dam develops during heavy rain, and then bursts, is correct. ” [ source ]
A landslide dam [.pdf for full discussion] created when a landslide falls and blocks the flow of a stream, creek, or river. This is quite common. The linked article explains that “Mandslide dams occur in all mountainous terrain” and “Due to the relatively short lifespan of most of these dams and the frequent occurrence of catastrophic failure, emergency [attention] must include an assessment of upstream flooding and catastrophic downstream flooding. “This is exactly what happened in the Melamchi River Valley.
I have personally seen these in the creeks that flow from the Catskill Mountains of New York State. In the Catskills, the clay mud filled with rocks slides from the slopes of the “cloves” [a clove is a narrow valley with steep sides, the term is used in areas of North America first settled by the Dutch] and block the stream or creek below. Eventually, the water overcame the blockage and spilled down the clover in a large stream, washing away mud and rocks before it, as it drained the water held back by the dam.
Landslide dams and their catastrophic failures are not caused by Climate Change. They are not due to global warming. They are not even necessarily caused by heavy monsoon rains.
The Melamchi River Valley itself may have been carved out of the mountain by repeated landslides.
Conclusion: The unfortunate flood in the Melamchi River Valley in June 2022 was caused by a catastrophic dam failure caused by a landslide. The damage to the Melamchi Water Supply project is enormous and will take years and lots of international funding to repair. This will delay the reliable supply of clean water to Kathmandu.
However, climate change is not the cause.
In a first-of-its-kind study of floods in Pakistan, scientists noticed climate change in the workplace
There were catastrophic floods in the Sindh region of Pakistan in June and August. The press naturally blamed climate change. Through the magic of World weather distribution; we hear, from every mouthpiece of the media about the climate crisis, that flooding can be caused by climate change.
For that to be true, flooding would have to be something new now that the climate has changed from some previous state. Of course, Pakistan has suffered terrible floods in ancient times. Notable floods occurred in 1992, 1995, 2003, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2020, 2021 and this year. One of the worst was in 1950.
Flooding in Pakistan is not new, it is an unfortunate standard.
To counter the press’s chatter about the climate crisis, was a series of opinion pieces in the New York Times. All assert, of course, that climate change must have played an important role in the disaster – such claims are required if one is to hope to be published. But now, months after the initial disaster, a piece of the truth is emerging:
one) David Wallace-WellsA Times opinion writer focusing on climate, admits (below) “The problem is that climate change is also becoming an excuse,” she [columnist Arifa Noor] continued, adding that “the rains and their intensity are beyond our control; The devastation they cause is not. ” and “bad governance has exacerbated flooding in Pakistan,” list a number of long-standing violations: inadequate water supply and drainage infrastructure, deforestation, poor and dangerous drainage system, construction not according to regulations. “
b) Fatima Bhutto Noting that “The hardest hit province, Sindh, in the south, is affected by extremes. There doesn’t appear to be any disaster preparedness or any plan to strengthen the underperforming water supply or sewerage infrastructure.”
c) Ibrahim Buriro, an organizer of the Awami Workers’ Party and a master’s student in development studies, points out that the Pakistani government is averse to damming and attempts to control the rivers on which the country depends. “…Feudal elites and bad government planning have interfered with the natural flows of our waterways. They predicted disaster. It came.”
To understand the water problems facing Pakistan, just look at the map:
The Sindh region is circled in red. The most southern and eastern parts are marked on other maps as “seasonal inundation”. Outside the great Indus River Valley, the country is arid. Map showing dams and lighter like red shape. When monsoon rains arrive in the north, including the slopes of the Tibetan Plateau, almost all the water flows out of the dry land and down into Sindh. More complete information is available in a YouTube on Indus.
Conclusion: Poor Pakistan is and has suffered from prosperous monsoon rains and floods when they come and drought when the monsoon fails. The rapid population growth has pushed increasing numbers of the poor to farm and build in a harmful way. Government policies and actions may have made this risk worse. An almost complete lack of emergency planning and preparedness exacerbates the problems there. Climate change is being used everywhere as an excuse for locally created problems. Pakistan will intensify its pleas for international aid at the next UN COP.
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Author’s comment:
I am waiting for world leaders to come to their senses and realize that their relentless efforts to stop fossil fuels “for the sake of climate change” are destructive and harmful.
Experts advise countries like Pakistan to build dams and try to control rivers in ways that have led to disasters elsewhere and then blame climate change for the disasters that they do. they created. The world will pour more international aid into Pakistan, which will be abused in similar ways. That is the world we live in.
Fortunately for today’s world leaders, they are blamed for their destructive policies by climate change. Hopefully their citizens will wake up and see the truth — maybe in Europe this winter as they shiver in their unheated homes.
Thanks for reading.
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