Opinion by Kip Hansen — 12 October 2022
I hope this will be a “bi-weekly summary” without a firm belief that I will be able to sustain the effort – I admit to being stretched rather thin by my ongoing commitments. I will debunk a few false climate crisis stories that don’t require an entire dedicated essay in each roundup.
The Asian Southwest Monsoon is Getting More Erratic and Violent
An easy start, as I’ve already covered this in: “The Southwest Monsoon – More Erratic?”. It is not. It is as it has always been and has not changed substantially in the last 121 years that the governments of India (ever changing as well) have kept meticulous records.
Fall Allergies Are Real. And They’re Getting Worse.
If you needed to be told that fall allergies are real, you are not a fall allergy sufferer. You can tell that this is a Climate Change® story because it has the mandatory opening of a positive assertion that “Some Unwanted Thing or Condition” (whatever one wants, in this case fall allergies) is “Real” – as always, telling readers this unnecessarily — no one thinks fall allergies are a hoax.
And why are they getting worse? Climate Change! (of course….)
The Times quotes an expert: “What a lot of people don’t realize is that the allergy seasons have almost doubled in length and gotten more intense because of climate change,” said Kenneth Mendez, the president and chief executive 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 a lot worse.”
“And as temperatures stay warmer for longer periods of time and the first frost happens later and later, plants like ragweed have more time to grow and release allergens, Mr. Mendez said.”
And don’t forget the heat island effect, that makes cities (where vast fields of ragweed and goldenrod don’t grow) warmer longer.
Really! There is a study! But what the study shows is that – get ready for it – “It depends” – on where you live and on the specific year. Some places are experiencing less pollen, some more. See study for details, full text is online at the link.
Allergy seasons–yes, there are more than one–in the United States occur all year long – each overlapping. Winter is a break from outdoor allergies but, because we spend so much more time in our homes, winter brings indoor allergies.
Bottom Line: It has thankfully warmed a bit since the end of the Little Ice Age, atmospheric CO2 has increased and plant life on Earth is doing better. Growing seasons in most regions have lengthened, allowing record yields of almost all agricultural crops. This benefit has also helped trees and weeds (“plants that we don’t like”)—the pollen of which cause pollen allergies— which are also having, in some areas, record yields.
[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’.]
Kathmandu Finally Got Tap Water. After a Climate Disaster, It Was Gone.
This story, with a subtitle of: “A disaster that wiped out a decades-long project to bring pipe-borne water to Nepal’s capital shows the mismatch between slow-moving donor-financed efforts and rapid global warming.”
If one needs an example of the execution of the mantra “every story a climate crisis story” this story will do. It is about a flood in the Melamchi River Valley of Nepal.
Geologically, the entire river valley is a flood plain, created by repeated floods that have gouged out the valley floor. Floods here are not unexpected and have obviously happened time after time over the ages.
Here are images of the location of and condition – post-flood – of the Melamchi Water Supply Headworks site:
The AGU Blogosphere’s The Landslide Blog, discusses the cause of the disaster and explains the extent of the damage pictured above: “The project’s headworks site at Ambathan remains buried in flood debris several metres deep. …. According to Rajendra Prasad Pant, spokesperson for the Melamchi Water Supply Development Board, it remains uncertain when the debris clearance and restoration works will begin…As per the initial assessment, the project has suffered more than Rs1 billion [about £6 million] worth of damage.” (the post-flood photo provided by https://flyinglabs.org/nepal/).
There has been a disaster, and it will adversely affect, possibly for years, the water project meant to supply clean drinking water to the city of Kathmandu.
Caused by climate change? No, the primary cause was weather, specifically heavy monsoon rains, which are experienced in Nepal almost every year, as are the subsequent floods in various river valleys in Nepal. The Kathmandu Post reports that many Nepalese have died in these flood over the last century, reporting “Flooding in Nepal remains an annual occurrence as this year.”
But this flood was caused not by just too much rain, which is weather-related, but by a special circumstance:
“Understanding this disaster, which we know was caused by the rupture of a landslide dam, is difficult during the monsoon, when cloud cover renders satellite image collection difficult. …. but it does appear that the interpretation that a landslide dam developed during the heavy rainfall, and then breached, is correct.” [ source ]
A landslide dam [.pdf for full discussion] is created when a landslide comes down and blocks the flow of a stream, creek or river. This is rather common. The paper linked explains that “Landslide dams occur in all mountain terrains” and “Due to the relative short life of most of these dams and often catastrophic failure, urgent [attention] has to be given including assessment of upriver inundation and catastrophic downstream flooding.” This is precisely what happened in the Melamchi River Valley.
I have personally seen these in the creeks that come down out of the Catskill Mountains of New York State. In the Catskills, clay-based mud full of rocks slips from the steep sides of a “clove” [a clove is a narrow valley with steep sides, the term is used in areas of North America first settled by the Dutch] and blocks the stream or creek at the bottom. Eventually, the water overcomes the blockage and rushes down the clove in a torrent, driving mud and rock before it, as it empties the water held back by the dam.
Landslide dams and their catastrophic failures are not caused by Climate Change. They are not caused by Global Warming. They are not even necessarily caused by heavy monsoon rains.
The Melamchi River Valley itself may have been carved out of the mountains by repeated landslide dam failures.
Bottom Line: The unfortunate Melamchi River Valley flood of June 2022 was caused by a disastrous landslide dam failure. The damages to the Melamchi Water Supply project are enormous and will take years and lots of internationally donated money to repair. This will delay the supply of dependable clean drinking water to Kathmandu.
However, climate change was not the cause.
In a First Study of Pakistan’s Floods, Scientists See Climate Change at Work
There was disastrous flooding of the Sindh region of Pakistan in June and August. The press naturally blamed climate change. Through the magic of World Weather Attribution; we hear, from every mouthpiece of the climate crisis media, that the floods were probably caused by climate change.
For that to be true, flooding would have to be something new that is occurring now that the climate has changed from some previous state. Of course, Pakistan has suffered from devastating floods for time immemorial. Notable floods occurred in 1992, 1995, 2003, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2020, 2021 and this year as well. One of the worst was in 1950.
Flooding in Pakistan is not new, it is the unfortunate norm.
Countering the chattering nattering voices of the climate crisis press, are a series of opinion pieces in the New York Times. All, of course, claim that climate change must have played a major role in the disaster—such claims are obligatory if one hopes to get published. But now, months after the initial disaster, bits a pieces of the truth are coming out:
a) David Wallace-Wells, a Times opinion writer focusing on climate, admits (far down the piece) “The problem is that climate change is also turning into an excuse,” she [columnist Arifa Noor] went on, adding that “the rains and their intensity are beyond our control; the havoc they wreak is not.” And “bad governance exacerbated Pakistan’s flooding,” listing some long-term mistakes: failing water infrastructure, deforestation, poor drainage systems and dangerous, unregulated construction.”
b) Fatima Bhutto notes that “The worst-hit province, Sindh, in the south, suffers in extremis. It does not appear to have any disaster preparedness or any plans in place to reinforce water infrastructure or the barely functioning sewage system.”
c) Ibrahim Buriro, an organizer for the Awami Workers Party and a master’s student in development studies, points to the Pakistani governments mania for dam building and attempts to control the rivers on which the nation depends. “…feudal elites and bad government planning interfered with the natural courses of our waterways. They predicted the calamity. It came.”
To understand the water problems faced by Pakistan, it is only necessary to look at the map:
The Sindh region is circled in red. The most southern and eastern portion is marked on other maps as “seasonally inundated”. Outside of the great Indus River Valley, the country is dry. The map shows dams and barrages as red shapes. When the monsoon rains come in the north, which includes the slopes of the Tibetan Plateau, almost all of the water runs off the dry packed land and flows down to the Sindh. Fuller information is available in a YouTube on the Indus.
Bottom Line: Poor Pakistan is and has been at the mercy of the monsoon rains, which bring prosperity and floods when they come and drought when the monsoon fails. Run-away population growth has pushed burgeoning numbers of the poor to farm and build in harm’s way. Government policies and actions have probably made this ever present ongoing risk worse. Near total lack of emergency planning and preparation exacerbate the problems there. Climate Change is being used, as everywhere, as an excuse for locally created problems. Pakistan will ramp up its begging for international aid at the next UN COP.
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Author’s Comment:
I am waiting for the world’s leaders to come to their senses and realize that their ongoing efforts to suppress fossil fuels “because climate change” are destructive and harmful.
Experts advise countries like Pakistan to build dams and attempt to control rivers in ways that have led to disaster elsewhere and then blame climate change for the disasters they have created. The world will pour more international aid into Pakistan, which will be misused in similar ways. That is the world we live in.
It is lucky for today’s world leaders that they have climate change to blame for their intentionally destructive policies. 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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Very good. Sooner or later people are going to realize they have been royally bamboozled. They are not going to be happy. I hope it happens sooner rather than later.
history says the witch doctors very rarely get the blame for disasters and death that they deserve, no matter how long the cons go on.
You’ll be waiting a long time. The normies are still asleep and still follow ‘The Science’….
Unfortunately, the British media are full of this type of false news on a daily basis. This is the reason that most Britons think severe weather events are increasing. I used to wonder if British journalists were mendacious or just stupid. Now I think that they are both.
They’re hacktivists
The Met Office always over hypes weather extremes be it heatwaves, rainfall, wind, storms and hurricanes. My view is that it doesn’t matter what the actuality is, and they canusually find a thermometer in airport or a rain guage in the Lake District, or an anemometer in the Cairngorms to back up the story. the hype for the week before the event is what people remember.
Case in point this year’s drought in Derby wasn’t as severe as claimed. No trees shed leaves prematurely, it rained on two or three days in July and there was green at the edges of fields. What people remember is pictures of nearly empty reservoirs that were built pre-war and haven’t been added to since, but water shortage is climate change silly
Bill ==> The Guardian is a founding member of the climate propaganda group, Covering Climate Now, whose very purpose is to convince the people of the world that there is a Climate Crisis by throwing out all the ethical standards of real journalism and writing outright propaganda in its place.
BBC follows, and sometimes leads, their efforts along those lines.
Yes, but are they being mendaciously stupid or stupidly mendacious?
I am waiting for the world’s leaders to come to their senses…
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World’s leaders? Ha ha ha! Not going to happen. As long as these so-called leaders live in the lap of luxury they aren’t going to do anything. It’s has to be a grass roots effort to bring down what has become a fashionable religion for the jet set.
Our daily news paper on page 2 today has a scare story about rising temperature that are going to cause heat waves and droughts.
On page 3 there is a story about the severe frosts that we experienced in New Zealand last week.
We had a polar blast from Antarctica which caused heavy frosts in both Islands and damaged a great deal of Kiwi fruit and grapes .
Very unusual to have severe frosts in October as we have thousands of hectares in kiwi fruit and wine grapes in both islands .
Electric wind mils and helicopters could not push down warmer air and the damage is very serious and the growers will not know the full extent for 2 or 3 month.
Next we will be told this polar blast was caused by globul warming .
Next we will be told this polar blast was caused by globul warming .
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Next?? That’s already happened:
LOL yes, as if the “Polar Vortex” is something new, as opposed to what brings the bitter cold WEATHER every WINTER.
No Graham, not Global Warming any longer, now it is Climate Crisis! See how much easier that new description is for just these kind of situations. You have late frosts well that is due to the Man Made Climate Crisis. You have early frosts well that is Man Made Climate Crisis too. Too much s rain Climate Crisis happening as you bale out your cellar. Lack of rain causing a hose pipe ban, well that’s Climate Change for you.
The ability for Climate Change to impact your everyday life is endless.
That may be why Global Warming was dropped as the prime description. Difficult to persuade a frost bitten stranded motorist their difficulty is due to Global warming. Easier to say Climate Crisis has driven those cold conditions in your direction.
“Globull warming” is the correct spelling as it is more descriptive of what all this reporting is truly describing. As reported by the morons in the MSM.
“Bottom Line: The unfortunate Melamchi River Valley flood of June 2022 was caused by a disastrous landslide dam failure. The damages to the Melamchi Water Supply project are enormous and will take years and lots of internationally donated money to repair. This will delay the supply of dependable clean drinking water to Kathmandu.
However, climate change was not the cause.”
My first thought when I read about Katmandu was to wonder if they had the same problems with their damn that Pakistan has, greed, incompetence and corruption.
To be sure, I don’t know but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they did.
KcTaz ==> Of course they have greed, incompetence and corruption — it is the third world and they are using International Aid monies to finance the projects. They have already spent “decades” wherein some government officials and engineers are getting rich, feeding from the trough of International Aid, while building sub-standard engineered water works, with the headwaters supply works on a known flood plain.
Here’s a senior member of the current UK govt telling the Guardian (!) that he and the govt back renewables and net zero.
I’m maligned as a ‘green energy sceptic’. I’m not. Dear Guardian reader, here’s what I think | Jacob Rees-Mogg | The Guardian
Griff, thank you for pointing out that a politician doesn’t understand how useless renewable energy is. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked.
griff labours (geddit?) under the impression that because Rees-Smugg is pro-fracking as are we, then we’ll agree with him on everything else.
griff really is so naive.
Mogg may not know that indeed, but he does know how interesting the green business model is with all those subsidies and therefore as investment vehicle. And that is what Mogg knows everything about.
But he is a politician he says what his current audience want th hear.
Can I add…
“The age of extinction
Almost 70% of animal populations wiped out since 1970, report reveals”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-70-of-animal-populations-wiped-out-since-1970-report-reveals-aoe
But not round my way
Strat ==> If you’ll pardon the expression: “Bollocks!” I may write on this….
To be rather insensitive – Show Me The Bodies.
California Forestry is going all out to burn the California Spotted Owl out of existence. They enforce buildup of brush and weakened trees so that when some spark occurs it will create a wildfire. Often crews are ordered to stand by until the fire gets a good hold.
We in neighboring Nevada get the benefit of summers that are so smoky we have to keep our windows closed at all times.
That’s government for you. Directed by an ignorant Sierra Club, with city folk who have only seen forests from their private jets determining how to “Save the Planet”.
Allergies might be getting more common, I don’t know, my middle son suffered from eczema and asthma until he was about 8 or 9. Not being familiar with either we put the asthma down to his being a “chesty baby” until he had a particularly severe attack. Upshot was that he had particularly bad attacks in May and September. Four Cup Final weekends spent in the children’s hospital with full wards three September admissions on 18th, or 19th of the month. When he wasn’t in hospital he’d be at home with a nebulizer suffering from an attack.
That is something environmental, pollen or fungus spores would be my uneducated guess. He no longer suffers from either but does chest infections more often than average in the winter.
Ben ==> You make a good point. Severe Allergies are nothing to sneeze at (yuk…bad pun). And I am sympathetic to all allergies sufferers, even myself. I only was free of them living in the Caribbean which has differing flora to which I was not sensitive.
Medical Science only thinks it understands allergies and how to treat them. Treatments are better now but cures are rare — most, like your son, happen spontaneously with age. I had a similar situation with one of my four kids.
Sounds like your child had some sort of lung damage from his childhood allergy attacks. Condolences. (Mine is still a little sickly himself).
The word ‘clove’ must derive from the Dutch ‘kloof’, meaning ‘gap’ or ‘fissure’.
Zuiderwijk
I can see why, but….
Clove comes to us from the Old English clufu “clove (of garlic)
Ed and Strat ==> Aren’t words interesting. Dutch has a lot of Germanic roots while English has a lot more Latin roots (as I understand it at least…English has had so many inputs…)
My area of New York State was once a Dutch colony with a capitial at New Amsterdam….thus a lot of local words have Dutch roots.
It is possible for words derived from two or more etymologies to have the same spelling. In case of clove, in English there are at least four:
As in “cloven hoof.”
Clyde => The hidden Devil in the details…..
If there is increased flooding in Nepal and Pakistan (and I doubt there is), the most likely cause will be increased runoff due to massive deforestation. I have been in both countries. 40-odd years I was appalled at the extent of deforestation in Nepal. Even then you could see the damage it was wreaking on the environment, with widespread erosion stripping away whole hillsides. I saw the same in Pakistan 27 years ago. The cause was the same in both countries – a massive and unsustainable population explosion.
Crisp ==> Poorer countries with growing populations suffer deforestation for cooking fuel (mostly) and for building materials. Overgrazing of livestock does the rest of the destruction. It takes a very dedicated central government to reverse centuries of deforestation. India, for example, is making headway.
There are programs in both Nepal and Pakistan to re-forest — but it will be a long hard fight uphill.
Crisp – I think you hit on an important and under-recognized issue here. And the issue going forward is that the more expensive fossil fuels are, the more deforestation there will be as people search for some sort of fuel.
After I moved from New Jersey to Connecticut in the early 1960s, I experienced hay fever, and my eyes were red and swollen.
After much uncontrollable sneezing, I was told to take a teaspoon of local honey every day.
Within one week, my symptoms were gone.
I have since moved to Vermont. I should have moved to New Hampshire to get away from the Socialism
I have taken local honey every day for almost 60 years.
It turns out it is a remedy of US natives, which does not require a visit to a drugstore.
Willem ==> There has been a lot of research in using local honey and bee-collected pollens to de-sensitize pollen allergies — works for some — doesn’t work for others.
Glad you had success!
Vermont has changed a lot since I lived there more than 50 years ago. I suspect it is all the rich New Yorkers moving there and bringing their urban politics with them.
Clyde ==> Many Vermonters consider Californians their neighbors….
“Climate change” as the cause for anything is total BS. “Science” about this nonsense has made itself into “weird science”. Not to be believed nor trusted by anyone with an ounce of common sense nor logical thinking capabilities.
This winter season will be very interesting to watch as the energy supplies, based on fossil fuel, start to disappear with usage from folks trying to keep from freezing.
I expect to see large protests, possibly riots, in some countries where the politicians are especially resistant to their citizens demands for fuel to keep their families from dying.
Just sayin’.
Thanks Kim.
Here in South Africa, news and weather sites regularly warn of ‘extreme’ conditions leading to ‘extreme’ rain and/or wind speeds and begging us all to ‘take care’. Not a report arrives without ‘extreme’ being used regularly and virtually none ever check historical records. Even lovely sunny days can be ‘extreme’ events when we’re in the middle of one of our routine droughts! My favourite story is of some crazed climate activist claiming that Cape Town’s threatening Day Zero a few years back simply reflected the ‘new normal’ and that we should expect longer, hotter summers and warmer drier winters in future. A couple of days after he finished his weeping, wailing, rending of garments and gnashing of teeth, it started to rain and kept it up for the next winter as well until every dam was over 100% full. Lots of people in both the public and private sectors are looking forward to making lots of money out of grants from foreign governments (the Germans being the most recent) but the poor get ever poorer and it’s not climate change that is impoverishing them. Meanwhile the academic intellectuals and the state bureaucrats have absolutely no idea of the reality.
The Indus river plain covers some 200,000 square miles (518,000 sq kms) from the Himalayan piedmont in the north to the Arabian Sea in the South. It has an average gradient of one foot per mile.
The upper Indus plain is drained by the Indus and five river tributaries. In the lower plain it forms a large single river and the plain narrows to form a corridor where it merges with its last major tributary the Panjnad River which itself is a confluence of five Punjab rivers. Flooding is a perennial problem.
(Abridged from Britannica ‘The Indus River Plain’)
Dave ==> And that is precisely the geological problem!
There are rational ways to deal with the unfortunate reality that the entire Nation is basically one giant flood plain. Doubt that any of them will be instituted anytime soon.
Fake climate news = propaganda. Some believe AGW hype is click or front page bait but it’s a carefully planned Marxist propaganda narrative spread by useful idiots controlled by ideologists. They’ve found the cornerstone of fear and won’t let go until either control is complete or the people realize there are no wolves at their doorsteps.
your ‘author’s comment’ is what the whole world needs to take heed of.
Robin ==> Kind of you to say so. (I didn’t know anyone read the section….)
“I am waiting for the world’s leaders to come to their sense.”
You will have a long wait !
Well, the solution should be obvious — eliminate pollen-producing plants.
Alright, I can accept that the growing season may be lengthening, even though the intensity of sunlight may be falling off at the same rate as in the past. However, is there any supporting evidence that release of pollen has extended. It is my experience that when a flower blooms, it withers quickly. Is the cherry blossom season becoming longer? Maybe the alarmists should ask the Japanese.
Clyde ==> I include a link to “The Study” that says so in the allergy season section, but it only “sorta says so”. The more basic truth is that it depends on where you live and what you are allergic to. Some places are seeing shorter pollen seasons, some longer, some are seeing more pollen, some less.
“The more basic truth is that it depends on where you live and what you are allergic to. Some places are seeing shorter pollen seasons, some longer, some are seeing more pollen, some less.”
And miraculously, every one of those effects is from climate change.
It really is everywhere.
/sarc
“Even the rain that falls will not be enough to fill our rivers and dams”
“I am waiting for the world’s leaders to come to their senses and realize that their ongoing efforts to suppress fossil fuels “because climate change” are destructive and harmful. ”
They _do_ realise.
They don’t care.
They are not our friends.
E.g. here in NZ we’ve just been told by our government that new agricultural emissions taxes will reduce sheep/beef production by 25-30%, and will (if you believe their numbers) reduce methane emissions by 13%.
They know they’re destroying us.
BTW, suicide in the farming community is a real issue in NZ. This will not help.
With any luck, that will be just one more nail in Labour/Greens coffin for this election. I hear a lot of discontent amongst people who are usually apolitical. We will see.
It may reduce NZ methane emissions by 13%, but will be unmeasurable on a global scale. COP-26 commitment to reducing anthropogenic methane was like committing to run on a treadmill to bring water to the desert.
Kip, you are right on! I’ve added a bit of detail to the ‘tell’.
“The times quotes an expert: “What a lot of people don’t realize is that the allergy seasons have almost doubled in length and gotten more intense because of climate change,”
“What a lot of people don’t realize…” means it’s not that noticeable. Something like allergy seasons doubling and being worse would be noticeable, but even the expert is thinking ‘so what’ in a world about to enter its last extinction.
1- they arent backed up with numerical data- they use ‘data’ like ‘almost’ doubled. To simply say ‘doubled’ actually sounds more tossed off and lazy. So there must be a real number in there if it has ‘almost doubled’.
2- they always add another dimension to it – yeah and it’s even ‘more intense’. They need to add weight to such a weak, bald assertion, so someone doesn’t say ‘so what’. It also serves to move on putting a bit of distance on from the main assertion.
This is also a formula in selling products. A washing machine that simply agitates clothes in soapy water as with an old fashioned machine, would sell for $150 and wash your clothes perfectly fine. But one that has half a dozen different settings that nobody uses sells for four times as much. Or a patent medicine extracted from some easily obtainable fruit to alleviate some health problem, has, generally, two other rarer ingredients that must be added in exact proportions to maximize its efficacy. It’s the only way to sell the product for an elevated price.
3- And, of course, the expert! It has to be kosher from one of those, right?
The fact climateers fell into the same approach to sell their alarm product as snake-oil shysters did I’d the biggest tell of all !
Pakistan, with a population approaching 235 million, is the world’s 5th most populous country. that’s a major factor in its inability to deal with climate disasters.
You forgot about the martians being a salutary lesson for us-
First Martian life likely broke the planet with climate change, made themselves extinct (msn.com)