Essay by Eric Worrall
My heart goes out to Om Prakash, who lost his family in a landslide disaster earlier this year. But it wasn’t climate change which killed his family.
‘Climate change killed my family’: Unusual monsoon hammers India’s Himachal
Record-breaking torrential rain leaves a trail of unprecedented devastation in northern India’s Himachal Pradesh state.
By Srishti Jaswal
Published On 25 Sep 202325 Sep 2023…
“It was raining intensely. Around 4am I heard a deafening crash. Just behind the house, the entire hill collapsed and unleashed a torrent of water and mud that destroyed everything. I survived, but my daughter, wife and my mother died in their sleep,” Prakash said.
…
“Due to global warming, the monsoon winds now carry more moisture from the sea along with dust and pollution from the plains. Himachal’s bowl-like topography captures those moisture-laden clouds. This leads to excess monsoon rainfall in less periods. The result is flooding,” Shukla explained.
…
Stopping the flow of rivers by dams in Himachal Pradesh has led to severe riverine disturbances, said Manshi Asher, co-founder of the environmental group Himdhara.
“When the water increases beyond the holding capacity of the dam, they open the floodgates without warning. The impact is visible in the form of landslides and floods,” she said.
The lack of comprehensive data on the environment in the region has also made the situation more dangerous.
…
Read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/25/climate-change-killed-my-family-unusual-monsoon-hammers-indias-himachal
I wonder what the original draft of that Al Jazeera story looked like?
In my opinion, someone involved in the chain of publication of that Al Jazeera story appears to have tried to tell the real story – uncontrolled building of dams, poor management of said dams, including abrupt releases of water without warning, and a lack of environmental data, have dramatically worsened the risk of landslides and floods.
But Al Jazeera decided to lead with climate change claims, which given the “lack of comprehensive data”, do not seem to be backed by solid evidence.
Even if CO2 is increasing rainfall, would reducing emissions fix the “landslides and floods” caused by poor water management? Or would focussing on water management issues be more likely to lead to an improved near term outcome?
If Al Jazeera had led with the dam management issue, I would have praised their handling of the story, even if it contained alarmist climate content. But instead of telling the story, in my opinion Al Jazeera have done a grave disservice to Om Prakash and others in his situation, by using Prakash’s tragedy as a prop to push their political climate agenda. You have to read the full article to read about the real root cause of local landslide and flood tragedies.
It is like the flooding in Libya, mismanaged dams.
Always a good idea to open gates without warning or not. What is it with governments?
The commie Chinese are masters at mismanaging dams & killing people.
Deaths and death rates for floods, responsible for over 30% of cumulative extreme weather deaths, have declined by over 98% since the 1930s.
Decadal average: Death rates from natural disasters, WorldThis clearly shows that deaths from natural disasters has dropped from 26 per 100,000 people in the 1920s to 0.16 per 100,000 people in 2020.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/decadal-average-death-rates-from-natural-disasters
The gods are angry with us, isn’t it obvious? No matter what….
“”Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief””
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/26/staggering-green-growth-gives-hope-for-15c-says-global-energy-head
Staggering as in falling over…
still giving a pass to China and India
They don’t mess around
The IEA was captured by net zero zealotry years ago. You cannot believe any of its forecasts.
I’ve said this before but I reckon Fatih Birol is angling to become the first Turkish Secretary General of the UN.
It’s unwise to sleep in a spot with a high potential for disaster. That’s why smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are compulsory and doors have locks. Sure, the design, construction and management of dams might be faulty or haphazard but one is still responsible for the safety of their loved ones and themselves. While living on high ground can be a daily, year around inconvenience, death and dismemberment is even more inconvenient.
Can you foresee a time when we have smart carbon monoxide detectors that don’t make an audible alarm, but they send a digital signal to the government so it’s known why the poor schmucks passed?
I thought that was the job of reporters. s/
Whilst agreeing with much of your comment, not everyone chooses where they live.
Climate change also killed my sister. It was leukemia, but it’s settled science that blood cell cancers have been made more frequent and severe by our CO2 sins. Based on my rapid climate attribution study that hasn’t been peer-reviewed but based on established scientific methods, the cancer was made 40 times more likely by your SUV.
My mother’s alzheimer’s was caused by climate change (and Trump)….
The torrential rain originated from immense areas of paddy field in the neighbouring state – centred on Amritsar.
In the image attached, Amritsar is on the left, Himachal Pradesh on the right.
That weird grey/green colour on the ground in Amritsar is the rice paddies.
At that time of year, that water would have been extremely hot and evaporating rapidly.
At a guess, the job of the water would have been done by then and the paddies should have been dry.
(And the job of the collapsed dam(s) was to provide that water earlier in the season)
Hence: weather.
So you have a perfect storm – the advancing monsoon had an immense amount of fuel thrown at it as it came over Amritsar and then, as it climbed the hills/mountains of Himachal – dumped its load
It was all man-made – by the rice farmers.
OK, with a bit of bad-luck from the weather but farmers should be used to that.
But but but again: as you see in the image – it’s a story of mono-culture.
If they’d left a few more large stands of trees/forest among the paddies, those trees would have gently drained the build-up of atmospheric moisture – the moisture that caused the torrential rain when it was forced to go up the mountainsides.
Farmer, noun – an ecoterrorist (h/t G Monbiot)
Help! My dog ate my Climate Change.
Not only has there been record breaking rain in the India’s Himachal Pradesh state. The Western Cape and Cape Town have just seen the end of the rain season with a huge downpour. This is the sixth good winter despite the alarmist predictions of perpetual drought at the beginning of 2018. The largest dam containing over half the total water stored is currently at 115.6%. Strange but alarmists have not reviewed their claims. Perhaps it is because there is a drought of honesty among them.
“The science” is settled that all the flooding is caused by liberal tears over the imminent catastrophic global climate disaster (ok, I made it up, but it’s valid because I identify as a climate expert).
Climate Change: Simultaneously the universal excuse for government failure, and the excuse for more government.
What I don’t get is why all these climate refugees keep fleeing to the epicentres of climate change with all that localised CO2-
A nation without border control is like a house without a door: Tim Blair (msn.com)
“Just behind the house, the entire hill collapsed…”
Hills don’t collapse even in rain forests- if not disturbed. I bet that hill was disturbed- probably by sheep and other grazing, along with, maybe, removing wood and other brush for burning? Most likely before anyone lived in that area – that hill had sturdy trees on it holding the soil in place. It’s a common problem worldwide. Much of the Mediterranean landscape is eroded due to disturbance from logging and grazing.
” Much of the Mediterranean landscape is eroded due to disturbance from logging and grazing.” Reports, maps, and books have been published.
The austere (as in bare) landscape makes for touristy type photos.
“Why did this happen to me?” People want answers and they will blame anyone or anything that’s convenient. I feel for the survivors, but the flooding was a man-made disaster.
The St. Francis dam collapse in Calif. in 1928 had basically the same proximate cause. Except back then, we didn’t have climate change to blame.
We had Mulholand to blame….
It rains a lot there. Who knew?
india-annual-rainfall-map.png (850×960) (wordpress.com)
1889 Johnstown Flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood
If government organizations were to always take into account the known, past history of extreme weather events in a particular region, before approving the construction of dwellings and projects that would be affected by a repetition of such extreme events, and also ensure that any mitigation projects, such as dams and drainage, were sufficient to contain the worst known floods of the past, then there would be far less damage and loss of life.
Blaming such extreme weather events on global warming is equivalent to letting the government administrators, and/or project managers, ‘off the hook’.
I personally experienced an extreme flooding event in Brisbane, Australia, in 2011. As a result of a previous, devastating flood in 1974, the local government built a flood-mitigating dam to ensure such a disaster would not occur again.
Unfortunately, the dam was not sufficient to prevent the flooding that took place 27 years later. The flood mitigation dam was also mismanaged by the operators who didn’t release enough water in preparation for the predicted heavy rain.
A class action lawsuit followed. Here are the details for anyone interested.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-02/2011-brisbane-flood-class-action-payout-maurice-blackburn/101118556
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-05/brisbane-2011-floods-engineers-dam-management-wivenhoe/102038192
Blaming such extreme weather events on global warming is equivalent to letting the government administrators, and/or project managers, ‘off the hook’.
IMO that’s why they do it. That way the politicians don’t have to actually DO anything and keep campainging on “we need to do more to fix this”
Lots of major floods can be blamed on poor planning and/or management of water-management devices, including dams and hydroelectric plants.
I don’t know much about India, but the disaster from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 was a prime example. Decades earlier, there were plans by the Army Corps of Engineers to build levees that could (at least theoretically) withstand a Category 4 storm, but somewhere along the line, that was downgraded to a Category 2. Katrina was Category 3 at landfall.
There were also huge pumps at the base of the levee to remove water from the low-lying areas (below sea level) over the levees, but nobody thought of locating a switch to turn on the pumps at the top of the levee. When the pumps were needed the most, they could not be turned on remotely.
Similar errors were made at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, which was built on a low beach between two hills along the coast. These two hills funneled the water from the tsunami straight over the nuclear plant, and once again there was no remote control switch for the water evacuation pumps on top of the hill.
Poor water management planning knows no boundaries. Wherever human beings build things, they can make huge mistakes, which have nothing to do with CO2 emissions.
Time to dance to discourage the gods of rain and thunder.
An advance for humanity.