Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 5 December 2023
Joshimath is a Holy City high in the Indian Himalayas. It is one of the stops on the route of a Holy Pilgrimage. Many homes and buildings in Joshimath have developed cracks and have become uninhabitable during the past year. The Indian press has been running ongoing stories since last January pointing fingers in all directions and, regardless of the cause, Joshimath is sinking.
The local people point the blame away from themselves and to Federal government projects that are taking place nearby: the building a by-pass road that would shorten the pilgrimage route by 15 kilometers by building a wider, safer road and the blasting being done for a tunnel for a massive hydroelectric project. The media in India and elsewhere have been running story after story on the situation.
However, in the run-up to (and the ongoing) COP28, news outlets aligned with the Climate Crisis propaganda effort (the Guardian, India’s News18, the Hindustan Times, The Times of India (news group) and many more) reach out to an IPCC associated professor:
“”Anjal Prakash, research director and adjunct associate professor at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business and a lead IPCC report author, said in a statement: “There are two aspects to the Joshimath problem. First is rampant infrastructure development which is happening in a very fragile ecosystem like Himalayas… Secondly, the way climate change is manifesting in some of the hill states of India is unprecedented. For example, 2021 and 2022 have been years of disaster for Uttarakhand. There have been numerous climate risk events like high rainfall events triggering landslides. We have to first understand that these areas are very fragile and small changes or disturbances in the ecosystem will lead to grave disasters, which is what we are witnessing in Joshimath.””
Note that Prakash points to long-term problems and risks from other nearby areas, then claims that small changes will lead to future disasters, and concludes that the sum total is the present situation in Joshimath must have been caused by climate change. Typical IPCC nonsense.
The truth is that Joshimath has been sinking for a long time. A report was commissioned in 1976 because of ongoing subsidence and landslides in the area. The findings indicated that the town of Joshimath was built on unstable soils deposited by a long-ago landslide – the soil beneath the city is a mix of sand and boulders, “boulders, gneissic rocks, and loose soil with a limited bearing capacity are covered by old landslide debris on the area’s dispersed rocks.” [ attributed to 1976 Mishra Committee — source ]. Further, the entire area surrounding Joshimath is classified as a high-risk earthquake zone – “Zone V of [India’s] Seismic Zonation Map” – being situated on a confluence of three major fault lines.
NEWS FLASH:
Joshimath, Neighbouring Areas, Sink 2.5 Inches Every Year: New Report
Satellite images collected from July 2020 to March 2022 show the entire area is slowly sinking. The red dots mark the sinking parts. They are spread across the valley and not limited to the Joshimath town, data shows.
Joshimath and its surrounding areas have been sinking at the rate of 6.5 cm or 2.5 inch per year, a two-year study by the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing has found. …. The unfolding disaster is not limited to Joshimath. In Karnaprayag, a town seen as the gateway to Joshimath, residents of one locality — Bahuguna Nagar — have flagged massive cracks that have appeared in at least 50 homes over the last few months.
The truth is that the people of Joshimath have been on a building spree over the last two decades, building homes and hotels for the tourist trade without any real planning, without testing soil load bearing capacities, without sewage system, without proper building regulations, without including plans for drainage system to carry off the storm waters of the monsoons. All of this in direct contradiction of the recommendations of the 1976 Mishra Committee. As a result, poorly built homes and tourist hotels, built on unsuitable lots, are settling and cracking, many dangerously so. Storm water flows freely through the loose soils, creating voids and new underground streams that emerge in seeming odd places.
From space, Joshimath looks like this:
And the subsidence:
The red dots are areas of the most subsidence, right at the bottom of the slope on which Joshimath is built.
Bottom Line:
Geography, physics, and people’s foolish propensity of building in harm’s way has created a situation that is currently untenable in much of Joshimath.
One thing is certain, climate change has had nothing whatever to do with Joshimath’s plight.
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Author’s Comment:
This type of “crisis creation” was fully expected in the months prior to COP28. Unfortunately for the climate crazies, no real climate or weather disaster has occurred recently enough to feed their propaganda frenzy.
The Climate Realist approach of Al Jaber, who is leading the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, has caused quite an uproar. What he actually said is:
“…there is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5.” He said he had expected to come to the She Changes Climate meeting to have a “sober and mature conversation” and was not “signing up to any discussion that is alarmist.” ….He continued that the 1.5-degree goal was his “north star,” and a phase-down and phase-out of fossil fuel was “inevitable” but “we need to be real, serious and pragmatic about it.”
Quite refreshing.
Thanks for reading.
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Duuh! It is built on a landslide, so why has it become stable because someone built on it? Rather than being below the land slip, it is on it.
Agree completely. Build in unsuitable places, win stupid prizes. Recall the liquefaction of the “ground” in parts of San Francisco during the World Series Earthquake (1989), and the complete devastation of the buildings on such ground.
The Marina District in San Francisco was a dump site for debris from the 1906 earthquake. Unconsolidated fill, as well as being apartment buildings that had inadequate sheer strength.
Kinda what I said…
Shear
Geoff S
Tom ==> The landslide rubble sits atop the longer-term steep-steep slope. The town is then built on top of that rubble layer — sand, small stones, big boulders, very permeable to water (which always flows downhill).
Of course it won’t become stable — but the original landslide was historical, way back. Looked nice and solid but….it was already so dangerous in 1976 that the government convened an investigation which made recommendations to meant to avoid a future disaster. As usual, everyone ignored the report. Result: disaster.
In the East Hills of San Jose, California, there is a subdivision on a hillside with a peculiar access road, that loops over and down the hill to enter the development from the uphill side.
Supposedly, a bribe was made to ignore an engineering report on the original access road, which promptly slid down the hill shortly after it was built. But after the houses were sold. I have no idea of who had to pay for the bypass.
The Himalaya region is among the most seismically active areas of the Earth’s crust – the fact that the Himalaya Mountains exist at all is evidence of that – they were created relatively recently (within the last 50 million years) by the collision of two massive tectonic plates (Eurasia Plate and Indian Plate). It is not only that earthquakes are a very large risk throughout the entire area, but the relative newness of the extremely high and steeply sloped mountains puts any kind of infrastructure development there at significant risk of failure and destruction.
Tom.. UNstable perhaps?
This is a perfect illustration of my view that most every “climate catastrophe” is the result of corrupt real estate developers bribing or ignoring all law, regulation and common sense, in the name of “free market” profits.
As long as there remains unsuitable (i.e. unsellable) ground, some developer will buy it up cheap and “develop” it for sale to the upwardly mobile, who are only interested in the status bestowed by home ownership “in the right address”.
…and it almost always boils down to some idjit too stupid to visualise the water flow, and how that will disperse, or, more frequently, gather in a torrential deluge testing the quality of your construction methods. The water usually wins…
..and now we have to send money for the poor victims. Or at least send some to the Clintons, they are aching to go rescue some children from disaster…
How in the hell can someone write “…fragile ecosystem like the Himalayas.”, with a straight face, not any sense of guilt, anticipating support from only deranged loonies, and then actually print it? I need a drink. Good report, Kip, I especially like the image showing the town on a steep hillside, what could possibly go wrong?
Ron ==> “…fragile ecosystem like the Himalayas.” — Thanks, you are right, of course. The Himalayas have endured for so long that they can hardly be called “fragile” . What is fragile there is the very surface of things — the thin soils atop ancient rock, the now-denuded hillsides with all the trees and even brush cleared over the centuries for firewood.
And, like many many areas of the world, where slopes are steep and rivers run in the valleys, landslides are what create and modify the landscape. Gravity demands that things move downhill — thus Joshimath.
And they’re still rising!
If by “fragile” one means “unstable” and prone to sudden catastrophic changes, mainly due to seismic activity within a region of extremely steep terrain, then yes, the Himalaya ecosystem is indeed fragile.
I haven’t read anything about our non-existent hurricane season.
Gregory ==> There has been some effort in the NY Times to paint the season as exceptional for “increased number of hurricanes with “rapid intensification””
“2023 Hurricane Season Ends, Marked by Storms That ‘Really Rapidly Intensified’”
Rapid intensification is just jargon for the weather modellers didnt get it right. The Hurricane was just doing what it does for the conditions and have always been highly unpredictable compared to what computer model runs generate
It’s not that weather forecasters don’t get things right. It is that tropical cyclones are subject to numerous chaotic variables that affect how energetic the storms become, how quickly intensification occurs, how large the areal extent and size of the eyewall, and the pathway of the eye. The hurricane models do a pretty good job overall, but they are not perfect and never can be. Natural variability rules.
The 2023 season in the North Atlantic, which gets most of the media attention, was in fact significantly above the 40 year average in numbers of named storms (20 vs. 14) and accumulated cyclonic energy (145.6 vs. 122.2) per Colorado State University which has been tracking cyclonic weather for decades. However, most of those North Atlantic storms did not make landfall at all, many just dissipating in the middle of the ocean.
So how strong a hurricane season is is largely determined by perceptions, not reality. If it affects the US it’s bad, if it affects some other nation who cares? And if it doesn’t even make landfall anywhere it never happened – is the mindset of the public and especially the medial
Well there was that storm that went from ‘tropical storm’ to Cat5 in a few hour in western Mexico recently. I’d say that was “rapid intensification””.
Back in May, the BBC eventually admitted it had mis-categorised its two January 2023 stories on Joshimath that both explained the causes of its sinking, which were NOT due to climate change.
Use Wayback Machine to spot that it changed its categorisation from “Climate change” to “India”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-64201536
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-64258918
Joe ==> Great find! Thank you. I had read those two pieces and didn’t catch the change in categorization.
I hope you donate to the Wayback Machine occasionally – I do every time I use it, just few bucks.
I quote the start of a BBC page “Joshimath: Panic in India’s Uttarakhand town over large cracks in homes
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stewgreen ==> Editorial Narrative at the BBC is “if it is bad, it is caused by Climate Change”. repeated endlessly without reference to facts.
Sorry but I can’t help but laugh at the photo of the town (with the green roof ‘thing’)
Please help me out, is that photo before or after the landslide wrecked the place?
Peta ==> Well, the town isn’t totally wrecked, but a lot of houses are going to be demolished as unsafe for habitation.
You may have a point, the photo shows that the town is “a disaster in waiting”.
Seems this is “slumping” or “flows” on a previous ancient landside, the date of that might be interesting. I’ve not found that date, but the word “ancient” is used.
It might be ancient in human terms and yesterday in geologic terms. Those mountains are still going up fast and eroding fast as India continues smashing into Asia- and uplifting the Tibetan Plateau.
Nice job Kip.
Bob ==> Thanks, always good to get a pat on the back (that isn’t my own…. 😉
Yes, but the BBC still maintains that we live in a fevered world, Who? Which individual has done more for the environment? Is it Lurch Kerry?….or the Muskmobile inventor?
“… news outlets aligned with the Climate Crisis propaganda effort (… the Hindustan Times …”
Hindustan Times is also one of the big Russky cheerleaders on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Any video of a T-72 tank blowing up, it’s always labelled as a Ukrainian T-72.
Mike McMillan ==> They are also a partner in the Covering Climate Now propaganda cartel.
yuh, I believe they have a YouTube channel- it’s terrible- almost as stupid as climate alarmists 🙂
And , this does not help ?
https://earthquakestoday.info
Bob ==> Yes, Joshimath is in a active earthquake area.
The September Indian TV report begins and ends with Climate Change
“It’s clear Climate Change is a significant role in Joshimath’s situation”
https://twitter.com/WIONews/status/1706745458456994295
Despite claims BBC removed the Climate Change bit A video story still has this
“because of over-construction, population pressure and *extreme weather events, which are now occurring frequently.* “
That’s a dogwhistle to Climate Change
and indeed the BBC page has “Climate Change” ten times hidden away in the HTML
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-india-64172954
The BBC simultaneously embeds its false claims in numerous media articles, it’s like playing Whack-a-Mole. It seems you’ve caught its earliest example! Well done.
Some hot real estate in scenic Iceland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTBBlnEB3yc&ab_channel=FOXWeather
Why do people live with such perils? fear of worse?
RE: President Jaber’s “…there is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5.”
One might wish to hear the audible gasps and see a few heads exploding.
Bill ==> I don’t know why people do, Iceland is a different thing — they live where they live, and there is no deciding to live in a ‘safer’ place.
The governments that deal with Joshimath knew and warned and but no one enforced….it is the same tale we see in many not quite developed countries.
The local people that deal with illegal border crossings “knew and warned” but no one enforced.
I lived in California nearly fifty years, and was in only one damaging earthquake (Loma Prieta, 1989). Politicians were a much more omnipresent risk.
The Gummint orta do sumpink!
‘My village is sliding into the sea – and my house could be gone by Christmas’ | Watch (msn.com)
At Bengello Beach, longest-running coastal study in Southern Hemisphere finds ‘nature is the best healer’ – ABC News
Depending on local circumstances, this effect can happen if there is a sudden increase ion groundwater, such as from a leaky new water pipe or drain. Shock-induced liquafaction can happen. No idea if this is the case here.
Report from another place is at link, there are many more.
Geoff S
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/03/asia/liquefaction-earthquake-indonesia-intl/index.html
Geoff ==> Joshimath has [almost] no central sewage system — all those homes have running water, toilets, showers, baths, washing machines and just put their waste water into cesspits…..no storm drains, porous soil, underground streams popping up here and there undermining homes, etc.
So, yep, you are right.
With a landslide, the material that slides down ends up somewhere close to the “angle of repose”, which is a function of how cohesive the material is (as in clays), the range in size of the rocks and granular materials, and the moisture content of the material. Being at the angle of repose is an extremely unstable condition, meaning it is always susceptible to landslides should any disturbance (earthquake, heavy rainfall, use of explosives, etc.)
.
If the town was built on a landslide as reported, then by definition it was unstable and inappropriate for development. The only safe approach is either to build elsewhere, or else excavate a massive amount of slide material to lower the angle of the ground surface. In such a steep mountain valley, the latter is impractical.
Duane ==> Quite right. I believe that is what the 1976 commission reported and recommended as well. Not followed, of course, resulting in today’s problems.
The problem is that there was no development as we in the west understand that term. Joshimath just grew, higgeltypiggelty, and at some point the town began to affect the underlying strata resulting in the current problem.
In today’s Boston Globe which I like to call the Bah-stin Glob:
Climate summit leader tries to calm uproar over a remark on fossil fuels
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/12/04/world/climate-summit-leader-tries-calm-uproar-over-remark-fossil-fuels/
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Simmering tensions around the decision to hold a global climate summit in a petrostate burst into the open Monday when Sultan al-Jaber, the Emirati oil executive who is leading the conference, launched into an angry public defense of his position on ending fossil fuel use.
Al-Jaber, who runs the state-owned oil company, ADNOC, was under fire for a video that surfaced in which he said there is “no science” behind the idea that fossil fuels must be phased out in order to keep average global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.
That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say humans would struggle to adapt to increasingly severe storms, drought, heat, and rising sea levels caused by global warming.
Climate experts convened by the United Nations have said that nations must cut the emissions from fossil fuels 43 percent by the end of this decade, compared with 2019 levels, if the world has any hope of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Many diplomats and scientists say that would be impossible without phasing out fossil fuels and want governments to emerge from the climate talks being held in Dubai with a pledge to end the use of coal, oil, and gas.
“The 1.5-degree limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said Friday. “Not reduce. Not abate. Phase out. With a clear time frame aligned with 1.5 degrees.”
But al-Jaber, who is supposed to be guiding nearly 200 nations toward an ambitious plan to tackle global warming, framed things differently in his comments two weeks ago.
“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5,” al-Jaber said during a panel discussion called SHE Changes Climate that featured Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland who is now a prominent climate advocate.
Robinson asked al-Jaber if he would lead a global effort to taper down and then end the burning of fossil fuels. He chastised her for asking the question, saying he had expected a “sober and mature conversation” not an “alarmist” one.
The panel discussion took place two weeks ago, but only came to light Sunday when al-Jaber’s comments were reported by the Guardian.
“Please, help me, show me a road map for a phaseout of fossil fuels that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves,” he told the panel.
His remarks set off a firestorm at the climate talks known as COP28.
Former vice president Al Gore, who has called for fossil fuels to be replaced with wind, solar, and other renewable energy, assailed al-Jaber.
“From the moment this absurd masquerade began, it was only a matter of time before his preposterous disguise no longer concealed the reality of the most brazen conflict of interest in the history of climate negotiations,” Gore said in an email. “Obviously, the world needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible.”
He said al-Jaber “has been preparing one of the most aggressive expansions of fossil fuel production, timed to begin as soon as he bangs the final gavel to conclude COP28.”
But on Monday, a defiant al-Jaber suggested he did not say what he can be heard saying on the video. And he indicated that anyone who claimed otherwise was trying to undermine his leadership of COP28.
In front of a packed and hastily arranged news conference, al-Jaber appeared to take the criticism personally and described his background as an economist and an engineer. “I respect the science in everything I do,” he said.
“I have said over and over that the phase-down and the phaseout of fossil fuels is inevitable,” al-Jaber said.
He insisted that he has called many times for a phaseout of fossil fuels and said that his efforts to champion climate change had been ignored by the media.
Al-Jaber appeared aggrieved, saying “one statement, taken out of context with misrepresentation and misinterpretation that gets maximum coverage.”
The planet has already warmed about 1.2 degrees since the industrial revolution, driven by the burning of coal, oil, and gas.
Jim Skea, the chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Monday while sitting next to al-Jaber that fossil fuels would need to be “greatly reduced” by 2050 in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Coal plants without technology to capture and store emissions would need to be phased out completely, he said.
The fossil fuel industry has responded to suggestions of a phaseout by saying that technology could capture and store carbon emissions, which would allow it to continue to operate. But scientists widely agree that the technologies that the oil industry is depending upon, like carbon capture and storage, cannot be deployed at the scale or pace required to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
“From the moment this absurd masquerade began, it was only a matter of time before his preposterous disguise no longer concealed the reality of the most brazen conflict of interest in the history of climate negotiations,” said Gore , describing himself ….
😉
Excellent!… Thanks… Let’s spread that quote far and wide.
“Warmed by 1.2 degrees since the Little Ice Age” it should have said. It is still cold enough that 4.6 million people die from cold-related causes every year compared to 500,000 from heat-related causes.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
When I read the headline it immediately rang a bell, I remember this city being discussed in a documentary in the early ’90s about humans building in earthquake zones and how building has to change so structures could withstand earthquake damage. So, not climate, location is the problem.
2hotel9 ==> Yes, and you are right, that is the issue. Joshimath’s problems are being repurposed for the Climate Crazies propaganda and for anti-government politics in India itself.
Can’t remember name of documentary, it mainly focused on efforts in San Fran after ’89 earthquake and went on to cover multiple sites around world where cities built in active earthquake zones keep being rebuilt and making the point it is a bit foolish to keep doing so.