FR version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.
Advertisement
Advertisement
⚡ Community Insights
Discussion Sentiment
61% Positive
Analyzed from 3146 words in the discussion.
Trending Topics
#https#flood#nepal#org#wiki#glacial#wikipedia#right#those#more
Discussion (127 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
>During the last deglaciation that followed the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, geologists estimate that a cycle of flooding and reformation of the lake lasted an average of 55 years and that the floods occurred dozens of times over the 2,000 years between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago. U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist Jim O'Connor and Spain's Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales scientist Gerardo Benito have found evidence of at least twenty-five massive floods, the largest discharging about 10 cubic kilometers per hour (2.7 million m³/s, 13 times that of the Amazon River).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channeled_Scablands
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods
Also it's interesting if you start reading about Native American flood stories, these were not just tales or legends but telling actual historic events that the ancestors experienced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods#Early_flood_st...
We had floods in Sikkim, which is practically a "stone throw" away from a world-level map point of view. I was there then. There was past research but everyone was so surprised. Activists talking about that event 10 years prior. Published reports.
Yet, we do nothing to move people away. To pause and think what the hell is going wrong. Just keep hustling and pretend shit is not going to go wrong. I am tired of our* culture.
our: all of us, I am not only talking about India, Nepal or China here.
Someone said that it's because we humans are very good at reacting at immediate danger and very bad at reacting at risks building up slowly.
I don't know if it is true, but by today still voting for parties denying climate change all the way and that have done nothing in past years to prevent this type of risks is crazy.
I have a tiny lithium battery on a desk in my lab that started swelling about a week ago. I've been meaning to go to the recycle place every day since then to drop it off, but nothing exploded yet, so here I sit with a slightly swollen battery some meters away from me.
I'd say you're just about right :)
We failed.
As a friend says, "Our collective cognitive dissonance is something I would not want to climb with a bike."
Aleksey Yurchak coined a term Hupernormalisation and it works here too.
We know the reality, yet leaders keep telling us via TV, social media... that everything is fine.
We know that they know that we know.
Fake world? Matrix? Escape from the freedom?
https://deming.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/inconvienent-t...
On the other hand, there's also a market for generating outrage and panic, sometimes justified, sometimes not.
So not the best metric for what majority of people want.
Also the wants are manufactured in many parts.
https://youtu.be/Gr7T07WfIhM
From wiki:
It argues that following the global economic crises of the 1970s, governments, financiers and technological utopians gave up on trying to shape the complex "real world" and instead established a simpler "fake world" for the benefit of multi-national corporations that is kept stable by neoliberal governments
So I don't think it'a new thing, but maybe it's getting worse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave
The century of the self must be recommended also.
How else will they make easy money from illegal and unsafe constructions.
There is always the "it was the will of god" excuse.
This will continue till we wisen up and elect the right people, select the right people.
This is part of the problem:
The problem is not necessarily democracy, but rather the insight the lack of bandwidth in voting ballots. A few bits every 4 years or whatever? Contrast this with the rate of modification in the law of a jurisdiction. Define the "democratic grade" as the ratio of binding democratic input in bits/per year to the changes in the binding law in bits/per year.
The problems aren't the concepts of democracy, but that humanity was sold a muzzle with a nameplate stating "democracy".
One may argue that it was necessary in the era where most democracies were initiated, until large enough fractions of the population become educated, but justified or not, its hard to defend today.
Every time you spread the message that we just need to "vote right" you too are in a novel way a part of the problem.
The entire Himalayan foothills area (which includes what, at least 6 different major countries off the top of my head) are potentially impacted by something like this.
Most of these areas are barely surviving, and extremely poor, and often very disconnected from the rest of the country due to the terrain.
Realistically, what do you think they could have done to prevent this, given the likely 1/1000 or lower chance it would happen to them specifically?
Use science based zoning and not build or populate known hazardous areas.
There are only a handful of areas on the planet without known disaster exposure risk. Maybe zero, really.
When the political class are questioned they utter inanities like people should be grateful that God Ganga maia waters have come to bless their lands and homes.
It is a racket. This will continue till we start electing people who respect the scientific methods and their conclusions.
Yes and that is broadly the safe option. One can build on geological stable high grounds. They are rather and more difficult to build on. We know what happens when we don't.
> Sure, politicians and contractors could do better
It's not mistake of the "oops a typo" variety.
They are knowingly making a freakton of money by endangering the people who ought to know better. I agree sometimes the poor might not have viable alternatives that they can fund with their own bank balance but it seems this is where the governments should step in to fund alternatives. But why do that when there is easy money to be made.
Why do they have to be “moved”? They are perfectly capable of moving themselves as I can attest to seeing them flooding into my country by the thousands. “The people” make their own choices.
For context that's not where the flood happened, there's a massive mountain range in between those vallies reaching over 8000m (Shishapangma).
In earth science there are thousands of worst case scenario models published, but it's hard to actually predict reality.
Looks like a warning siren could have saved some lives. But apparently this was a black swan.
What is your definition of black swan? This paper is from 2022 and scientists have been warning about climate change for decades. It's not like this possibility wasn't anticipated. It seems likely we'll see more glacial events as the atmosphere warms.
It usually takes entire icebergs calving off to produce such seismic events and intense monsoons to create such flooding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood
Rescue operations in Nepal are in good hands, but this is sadly because those same response orgs had to respond to a similarly brutal cloud burst floods back in 2013 [0], 2021 [1] and 2025 [2].
It also shows the very real and brutal effect climate change is already having, and will only get worse.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_North_India_floods
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Uttarakhand_flood
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Kishtwar_district_flash_f...
You could probably count 100+ people in the death zone of the border crossing video alone. The final death toll will be terrible, with most never found.
Not long after that, Ethiopia was in the news for... anyone?
Lots and lots of ignoring scientists. Nothing new here.
Cassandra
"As placed in the press by the same think tanks upselling tobacco" - yes.
Paid for and spun as media confusion by powerful oil and resource extractors, such as but not limited to the Koch brothers, yes.
As a reaction to the late 1960 papers on CO2 impacts being taken seriously by world forums - yes.
But an actual significant number of atmospheric scientists and global modellers "panicking" about glacial expansion of the ice age we're currently in (you know, an ice being any era during which ice covers the poles) ... uhhh, no.
Mainly as that didn't happen.
I remember them referencing global cooling on science Friday on NPR as late as 2005
https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1hajzg9/here_is_th...
The cooling was from nuclear war.
But do you have a statistics on how often these predictions are wrong?
Since you don't have them, I have to suppose you just like being on a high horse...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Huascar%C3%A1n_debris_ava...
https://www.weather.gov/ajk/suicidebasin
>Much of the landform has been shaped by the actions of glaciers and the shrinkage of the bay over long periods of time
This would support your notion. Albeit ridiculous.
>Finally starting in the Late Ordovician and continuing into the Silurian did the gradual regional subsidence of this part of the Canadian Shield form the Hudson Bay Basin
This would not.
I cannot decide whether to laugh, or downvote your comment without more context. That I did some research and learning to decide to comment instead leaves me happy and satisfied that your comment was not completely worthless.
ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Bay
Rather, the entire front face of a glacier at high elevation sheared off, likely millions of tonnes of material at least, crashed down a steep runnel, slammed into the opposing slope on the other side of the valley at the bottom, made that partially collapse, dammed the river for several minutes, and then all descended at high speed as the dam failed, with the results we see.
Some reportage is still saying there was an earthquake - there wasn’t - the landslide itself was the source of the seismic waves.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000tbwb...
USGS is a fact finding organization. They do not regulate. They have been around since 1879. The land surveys they have done made huge impact on society. The reliability of surveys that they have facilitated has made an impact on industrial civilization that few will understand or ever hear about.
https://www.dogmanray.com/true-stories/orion/
https://greatergood.com/blogs/news/heroic-dog-rocky-saves-63...
It would have been more apt if his name was Sirius.
Sadly it's not uncommon to see teenage and young men groups to seek out puppies and pregnant strays to stone to death in Himachal and Uttarakhand (two states in Himalayan India). Properly vaccinated they can be protectors.
exceptionaly brutal cctv footage from the tibet/nepal border, so many people that there is a tiny chance that perhaps one of them was tossed clear, but of the rest there will be no remains. other videos shows that the flood "water" is so thick with mud that it is sheering off in sheets and one more shows it ripping out a concrete bridge that then floats away on top. *disturbing video
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rIVNeDuCF_k
fixed, but some things are better off wrong perhaps
As I've heard tell, this was a glacial collapse into and blocking a river, which then built up a head of pressure behind it, bursting to release a hammer blow of river water and debris that travelled a great distance.
Similar things can happen due to landslides into rivers; it depends on the topology of the land, here long narrow valleys carved out by heavy water flows.
The warning being, don't live in a natural "drainpipe".
In mountainous regions that's often not much of an option, there's a lot of vertical sides and valley bottoms.