The Disaster In Nepal Is Obviously Your Fault

I understand the peasant level cultists yammering on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, etc, but, damn, the Credentialed Media jumped on the doom bandwagon pretty damned quick. Cult business is so important that the NY Times didn’t even paywall it, and didn’t wait till the bodies were even found

Climate Change Raises Risk of Disasters Like Nepal Floods
Glaciers and permafrost in the Himalayas are melting faster as temperatures rise, though scientists are still studying the exact causes of this week’s landslide.

Climate change is heating up the Himalayas and supercharging the risk of disasters like the deadly flash flooding in Nepal and Tibet, though scientists are still determining the exact cause of this week’s catastrophe.

A group of glaciologists and geologists said on Thursday that the flooding was probably unleashed after an enormous chunk of bedrock collapsed underneath a glacier, triggering a landslide high in the mountains. At the same time, a chunk of ice snapped off the glacier itself and cascaded thousands of feet to the valley below, the scientists said.

As humans warm the planet by burning fossil fuels, the Himalayas are losing their permafrost, a mixture of soil, rocks and organic matter that has remained frozen for thousands of years. The thawing permafrost is destabilizing the foundation underneath glaciers, raising the risks of precisely these kinds of landslides and glacial collapses.

Sigh. Cult. Neither of the “reporters” are even anywhere near Nepal. One is in D.C., the other is in London. Really, none of the geologists in that Thursday link are in Nepal

“Permafrost has been the cryospheric glue that’s held the rock and the ice and the glaciers together for millennia, and now we’re getting increasing evidence that it’s being weakened by warming trends,” said Alton C. Byers, a senior research associate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Boulder. Is anyone actually there doing research? Of course, a lot of the media are following this cult talking point

• Climate crisis could be destabilising mountain areas like Nepal, experts warn
• Deadly Nepal flood reveals how climate change is unraveling in the Himalayas
• What Role Did Climate Change Play in the Deadly Nepal Flood
• The Guardian view on the Nepal-Tibet floods: prepare for more climate-linked disasters
• What caused the Nepal disaster—and why climate change could make these events more likely

And so many more. Doomsday cultists just cannot help themselves when it comes to using a tragedy to prop up their cult. There have been numerous flooding issues in the Himalayas, glaciers letting go, earthquakes, being recorded for thousands of years as people lived there.