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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