A truly terrible tragedy. The other thing to note is that the bridge was built as a pedestrian one.
Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Oct 31st 2022 at 12:54:26 PM
Yale Environment 360: As Himalayan Glaciers Melt, a Water Crisis Looms in South Asia.
Pakistan’s climate change minister, Sherry Rehman, tweeted videos of the destruction and highlighted the vulnerability of a region with the largest number of glaciers outside the Earth’s poles. Why were these glaciers losing mass so quickly? Rehman put it succinctly. “High global temperatures,” she said.
Just over a decade ago, relatively little was known about glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayas, the vast ice mountains that run across Central and South Asia, from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east. But a step-up in research in the past 10 years — spurred in part by an embarrassing error in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, which predicted that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 — has led to enormous strides in understanding.
Scientists now have data on almost every glacier in high mountain Asia. They know “how these glaciers have changed not only in area but in mass during the last 20 years,” says Tobias Bolch, a glaciologist with the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He adds, “We also know much more about the processes which govern glacial melt. This information will give policymakers some instruments to really plan for the future.”
That future is daunting. New research suggests that the area of Himalayan glaciers has shrunk by 40 percent since the Little Ice Age maximum between 400-700 years ago, and that in the past few decades ice melt has accelerated faster than in other mountainous parts of the world. Retreat seems to have also recently initiated in Pakistan’s Karakoram range, one of the few areas where glaciers had been stable. Depending on the level of global warming, studies project that at least another third, and as much as two-thirds, of the region’s glaciers could vanish by the end of the century. Correspondingly, meltwater is expected to increase until around the 2050s and then begin to decline.
These changes could have far-reaching consequences for hazard risk and food and water security in a heavily populated region. More than a billion people depend on the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra river systems, which are fed by snow and glacial melt from the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, known as the world’s “Third Pole” because it contains so much ice. Peaking in summer, meltwater can be a lifesaver at a time when other water sources are much diminished.
But increased melt may also trigger landslides or glacial lake outburst floods, known as GLO Fs, scientists warn. Or it could aggravate the impact of extreme rainfall, like the deluge that caused recent massive flooding in Pakistan. Changes in melt could also affect the safety and productivity of the region’s expanding hydropower industry. Countries like Nepal already get most of their electricity from hydropower; others, like India, are planning to increase capacity of this low-carbon energy source. Around 650 hydro projects are planned or underway in high-altitude locations across the region, many of them close to glaciers or glacial lakes.
The Indus basin, which largely falls in Pakistan and northwest India, is particularly vulnerable to long-term changes in runoff, scientists say. That’s because snow and ice melt comprise as much as 72 percent of river runoff in the upper Indus, compared with between 20 and 25 percent in the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers (the latter two depend on monsoon rain).
Farmers in Gilgit-Baltistan are already affected, according to Aisha Khan, CEO of the Mountain and Glacier Protection Organization in Islamabad, who has been visiting the region regularly for two decades. In one village, Khan says, unpredictable changes in the timing of snowmelt, which supplies water for irrigation, have led local men to abandon their fields and migrate to cities. In another settlement, increased velocity and volume of river flow have eroded banks and swept away land. “These communities can’t afford to invest in flood and erosion protections,” she says.
Atmospheric warming is the main driver of glacier melt in the Hindu Kush Himalayas—temperatures here, as at the poles, are rising faster than the global average. But local topography and other factors may also be shaping the pace of retreat, scientists say.
The region’s glaciers are scattered across thousands of kilometers and vary greatly in size, thickness, and elevation. Some are melting faster than others. A 2020 study projected that the eastern end of the range, in Nepal and Bhutan, could lose as much as 60 percent of its ice mass by 2100, relative to 2015, even in a low-emissions scenario. By comparison, the western end, including the Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges in Pakistan, would see slower melt rates.
These melt patterns may have to do with regional climatic differences, says Sher Muhammad, a remote sensing specialist with Nepal’s International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), an intergovernmental institute at the forefront of climate research in the region. The eastern Himalayas are strongly influenced by the Asian summer monsoon and get more rainfall than snowfall, he notes. On the other hand, the western Himalayas, as well as the Hindu Kush and Karakoram, are more influenced by what are known as the western disturbances, which bring more snowfall. Glaciers in the west are also larger, Muhammad says, and respond more slowly to climatic changes.
But they do, eventually, respond. For decades, most glaciers in the Karakoram mountains bucked the global trend: the majority were stable, and some even grew. One reason for the anomaly was thought to be the relatively stable snowfall in the area, compared with declines in other parts of the Himalayas. But a study published in Nature last year found that overall acceleration of ice loss in the late 2010s had shifted even this area from “sustained thickening” to a “generalised thinning.” While this trend needs more research, the remote sensing data used in the study is of high-quality, notes Muhammad, who was not involved with the research paper. “Climate change may be ending the Karakoram anomaly,” he says.
Some studies suggest that glaciers covered by debris such as rocks and pebbles, which protects the glacial surface from the sun’s radiation, may melt more slowly. “The blanket protects the ice,” says Mohammed Farooq Azam, a glaciologist with the Indian Institute of Technology in Indore.
Meanwhile, glaciers that terminate in a lake may melt faster, as warm water is directly in touch with the glacier’s toe, or snout. Remote sensing data show that glacial lakes have increased in number and size since the 1990s. Lake formation is an outcome of glacier melt, explains Azam. After the last ice age ended, glaciers retreated, leaving behind depressions that have only recently begun to fill with ice melt.
More glacial lakes means greater risk of glacial lake outburst floods, when land or ice holding back a lake can suddenly give way, releasing a huge volume of water. One study projects almost a threefold rise in the risk of lake outbursts in the region, posing a hazard to mountain villages, roads, and hydropower dams.
The risk of lakes bursting may be increased when glaciers “surge.” In this phenomenon, ice in the upper parts of the glacier slips or moves downward, causing the snout of the glacier to advance. A recent study by Bolch and others identified hundreds of newly surging glaciers in the region between 2000 and 2018, most of them in the Karakoram.
These glaciers can block valleys and create lakes, which is what happened when the Shisper Glacier, in Gilgit-Baltistan, began surging in 2017. The advancing ice blocked a river that flowed from an adjacent glacier, creating a new lake. “Once the water pressure is high enough, it lifts the glacier ice and then drains immediately, like a flash flood,” says Bolch. Lakes formed by this glacier burst in 2019 and 2020, and again this May. In July, government officials in Pakistan determined that unusual heat waves had contributed to 16 glacial lake outbursts in the mountains this year, compared with just five or six in previous years.
The Shisper lake outburst in May did not take any lives, due in part to a glacier monitoring system set up under a United Nations Development Programme project. Still, the timing of the outburst was not expected, says ICIMOD’s Muhamad. And with the Karakoram Highway and Hassanabad village only a few kilometers away, destruction was almost inevitable. The flood destroyed two homes and damaged 16 others, washed away farms and orchards, and knocked out the local power supply. The collapse of the Hassanabad bridge cut a key link in the remote northern region, stranding tourists and threatening food supply. Rebuilding a permanent bridge, officials said, could take up to eight months.
Despite the advances in knowledge about Himalayan glaciers, scientists say many research gaps remain. The role of black carbon, or soot, in accelerating melt is not fully known. Air pollution from the Indo-Gangetic plains is thought to be depositing black carbon on the mountains, increasing the absorption of heat and accelerating melt. There is also almost no data on permafrost, the ice that lies beneath the ground and can influence water flows and slope stability. “When permafrost thaws, the soil surface loses strength and can subside, destroying roads,” says Azam.
One reason for these gaps is the dearth of field measurements, which would help scientists understand catchment-level changes. Azam notes that there are no weather stations in India above 4,000 meters, above which most glaciers originate. Most new data are from satellite studies. “I can count on one hand the number of glaciologists working in the field,” says Azam, who studies two Himalayan glaciers.
Moreover, the measurements that do exist often don’t get shared, Bolch adds, noting, “This is a political issue.” Governments in the region need to be more collaborative, agrees Khan, in Islamabad. “If countries are isolated and don’t share, we won’t know,” she says. “We’re all part of the same region, and we all get water from the same source. Anything that happens [in one place] is going to have a cascading effect on all of us.”
Sadly I can buy this as either the Army trying to silence him (like Musharraf did to Benazir 15 years ago) or Imran trying to frame it up that way. He stands to benefit from this.
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...Looks like an update on the Sri Lankan crisis.
AFP has this report.
Crisis-hit Sri Lanka said Monday it would take responsibility for $1.7 billion owed to China by state enterprises as it seeks to sell them off and restructure its foreign debt to secure an IMF bailout.
The government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe is in talks with the Washington-based lender as it seeks funding to enable the island to recover from its worst-ever financial crisis.
His predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to flee the country and resign after demonstrators overran his house following months of protests over the unprecedented economic hardships faced by the 22 million population.
Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt in April and the IMF has said its borrowings must be "sustainable" to unlock any new external funding.
That will require its creditors to take a haircut on their loans, but China is its biggest lender and Beijing has given no indication it is willing to do so.
Wickremesinghe said $1.7 billion in loans taken from China's Export-Import Bank by three key loss-making state-owned enterprises (SOE) — the electricity utility, Port Authority, and Airport and Aviation Services — would be considered government debt.
Taking the loans off their books will strengthen their balance sheets, which could make them more attractive to buyers or outside investors.
The IMF has said the country should also restructure its loss-making state enterprises.
Wickremesinghe, who is also the finance minister, signalled the selling-off of five state-owned companies, including the national carrier Sri Lankan Airlines — which has debts of more than $1 billion — to reduce the strain on the national budget.
Proceeds from the "restructure" of the companies will be used to boost the country's depleted foreign reserves, he said, without giving estimates.
"A glimmer of hope on emerging from the economic abyss is currently visible," Wickremesinghe told parliament as he presented his first full budget in the legislature.
"After the era of waiting in queues for days and protesting in various occupied places, our sufferings have been eased to some extent and we have reached an era where our peace of mind is much settled."
He said bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund were on track and hoped for a deal with lenders.
"We are confident that these discussions will lead to positive outcomes," he added.
The government revised its external debt figure down from $51 billion to $46 billion.
Just over $14 billion of that is bilateral debt owed to foreign governments, of which China holds 52 percent.
Wickremesinghe, a six-times prime minister, has sharply raised taxes and increased fuel, water and electricity tariffs and rationed petrol and diesel since coming to power in July.
Looks like we might be seeing some tensions along the China-India border, this time in the Assam direction.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanThe Times of India: Fearing 'water war' by China, government puts Arunachal dams on fast track. The Brahmaputra, which runs from Tibet into the subcontinent through Arunachal Pradesh, provides around 30% of India's freshwater and 40% of its hydropower capacity. About 50% of the river basin is in Chinese territory, and the Indian government is now worried that a Chinese 60,000 MW dam project across the border could potentially be used to starve out or flood the Indian side in the future. To counter the possibility, the Indian government is accelerating a series of smaller dam projects in order to contain a water reserve or mitigate flooding in those contingencies.
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)Nikkei Asia: A suicide bombing at a Peshawar mosque killed 59 people, including 27 police officers. The attack took place in the "Red Zone" of the city where police and other security officers reside, and is the deadliest one to hit the city since an ISKP bomb attack killed 63 people at a Shi'a mosque last year. TTP has denied responsibility.
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)I do wonder how Pakistan would fare at default compared to Sri Lanka. On the one hand, it has more potential, on the other hand, it has even more internal problems that prevent it meeting such potential...
IMF is meeting with Sharif today to figure that out I guess. Certainly the last possible chance before Pakistan defaults sometime in the next three weeks.
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...Would be interesting to see if the IMF-standard governance reform package is going to extend to the military, eh.
Anyhey, I randomly learned some, ah, interesting things about Gautam Adani from an IRL acquaintance this past week:
- He apparently owns NDTV now.
- He's really into ChatGPT? For some reason??
- He just lost $50 billion after a US-based short seller accused him of fraud???
Adani Group is a fairly controversial name in Australia over its coal mining practices (I knew that they're looking to expand green hydrogen production in India), but I didn't really know anything about the guy himself before, so learning about all this has certainly been something.
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)I've actually been wondering what reforms could be done with the Pakistan military (without setting off an immediate mutiny/coup/civil war anyway).
And quite frankly, the Pakistan Navy with their recent shopping spree (lots of Turkish and Chinese vessels were purchased in the last five years, though not all of them have finished construction) would probably be a prime place to start.
But the Army and the retirement funds will have to be tapped eventually...just how, I'm not sure.
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...A very interesting article in Le Monde on Shwe Kokko.
Paywall, but the gist of it is: it's a city on the border between Myanmar and Thailand, that started as something of a gambling paradise, but since then has turned into a paradise for online conmen funded by the Triads with the blessing of the new military regime in Myanmar.
But on top of holding ton of shady companies that try to incite people to invest in random crypto stuff online or rob them through fake dating profiles, the "fun" part is that it apparently works thanks to Indian workers (no surprise there given India's reputation for online scams)...but they get conned themselves into thinking they're going to find a tech job overseas, until they get their passport confiscated and have to basically buy their way out (or pay a ransom if their family is wealthy enough).
The whole read made me think of a real-like Roanapur from Black Lagoon, minus all the funny/entertaining/noble criminals obviously.
Edited by Bexlerfu on Mar 28th 2023 at 11:09:07 AM
So basically Cambodia's Sihanoukville, only mostly targeting Indian nationals rather than Chinese ones.
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)https://www.voanews.com/a/rare-trade-occurs-between-pakistan-israel-/7029355.html
A rare first by a Pakistani Jewish man who arranged for Pakistani food to be sold to Israel. A delegation from Pakistan also met with the Israeli president.
However, Paksitani right-wing/Islamist groups are calling foul over this.
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-engineer-arrested-in-pakistan-for-alleged-blasphemy/7053411.html
Chinese engineer in Pakistan got detained for supposedly making comments on insulting Islam.
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"One more article i found talks about there being a factor of growing tribal land dispute between the state government and minority Kuki and Naga community with regards to state government trying to evict groups terming them encroachers as per Manipur Forest Rule, 2021 while the Naga and Kuki tribals bringing up other acts like the 1927 India Forest Act, Manipur land revenue and land reforms act 1960 and the SC and ST act 1989 to oppose their eviction without consultation stating they are a settlement who have lived for years and not encroachers. That the chief minister hails from the Meitei community and is accused of pushing the minority tribes to the margins is also adding fuel to the tensions between the groups.
Edited by xyzt on May 5th 2023 at 2:04:16 PM
So if I'm parsing this right, the minority tribes are worried that powerful members of the Meitei/Manipuri majority would exploit their Scheduled Tribe designation in unbecoming ways? Remind me, what does the status entail, again?
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)ST status would entitle them to reservation in jobs, educational institutions, tax relief, and the reason the Meiteis seem to emphasise of providing protected status for their lands from non-S Ts and presumably to the fear of the minority tribes that are already categorised as ST, give them the right to encroach on their lands as Scheduled tribes can buy other scheduled tribe lands.
Land Rights of Scheduled Tribes
This old article talks about the various reasons Meiteis want ST status and the reasons the minority tribes oppose it.
https://scroll.in/article/916082/why-manipurs-dominant-meitei-community-wants-scheduled-tribe-status
The Meitei-dominated Imphal Valley, Yumnam pointed out, accounted for only 10% of Manipur’s land area, but hosted almost 60% of the state’s population. “The Valley land is open for all, but Meitei cannot own land in the hills,” said Yumnam......“The Bill will not be accepted, so the only thing that can help is Scheduled Tribe status,” said Yambem Laba, an advisor to the Scheduled Tribe Demand Committee. Scheduled Tribe status will automatically pave the way for safeguards that the Constitution offers to tribal-dominated areas, in terms of land ownership and political representation, said Laba.....Yet again, the state’s tribal groups are resentful of the demand. “They are no longer primitive or backward,” said Vareiyo Shatsang, the president of the All Tribal Students’ Union Manipur. “Why should they claim they are tribals? Once they become ST [Scheduled Tribes], the land of poor tribals would be encroached overnight by Meitei millionaires.”...
Roderick Wijunamai, a tribal academic from the state, said the Meitei demand was not so much about demographic concerns, as its proponents claim, as it was about getting “provisions from the state”. Wijunamai pointed to the 2018 upheaval in Manipur University, led by Meitei student groups. Meitei students had demanded the vice chancellor be removed, accusing him of saffronising the university and of administrative ineptitude. Tribal student groups allege the agitation was aimed at the vice chancellor’s move to restore a higher percentage of reservation for tribal students in the university. “They can come up with a thousand excuses,” said Wijunamai. “But at the end of the day, it is all about control of resources and provisions from the state.”
Seilin Haokip, the spokesperson of the Kuki National Organisation, an umbrella group of Kuki groups in the state, concurred with Wijunamai. “Historically, they [Meiteis] have always been opposed to being identified as tribals, because they consider themselves superior” he said. “But now I think it is the economic pressure.”
Edited by xyzt on May 5th 2023 at 5:08:31 PM
Financial Times: Imran Khan has been arrested by Pakistan's anti-corruption force outside a court in Islamabad where he was due to face graft charges, sparking protests from PTI supporters.
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)Whether or not he's actually guilty of graft, the charges he'll face will be trumped up because that's how authoritarians do things.
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.Aung San Suu Kyi gets arrested by the Burmese military on trumped up charges in Myanmar and now Imran Khan gets arrested by the Pakistani military on trumped up charges in Pakistan. I should some day really get to reading about the measures the Indian civilian govt took during its early days to ensure the Indian military didnt get similar political ambitions and ideas of their own.
Edited by xyzt on May 11th 2023 at 7:21:23 PM
AP: Suspension bridge collapse kills at least 132 in India.
Authorities said the 19th-century, colonial-era pedestrian bridge over the Machchu river in the state’s Morbi district collapsed because it could not handle the weight of the large crowd, as the Hindu festival season drew hundreds of people to the recently opened tourist attraction. The bridge had been closed for renovation for almost six months and was reopened just four days ago.
It was not immediately clear exactly how many people were on the 232-meter (761-foot) -long bridge, but officials fear the death toll could rise. State minister Harsh Sanghvi told reporters that 132 people have died so far and that many were admitted to hospitals.
Sanghvi said emergency responders and rescuers worked overnight to search for the survivors and those killed and injured were mostly teens, women and older people. Teams from the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force were also dispatched to help with the rescue.
Videos on social media showed people clinging onto the metal cables of the partly submerged bridge in distress as emergency teams and rescuers used boats and inflatable tires to reach them. Some people were seen swimming ashore to safety. Others, who were fished from the waters, were carried away and transported to the hospitals in private vehicles and ambulances.
Local news channels ran pictures of the missing shared by concerned relatives in search of their loved ones.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is in his home state of Gujarat on a three-day visit, said he was “deeply saddened by the tragedy.” His office announced compensation to the families of the dead and urged for speedy rescue efforts.
Meanwhile, the state government said it has formed a special team to investigate the disaster.
A vote for Gujarat’s state government — led by Modi’s party — is expected in the coming months and opposition parties have demanded an investigation into the collapse, saying that the bridge was reopened without getting safety clearance from the city’s civic body. The claim could not be independently verified.
Modi ruled the state as the top elected official for 12 years before becoming India’s prime minister in 2014.
The bridge collapse is Asia’s third major disaster involving large crowds in a month.
On Saturday, a Halloween crowd surge killed more than 150 mostly young people who attended festivities in Itaewon, a neighborhood in Seoul, South Korea. On Oct. 1, police in Indonesia fired tear gas at a soccer match, causing a crush that killed 132 people as spectators attempted to flee.