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Himalayas bare and rocky after reduced winter snowfall, scientists warn
- profsummergig 9mo agoMaybe they'll finally find the nuclear device lost on Nanda Devi, that has the potential to - *checks notes* - poison North India (via the glacier that feeds the Ganges).
- ninjin 9mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanda_Devi_Plutonium_Mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanda_Devi_Plutonium_Mission
- krasin 9mo ago> that (checks notes) has the potential to poison most of North India. How large is the amount of plutonium in there? I highly doubt that it has the claimed potential.
- krasin 9mo agoI found the specs for the fuel source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e9/SNAP-19C_Mound_Data_Sheet.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e9/SNAP-19C_Moun... The high-power unit had 300 grams of Pu-238 in 1965. Given its 87.7 years half-life, only 187g of Pu-238 remaining. It's very hard to do much damage with this amount of radioactive material.
- onion2k 9mo agoIt decays to uranium-234 though, which still isn't exactly nice. It'll be a long time before it's a block of inert lead.
- krasin 9mo agoU-234 is ~3000x less radioactive than Pu-238, so having ~120g of U-234 is negligible. I really fail to see a problem with these tiny amounts of non-brittle material embedded into a solid case. It's still very dangerous, but it's locally dangerous (meters away), not at the scale of whole countries.
- khuey 9mo agoAround three pounds, and something like 40% of it has already decayed away since this happened in the 60s.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- s5300 9mo ago[dead]
- Guestmodinfo 9mo agoWhat's your opinion on a sudden flooding that happened some years ago in that region. I am an Indian so for some days our news were showing only that flooding news. It was sudden and super mssive and some news people suspected that same device or maybe one of the devices being accidentally going off. It was all speculation but the sudden and massive flooding was also unexplained to some extent. There has been several massive flooding in the region recently but all are due to extensive rain and cloud bursts. But one was unexplained in my untrained opinion. I remember it was some huge construction site. Wha they were building now I have forgotten that
- ceejayoz 9mo agoThe entire world would notice a nuke going off. Like we did with North Korea’s nuclear tests.
- hahahahhaah 9mo agoWhat notes did you check?
- adrianN 9mo agoIt won’t be long before climate change starts causing mass migrations and the associated conflicts. With the current unstable world order we could really do without another massive problem.
- netsharc 9mo agoAre you writing from e.g. 2008? In 2010 Russian forest fires caused grain shortages and the price to go up, creating the Arab Spring and including the start of the Syrian civil war. That caused a wave of refugees that peaked in 2015. That caused the rise of right wing racist populism in Europe...
- fleroviumna 9mo ago[dead]
- adrianN 9mo agoIn that instance climate change (probably?) played a role, but that is unfortunately not obvious enough to reach the people who are not already concerned about climate change. Millions migrating from India somewhere else because there is no water or wet bulb temperatures become deadly hopefully would cause more people to notice.
- BLKNSLVR 9mo agoThat will be the case, ie. cognitive dissonance / denial, for many future climate change caused incidents as well. This kind of reasoning: "California wildfires and tornadoes have always been part of the US weather patterns" Whilst ignoring the increasing frequency and magnitude / intensity.
- nandomrumber 9mo agoIn California wildfires, how do you separate climate related effects from the effects the invasive gumtree problem? Gumtree forests tend to need more frequent low intensity burns to clear fuel build up, which Australian Aboriginals used to manage.
- Arun2009 9mo agoWhat we tend to forget is that even with the catastrophic effects of climate change, the Earth is still vastly more inhabitable than other planets in the solar system. More pertinently, today we also have the intellectual tools to come with the right solutions for a good part of this problem. Solutions most likely won't require dramatic breakthroughs in fundamental science; probably just more clever engineering and better social and political coordination. The real problem is that this is happening in one of the most socio-economically underdeveloped regions of the world. Despite isolated centers of modest excellence, India still hasn't fully absorbed the implications of the scientific revolution at a popular, cultural level. A good part of the population are still caught up in pre-modern modes of thinking. Rather than addressing this gap, the political establishment is only deepening an irrational and romantic belief in the worth of India's classical worldviews to continue their hold on power. More than climate change, I dread the self-inflicted servitude to infantile notions that is holding India hostage. It's not really difficult to emerge out of this - we just need to shed our intellectual timidity and face reality as it is.
- tehjoker 9mo agoThere are also pockets of India that are more advanced than many places elsewhere. I have a lot of love for Kerala. It doesn't have too many jobs, but it has a ton of heart and forward thinking people (which is why industrialists are scared of it).
- SanjayMehta 9mo agoIndustrialists are scared of communists and unions, for good reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokku_kooli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokku_kooli
- M95D 9mo agoThat's not communism, nor a union. That's just racketeering.
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- MORPHOICES 9mo ago[flagged]
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- softwaredoug 9mo agoEven in optimistic scenarios we won’t see this actual global temperature decrease again in our lifetimes. We can only hope to minimize the impact so that the curve softens and maybe in a century starts to go down.
- lm28469 9mo agoHey, not so fast, we might fuck up the AMOC and reduce western europe temps by up to 15c!
- arethuza 9mo agoOn the bright side, at least the ski areas here in Scotland would have reliable snow!
- bamboozled 9mo agoFor someone who loves winter, it's really sad news, but it's likely true.
- aussieguy1234 9mo agoClimate change is obviously the cause and this is not good for the environment. But on the flip side, does this mean it's never been easier to climb the Himalayan mountains?
- snowwrestler 9mo agoNo, the lack of snow and ice has greatly increased the rockfall hazard. It’s way easier to climb the highest mountains on snow and ice than on crumbling rock. https://www.instagram.com/p/DM5sYghMr2g/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DM5sYghMr2g/
- scarecrowbob 9mo agoA lot of mountaineering is contingent upon the decomposing chossy rock being solidified by ice. I can't speak to the Himalayas, but I can speak to southwest Colorado: climbing a 70 degree snow face is fun, climbing the pile of shit underneath it with crampons is (to me) terrifying.
- dukeofdoom 9mo agoOn the flipside, it might make greenland actually green.
- manarth 9mo agoI visited Greenland for 6 weeks in 1998 (youth expedition with BSES) and it's surprisingly green in the summer, with thick foliage at the lower altitudes. And the midges, oh my! They sure had a taste for visitors.
- nQQKTz7dm27oZ 9mo ago[dead]
- malablaster 9mo agoI’m disappointed at the lack of before/after photos in that article. My ape brain would love them.
- delta_p_delta_x 9mo agoIf you know languages, the 'phrase Himalayas bare and rocky' is particularly sad, because himālaya/हिमालय in Sanskrit literally means 'house of snow'.
- bloak 9mo agoThank you for pointing that out. Also, according to Wiktionary, the first part, "hima", is cognate with English "hibernate" (snow and winter are close enough), and the second part, "alaya", is cognate with English "slime" (which is less obvious, but slime is sticky and you stick things together to make a house).
- zkmon 9mo agoQuestion is, is this human-caused change or the usual natural climate shift that Earth goes through every few thousand centuries or millennia? And is there anything humans should do about it, other than adapting to it?
- lm28469 9mo agoThe human impact is unquestionable. Is it part of a bigger cycle? maybe, but I feel like people use that as a cope to not do anything. "it doesn't exist", "it exist but it's not bad", "it's bad but it's not our fault", &c. https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- Cthulhu_ 9mo agoThis isn't actually the question though, and have you done any research yourself or are you Just Asking Questions [1]? tl;dr we have extensive historical records of past weather progression through e.g. ice cores and the recent weather and climate changes are unheard of outside of cataclysmic events like meteor strikes or volcano eruptions, with a very close correlation with emissions. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_last_2,000_years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_last.... As for whether we can do anything about it, personally I don't think so, we passed the point of no return... probably decades ago, even if emissions suddenly stopped then, the wheels were set in motion, for example through the melting of permafrost causing ???? amounts of sequestered plant matter to start decomposing and releasing methane and the like.
- zkmon 9mo agoIf we are past the point of no return decades back, what are the current goal of talking about it now? Our social and economic structures, and life styles are also well past the point of no return. Energy and resource consumption is at vulgarity levels. We bring a 10 ton machine from 10 miles, to sweep a floor of 10 square foot area. That's us. The expectations are set, supply chains are set, global domination goals are set. Science is only a force to drive us towards these directions. That's our choice made.
- timwalz 9mo ago[flagged]
- jibal 9mo agoWhere "you guys" is apparently anyone who knows anything at all about the subject. When in Congress, Al Gore worked hard to turn the government owned and run network into something that the entire population can use. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_techno...) I suggest that you take advantage of the incredible resource known as the Internet (and the WWW layered on top of it) to learn something about climate change and its underlying cause, anthropogenic global warming. See for instance https://skepticalscience.com/ https://skepticalscience.com/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climat...
- rafterydj 9mo agoThis is inflammatory, dismissive, and hardly constructive for discussion. Flame wars are discouraged by the rules. All said, you're comment worked. I'm angry now. Good job.
- jibal 9mo agoCheck out his other comments ... wow.
- an-allen 9mo agoA third of humans are fed as a result of the melt of the Himalayan ice sheet. No ice sheet, no runoff, no flooding the rice paddy's, no rice…. famine.
- tasuki 9mo agoAre you saying we need global warming for the melt to increase?
- bamboozled 9mo agoWhat about all the people who say the world will be greener and therefore there will be more plants and food? It's almost like they just made that up to suit their worldview?
- timr 9mo agoThe world will be greener in a high-CO2 environment. There’s no legitimate argument over that fact. Where you go wrong is in misrepresenting the argument as “more plants and food”. That’s a straw man. Certainly it’s more favorable for growth of plants that make food, but that doesn’t mean that existing patterns of food production will exist unchanged, or that adaptation won’t be required. But we’re also talking about a 100+ year change timeline. People who tell you that this year’s weather are indicative of urgent, rapid change are exaggerating. You seem to be willing to accept wild extrapolations of doom without evidence, while rejecting scientifically well-founded statements of fact, so I’d challenge you to examine your priors.
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- zvqcMMV6Zcr 9mo agoI always considered the conflict between India and China a bit silly, considering the size of those countries compared to tiny disputed territories. But the are totally are going to war over Himalayas water resources, aren't they?
- screye 9mo agoNot quite. Chinese rivers are fed by the eastern tibetan plateau while South Asia is fed by the western glaciers by the tallest mountains. Bangladesh would be at risk because the Bramhaphtra sees upstream fresh water use by China. But China's use of Bramhaputra water is mostly energy related, not for drinking water or irrigation. If decreasing population trends continue then this problem will solve itself.
- bamboozled 9mo agoMeteorologists, however, also add that there have been heavy snowfalls during some winters in recent years, but these have been isolated, extreme events rather than the evenly distributed precipitation of past winters. Anecdotal but this is not dissimilar to how Japan has been lately with snowfall in the northern regions. It was once 30cm a night, almost every night during winter, fairly stable and predictable weather, we're still getting a lot of snow most winters, but it seems to happen in these major storm events now. Not consistent manageable snowfall, but more like a snow bomb goes off once a week, it gets warm, quite a lot of melt occurs and then boom, hit again. It's actually. taking some getting used too and requires adaption. It's a small thing but it makes it quite hard to plan for, and it makes life generally quite stressful. Also due to the rapid warming and cooling ice is a bit more of an issue now, like more injures from people getting hammered on icy / slick roads and paths.
- throwaway173738 9mo agoIt’s the same in the Cascades. In a couple decades we’ll probably need a bunch of dams to have water capacity for the summer, because the snowpack melts so fast.
- Qem 9mo agoIIRC the Himalayas are still being pushed up, as the indian plate pushes against Eurasia. That makes me wonder if the loss of ice will result in taller mountains, with less ice to grind the upwelling rock.
- snowwrestler 9mo agoThe ice grinding primarily happens at the base of glaciers, in valleys. Above the bergschrund (the head of the glacier), erosion in high mountains is accelerated by freeze-thaw cycles. Temps above freezing obviously contribute to this. But even well below freezing ambient temps, exposed dark rock in sunlight can absorb enough energy to cause local thawing, which results in rockfall.