It would not be surprising if the UN ponied up.

However, the reality of the situation is a lot different than Nepal’s representative says. The landslide was the result of weak bedrock that collapsed coupled with glacier ice and not due to climate change.

Geomorphologists Kristen Cook and Dan Shugar said initial images from Nepal were obscured by clouds and dust from the debris, so they could only see that part of a glacier had broken off from Langtang Lirung peak, near the border with Tibet. In clearer images from Thursday, they said they could see that the bedrock underneath the glacier had collapsed, taking the massive chunk of ice down with it and sending boulders and ice into the valley.

“It shows the whole area without anything hidden, and we could see that, yes, it looked like there was not only this glacier that had failed, but a much larger chunk of the bedrock of the mountainside itself that had given way,” said Shugar, associate professor at the University of Calgary. “You have this big bedrock failure that took part of the glacier with it.”

 Director of the US Global Change Research Program Dr. Matthew M. Wielicki agrees with this assessment.

Where tectonic plates collide, the immense stresses can fracture and weaken rock on a large scale, leaving mountainsides riddled with cracks and far more likely to fail. That is a major reason landslides are so common and so damaging in active collision belts such as the Himalayas.

The Nepal landslide was a geologic event produced by the Earth itself. Keeping in mind that the Himalayas are earth’s youngest mountain range and, to this day, are still growing.

If Nepal’s claim is accepted, the same rule should apply everywhere: the United States would then have a comparable case for climate-recovery funds after a major earthquake or other natural disaster. Unless the United Nations is willing to treat those events the same way, the request should be refused.

Earthquakes, landslides, and tsunamis do not require climate change. Recasting every natural disaster as a pretext for climate payments is neither science nor justice.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay