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PRESSURE HAS INTENSIFIED today to save thousands still trapped by devastating floods that have killed more than 300 in the Indian state of Kerala, triggering landslides and sending torrents sweeping through villages in the region’s worst inundation crisis in a century.
Authorities warned of more torrential rain and strong winds over the weekend, as hundreds of troops and local fishermen staged desperate rescue attempts in helicopters and boats across the southern state.
Kerala, popular among international tourists for its tropical hills and beaches, has been battered by record monsoon rainfall this year.
The state is “facing the worst floods in 100 years”, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Twitter, adding that at least 324 lives have been lost so far.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in the stricken state last night, Vijayan’s office tweeted, with media reports saying the premier would undertake an aerial survey of the worst-affected areas today.
People all over the state of 33 million have made panicked appeals on social media for help, saying they cannot make contact with rescue services as power and communication lines are down.
“My family and neighbouring families are in trouble,” wrote Ajo Varghese, a resident of the coastal city of Alappuzha, in a Facebook post that quickly went viral.
“No water and food. Not able to communicate from afternoon. Mobile phones are not reachable… Please help,” he added.
Other distressed messages were shared online from people trapped inside temples and hospitals as well as their homes.
More than 30 military helicopters and 320 boats are attempting rescues across Kerala after some areas were engulfed by overflowing rivers, with residents seen swimming and wading through chest-high waters past partially submerged houses.
Authorities said thousands of people have been taken to safety so far but 6,000 more are still waiting for rescue.
“We are deploying more boats and the army to ramp up rescue operations,” senior state government official PH Kurian told AFP.
Helicopters have also been dropping emergency food and water supplies, while special trains carrying drinking water have been sent to Kerala.
‘Extremely grave’
According to India’s weather bureau, since the beginning of June more than 321 centimetres of rain has fallen on the hilly central district of Idukki, which is now virtually cut off from the rest of the state.
The Kerala government has said it faces an “extremely grave” crisis and Vijayan warned of further torrential rainfall hitting the region over the weekend.
The gates of dozens of dams and reservoirs across the state have been opened as water levels reach danger levels, inundating many other villages.
At least 310,000 people have been displaced and are taking shelter in more than 2,000 relief camps.
North and central Kerala have been worst-hit by the floods with the international airport in the main city of Kochi shut until at least August 26.
The home ministry announced separately that 868 people have been reported dead in seven Indian states including Kerala since the start of the monsoon in June.
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This is why we need to leave the EU!!
@Simp Cuckington: quite the opposite, in fact.
Thankfully we only have a few vocal cranks who don’t believe in the scientific facts. A pity social media gives them a voice.
@Fozz: it would be nice if we could silence sheople like yourself
@Simp Cuckington: the world and the EU does not revolve around the UK and Brexit. Delighted to see that the European Council only spent ten minutes on Brexit. Everyone is fed up with the angst of Boris and his Tory party chums who claimed that they held all the cards.
@Simp Cuckington: The anti science tin hat brigade is out in full force. Tin hats believe anything made by some guy in his bedroom on YouTube is fact. so gullible
@Simp Cuckington: isn’t amazing that the only people constantly trotting out the same lines are the same ones that accuse others of being sheeple, or some other ridiculous derivative?
@Leitrim303: Now is your opportunity to enlighten us tinfoil hats with some science, I am sure these guys would love to hear from you
https://clintel.org/
p.s. they don’t operate from their bedrooms
@John Kennedy: https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/letter-signed-by-500-scientists-relies-on-inaccurate-claims-about-climate-science/
According to Dutch broadcaster Pointer (KRO_NCRV), the 800 “scientists, scholars, and professionals” that support CLINTEL have “conducted little to no climate research”. DeSmog analysis has found that the list of signatories includes a commercial fisherman, a retired chemist, a cardiologist, and an air-conditioning engineer, alongside a number of retired geologists.
The Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) is a Netherlands-based climate science denial group founded in 2019 by retired professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and journalist Marcel Crok.
Additionally, research by Follow the Money and the Platform Authentic Journalism, two Dutch investigative journalism sites, and data-journalism broadcaster Pointer (KRO-NCRV), found that oil money built up from the 1990s has filtered its way into the foundations of CLINTEL. [16]
An article on Follow the Money’s site explains that Guus Berkhout founded the Delphi Consortium, a company that develops geo-imaging technology for the oil and gas industry, in 1982. Over 30 fossil fuel organisations were committed to paying €30,000 to €55,000 per year to have access to Delphi’s research, including Shell, BP and Chevron.”
https://www.desmogblog.com/climate-intelligence-foundation-clintel
@Oisín Callan: I find no evidence in the quoted article to dispute the claim by Clintel, perhaps you could point it out to me, incidentally any comment from anyone associated with the Climate Research Unit should be taken with a large pinch of salt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy
Desmogblog… yup, a truly reliable source
@John Kennedy: Literally the first link in my comment is to a systematic debunking of every unsourced talking point in the clintel declaration by actual climate scientists, not cardiologists and fishermen. I’ll post it again in case you missed it:
https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/letter-signed-by-500-scientists-relies-on-inaccurate-claims-about-climate-science/
If you’re going to try post wikipedia articles as some kind of “gotcha”, try actually reading them first.
“Fact-checkers confirmed that climate change deniers misrepresented the contents of the emails.”
“Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.”
“Desmogblog… yup, a truly reliable source”
More reliable than a think-tank funded by the oil industry. They even listed their sources at the bottom of the article so you don’t have to take their word for it.
@John Kennedy: hahahahaha actually read that wikipedia article and the whole way down you will see that it repeatedly shows that climate deniers misrepresented what was contained in the emails and took sentences out of context to give them meanings they never had. If anything you have just cited evidence of the credibility of the Clinate Research Unit, a large scale hack and 8 subsequent investigations uncovered no actual evidence of scientific misconduct
@John Kennedy: Here’s a good video which looks at the CRU email quotes in context:
https://youtu.be/7nnVQ2fROOg
@Oisín Callan: Watch this prof take apart the co2 argument in front of congress using facts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofXQdl1FDGk
The Great Reset
@Mike Burry: the great flying tinfoil monster
@DJ François: how can it be a conspiracy if the world economic Forum aka the davos summit and the UN are actively promoting it.
@Mícheál Seán Mac Conmhaic: Actively promoting the “great reset”?
@DJ François: The World Economic Forum have a podcast talking all about the Great Reset, its on Spotify you should give it a listen (seriously)
There is no tax on airline fuel
@Pete Lee: hopefully flying for business meetings will be a thing of the past now and commuting will be permanently reduced. People do need protein though so they shouldn’t come down so hard on meat and dairy which are essential for our health, while cars, which have enormous emissions during manufacture and use and are mostly unnecessary get a free pass because the EU is controlled by Germany. There’s a reason they built roads not more efficient rail for us.
@SC: we had loads of rail and we got rid of it
@Pete Lee: can’t tax airline fuel they couldn’t compete with oil rich nations where the stuff is consumed like its fresh air because it’s so cheap
Growing imimirgrant population all striving to gets jobs driving to pay for energy to heat their dwellings in a cooler climate, guess we’ll have to go nuclear for the future
@Gerard Heery: The energy cost of individuals is negligible compared with that of industry. That is why it is important for society to act as a whole in terms of energy efficiency
As for nuclear power we should at least be able to debate the possibility. The technology has come a long way since the likes of Sellafield
@David: then why is it a us negligible individual s pay for it the most
@Gerard Heery: Do you mean as tax payers? Businesses pay taxes too. While as a percentage of there income its significantly less overall businesses tax returns account for the vast majority of the finances available to a country
The idea of companies or the rich paying more is a different debate though tax rates do not fluctuate a lot from country to country.
But personally I think cleaner air and a cleaner environment benefits everyone
Install solar panels on every roof of every home built…. or in desert areas for alternative power supply…investment is essential.
@Eddie Michael: You really don’t know anything about solar panels. do you?, in 2019 in the EU28 solar panels operated at 12.7% efficiency
Source https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/the-excess-costs-of-weather-dependent-renewable-power-generation-in-the-eu28w/
based on data from https://www.eurobserv-er.org/
@Eddie Michael: Great idea! And not that expensive, I also think local turbine areas and hydro energy converters that provide power to whole towns would be a great shout, provide a lot of jobs in places they’re sparce and hopefully get more people out into the country
@John Kennedy: Fossil fuel plants are about 33%-37% with out factoring the energy spent in extracting and transporting them not to mention the cost of cleanup including the removal of waste etc.
@John Kennedy: 12.7 % of the sun’s energy is a lot…
@SC: No, that would be 12.7% of their rated output.
@Francis Devenney: No, conventional power plants (fossil fuel) operate at 90% rated capacity.
@John Kennedy: We’re talking about efficiency (Your OP) not capacity. A 100 watt incandescent light bulb runs a nearly full capacity but is less than 10% efficient as most of the input is lost in heat rather than light. In fossil fuel plants about 70% of the input is wasted, as in not converted into energy output.
This is really brilliant news on paper and I’d be really excited about it but I have a feeling our government is gonna use this to tax the pollox off us.. I hope they realise they can’t actually tax us out of our emissions, they gotta make green options much cheaper and WIDELY available if they really wanna take this off the ground. I think we should invest heavily in green energy, if we’re smart enough we could provide clean power the whole island with some left over to sell and share with the rest of the world, our little island nation has a lot of potential to be a real world player in the next 10 years if we make the right moves sooner rather than later
@Dylan Byrne: of course it is. The EU wants to buy more weapons and build up its armies. There are no policies in place to tackle wasteful use of resources (personal cars, excessive consumption, planned obsolescence) and distinguish them from essential activities like farming. It just means EU corporations will ship their manufacturing to poor countries and raise taxes on normal people. Overall global climate will be unaffected.
@SC: gulp
Let’s hope the greens are gone. More carbon taxes on the way.
As someone who has tried organizing a group “do” at a restaurant, I applaud 27 people agreeing on anything.
But while 55% sounds decent on the surface, using 1990 as the benchmark is bitterly disappointing.
@Amiga Ireland: and it seems that they use the 1990 baseline because that been agreed on the Kyoto-Protocol and they are using it since then. Makes sense to have everyone measuring against the same baseline. But they should update it.
@Amiga Ireland: it is the benchmark universally used.
have your say