33% of Pakistan Land Currently Underwater | Hacker News Reader

33% of Pakistan Land Currently Underwater

timesofisrael.com

75 pointss530074 comments

This is devastating to read and see the videos. Hindsight is 20/20 and I don't believe it really helps to mention that Pakistan should've done x or y to prevent this. They are experiencing this now, and I'm not sure what the best course of action is for them. All I can think about is how my family went through a flood when I was young and how devastated they were, especially at losing countless pictures. I'm sure countless Pakistanis have lost a lot through this. I hope world leaders will step up and help Pakistan minimize the damage and create a plan with appropriate funding.

Exactly. We could perhaps done something for one flood, but there is no freaking way we could have done something for three seperate floods all deciding to do a combo-attack on us.

The governments and massive corporations of every nation everywhere should've done "x or y" to prevent this. We've had literal decades of warning that these sorta disasters were gonna become more commonplace if we didn't change our ways re; the environment. Now it's time for those who've profited massively from the "rape" of our planet to pay up to cover the costs of adaptation and recovery when things like this happen, seeing as how they caused (and are still causing) it.

The footage in this tweet[1] is really insane, it looks comparable to what I saw in the 2011 NE Japan Tsunami footage but it's rain water. Incredible and sad for everyone affected.

[1] https://twitter.com/scottduncanwx/status/1563437146908037125

Quite a bit of flooding around where I am but holy shit I've stopped complaining after seeing this!

Images like those truly boggle the mind.

The comments here are not fruitful, pointing fingers at each other like juveniles and meme-ing will not solve the problem. We are better than this, let's act like it.

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I don't think people understand the scope of just how bad things are. As a local, let me give you guys a run down of the situation:

1- Our Economy is not even worth calling weak, we are just.... unwanted. Despite being the 5th most populated country in the world, we simply don't produce and export anything of global significance. I remember when there was a flood in Thailand and it caused a world-wide shortage of hard drives. We are flooded and no one notices.

This means that our currency has no global cache, and we are constantly in the hunt for Dollars, so we can actually import anything. If it wasn't for our population abroad sending back forex in the form of remittances, we would be bankrupt.

This means that, even before this situation, we were already running around with a begging bowl, asking for a few hundred million here, and maybe a billion and a half there. And this all flows into the ever gawping black hole of expenses, it doesn't actually lead to anything. As much as we like to blame corruption and illiteracy, the bitter honest truth is that that it's just mundane incompetence.

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2- So now that I have set the base line, I need you to understand the climate side of it. Unlike the 2010 floods, the events happened so slowly and randomly that until recently we didn't even realise what was happening. First was one of the hottest summers we had, burning and drying the summer crops, reducing yields, so we thought, oh it is that sort of year, and then the rains came and we were actually happy.

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3- The problem is, honestly, not the monsoon rains, atleast not completely, but a few random rain related events.

In one area, we had sudden hill torrents and flash floods; in yet another area, we had a cloud burst; in a third, our glaciers that had melted because of the drought before overflowed. In each situation, the Monsoon rains added the icing on the cake, making each individual climate disaster worse.

THIS is how you know this is a climate disaster. The monsoon rains is a recorded phenomenon and it follows a (slightly predictable) pattern where we see a sort of wave wash from the in from the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, and goes across the Indian subcontinent like a traveling waterfall. But you don't hear much about floods in the other countries in the region, as there usually are in other times.

That's because the OTHER freak events, all separate from each other, all in addition ( and a bit unrelated) to the monsoon; meant that in an area where you perhaps predicted X amount of rain from Monsoon, you had Y amount of additional water coming from an unrelated source.

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4- And that water had no where to go. Remember, the thirsty rivers and parched fields of the summer were already full with monsoon water, they can't absorb this extra water; especially not in the absurdly short time all this water was dumped in one go.

And water flows. So when an area overflowed, it lead to another area, which also was already already full. And these climate disasters struck in a cascade, so one area was already being flooded because of glacier melt, then the floods from ANOTHER area upstream, which had suffered random cloud burst also came through, so it was double the trouble. And the monsoon passed through on it's own merry way.

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5- So a country that was already on the brink was flooded through. Even if you, a random, poor bonded [1] farmer somehow survived, your home was destroyed, your crops destroyed, your animals were killed, and your field will no longer be workable for sometime, even if you wanted or had the ability to work.

And this means that, I, who thankfully lived in the sliver of land NOT affected by all this problems, will soon also be affected in another way; shortages. I went to the market yesterday and food was already short and prices hiked horrifically.

I simply could not afford to buy all my necessary groceries, and in fact could not even if I had the ability, because some of the things simply weren't on the stalls.

And remember this is not 1st world supermarket where foods are graded; I couldn't find even the usual bruised and halfway-to-rotten goods I usually buy. Partly because that tomato I was going to eat was flooded away, but also maybe because the truck it was going to come on was washed away, or maybe the bridge that truck was going to cross no longer exists. Or maybe the people who run these supply chains are dead or injured.

Either way, while I, thankfully, am blessed to somehow afford my groceries regardless, there will be yet additional LARGE group of people, who will be starving simply because the supply chains that fed them are gone.

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6- And the kicker of this all; with all that extra water from glacier melts flooded away and washed down the drain into the Arabian sea, our usual frozen water stores are reduced, and we will have possibly a drought next year. Our luck just doesn't end.

____

Here is an article you might like to read, for more information on the floods and the effects they will have on our economy.

https://profit.pakistantoday.com.pk/2022/08/29/death-devasta...

--- For some bonus misery content [1]:https://www.dw.com/en/life-of-slavery-the-perpetuation-of-bo...

This is very well articulated and sombre. Even as your neighbouring country, we barely registered anything about the devastation in local news. The recent cricket match between India and Pakistan was an order of magnitude more attention grabbing.

It is disappointing not just because of the indifference but because all these “random events” are inevitably going to happen here and cause devastation and chaos at unimaginable scale. We share the same rivers, glaciers, and mountains and the clouds don’t respect land borders. We need to work together to soften the impact of cascading climate disasters.

According to wikipedia: "Pakistan is a regional[21][22][23] and middle power nation,[24][25][26] and has the world's sixth-largest standing armed forces. It is a declared nuclear-weapons state, and is ranked amongst the emerging and growth-leading economies,"

To fight flooding you need to build channels and dams. And you need a bit of planning and understanding the situation on the site. And you don't need dollars for this, just a working force and machinery (if you can build nuclear weapons, i presume you have some). All i can say is that the main issue is corruption and lack of interest (a dam does not generate any money and is difficult to calculate the return of investment). It happens also in western europe ( if that makes you feel better). ("you" here is the general form. I have nothing against you, just replied to your comment)

Thanks, this is one of the best posts I have read in years.

As for poverty, I see that Pakistan's share of world GDP (PPP) is increasing since 1980, now at ~1%. [0]

In France, for example constant since 2008 and diminishing since 2017. [1]

[0] https://www.worldeconomics.com/Share-of-Global-GDP/Pakistan....

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/FRA/france/gdp-gross-d...

Excuse me for being perhaps too honest, but as a person who obviously speaks very good English and is likely to be well educated, why are you still in Pakistan, struggling to buy groceries? You could have a better life abroad.

Your country might have just enough problems to implode, and it is better not to be caught in something like that.

It's impossible to get a visa to leave the country. Watch the parody movie " tere bin laden"

Some people may find it manageable to leave behind all the places and people they ever knew and move to another country. Many would not want to do this.

How so many people if so poor?

We know some areas will flood heavily, 100% chance, so why are there buildings there?

People think about 'dams' and 'technology' when there obviously core issues of civic and social organization.

What we see here is a problem of specific kinds of technology development that allow for mass increase in foodstuffs and other things, that fold over into civilizations that otherwise are not ready for the human capital that it creates.

We think that 'weapons' are the things that disrupt developing areas when maybe it's 'modern farming'.

Why are people in the US moving to Phoenix and Miami? One is gonna be buried under toxic dust from its dried out lake and the other will be permanently underwater. Why does New Orleans exist?

? All those places are and will be just fine.

New Orleans exists because those that live there are (mostly) organized and capable.

Ever heard of this thing called Katrina?

That wasn’t even a dramatically extraordinary weather event but a complete failure on the part of your supposedly capable and organized people.

Katrina was a rare event and New Orleans is just fine.

The volcano that blew up in January increased atmospheric water by 10%. That is a lot, and it is going to come back out. Plus the atmosphere has much more energy than it used to. We will see a lot more extreme weather events.

Are you talking about this (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/tonga-volcano-eruption-t...) one?

Huh, didn't know about this. Another link for those interested:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprece...

Of note as I was curious:

It appears that Pakistan is slightly larger than Texas.

Pakistan could have prevented this with better water management practices/ more dams along the Indus.

No, that's a myth that needs to end.

Yes, in SOME of the places, SOME of the floods water could have been stopped by dams.

But overwhelmingly, the floods are beyond the scope of any damming technology, it's just..... SO-MUCH-WATER! and all of it in in one go, in a very short period of time!

I can't drink a weeks water intake in one gulp.

We had a headworks just break and give way because of the sheer supply of water broke the concrete structure of the barrier. This is a barrage that survived the equally horrific 2010 floods.

And this is besides the fact that a lot of the areas simply aren't dam-able. This is not one big flood, these are multiple, separate floods all occurring in the same time.

A dam on that big river a hundred miles away from me will prevent floods from that direction, but can't do anything about the sudden cloud burst coming from the other direction.

These types of situations have lesser impact if there is good water management.

> the floods are beyond the scope of any damming technology

Claiming this could have been prevented with dams is asinine. But claiming it’s beyond technology is defeatist. 10x surges are never pretty, but they shouldn’t be this bad.

There are water management practices which can manage order of magnitude surges. (There were dams which breached, for instance.) This usually involves creating diversions and dedicated sacrificial zones (flood plains) between the expected surge sites and a reservoir (ideally, the ocean).

If the problem is unaddressable, due to lack of funds or politics, the areas should be de-populated and/or evacuation procedures put in place.

> dedicated sacrificial zones (flood plains)

This requires control where people house and the ability to remove people who do not follow the law. This is not water management infrastructure this is social infrastructure.

> the areas should be de-populated and/or evacuation procedures put in place.

They would populate on their own if were able to move freely. The volume of people displaced however would end up in the "imperial core" and apparently we can't have that

What a great bargaining opportunity! Let's trade their nukes for humanitarian help.

That climate alarmism and slefblaming about how we are collectively responsible for this bother me quite a lot.

It's damn weather! It's bad, it's sad, but it happens. Why we still think that we are more powerful than nature?

If we were more powerful than nature we'd be able to prevent climate change. We aren't hence the reason we're stuck with the mess.

But do you also say as much for smog? It's just weather? It's a very visible instance of us affecting, at least at a local level, the environment.

The precedent of stucking in mess is something that lacks debate with insight. Less emotion and politics, please. Climate is changing, sure. But faith in our ability to change it (same as that is our responsibility) is still faith. Collective guilt do harm more, history proofs that. And it happens over and over (how many people will suffer just because of "green politics?").

Volcanoes spewing smog here and there. It's nature.

It's damn weather! It's bad, it's sad and it's been happening badder and sadder at an exponentially increasing rate over the last 50 years or so, best explained by models in which there is a causal link to human activity.

Ah yes. There are alarmist articles and studies for decades that predicted our extinction because of climate change. But somehow we are still here.

I'm sorry, but I don't belive that individual human beings are cancer of our planet.

It is easy to spread fear and blame others for nature disasters. Then it is much easier to accept new orders to feel safe more. Or defence for a suffering of others. It is basic rule for implementing any totalitarian ideologies.

The earth is cooler now than at most points in history. We're at the tail end of an ice age. Most of the earths history didn't even have ice caps.

That being said...nothing is certain in life. Humans greatest evolutionary advantage is adaptation.

This is heartbreaking and does suck for those involved.

Reference from US government: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hotte...

> Most of the earths history didn't even have ice caps.

Most of Earth's history also didn't have humans. Or animals, even.

Fortunately over the course of Earth's history, the planet managed to develop a climate that was favourable to human life, and now we've gone and destabilised that.

It's not that Earth is immediately inhospitable to human life, but it is disrupting everything that we thought that we could count on. Countries that developed around an abundance of water suddenly have droughts. Other countries get way more water than they're used to. Or it gets more extreme: droughts followed by massive floods.

Also, the climate doesn’t even have to become worse for climate change to be a problem (although it will, and rising sea water levels bring their own problems).

The mere change in weather patterns means that assumptions underlying human civilizations for millennia are not true anymore. You will (we already are) see vast migrations with people resisting the migrators leading to more war and strife. Cities built on the assumption of the presence of clean water will no longer have that clean water anymore leading to the destruction of the city, it’s economy and the lives of the people in it.

The rapid change in climate is a huge problem even if theoretically the climate was somehow becoming more suitable for humans.

For the past 500 million years (with animals) the climate has fluctuated massively both hotter and colder.

The earth is currently in an very normal climate fluctuation.

We're almost right at the mean of the past 500 million years.

Humans aren't impacting the environment even close to as much as natural climate fluctuations.

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