Thankfully, the village was evacuated already, but one person is missing and everyone else’s homes are destroyed. Make no mistake: this is a climate disaster. - ThreadSky

katharinehayhoe.com • 3 days ago

Thankfully, the village was evacuated already, but one person is missing and everyone else’s homes are destroyed.

Make no mistake: this is a climate disaster.

Comments

leinsterlad.bsky.social•3 days ago

Did you see the carbon bomb that Australia just approved ?

Woodside Browse basin gas expansion.
50years
gas given away for free
no royalties
no taxes
no gas for locals
PLUS
world heritage indigenous petroglyph site destruction from the gas plant emissions.

From a "progressive Government" !!

😳😡

leinsterlad.bsky.social•3 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/australiainstitute.org.au/post/3lq7g5t2bls2g

wanderingdutchman.bsky.social•3 days ago

#Australians are paying a high price...
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/extreme-weather-is-australias-new-normal

paogle.bsky.social•3 days ago

Sad story....and it will get worse.

ryankbrook.bsky.social•3 days ago

Horrifying.

My area in Western Canada is on fire earlier and at larger scale than 'normal'...whatever normal is.

wearamask5.bsky.social•1 day ago

The weather forecast for next week predicts (heavy) rainfall for the Lötschen valley region. Great 🥴

wearamask5.bsky.social•2 days ago

I‘m Swiss and my heart hurts. This disaster shows that the Alps are changing rapidly and it’s heartbreaking to know that many of those magical places look so different from what my grandparents saw and experienced.

d2lo.bsky.social•3 days ago

Wow. This is not good.

engineersmit.bsky.social•3 days ago

IMPORTANT: This is Blatten in the Lötschentall and NOT Blatten bei Naters (Belalp)! Two villages, one name - different (but close) location.

judet.bsky.social•2 days ago

Thanks! I wanted to know if there was warning/evacuation but couldn't bring myself to read any of the articles in case it was just too depressing.

wearamask5.bsky.social•2 days ago

Yes there was. They evacuated all the animals as well. Looks like they now evacuated people from Fafleralp, which is further down the Lötschen valley. Because all the roads are blocked.

seaseaseasiders.bsky.social•3 days ago

We need to get the Chinese gov to cut their emissions

katharinehayhoe.com•3 days ago

Yeah no. This is a form of denial.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-just-put-chinas-co2-emissions-into-reverse-for-first-time/

olthwaiteeric.bsky.social•3 days ago

tropenfisch.bsky.social•3 days ago

This is the most prominent recent example of how science protected lives:
By predicting the collapse with incredible precision, people moved out in time and did NOT return within months of waiting.
Just: wowww!

borisboris.bsky.social•2 days ago

Unfortunately, what they can't predict is the exact location and day of the next M6 earthquake, which occurs in this area approximately every 100 years.

cjmoose.bsky.social•2 days ago

Kudos to the Swiss geologists, glaciologists, government officials, et al and to the community itself!

Sadly, if this happened in America, half the population of the village would complain “But muh freedumb!” and would refuse to evacuate. The anti-science/ anti-intellectualism here is exhausting.

melissa4thrivingmt.bsky.social•2 days ago

Yes it is.

damianaswan.bsky.social•2 days ago

Or, more likely now, wouldn't be warned at all.

cjmoose.bsky.social•2 days ago

Yeah, that’s a good (and frightening) point.

classyearlgrey.bsky.social•3 days ago

The video is bone chilling. A warning to us puny humans. And rebuilding there? Maybe helpful to say anything brave in a terrible moment, but I’m thinking that’s not happening. My heart goes out to villagers.

wanderingdutchman.bsky.social•3 days ago

Unfortunately our politicians and consumers need more of these disasters to wake up from their deliberate ignorance.

profraywills.futuresmart.com.au•3 days ago

Lands inundated with liquid floods from atmospheric rivers
Lands inundated with solid floods in avalanches of glacial loss
Lands also inundated with solid floods reported as snow as in Antarctica
https://bsky.app/profile/profraywills.futuresmart.com.au/post/3lqbnkuj5i22z
Not to mention other lands currently reduced by flame and by drought

profraywills.futuresmart.com.au•3 days ago

Snow not really regarded as a flood - but it really is just a solid flood - reported as gain of mass balance in Antarctica
https://bsky.app/profile/profraywills.futuresmart.com.au/post/3loxx4m6tbk2n

cmaguire3.bsky.social•2 days ago

With traitor tACO and his trumplicans in Congress turning the U.S. into a complete circus, sadly, when the time comes, maga clowns will fail to warn US citizens.

profraywills.futuresmart.com.au•2 days ago

In the case of the US, the US citizenry actually voted for a landside to hit their village?
drinking the cool-aid can be fatal
https://bsky.app/profile/profraywills.futuresmart.com.au/post/3lok5angefc2f

elmarveerman.bsky.social•3 days ago

But @theguardian.com fails to mention that. Why?

brianmcentire.bsky.social•3 days ago

Climate "mitigation" won't cut it. We need to leave carbon in the ground and draw down.

katharinehayhoe.com•3 days ago

The first sentence is a bit of a strawman, but yes!

brianmcentire.bsky.social•3 days ago

It feels naive to think humankind can mitigate against uncontrolled heating. Like it's a distraction from (or corporate whataboutism to delay) reversing greenhouse gas pollution. Good pool visualization; an enclosed tank may be more grim and accurate

deepgreendesign.bsky.social•3 days ago

😢

I wonder how many people will be forced to flee their homes from climate disasters in 2025.

phidipdbq.bsky.social•3 days ago

Since pareidolia is a thing. . . does anyone else see an enormous pair of pursed lips in the center toward the top of the photo? Like, I dunno, Mother Nature is pursing her lips in disapproval?

phidipdbq.bsky.social•2 days ago

No? 🤷🏻‍♀️ Just me, then. Aging has the weirdest side effects. Plain as day to me.

anotherdaphne.bsky.social•2 days ago

I always need eyes to make it a face. Huh.

kevinabwhite.bsky.social•3 days ago

There seems to be a climate related disaster everyday. In Canada, wildfires in Manitoba have forced evacuations.

katharinehayhoe.com•3 days ago

That was literally my previous repost 😳

kevinabwhite.bsky.social•3 days ago

Sorry I missed that.
Now it seems that BC and Alberta may also have evacuations. I’m afraid to follow up on these stories.

borisboris.bsky.social•2 days ago

The biggest problem now is rubble and scree over a length of 2 km. And on top of that is the River Lonza. It is currently too dangerous to clear this area, so the likelihood of the valley flooding is high.

cjmoose.bsky.social•2 days ago

I would imagine it adds to the trauma for folks who enjoyed momentary relief seeing the landslide/avalanche miss their house but now realizing now it’s likely going to flood.

h2nick.bsky.social•21 hours ago

Looks like some of the surviving properties are flooded, but the article below says the lake just formed is beginning to drain.

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-recede-swiss-glacier-collapse.html

halfbit.bsky.social•2 days ago

Wer war den jetzt der Vermisste?

nycaju.bsky.social•2 days ago

Ein 64-Jähriger Einwohner, der das Gebiet nicht verlassen hatte.

halfbit.bsky.social•2 days ago

Sowas hatte ich mir gedacht, RIP

dbonowitz.bsky.social•3 days ago

The difference between safety and recovery.

Not sure what could have been done here, but it is entirely possible to design for faster, more widespread recovery from earthquake, hurricane, WUI fire, winter storm, and flood -- all* of which are now extra-fueled by climate change.

*less so for eq.

bethmorgan.bsky.social•2 days ago

We did the Tour du Mont Blanc a few years ago and seeing how far the glaciers on the mountain have receded was really shocking.

referencehs.bsky.social•3 days ago

Climate issues are "woke", so "don't exist". Science in general is "woke" and an "extreme leftist" thing. It's a sad situation. We could have solved many issues already, we chose to ignore them.

veraaraujosoares.bsky.social•3 days ago

In this piece there is no reference to climate. Disappointing. Also… no reference to the role of science in preventing further death. Missed opportunities IMHO

nycaju.bsky.social•2 days ago

It's not disappointing since it's not fully known yet what led to this particular event. Wait for the scientists.

energiegezwitscher.bsky.social•3 days ago

Permafrost is also thawing in the Swiss Alps, resulting in rockfall. In this case, a huge amount of rock landed on the Birch Glacier and destabilized it. A chain reaction due to global warming.

steegs.bsky.social•3 days ago

omg, terrifying

ericallyn.bsky.social•2 days ago

This is the future US Republicans want.

They are trying to eliminate and defund much of what climate-change-related work our federal government was doing.

Which was already not as much as it needed to be!

jdsboston.me•3 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/jdsboston.me/post/3lqc6emzwrk2j

bjking.bsky.social•2 days ago

In the midst of this disaster, I'm gratified to see that focus was kept on rescue of animals as well as people.

cjmoose.bsky.social•2 days ago

They even air lifted Loni the Cow!

An article from last week:

https://apnews.com/article/switzerland-alps-blatten-evacuation-landslide-valais-cows-d587c56f462a8839f2c3269bc3d3f7a2 Swiss evacuate livestock by hoof and helicopter because of landslide risk over Alpine village

melissa4thrivingmt.bsky.social•2 days ago

Last night at a Montana Town Hall a majority of the Republican representatives present said they did not believe in global warming.

ericallyn.bsky.social•2 days ago

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
- Philip K. Dick

It's a truth that too many people don't get. We have a right to our opinions, but reality doesn't give a fuck.

onebluecat.bsky.social•3 days ago

Omg. Awful.😢

y2skot.bsky.social•1 day ago

I hate and fear that the US government now denies climate change is real, much less a threat.

ctwerenbold.bsky.social•2 days ago

The irony of history is that population of Valais rejected the climate law last year. The law provided resources to strengthen adaptability to climate change. In addition, the law provided for CHF 100 million for climate measures

jonaskampus.bsky.social•2 days ago

Is it? Can you provide me with good literature on that? In pieces like this, the people from WSL at ETH Zurich say something different.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/climate-solutions/why-do-swiss-mountains-collapse-its-complicated/89398763

katharinehayhoe.com•2 days ago

This is a good article; if I were quoting only from the peer-reviewed science published on this specific phenomenon to date, I would say the same.

However, there is an important bigger picture here.

Today, every extreme event is now occurring over fundamentally altered background conditions...

katharinehayhoe.com•2 days ago

...so the question is no longer "was this event climate change or not?" but rather "to what extent did climate change make this more likely/bigger/more harmful?"

For most events, that number is neither zero nor 100 but somewhere in between.

Here, we have ice and permafrost involved. So ...

katharinehayhoe.com•2 days ago

... we know that, as Switzerland is already warming 2x faster than the global average, there's no question that it has affected both ice and permafrost.

In the case of this event, even if such a collapse would have happened eventually (which is possible), climate change moved the timeline up.

katharinehayhoe.com•2 days ago

However, as scientists we are highly allergic to Type 1 errors. We prefer to not say whether human-caused climate change was involved until we have extremely precise data in the published literature we can cite. As a result, we often commit Type 2 errors.

A good discussion of this bias here:

katharinehayhoe.com•2 days ago

We must wait for detailed attribution to determine exactly how much climate change accelerated the timeline of this collapse.

However, the balance of the evidence (given the impact of warming on ice and permafrost) suggests a number is greater than zero, and this was a climate-enhanced event. //

akjackson.bsky.social•2 days ago

Yes. As a scientist this has been a concern of mine for years. I keep trying to tell people, scientists are fundamentally conservative, not alarmist. There is a real probability that climate risks have been low-balled because of this.

melvilleandmunro.bsky.social•2 days ago

What is a Type 2 error?

jonaskampus.bsky.social•2 days ago

Thanks. I am aware of that debate and I agree that with many events we no longer need to wait years until the causation is fully established to point out its linkages to the climate crisis. I wrote about this after last year's devastating storms (in German tho)

https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/klimastreik-menschen-verlieren-ihr-leben-wegen-klimakrise-139643950838

jonaskampus.bsky.social•2 days ago

But my question is whether this primary linkage to climate change exists. As far as I read the reports, glacier melting was not the problem but rather the rock mass on top of it that may have become unstable due to thawing permafrost, correct? Is that also the line of causation you draw?

katharinehayhoe.com•2 days ago

Why do you think the permafrost was thawing?

And – the fact that you’re asking a question which is a strawman suggests you didn’t read my response very carefully, as I mentioned permafrost already. Did you miss that?

jonaskampus.bsky.social•2 days ago

I think you may misunderstand my intention behind my questions. My knowledge on this matter is solely based on media articles and I got confused because I have been reading to certain degree contradicting things.

theshippingprayer.bsky.social•2 days ago

No, they don't - they say that the data for large events like this one is ambiguous, in large part due to their relative scarcity. It's fair to say we don't know for sure that climate change caused this event, but it's also fair to say that climate change will cause more catastrophes like this one

passem.bsky.social•3 days ago

We can’t ignore global warming

boy-rat.bsky.social•2 days ago

Unfortunately Trump doesn’t care about anything or anyone but himself

We could tell him that in the next 40-60 years, his beloved Mar-a-Lago will be under water

But he knows he’ll be dead long before that and has absolutely no thought of anything thing else bu himself

scribessanctuary.bsky.social•2 days ago

Unfortunately, Danielle Smith doesn't give a damn about climate crisis either. I don't think she skis at all.
It's all about big oil and govt subsidies in Alberta.

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