{"id":473259,"date":"2026-09-23T06:14:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T13:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=473259"},"modified":"2026-09-23T06:14:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T13:14:59","slug":"biting-the-hand-that-feeds-nepal-demands-climate-cash-while-blaming-us-for-its-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=473259","title":{"rendered":"Biting The Hand That Feeds: Nepal Demands Climate Cash While Blaming Us For Its Disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From The CO2 Coalition<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Angela Wheeler<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nepal Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal\u2019s request for a foreign response<\/a> to his country\u2019s disastrous Himalayan flood would be better made as an appeal to the charitable instincts of people than as a demand for compensation from climate sinners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khanal connects the August 26 flood to the popular narrative that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2<\/sub>) cause dangerous atmospheric warming and the melting of mountain glaciers, which, so the logic goes, produces floods like the one that killed his countrymen. \u201cClimate justice\u201d reasoning is that industrialized countries such as neighboring India and China bear more responsibility for the disaster than does Nepal, whose per capita income ranking<\/a> is less than five on a global scale of 1-100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khanal\u2019s framing begins with a vacuous political claim that someone else must pay and ignores realities of the physical world, adopting the false premise that CO2<\/sub> emissions have made weather worse. He apparently embraces the notion that computer models can assign a dollar value to damages inflicted by increases in the destructiveness of natural disasters. For the foreign minister, an apocalyptic narrative used for a decade to advance net-zero policy is an observed fact rather than an implausibly extreme scenario treated as destiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A century of observations shows no CO2<\/sub>-driven march toward more heat waves, hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires. Many of those hazards peaked in earlier decades or have declined. Record U.S. heat still belongs to the 1930s. Hurricane activity has not followed the alarmist script. Wildfire intensity is inseparable from fuel loads and land management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A report<\/a> by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that \u201cquantifies climate damages\u201d merely assumes worsening weather with rising CO2<\/sub> without even attempting to establish a link<\/a>. The National Academies uses computer-generated models of a world with no industrial CO2<\/sub> emissions to divine how much milder the weather would be. That is a fabrication for use in a liability case, not a finding of fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Studies that purportedly attribute worsening weather to emissions have multiplied because \u201cclimate scientists\u201d have been rewarded with research grants, not because physics demonstrates evidence of a connection. Saying the Nepal flood would have been milder on a planet without industrial CO\u2082 is not evidence that floods have grown more common or more destructive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once those exercises are treated as proof of causation, Nepal\u2019s Khanal would say, energy producers \u201cwhose historical contribution to greenhouse gases is much bigger than ours\u201d are to be made defendants in civil courts facing billions of dollars in liabilities. This demagoguery makes villains of businesses whose products \u2013 coal, oil, and natural gas \u2013 have powered electric grids, transportation systems, and factories that have lifted living standards worldwide. The fertilizers and medicines derived from these hydrocarbon feedstocks nourish and enhance the health of billions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nepal\u2019s own development depends on fossil fuels. Transport runs on imported diesel and gasoline. Cooking and industry use liquefied petroleum gas and coal. Coal is necessary for production of cement, which is integral to the infrastructure of the country\u2019s hydroelectric system and highways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asian neighbors and Western countries demonized for \u201cclimate failings\u201d have supported Nepal\u2019s building of high-voltage lines, tunnels, bridges, vehicles, and other blessings of modernity. Foreign Minister Khanal is biting hands engaged in feeding his country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of this diminishes the tragedy of the thousands of dead and missing in August\u2019s awful flood. Nonetheless, compassion does not require surrendering facts to accommodate what amounts to a scam. There is no evidence of carbon dioxide emissions precipitating the Nepal flood or any other disaster. Even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared as implausible its most extreme predictions of global warming. The most likely cause<\/a> of the flood has been identified as the failure of bedrock underlying a glacier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than climate apostates to blame, Nepal needs modern technology and better land-use practices to protect people as much as possible from the risk of nature\u2019s brutality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, the country has reportedly received $820 million in aid<\/a>, which suggests that at least some of the developed world is more charitable than villainous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally published in Washington Examiner<\/a><\/em> on September 22, 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Angela Wheeler<\/a> is executive director of the<\/em> CO2<\/sub><\/em> Coalition<\/em><\/a>, Fairfax, Virginia. She is a cum laude graduate of Emporia State University, Kansas, where she studied communication, with additional biology and pre-medicine coursework.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nepal Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal connects the August 26 flood to the popular narrative that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) cause dangerous atmospheric warming and the melting of mountain glaciers, which, so the logic goes, produces floods like the one that killed his countrymen. <\/p>\n

Asian neighbors and Western countries demonized for \u201cclimate failings\u201d have supported Nepal\u2019s building of high-voltage lines, tunnels, bridges, vehicles, and other blessings of modernity. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":473273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"Nepal's demand for climate compensation ignites debate on accountability, aid, and the reality of natural disaster causation amidst political narratives.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"Nepal's Floods: Misplaced Blame and Climate Accountability","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691819772,691842147,691835486,691829997,691845631,691818228,691836315,691845630,691824179],"class_list":["post-473259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-asia","tag-climate-justice-2","tag-climate-scientists-2","tag-carbon-dioxide-co","tag-climate-sinners","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-india-and-china","tag-nepal","tag-united-nations-un","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1Z7d","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":468602,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=468602","url_meta":{"origin":473259,"position":0},"title":"Nepal\u2019s tragic flood was nature, not climate","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"09\/05\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"When natural disaster strikes, climate charlatans pounce. 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