Nepal Wants a $5 Billion Climate Handout from UN for a Himalayan Bedrock Collapse
Nepal’s request should be rejected unless the U.N. would likewise fund U.S. recovery from a San Andreas earthquake or Cascadia tsunami.
The death toll from the Himalayan landslide and subsequent flash flood in Nepal and an adjacent region in China continues to rise, and thousands are still missing.
The death toll following the massive flash flooding along the Nepal-Tibet border climbed on Wednesday to 1,114 in Nepal, officials said, as the country’s leader said his government would begin to shift its focus toward “rehabilitation.”
The Nepali government’s estimate for the missing remained at 3,916, the National Disaster Management Authority said in an update posted on social media at 9 a.m. local time.
The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it was tracking around 75 Americans who were unaccounted for across the Nepal-Tibet cross-border region. Fourteen Americans had made their way to safety, the department said.
Earlier this week, I noted that it is premature and politically opportunistic to attribute this disaster to climate change since the immediate trigger remains under investigation and no formal attribution study has been completed. I reviewed the Himalaya’s long-running tectonic activity, steep terrain, monsoon dynamics, avalanches, and glacier-bed processes that offer more plausible explanations, while acknowledging a regional scientific body says it is too early to determine climate change’s role in this specific event.
Back in 2025, I reported that President Donald Trump rescinded $4 billion in outstanding U.S. pledges to a United Nations Green Climate Fund (an initiative supposedly designed to help struggling nations adapt to the rapidly changing world). With that move, Trump halted the transfer of wealth from American taxpayers to politically-connected bureaucrats and the climate cultist minions.
It’s a good thing he did. A Nepali politician is already knocking on the United Nations’ door asking for a climate-handout.
Putting the cost of recovery at $5 billion, a senior Nepali official said his country had requested urgent financial help from the United Nations’ special fund for climate-disaster recovery.
The official, Maheshwar Dhakal, the climate change chief in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Environment, explicitly asserted that human-caused climate had been a factor in last week’s horrific glacial collapse and flooding. In an interview on Monday he framed the event as an inequity in which decades of greenhouse-gas emissions from richer nations are harming vulnerable countries like his that can’t cope.
“Those who have contributed the least are suffering the most,” said Mr. Dhakal, who shared a letter his government sent to the fund’s board and that echoed that language.
It was a version of this argument, used for years at international climate conferences, that persuaded negotiators to agree to the special U.N. climate fund in 2023, after years of talks.
Nepal wants $5 billion from UN climate find that only has $820 million and that faces claims of $2.8 billion from 119 other countries. Trump villainized for reneging on Biden's pledge of $17.5 million because that would make a meaningful difference?https://t.co/nYNvW0Wgmo pic.twitter.com/uzk5lWkJcu
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) September 1, 2026
As it turns out, I was right to focus heavily on the geology of the Himalayas in my earlier piece. The root cause of that landslide was weak bedrock that took the overlaying glacier with it.
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.”
Dr. Matthew M. Wielicki, Director of the US Global Change Research Program, says this information changes the story.
That distinction matters. This was fundamentally a geologic mass-failure event involving bedrock, which then mobilized ice, rock, sediment, and water downstream… not simply a glacier spontaneously collapsing because of warming.
Well, this changes the story considerably.
The initial headlines called this a “glacial collapse.” Satellite analysis now indicates the major failure was a massive bedrock collapse beneath the glacier.
That distinction matters. This was fundamentally a geologic mass-failure… https://t.co/5vGx4ND8Iz pic.twitter.com/SyHWx1tP0s
— Dr. Matthew M. Wielicki (@MatthewWielicki) August 31, 2026
Tectonic forces along colliding plate boundaries can substantially weaken rock, creating dense networks of fractures that leave slopes far more vulnerable to failure. This fact helps explain why landslides can be so frequent and destructive in active plate collision zones….like the Himalayas.
The Nepal landslide was an Earth-caused disaster.
Nepal’s request should be rejected unless the United Nations is prepared to apply the same standard consistently, such as providing the United States with climate-recovery money after a catastrophic San Andreas Fault earthquake or a Cascadia Subduction Zone rupture and tsunami.
The Earth does not need climate change to produce earthquakes, landslides, and tsunamis, and turning every natural disaster into a climate-money shakedown is neither science nor justice.
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Comments
Flooded many towns and caused hundreds of dollars in damage.
Originating from collapsed bedrock, and with the root cause being geology.
Florida would take $5 billion from the U.N. for its next hurricane. One is as likely as the other.
Nepal is a mountainous country. The Himalayas are known to be unstable. Fact of life. Learn to prepare.
As I recall, the UN’s IPCC created the global warming scam, and hired Al “I would be president and I created the internet” Gore as their PR man. As such, if they pretend to believe the shit they spew, they should pay Nepal for the “effects” of their creation.
The Himalayas are the youngest mountain range on earth and they are still growing. Do these climate activist morons think the earth just went into suspended animation the moment they were born?
This was fundamentally a geologic mass-failure event
AKA, erosion.
So where does the UN get that kind of money?
They have no taxing power… unless some local suckers somewhere gave it to them.
I’d like a handout too please. My energy bills are up this year because of green subsidies. About 10M is sufficient. Thank you.
Are you in Massachusetts? Nine line items of charges on every electric bill vs. 3 at our Florida home.
How many of those line items are compulsory “charity” to “help” those who sit at home and watch TV all day rather than actually working?
Note: if someone really truly can’t work due to injury or infirmities, yeah. Help ’em out. But not to those who think they are owed food and utilities and much more as reparations.
Yes which is why I mention it. Subsidies to green producers while the green idiots fight against replacing or expanding gas pipelines to meet increasing demand. Irritates the hell out of me.
“As it turns out, I was right to focus heavily on the geology of the Himalayas in my earlier piece. The root cause of that landslide was weak bedrock that took the overlaying glacier with it.”
As I said in a comment to the first post concerning this event, this was not a “glacier collapse” as that’s complete BS. The bedrock erosion will be blamed on increased glacial melt due to climate change, but this is a usual process of glaciers whether they are retreating or advancing – they are constantly melting and much of the surface meltwater goes down moulins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moulin_(geomorphology)) and flows beneath the glacier (it also melts at the ice/rock interface). This water lubricates the underside of the glacier and is, in part, responsible for its flow downhill (with the major contribution coming from the mass of the ice and snow uphill, which pushes the lower part of the glacier forward). Naturally, this water makes its way into the bedrock under the glacier and, given enough time, can make it prone to give way, as it may have done here. These are natural events that take place everywhere there are glaciers and they are at work at all times. Attributing any of these processed to “climate change” is beyond science and borders on religion.
My blood simply boils too hot when I read the blather, daily, about climate catastrophe. It boggles the mind that I could be certain that I know what caused a half degree (C) rise in the last hundred fifty years. It’s simply not large enough to find a physical cause.’
Climate Statistics Professor Dr. Caleb Rossiter of American University
http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/09/23/politically-left-scientist-dissents-calls-president-obama-delusional-on-global-warming/
It’s a religion really, It’s totally unscientific.
James Lovelock (creator of the “Gaia” hypothesis)
http://www.climatedepot.com/2016/10/01/green-guru-james-lovelock-reverses-belief-in-global-warming-now-says-im-not-sure-the-whole-thing-isnt-crazy/
Whether Nepal is enthusiastic about it or not, they are a client-state of China. Given the size of China’s economy surely they can extend a loan of S 5B USD without much strain.
Loan? Surely it should be a strings free gift. Beijing are the largest contributor to climate change by a huge margin, yet the climate change crowd largely refuse to hold them accountable. Why shouldn’t they pay if climate change is real?
Someone should advise Nepal: they don’t need $5 billion from the UN, they can just open a Learing Center in Minnesota. MN voters will support it 100%!
They don’t want any help, refused rescue teams from other countries
But they want $5,000,000,000 billion dollars from the UN
Ie
USA
The UN. NATO. USAID. And on and on and on. They are big global money laundering schemes taking in almost exclusively US taxpayer money to “solve” problems and “keep the peace” all over the world. But nothing actually gets solved, and any truly successful UN operation, peacekeeping included, are fictional accounts told by bought/paid for main stream media propagandists. The California NGO’s operate on the same model as the UN et al. 1. Take massive amounts of US taxpayer money. 2. Pay themselves first. 3. Pay their paymasters second. 4. Use the remaining money to grow the problem they say they’re trying to fix. 5. Demand more US taxpayer money because they are so close to success. 6. Repeat.
According to the Climate Cult all the glaciers would be melted by 2010 and the ocean boiling by 2015 so how could this have happened? Well? WELL????
Go sell crazy somewhere else Nepal, we’re all full here.
Here comes the gimme gimme crowd. But wait, didn’t they say it was Trump’s fault?
If it’s up to a UN vote they will get their payout.
There is nothing the Climate Change scam can’t do.