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03/09/2026

STOEP CHAT

by Melanie Gosling

3rd September 2026

Fossil Fuels Caused Nepal’s Devastating Flood

I was utterly gobsmacked at the videos showing the massive flood tearing down the river valley in Nepal last week.
People fleeing as a giant wave smashed up the border post buildings, sweeping away cars and buses like leaves.
There had been no big rains, so what had caused this huge, sudden flood?
In a nutshell: global warming.
One excellent video explained it all.
The first, incorrect, reports were that an earthquake had caused the massive flood because seismic instruments around the world had recorded what appeared to be a 5.2 magnitude earthquake just before the floodwaters hit. But by looking at satellite images scientists soon realised that the seismic wave had not come from underground, but from a giant chunk of mountain and glacier that had broken off in the Himalayas 20km north of the Nepal/Tibet border.
This fell 1200m into the valley at such speed that when it landed it created huge vibrations on seismic instruments. It appeared to be an earthquake, but as the video explained, “the mountain itself was the earthquake”.
It was a rock-ice avalanche.
These usually travel for a short time and then peter out, but this one travelled about 40km down the valley at enormous speed. Why? Because of something called “entrainment”.
Entrainment occurs when a flowing substance picks up and drags along other fluids or solids with it. That’s what happened in Nepal. The moving avalanche of rock and ice was so powerful that when it landed in the river below, it scooped up all the water, mud and boulders in the river and swept this along. It became what is called a “debris flow”. It has the consistency of wet concrete, “but travelling at highway speeds and carrying boulders the size of cars”.
It was not a river overflowing its banks, “it was a mountain that had turned itself into a flood”, the video said.
That boggles the mind.
Why did the glacier and mountain collapse?
Because of global warming.
Satellite images show that glaciers in the Himalayas have been melting for decades. So has permafrost, which is basically frozen ground where rock, sand and soil are held together by ice.
This permafrost acts like natural glue on high mountain slopes, but global warming is causing it to thaw.
“Rock walls that have been frozen solid for thousands of years are now becoming unstable. The International Centre for Integrated
Development has been warning for years that floods, landslides and glacial collapses in the Himalayas have been increasing in both frequency and severity.”
Many go unnoticed by the public because they are not near towns and villages. Not this one. The death toll is already over 900 and around 4000 people are still missing.
The morgues cannot cope. Authorities are taking DNA samples from bodies before burying them. They hope in time to match the dead with living relatives.
The world sees all this, but carries on burning oil, coal and gas, creating climate-changing emissions that are increasing.
So what’s to be done?
Economist Richard Denniss says: “It’s not climate change that needs to be tackled. It is the political power of the fossil fuel industry.”

02/09/2026

https://www.actionads.co.za/edition/action-ads-knysna-issue-1974-2026-09-03/

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27/08/2026

STOEP CHAT

by Melanie Gosling

27th August 2026

Black Rhino Teenagers Hang Out Together

Any of you who have been on trail in game reserves will know how scary it is when your ranger takes you into thick bush because that is where you find black rhino.
Unlike their placid white rhino cousins, black rhino are quite fierce and charge anything that comes into their territory.
Interesting new black rhino research dropped into my inbox today from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). WWF has been running a programme for 23 years to increase numbers of these seriously endangered animals by transporting some to new areas to start new breeding populations.
A fantastic programme.
They have moved 270 black rhino and created 17 new populations on a total of 360,000ha of land. You’ve probably seen photographs of rhino being transported by helicopter, blindfolded and dangling beneath the chopper by their legs. What a sight!
Anyway, because each of these new black rhino populations has been closely monitored, many with tracking devices, there is now a stack of data about them that some scientists have dug into to see what they can find.
An interesting thing they discovered was that black rhino are not always as solitary as was thought, but go through phases of being social in small groups. And guess what? Many black rhino “teenagers” like to hang out together in a group - just like humans.
But not all of them. Researchers have found that those teenaged rhino that do hang out together grow into less aggressive adults. So if managers are deciding which rhino to capture to move to a new area, they suggest taking those that were “social teenagers” because these rhino are less likely to engage in territorial fights – which can end up with one killing the other.
I remember a ranger, Dave Reynolds, who was almost killed by a black rhino while leading a walking trail at Lake St Lucia in KZN back in the late 1980s I think. He told me that when he saw the rhino charging he instinctively raised his r***e.
“But I knew how threatened these rhino were and I couldn’t shoot it,” he said.
I don’t recall if he got off a warning shot, but either way the animal smacked into him and gored him in the groin. He was badly injured but survived to tell the tale.
The story has an interesting twist. Dave and his wife had been married for some years but didn’t have children. Some time after he had been gored, Dave’s wife became pregnant.
Well, for many locals that just confirmed what they believed: that rhino horn increases a man’s virility.
All nonsense of course, but Dave was called Ubhejane after that, meaning black rhino in Zulu.
I remember his amusement when he moved up north to work at a Lowveld game reserve.
“When I got here from Zululand, the guys already knew me as Ubhejane. The story had travelled all this way,” he chuckled.
I’ve always admired Dave’s enormous courage and commitment to conservation.
Not many could face down a charging black rhino and think about the animal’s survival rather than his own.

26/08/2026

https://www.actionads.co.za/edition/action-ads-knysna-issue-1973-2026-08-27/

Edition 1973 - 27 August 2026

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20/08/2026

STOEP CHAT

by Melanie Gosling

20th August 2026

Toll Road to Take Trucks out of Town?

Three road accidents involving trucks in four days - and two people killed.
What will it take to get the N2 bypass built so freight trucks can stay out of Knysna?
It looks as if the answer may be a toll road.
It’s crazy that if you want to go, say, from the bank to a coffee shop, you have to cross a national highway. Remember the woman who was killed by a passing truck near the post office as she waited to cross the road?
I’m pretty sure truck drivers would welcome an N2 bypass, but I hear some locals think a bypass might mean lost business. I said that to a business friend who laughed: “What? They’re worried truck drivers won’t stop for that pie anymore?”
Seriously, how many residents – and tourists, who underpin Knysna’s economy - want the stink, noise, congestion and danger of trucks travelling through town?
The road authorities recognised this in the 1960s and 1970s and proclaimed a new N2 route north of town. But there was a public outcry because some sections went through forest, and the bypass was shelved.
It kinda feels that Knysna lost its chance. The proclaimed road reserve is still there - the land State procured for the N2 bypass – but the money is not.
Randall Cable, Western Cape head of the SA National Roads Agency Ltd (SANRAL), said because of increased development on the Garden Route, this section of the N2 had to serve competing functions of “mobility” – how fast goods and people could travel - and “accessibility” – how easily people could reach their jobs, shops, schools etc. This increased road safety concerns and slowed traffic flow.
“The ultimate solution is to build the N2 on the proclaimed road reserve of the 1960s/1970s. However, with severe budget constraints, this is only likely to happen in the distant future.”
Another problem: people moved in and built houses on part of the N2 road reserve, roughly between Simola and the Uniondale Road, so SANRAL donated this settled land to the Knysna Municipality around 2016/17.
But that means other land has to be found to replace it, which is “very tricky” because the land to the north is more mountainous.
“That means tunnels and long bridges which have high costs.”
So: a desperate need for a bypass, but no money to build it.
“There is one way to bring this bypass forward and that is as a toll road,” Randall said.
Would people be willing to pay tolls to have the N2 out of Knysna? I think truckers would vote with their wheels.
Over 90% of freight in the Western Cape is moved on the N1, N2 and N7. Drive Alive says “high density freight routes on the Garden Route, like Knysna and Plettenberg Bay, have a history of heavy vehicle accidents, heavily impacting passenger vehicles.”
We saw that last week with the tragic death of two Knysna residents.
Knysna needs to have a serious conversation about this: How badly do we need a bypass, and if there is no money to build it, will we support a toll road?

20/08/2026

https://www.actionads.co.za/edition/action-ads-knysna-issue-1972-2026-08-20/

Edition 1972 - 20 August 2026

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19/08/2026

13/08/2026

STOEP CHAT

by Melanie Gosling

13th August 2026

Humans Cause Wildlife to Evolve

Did you know that some birds living in cities have changed their songs so they can be heard above the roar of traffic?
Most of us love hearing birds sing, but of course they don’t sing for our entertainment. They do so to mark their territories and to attract mates, so it’s a serious problem if they cannot hear each other.
And guess what? Researchers at the Centre of Ecological Research in Hungary have found that in order to be heard in noisy cities, some species of songbirds not only sing more loudly than they do in the wild, but they actually change the frequency of their songs, making them higher pitched. They also sing for longer and some even change notes.
Clever birds.
Something else I found interesting recently is that some scientists say that humans – who took millions of years to evolve – have now become the world’s greatest force for evolutionary change.
Take elephant poaching for example. Humans have killed elephants on a massive scale for the illegal ivory trade. Poaching was particularly rife in the Gorongosa National Park during the Mozambican civil war. Researchers have now found that this intense poaching has actually changed the elephants’ evolution. Because poachers targeted elephants with tusks, those without tusks survived to breed – and so tuskless ellies in Gorongosa have now become dominant.
Then there are lizards. The BBC reported last week that anole lizards in Puerto Rican cities have evolved longer legs with many more lamellae - microscopic hair-like thingies on their feet that enable them to stick to walls.
In nature lizards walk mainly on rough surfaces, but in cities they often have to walk on super smooth surfaces like glass and metal – which can also become extremely hot. In response these lizards have evolved longer legs to keep their bodies further away from the hot surfaces and have grown more lamellae so they can walk on glass and metal.
The article also described how some fish species have evolved to become smaller because of commercial fisheries targeting the big fish. This results in a larger number of smaller fish and they breed to produce smaller fish like themselves.
But the wild animals that can adapt to humans changing the planet are the lucky ones, and they are in the minority.
As we heat the planet, mainly with coal and oil emissions, we create more extreme weather – floods, droughts, fires – and most wildlife, animals and plants, cannot adapt to this rapid change.
To be safe from the worst of global warming, we have to keep the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C. We have already reached 1.1°C.
But there are hopeful signs: the sale of electric vehicles rose by 25% in 2025. Renewable energy, mainly solar and wind, overtook coal electricity production last year – an historic first.
We need to keep our foot on the pedal of clean energy, for all the millions of animals and plants that cannot adapt to how humans are changing the planet.
And as Nelson Mandela said, let’s hope world leaders make choices that reflect our hopes, not our fears.

12/08/2026

https://www.actionads.co.za/edition/action-ads-knysna-issue-1971-2026-08-13/

Edition 1971 - 13 August 2026

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