Some environmentalists and scientists are blaming global warming for the historic flooding across the Midwest, adding to the long list of disasters that eager activists link to climate change.
But is the scientific connection between historic Midwest floods and global warming very strong? No, it’s not.
A “bomb cyclone” led to sudden, devastating floods across the Midwest and Great Plains that left at least three people dead, according to reports. Officials say it’s the worst flooding in 50 years.
While most in the media largely stayed away from connecting Midwest flooding to climate change, environmentalists were quick to make the connection, claiming the science was on their side.
Bill McKibben, a prominent environmentalist who made headlines protesting the Keystone XL oil pipeline, proclaimed “[s]cientists confirm climate change” was at work in the historic Midwest flooding.
Scientists confirm climate change played role in the insane flooding now covering much of the Midwest (which is apparently invisible to coastal newsrooms)https://t.co/JXZEAX6G9v
— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) March 18, 2019
The article McKibben linked to, however, only mentions a “changing climate” once, but does discuss the myriad of other, likely more important factors, that contributed to the massive flooding, like rainfall piling up over frozen ground.
The liberal blog ThinkProgress claimed Midwest floods were a “terrifying preview of climate impacts to come,” though the article relied heavily on comments from environmental activists.
“This level of flooding is becoming the new normal,” John Hickey, Sierra Club’s Missouri chapter director, told ThinkProgress.
Other environmental activists attacked major media outlets, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, for not linking Midwest flooding to global warming.
Environmental policy experts were quick to point out the lack of science behind such claims.
#EnoughWithTheAlarmism
Alarmists annoyed that NYTimes don’t blame global warming when writing about the floodingThis is ridiculous
Even US Climate Assessment “have not established a significant connection of increased riverine flooding to human-induced climate change” https://t.co/dNz0fwysMO
— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) March 19, 2019
The 2018 National Climate Assessment (NCA) found that “formal attribution approaches have not established a significant connection of increased riverine flooding to human-induced climate change.”
Likewise, the NCA noted that “a variety of other compounding factors, including local land use, land-cover changes, and water management also play important roles.”
Land-cover was an extremely important factor in the Midwest floods. Heavy rain fell onto the snow-covered frozen ground. Rain and snowmelt ran off into already ice-covered rivers, which rose and sent massive chunks of ice downstream, breaking infrastructure and damming up the river.
More than 70 cities across Nebraska declared emergencies amid historic floods. Thousands of people across four states were forced to evacuate because river flooding breached nearly 200 miles of levees, CBS News reported.
The Mississippi and Missouri rivers also saw widespread flooding. Residents in western Illinois saw the worst floods in 50 years, according to The Chicago Tribune.
Many homes in Holt County, Missouri were sitting in up to seven feet of water from river flooding, The Associated Press reported.
Oddly enough, the Nebraska-based Omaha World-Herald got comments from two scientists who gave rather broad statements on the connection between global warming and extreme rainfall.
Former NASA climate scientist James Hansen said: “the strongest storms are getting stronger with global warming” because warmer air has more moisture.
Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann, the creator of the controversial “hockey stick graph,” told the World-Herald that some studies show factors behind “bomb cyclones” are increasing due to climate change.
“There is evidence now in modeling studies that climate change is increasing these factors, supporting the development of more intense bomb cyclones and Nor’easters, packing tropical storm-scale winds and dumping huge amounts of precipitation (often in the form of huge snowfalls),” Mann said.
However, atmospheric scientist Ryan Maue shot back, saying that Hansen and Mann were giving generalized explanations of modeled climate impacts instead of gathering actual data on the flood event.
Why not actually do some analysis, collect some data, formulate a hypothesis, then test it through formal detection attribution procedures?
Of course, that’s not the goal here at all — instead it’s politics. It will protect and help no one from the next flood or disaster.
— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) March 18, 2019
Read more at Daily Caller
Every Year, thousands and thousands of acres paved, cemented, ect. Guess where the water goes? Are we surprised when we flood?
Guess where the water goes?
WHOAA! That is deep man. Let me take a stab at it anyway… Steams, creeks, brooks and rivers????
Are we surprised when we flood? No. For instance; Two conditions are present which will make the opening of the next spring a season of apprehension. In Virginia and all through the Middle State, s except in Northern New York, there are vast deposits of snow and unusual thickness of ice in the rivers and lakes. The event of having unusually disastrous floods is therefore only a question of weather.
A “bomb cyclone” led to sudden, devastating floods across the Midwest and Great Plains that left at least three people dead, according to reports. Officials say it’s the worst flooding in 50 years.” And 50 years ago the CO2 level was….?
These are just a sampling of tens of thousands of articles reporting spring storm & flood devastation PRIOR TO 1915. More than 100 years ago. Anyone know what the CO2 level was back then?
Phillips County Freeman, 27 Jan 1881, Thu
Two conditions are present which will make the opening of the next spring a season of apprehension. In Virginia and all through the Middle State, s except in Northern New York, there are vast deposits of snow and unusual thickness of ice in the rivers and lakes. The event of having unusually disastrous floods is therefore only a question of weather. If day succeeds day with sunny warmth and slow disintegration of the great drifts, all will be well. But if the rain descends, the snows melt suddenly and the rivers break up in flood, there is the certainty not only of the enormous damage which a simple rise of waters causes along swift rivers, but of the ice dams which concentrate and intensify disaster. For many years the two potent causes of great spring floods, namely, thick ice and deep snow, have never appeared with so threatening aspects as they do now.
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Nebraska State Journal, 31 Mar 1912, Sun
RIVER’S HIGH MARK NOTHING IN HISTORY APPROACHES PRESENT SITUATION, PLATTE COVERS GREAT AREA SERIOUS EAST OF FREMONT AND NEAR ASHLAND. Transportations Lines Further Hampered and Lives of Residents on Lowlands Placed in Jeopardy”
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The Daily Commercial Herald, 08 Apr 1893, Sat
SPRING CYCLONES- MUCH DAMAGE DONE THROUGH ILLINOIS, The Plymouth Hotel at Chicago Collapses–So Does the Building Intended for the Gettysburg Panorama.
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Lincoln Star, 01 Apr 1912, Mon, 4
WATER RECEDING IN EASTERN NEBRASKA… The crest of the worst flood Nebraska has seen since 1881…
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The Western Spirit, 23 Mar 1894, Fri
THE SPRING CYCLONE. It Strikes the Lone Star State with Disastrous Effect Many Persons Killed and Injured.
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Lincoln Star, 10 Mar 1903, Tue
FLOODS WASH OUT RAILROAD BRIDGES…..
DESERT THE TOWN Proposition to Open Levee at Shawneetown, ILL., and Allow River to Enter.
GREAT DANGER OF DISASTER
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The Tribune Leader, 22 Mar 1895, Fri
From Brewton and Eufala comes news of great damage to farms and destruction to cattle. The worst fatality “occurred on the Coosa river, 30 miles above this place. A waterspout burst and the river rose out of its banks, unlodged the house of Jacob Anderson and carried him, his wife and baby down the stream. The house was wrecked upon a rock and the three inmates drowned. A negro servant saved his life by catching the limb of a tree as the house sped down stream. Hundreds of cattle were drowned and fifty to a hundred barns were wrecked. Three men who were logging on the Coosa have not been seen since the storm and are thought to have, been lost.
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Chicago Tribune, 20 Mar 1897, Sat
DEATH LIST IS BIG. Floods Cause Great Loss of Life in the South. LEVEES ARE SWEPT AWAY Rivers in Several States Overflow Their Banks. FARMERS FLEE FOR SAFETY. Damage to Property by Inundation Will Be Enormous. SEVERE CYCLONE IN MISSISSIPPI.
LOSS OF LIFE GREAT IN ARKANSAS. Many Dead Are Reported In the Submerged District Along the Mississippi River,
FIVE PERSONS DROWNED IN ALABAMA. Dead Bodies Taken from the “Warrior River, but They Are Not Identified.
CYCLONE PASSES OVER MISSISSIPPI. No Lives Are Lost, but Considerable Damage Is Done to Farming Property.
RIVERS ARE RISING IN ARKANSAS. It Is Thought the Worst Will Not Be Experienced Before Next Sunday.
RICH FARMING LAND IS SUBMERGED. Enormous Damage Result from the Floods In the Vicinity of Cairo, ILL.
SUBURBS OF MILWAUKEE INUNDATED. Wisconsin Rivers Overflow Their Banks and Cause Disastrous Washouts.
COUNCIL BLUFFS IS THREATENED. Missouri Is on the Rampage and Is Being Swollen Rapidly by Its Tributaries.
NEARING DANGER LINE IN IOWA. Ice Passing Out of the Streams and Water Rising Rapidly at All Points.
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The Record-Union, 28 Mar 1881, Mon
Destruction to property in Nebraska caused by ice gorges
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The Columbus Journal, 27 Apr 1881, Wed
High Waters. The second rise last week in the Missouri river at Omaha marked on the 23d inst. twenty-three feet and four inches above low water mark, being sixteen inches higher than the rise of two weeks ago.
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The Nebraska State Journal, 15 Apr 1881, Fri
Hundreds of People Yet Missing and Thousands Destitute. Twenty Families in One place Still Inaccessible to relief’. Yankton, April 13.
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National Republican, 28 Mar 1881, Mon
DISASTROUS FLOOD. The Platte Valley Under Water – Great Destruction.
Omaha,- Neb., March 27. The Platte Valley, about seventy-five miles west of this place is the scene of the most disastrous flood experienced in the history of the Union Pacific Railroad. The Platte is a broad and shallow….
This is all brand-new, never before happened, except for Global Warming.
Who knew that it warmed in the Spring and melted snow, and filled the rivers!?!? Must be…Global Warming.
Now, just hand over all power to us elite few and we will tell you peasants how to live your lives properly.
Phooie on their Bird and bat maiming Windturbines lets quit blowing all our dollars on silly pipe dreams of the Eco-Freaks let them run their homes on their liberal stupidity we need to end all this nonsense and defurnd the New Green Scam
Before man built a series a levees along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers they both flooded often with devastating results. Taming both rivers has been a long fought battle, sometimes man wins and sometimes nature wins. It will continue like this forever or until man moves out of the area’s that often flood.
Take the money and effort wasted on wind turbines and spend it on solid levees.
New Orleans and Katrina demonstrated the folly of penny – pinching on infrastructure when REAL emergencies occur. Adapt!
New Orleans and Katrina also showed that throwing money for infrastructure at a corrupt bureaucracy makes matters worse. Fed Gov gave $$$ to automate flood pumps starting. 10 years later money had disappeared but the project was never installed. Katrina flood showed up. Huge pumps to move the water out never were started, and the flood waters ruined the motors on the pumps so could not be used. City floods.
The alarmists are sounding as stupid as those who claimed Gaia was using Hurricanes Harvey and Irma to punish America for electing Trump these Ecology Freaks are total idiots
Lead with “scientists say” and everyone lets their guard down.
Every other profession in the world has their crooks, quacks, forgers, plagiarizers, liars and embezzlers. Science doesn’t?