Greta Thunberg has declared the floods in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands to be the product of man-made climate change, adding: ‘We’re at the very beginning of a climate and ecological emergency, and extreme weather events will only become more and more frequent.’
Well, that’s sorted out that one, then.
We hardly need Angela Merkel or the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, to confirm it for us.
Nor, indeed, do we need to hear from Michael Mann – aka Mr. Hockey Stick – to tell us that the floods are the living embodiment of what climate scientists have been warning us about for decades.
It was climate change wot flooded Germany and that is that – there is no reason for any further debate on the issue; indeed, even to suggest that there is a debate to be had is to mark yourself out as an evil ‘denialist’, intent on blinding yourself to deadly reality, and probably in the pay of on an oil company.
Except there is just one niggling little doubt at the back of my mind – and which perhaps ought to be leaping up and down in the minds of Greta and Chancellor Merkel, too.
Far from predicting more summer rainfall in the German Rhineland, climate models have tended to do the opposite: to predict less.
Had these floods occurred during the winter, it would have been reasonable to claim that they were consistent with climate projections.
Had they occurred in Scandinavia or the Baltic states that, too, could have been claimed to be consistent with climate change projections.
But as you can see from the below map put out by the European Environment Agency, the clear prediction for the Rhineland of southwestern Germany, as well as for Belgium and the southern Netherlands, is that summers will become drier.
Indeed, when Germany did have a dry summer last year that, too, was put down to climate change.
Could Germany end up with summers that are generally drier but which nevertheless have more severe incidents of heavy rainfall?
The two are not necessarily inconsistent – except that if you are going to have two months’ worth of rain in a few days, as happened in some places last week, that doesn’t leave a lot of rain for the rest of the summer.
There is an alternative explanation for last week’s floods: that they are mere weather. Weather, indeed, caused similarly devastating floods in nearby areas in 1954, leaving 10,000 Germans homeless.
We went through a similar process with the 2007 floods in southern England. Initially, and lazily, they were attributed by government ministers to climate change – a very convenient thing to blame because, of course, it distracted attention from the failure to provide and maintain flood defenses, and from a disastrous planning policy that allowed new homes to be built on floodplains.
Yet when the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology looked into the 2007 floods it found it couldn’t attribute them to climate change.
To have such large volumes of rainfall in the summer simply wasn’t consistent with models that predicted southern England, like Germany, will see lower summer precipitation in the future.
To lazily blame the German floods on climate change is a case of predicting one thing and then, when the opposite happens, turn round and say ‘look, I told you so’.
If you want to try to blame last week’s floods on climate change, it is first necessary to argue that the models have been wrong all along – and that actually Germany will suffer greater summer precipitation.
But then that might undermine climate models in general.
Alternatively, you can argue that the floods are a weather event that happened in spite of trends towards drier summers in Germany.
Hysteria, I fear, has moved on a bit since 2008 when the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology delivered its report on the 2007 floods. I suspect that public bodies will be more reluctant now to point out what I have just done – and to risk being labeled ‘denialists’.
Read more at Spectator UK
So our scientists can predict climate 50 years in advance but could not forecast a weather event one day ahead.
Maybe Climate godess Greta Thunberg needs more babies burnt in sacrifice to stop flooding events.
What caused the problem in 1910?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1910_European_Floods
“The 1910 European Floods were a series of floods that struck Central Europe in mid-June 1910. The flooding was the result of several days of heavy rains, and resulted in severe flooding to the Ahr River in Germany, which killed up to 200 people in the Ahr Valley. The town of Schuld was particularly hard hit where at least 50 people were reported to have been killed after a bridge gave way during the flooding. Reports from the time also claimed that almost every bridge in the valley was destroyed by the flooding. The rains also resulted in flooding in Switzerland, where at least 26 people were reported to have been killed around Lake Lucerne. Flooding was reported in Lucerne and Zurich where the city electric lighting systems were compromised. The worst human loss however was reported in Hungary where over 1000 people were reported killed which was reported as “exceeding all records”. Elsewhere severe flooding also occurred in Austria, Belgium, and Serbia. Serbia in particular saw severe flooding on the Great Morava river which resulted in severe damage to cities such as Jagodina as well as an additional 35 fatalities.”
From the Trove link:
“In Hungary, one hundred and fifty school children were drowned in the River Moldova and their bodies carried into the flooded Danube, in which are also the corpses of cattle and the wreckage of houses.”
Historic flood levels in a German town hit by the ‘climate change’ floods of a week ago.
https://twitter.com/ClimateRealists/status/1417026546813095936?s=07&fbclid=IwAR37-unn9lCMC0-XpaNO-k_kSbCepIyF-8bywbNdSLTpmq99eoc0OtiNhxM
It’s weather. I agree with B. Bateman. I wondered early on what global warming would do. I guessed that warmer air would hold more water and it would lead to more rain. “Rain makes grain” What has not changed is the basics, it takes a cold front / low pressure weather system to dehumidify the atmosphere.
We are experiencing drought where it is expected. We are experiencing heat where it is expected. What I am experiencing this year is similar to 2010, a perfect growing season. I hope to live another decade to have another.
The Magdalenenhochwasser in July 1342 was so severe it is estimated to have carried away the equivalent of 2000 years of annual soil erosion.
Apart from even the UN IPCC itself stating that since climate is a non linear chaotic system (about which, given the vast complexity of the solar system) we still know little), long term forecasting is impossible – there is the usual ignorance of history. There are records and chronicles of the climate/weather as the medieval warm period ended and gave way to the Little Ice Age. Catastrophic rains for months on end, disastrous floods which killed tens of thousands, villages abandoned and destroyed, crops and livestock ruined, muddy lakes formed. Pilgrimages of people saying it was God’s punishment for our sins (same with St Greta). This was not one or two days of disaster but months on end. Merkel etc play on this ignorance themselves, not apologising for proper warnings never being issued, or any preparations. The media jump onto the bandwaggon, computerised studies by AGW scientists then confirm it. Try teaching some history to children.
All things bad are unnatural and therefore they just have to be the creations of the unnatural warming of the unnatural humans.
https://wp.me/pTN8Y-7fZ
The perfect fraud. Drought? – “it’s climate change”. Floods? – “it’s climate change”. Not releasing as much water as possible before a forecasted huge rain was the problem. Why not? “We can always blame the climate”. I’m a farmer with a biology degree. Only idiots would believe that more heat leads to less evaporation…