Get used to 'em: Floods force many to face climate change reality
While there is a (pretty valid) school of thought that 'we' need a pretty big 'something' by way of a climatic kick in the pants, I do wonder if pinning everything on 'climate change' isn't going to get to be a common, and convenient, catch-all, and hence lose its effect PDQ.
I don't know for sure, but at the moment I'm guessing that these floods could equally force a few to face the facts of overpopulation, woeful political priorities, disastrous land management practices and even that most awful of all: stuff happens.
Sitting in my room on July trying to figure which water borne menace will get me first - the river coming up or the rain down/sideways - it's hard not to get the feeling that this is all a tad 'odd'. But then it is not, it seems, without historical precedent. Any hence if nature is just doing its funky thing, then all the billion £ claims are more a matter of how many of us there are now, where we were told/allowed to stick our homes, and fill 'em with expensive kit for insurers to try and get out of paying for.
So when I see such as this: "...mechanism may well explain an observed rise in flash floods in Europe over the last decade.." I worry a bit. Especially with the all too wonderful 'may'.
At least this is definitive: '... parts of China have seen the heaviest rainfall since records began,' though I have expressed caution on 'toll' figures bearing in mind our race's spread over the planet. The Boxing Day tsunami killed a lot more than Krakatoa because in those days Swedish tourists were not skinny-bathing in Phuket, and half of India hadn't cut down the mangrove swaps to get a sea view.
I'm no statistician, so I'll go with this: 'This year's UK floods were an event statistical models say should happen once only every 30 to 50 years, Mehlhorn says: the floods in 2000 were a 25-30 years event. Two such events in only seven years are not statistically impossible, but they are unlikely. Other countries have seen similar increases in such disasters.' But again I think it too easy to just say that it's down to what is dropping from the skies and not a lot to do with what it is all dropping on.
And, frankly, one (while critical) is in the future, while the other is now. So while both need addressing, let it be for the right reasons, and not to get a lot of pretty key questions off a load of folk who should be tasked to explain themselves. Because if we don't have the right folk, with the right abilities, and the right motivations in charge of the future... we're screwed.
And that IS scary.
4 comments:
Be careful using Krakatoa as an example. When Krakatoa went up some 35,000 (by recollection, though I have to admit my brain struggles to recall facts from my Uni days) people were killed directly, most by the tsunamis generated. However, global temperatures fell by 1.2C and did not stabilise back to normality until several years later. Over the next 12 months, incoming solar radiation decreased by something like 25 percent and remained around 10 percent below normal for about three years.
There are reports from the time of 100's of thousands (I remember one study from my Uni days that estimated as many as 2.5 Million died as a consequence) dying from starvation across the globe, particularly across the far east and the pacific rim, where the dust in the atmosphere prevented the growth of crops and the altered weather patterns meant rainfall was either barely present, or so heavy that it washed crops away.
It may not have had the immediacy of impact that the Boxing Day Tsunami had, but I'm sure that over the following two or three years it did actually kill a lot more people.
Whilst on the subject of volcanoes, Krakatoa was only a baby in comparison to Thira (now Santorini) in the Greek islands. This was 10 times bigger than Krakatoa and was responsible for wiping out the Minoan civilisation in one go.
As Michael Caine didn't say: "Not a lot of people know that!"
Actually, I knew a bit more, but not as much as you, dear guru.
A few points are being and do get made here, so it's worth amplifying.
First up, let's not forget we are living in the age of immediacy.
Hence I was mostly referring to the coverage post event that hit the wires. 35k vs. 350k by tsunami alone. A few mobile images of a boat up a tree inland and we are all agog. Thing is, in 18whenever, when the thing swept the surrounding coastlines it didn't take out as many because they were not there to get taken.
Slow death over the weeks, months and years is barely mentioned, which is a lesson of history to learn now.
What made good, if sick, copy was 'Look how many died!!!' in the next Sunday's papers (blogged earlier today).
Interestingly, I was one who scoffed when a few tried to pin the earthquake then on climate change, but am now prepared to wonder.
I know man's potential effects on the vastness of the globe is but a pinprick, but as with 'death by 1,000 cuts' things can accrue. So I have always wondered what the consequences are of sucking vast amounts of fluid out of big holes under the crust (no oilfields around were there?). And speaking of the consequences of burning the black stuff, if the climate is changing due to CO2 imbalance, then by all accounts what happens in the oceans can have its effect deep down. So who knows?
And finally...
Another care we must have with volcanoes is the fact that they punt out just how much at a single go, and have done for how long? So what's us going to Benidorm for two weeks going to do in comparison?
And I don't think the Minoans had Humvees.
Thank you for one of the few sensible comments I've seen on the current weather. For me, the greatest crime in the name of 'climate change' is the consistent trend by the media, the Government and other agencies to blame every weather event on climate change. For the most part there simply isn't the depth of statistical data to make meaningful comparisons and phrases such as 'since records began' are worthless when reliable records span mere decades. Worse, as you've pointed out, simply finding comparable weather isn't sufficient. You'd need to take into account changes in land usage, population and so on.
The danger in this finger pointing is that it runs the risk of becoming a double edged sword. For example, last year the Met Office summary of the Summer claimed that the hot, dry weather was consistent with their predictions on climate change. It's difficult to see how they're going to claim that a cool, wet summer is also consistent with those predictions and what happens if 2008 is merely 'average'? Last year also brought a crop of programs claiming that the UK would (and I remember this claim clearly) "never recover from this years drought". I won't go into my displeasure at the word drought - people who lose their families are suffering from a drought, not those who can still top-up their back garden swimming pools - but clearly this statement now looks absurd.
The media are also famous for having the memories of goldfish. Last year, following the 'tornado' that hit West London, one paper put the blame firmly in the climate change court and quoted local residents (all of 30 years old) saying they'd never seen anything like it. Even this resonably balanced BBC report feels obliged to say 'the UK's worst in 25 years', which, when you consider it, is really not saying much. The truth is that a larger, more deadly wind occurred in virtually the same area in 1954. For July, this page holds some fascinating data on historical weather.
Perhaps worst of all, blaming climate change allows us to ignore our own failings. If our houses were flooded because of climate change it's not our fault, even if they were built on a flood plain or in the lee of a deforested slope.
I worry that if this practice continues when we have seasons in the future that appear to refute the claims of scientists, those that have previously been convinced will begin to doubt the reality of climate change. Whether it really does exist or not is not the issue, the threat of climate change is being used to promote energy saving and anti-pollution incentives and if doubt is cast we may find these worthy goals ignored.
Dear Jack,
Welcome, and thanks for the nice words.
I am really getting quite agitated by several trends that seem to be taking the motivation of the masses in the wrong direction from those that will make this planet (and my... our kids' futures upon it) a better place to live in the future.
People are not stupid, so trying to cover local failings with some blanket global monster under the bed may work a few times, but soon they'll catch on, and start to doubt and/or resist. Especially when so much seems to be either for personal protection (politicians), personal advancement (NGOs and activists) and/or ratings (media). And almost all to the exclusion of accuracy, honesty and the sharing of rational facts and viable solutions.
If, as I believe, there is decent evidence to suggest that the climate is changing for the worse, then we need to do all sorts of stuff. Some preventative right now. Some in mitigation PDQ.
And high on the agenda to do those in a sensibly prioritised manner is a reality check.
What's working? What's not working? Who is effective? Who is not? Where can we score big hits, and quick? What can be left for later? Etc, etc.
I am not seeing anything like enough of this. What I am seeing is a proliferation of competing departments and quangos created principally to point elsewhere and say 'not us'.
Some decisions are going to be hard. We are an expanding race with a finite space to occupy and foul up. That needs to be dealt with. Now.
Sadly, the woeful collection of short-termists, bandwagon jumpers and opportunity exploiters in government, not-for-profits, for-profits-at-any-cost and in the media are not flling me with much hope. It's all talk and little action. And where I do see action I often don't trust it is either for the right reasons or very effective on enviROI.
Your concerns are shared. But let's see what we can do to turn things around.
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