Few fearmongering scares cause more deliberate panic than sudden and overwhelming flooding. The ancients were at it in the Bible and the Net Zero fanatics use it to drive modern-day mass climate psychosis. Fake pseudoscience attributions of heavy human involvement are fed to activist journalists who promote the invented idea that there is a ‘climate emergency’. But a recent scientific paper has blown all this Noah-inspired nonsense out of the water. Studying both documentary and geological flooding records, a group of European scientists found that over multi-century and millennial periods across parts of western and southwestern Europe, floods have been of a much higher magnitude than those of the present day. In the UK, flooding in the Severn area during the last 70 years “was not considered exceptional” in the context of the 4,000-year record.
The science team, including Professor Mark Macklin of the University of Lincoln, showed that flood magnitude was “significantly higher” before the 20th century, despite there being a negligible greenhouse gas contribution from humans. In a phrase that strikes down much of the pseudoscientific weather-attribution copy, it is noted that this means “natural variability might be significantly higher than assumed by climate modellers”.
The scientists state clearly that any attempt to attribute anthropogenic causes to extreme events such as droughts and flooding needs a sufficient length of events to enable comparisons to be drawn. Attempts using computer models to attribute recent floods to human causes have been made, the authors note, but such assessments “have failed to correctly analyse the true frequency and magnitude of past floods, when anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing was low”. It becomes clearer by the day why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) pointed out in its latest assessment report that human involvement in almost all extreme weather categories is almost impossible to discern. In fact this inconvenient conclusion has directly led to the major growth of modelled attributions. Activists have become increasingly frustrated by the IPCC and pressed ahead with their pseudoscience due to the the need for lawfare material and ‘trusted media’ scare stories.
The scientists go on to point out that their findings have “profound implications” for flood planning and climate adaptation policy, “as many recent floods cannot be viewed as unprecedented, even in the historical record”. Alas, any changes in public policy over Europe at least will have to wait for the pre-ordained narrative to be re-written, so there might be a bit of a wait.
The scientists looked in detail at the Lower Rhine in Germany, the upper Severn in the UK and the Valencian community rivers in Spain.
The above illustration shows clearly that the largest flooding during the past 8,000 years in the Lower Rhine did not occur in the recent past. Far from it, with at least 12 floods, including massive inundation in 1374, likely to have exceeded the highest modern peak discharges.
Recent floods in the Severn area are frequently used by Net Zero activists to whip up climate fear. The illustration below would appear to show that such stories are little more than the product of those possessed of over-stimulated imaginations. Nothing out of the ordinary is to be found, and it appears we are in a current period of reduced inundation.
Late last year Jonathan Watts of the Guardian said that the recent “apocalyptic” Spanish floods in Valencia showed two undeniable truths – “the climate crisis is getting worse and Big Oil is killing us”. Getting into his hysterical Guardianista stride, Watts continued to amplify his message: “The unnatural disaster in Spain – Europe’s deadliest flash floods in at least half a century – is evidence of two undeniable truths: the human-caused climate crisis is just starting to pick up ferocity and we need to quickly kill the fossil fuel industry before it kills us.” How we laughed first time around – Jim ‘jail the deniers’ Dale come back, all is forgiven – only to be set off again in our mirth by consideration of the actual evidence of floods in the area going back to 1400.
If we consider the Spanish area including Valencia we can see Guardian-style apocalypse floods throughout the record going back to 1400. This was no doubt very useful to promote whatever scares the sandwich board loons were peddling at the time. In fact the largest flows of the 18th and 19th centuries had peaks about 25% higher than those of the present.
Every day is undeniably Apocalypse Day at the Net Zero-crazed Guardian. Or should that be April Fools’ Day.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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