Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
Paris, France is flooding again. The River Seine has risen over its banks and streets are covered with slowing moving yellowish water. The Louvre is building sandbag barriers to protect its statuary.
There is talk, as always, that the culprit is the dreaded modern boogeyman — Climate Change.
As our introductory image states, Paris is not just flooding, it is flooding again, and again, and again, and again.
“Why does the Seine, famous for its bridges, flood at all?
As one of France’s major commercial waterways, the river is closely monitored so it can accommodate a constant procession of barges and other commercial vessels. The river begins in Burgundy, in east-central France, and meanders 485 miles westward until it reaches its mouth, near the port city of Le Havre.
Upstream from Paris, four large dams control the flow of the Seine and three of its major tributaries: the Aube, the Marne and the Yonne. According to Charles Perrin, a hydrologist at the National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture, in late spring the dams start stocking large reserves of water that can be released in the drier summer months.
Dams and locks normally keep the water level consistent, particularly in the Paris region, where the Seine’s traffic is especially heavy, in part because of tourist and other recreational vessels. If the water level drops too far, the barges could scrape the riverbed and get damaged. If it gets too high, vessels cannot pass under the city’s lowest bridges.”
Last spring “The dams were already at 95 percent capacity when heavy rains started in late May, so their ability to take in the excess water was limited.” So, Paris flooded — again.
“Public authorities said they expected the Seine to crest on Sunday at up to six meters, or about 19.6 feet. In the floods of June 2016, which killed four people in France, it peaked at 20 feet.”
“Although some experts said it was hard to determine whether global warming was behind the current flood, others warned that a worrying pattern was emerging.
“Because of climate change, we can expect floods in the Seine basin to be at least as frequent as they are right now,” said Florence Habets, a senior researcher at the C.N.R.S., France’s national center for scientific research. “No matter what we say, the more we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, the more we reduce our impact on droughts and floods.”
The French scientist tells us that “Because of climate change…” the flooding frequency will remain the same. Brillant!
What is the flooding frequency? Every recent flood is compared to the great flood of 1910, “in 1910, a January deluge turned Paris into Venice for a week — river levels rose nearly 30 feet above normal — causing roughly $1.5 billion worth of damage, in today’s terms. … Topographically, Paris is a basin, with hills in Montmartre and Montparnasse rising in the north and south of the city, respectively. When it comes to flooding, that means big trouble for anyone who lives in the city center, which in 1910 was not so different than it is today” [source]. “A very severe period of high water in January 1910 resulted in extensive flooding throughout the city. The Seine again rose to threatening levels in 1924, 1955, 1982, 1999–2000, June 2016, and January 2018.” [source]
The New York Times carried the story of the 1910 Paris flood — read the full original report on the front page of January 27, 1920.
This “worrying pattern” really began in the 17th Century with major Paris floods being recorded in 1649, 1651, 1658, 1690, 1711, 1732, 1740, 1779, 1795, 1802, 1830, 1836, 1879-80, 1882-83, 1886…..you get the idea here.
What’s the deal here? Again, as with Bangladesh: GEOGRAPHY.
There we have it. Four rivers flow into one another and converge just before Paris: The Seine itself, the Aube, the Yonne, and the Marne.
Google Earth reveals that the Seine is no longer a river but a channeled and closely controlled canal, complete with flood control devices and locks for the river traffic.
We see once more that the efforts to control great rivers and put them solely to our own purposes leads to unforeseen, or at least, unacknowledged, problems. The upriver dams, used to store water against the dryer summers, to maintain river levels appropriate for shipping, are allowed to fill in the Spring, find themselves nearly full — and if late summer rains come, there is nowhere to store the resultant excessive river flow — floods start upstream and spread down the river to Paris. We see this same pattern with the great rivers of the American Midwest — the Mississippi and the Missouri.
Of course, the Europeans have known all about this situation for years and years, and publish reports and recommendations such as OECD Reviews of Risk Management “Policies Seine Basin, Île-de-France: Resilience to Major Floods”.
Still, Paris floods and the blame gets shifted to anything but the real cause — inadequate action to remedy the known problems of Seine River managenment.
Remember our expert Climate Science opinion: “Because of climate change, we can expect floods in the Seine basin to be at least as frequent as they are right now,”
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Author’s Comment Policy:
Love to read and respond to your on-topic comments.
Paris floods — that’s weather — so it must be Climate Change.
If you want me to respond specifically to a question or comment, address it to “Kip…” so I am sure to see it.
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Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo said the city was coping – but said that the flooding, coupled with recent summer heatwaves, was “clearly a question of the town adapting to climate change”. What an idiot. How do these people get elected?
Idiots elect them.
One possible solution would be to extend a tunnel from where the Marne meets the Seine to channel 1/2 of the water normally carried through Paris running along the south side of the city with 2 outlets, 1 outlet at Meudon and the other outlet at Poissy. This would effectively bypass the Paris Flood Zone with 1/2 of the water flow.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1ukvqQG-X96C1Y7UtUb_5FTTuybSYb6-k&hl=en-US&gl=us&ll=48.836284818880905%2C2.309294397070289&z=12
Bryan A ==> There is only a 20 foot vertical difference in elevation between the two points.
Then a 10′ tall, 50′ wide tunnel that is 7′ below the surface would place the bottom of the outflow duct 10′ below the top of the inflow and shouldn’t present a drainage issue during times of peak water flow
right !!
Once over 10% of the constituency is convinced of something, the smart thing to do is to address their concern, no matter how unsound it is. If I was the major of Paris I would also be talking about climate change to get reelected. If you want to be truthful, you don’t get into politics.
As Napoleon allegedly noted: “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”
Propaganda and a compliant press.
Climate Change provides the ultimate political scapegoat for poor management and mismanagement. A convenient excuse for politicians to use against an ignorant public.
We’re doomed; https://weather.com/news/trending/video/doomsday-clock-moves-closer-to-midnight
icisil – I don’t think it’s so much that I’m an idiot, but rather that I believe their promises. I’m almost always disappointed. (Except for 2016 election – jury’s out, but so far, so good.)
We’ve got the same problem in Brisabane, Australia. The city & it’s suburbs are built on a flood plain which floods from time to time. 1890 (twice in 2 weeks), minor flood 1956, major flood 1974, similar level flood 2011. We have dams for mitigation but nature always throws a curved ball from time to time. Get your timing wrong & you’ll take a bath!
Any way we had a guy named Tim Flannery tell us we’d never see rain again in our lives.
Tim is not qualified in anything except Anthropology, but our politicians don’t know what anthropologists actually know about climate! But they employed him anyway to scare everybody including themselves!
Beat me to it, Graham. The dam engineers believed Flannery when he said the dams would never fill, so they kept the flood mitigation dams as full as possible even when the forecast was for very heavy and sustained rain. Thus, a flood occurred “due to global warming.” Much the same as Paris, now, from the looks of it.
We should all re-read John McPhee’s “The Control of Nature”. Sobering.
Kip and rms,
The issue of scale comes to mind.
Atmospheric Rivers are common in California. Is France impacted by extreme weather events?
Kip,
Extreme wind and related rain events are common in Europe resulting in Annual insurance claims in excess of 1 billion.
Seems like your post points out inadequate weather forecasting sufficient to alert River Management in France.
John M ==> The problem is lack of physical infrastructure to deal with the flood waters — this has been going on forever with the Seine River….historical floods recorded starting in the 1600s.
That’s inseine.
The rain in the Seine is the cause of the complain.
Ian and Piper ==> LOL….very nice.
The rain in the Seine is the bane of the insane. <=== better?
At PiperPaul, I think you’ve got it. By Jove you’ve got it.
Flood (haiku):
the pain out of rain in the Seine
is the complain of inseine.
Here in Southern California we have flood control basins with big dams and flood gates that are kept bone dry all year waiting for flash floods. Apparently this technology, implemented here in the 1940’s, has not made it to Europe.
And they largely work, too. Until they don’t. San Gabriel Dam was finished just in time for the big 1938 flood. But that flood filled the reservoir and they lost control as water poured over the spillway. Washed out the western end of “The Long Bridge” in Duarte. Cogswell had advocated building three dams: One on the West Fork (now named after him), one on the East Fork, and one on the main channel (San Gabriel Dam). The East Fork dam was never built.
A repeat of the 1938 rainy season would be mitigated by the newer Santa Fe Dam, with a large impound basis downstream. But that would not protect the cities above the dam. We will never have absolute protection from unpredictable weather.
Trying to mitigate weather completely is a fool’s errand. We can, however, exact some control.
They don’t have flash floods in Europe- this flood was already pre-set up. The French just failed to do anything about having 95% full dams and predictable more rain. Brisbane in Australia failed to do anything about its full dams and so it flooded.
The some of the effects of the last major Brisbane flood we accentuated by the mismanagement of the Wivenhoe Dam, which is part water storage, and part surge capacity for flood mitigation. Unfortunately, due to Queensland having experienced a severe drought in the preceding 7 years, that dam was allowed to retain water well in excess of its water storage design capacity. So when the serious rains returned, there was no options but to release very high volumes of water at short notice. The consequences were tragic, but maybe understandable given the circumstances.
Say again?
Trying to understand the au problem
Cloa5132013 —
Oh yes we do! Possibly not on the scale of parts of the US but being generally more compact and therefore more crowded, the impacts can be just as severe!
@ur momisugly Henryp
Here is a newspaper report from years ago: “The conditions were so bad that Tim Flannery, now Australia’s Chief Climate Commissioner, declared rather bizarrely in 2007 that hotter soils meant that “even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and river systems”.
Some claim that because of Flannery the dams were more full than they should have been if flood control issues were considered. LINK
Learn more by searching with Wivenhoe Dam and Tim Flannery.
Jo Nova’s site had posts.
“worrying pattern was emerging.” Yeah , idiots in charge of the flood mitigation/management regime. e.g letting the dams get to 95%
They need a few more in California, too, to reduce flooding and drought problems.
I thought dams were regarded as not green?
StephenP ==> Some environmentalists are opposed to dams because “rivers should run free”. Dams, of course, were man’s first great source of power to run mills and factories. “:In 2015 hydropower generated 16.6% of the world’s total electricity and 70% of all renewable electricity, and was expected to increase about 3.1% each year for the next 25 years.”
In my view, the natural way is the rain falls on high places so that we can capture the power of its race to the sea.
Donald ==> When I was a boy, I lived within a block of one of Los Angeles’ great storm drain canals. The system is mapped here. The concrete lines canals (we called them “ditches”) were empty almost all the time, but filled to the top when flooding rains came. Although technically illegal, we boys used the canals — running the ditches — as quick easy routes to places we wanted to get to.
Oh heck yeah. We owned the world then. How did we ever lose control of it?
icisil ==> Some of us didn’t — it is an outlook and a philosophy.
Kip,
“The concrete lined canals (we called them “ditches”) were empty almost all the time, but filled to the top when flooding rains came.”
We called them “washes” out in “The (San Fernando) Valley” when I was lad (way back in the Pre-Carbonefarious), and yeah, they remove a chitload of water come big winter storms . . but are not at all river-like in terms of scenery, transport, habitat or adventuring . . I checked the site you linked there, and it turns out I lived a couple blocks from the Los Angeles River !! ; )
JohnKnight ==> I have, in my time, actually seen the Los Angeles River full to nearly overtopping the channel.
And the water zips along then, such that when you stare down from a bridge (almost flat with the general terrain, so one doesn’t usually think of them as bridges) you can “feel” the tremendous movement of mass going on just beneath you . . ‘at’s a big rain gutter I tells ya ; )
Paris is flooding (again) because of this:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/24/todays-food-is-a-modern-agricultural-miracle-so-why-is-it-under-attack/
We know this because the report tells us that
The operative word in there is ‘yellow’
Unless something epically catastrophic gas happened upstream, the water should NOT be yellow. or brown. or red. That is farmland dirt washing away.
The reason Hidalgo and ‘most everyone else blames Climate Change for that is simply because they eat the mush described in the link above.
Very very simple – yet a mush eaters will (try to) make it ever so, *ever so*, complicated so as to protect their own fat, lazy and brain dead backsides.
Yet its the consumption of mush that causes that causes the braindeadness.
A perfect positive feedback.
Will doubtless have a Happy Ending, because mush eaters tell us that positive feedbacks are good, stable and long lasting things.
Every hectare of land upstream of Paris is farmland.
Didn’t know that,.
Peta ==> Floods are always muddy — lots of rain washes lots of dirt down into the rivers and down to the sea. That is the way the world works — always has — agriculture or not.
The land upstream of Paris is flat river floodplain — and not particularly prone to erosion. See Google Earth.
People have selective and short memories. That’s why we invented writing.
And why those in power prefer an illiterate population.
To be fair this classic , heads you lose tails I win, is the standard approach in climate ‘science’ Hence why this easy life attracts so some third-raters looking for cash.
Even to this day Paris lacks what goes for modern sanitation just about anywhere except India. The Seine is the French sewage “removal” system … hence the brown-yellowish color depending of the proportions of excrement and piss that has a daily cycle of brown in the morning and yellow in evening.
On another thought the Seine serves as an analog model for the Paris Accord and the UN-EU that controls it!
Ha ha
They grow vegetables on the sewage farms downstream at Gennevilliers for instance.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Paris-main-sewer-system-and-sewage-farms-at-the-beginning-of-the-20th-century-Gerards_280878846
“politics is downstream from culture.”
Andrew Breitbart
A quick look at the link immediately above shows that Paris has a sophisticated sewage system with construction beginning in about 1860 and largely completed by about 1915. Bazalgette sorted out London at about the same time with interceptors picking up rivers like the Fleet which had been covered and turned into sewers. Dickens and ohers described conditions in earlier times.
‘Sweepings from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts and Blood,
Drown’d Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench’d in Mud,
Dead Cats and Turnip-Tops come tumbling down the Flood’
Jonathan Swift, 1710
http://www.londonslostrivers.com/river-fleet.html
“hence the brown-yellowish color depending of the proportions of excrement and piss that has a daily cycle of brown in the morning and yellow in evening.”
———————-
The Seine is brown-yellow only during floodings. The rest of the time, it has the color of water.
A river is brown or not depending only on its content of mud and has nothing to do with pollution.
There may be a kernel of truth in Habets’ comment, “…the more we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, the more we reduce our impact on droughts and floods.”
Reduce your “greenhouse gas emissions” enough, you will not have the money to do anything about the effect of droughts and floods.
“Reduce your “greenhouse gas emissions” enough, you will not have the money to do anything about the effect of droughts and floods.”
This is a part of natural reality that seems to escape millions of people (who prefer to believe otherwise. So they remain stubbornly mind blind. And, by the way, you won’t have money with which to subsidize the cost of so-called “renewables.”
But surely France’s use of nuclear and hydro as sources of power mean that the energy sector is virtually carbon free already.
So what causes France to fail to meet its CO2 emission targets as imposed by the EU ?
Cars ? How would the French respond to demands that they give up their traditionally fuelled Peugeots , Renaults , etc?
maikewaite ==> Personally? I would give up my Renault in a moment…..
oh no Paris floods again… must be something with the system as here we got no floods. or at least the designed flood zones did flood, but that’s why they are there.
why do i say this? i live just 260 miles up northeast of Paris and we had the same amount of rain as paris had but Belgium has a completed “sigma plan” (bit like the delta works in the Netherlands) to avoid river flooding.
it worked pretty well there are just 2 zones that are nearly finished that experienced some minor flooding. but that’s because they are built in flood prone area’s
Why be surprised? The French invented the phrase, “Le plus ce change, le plus c’est le meme-chose!”
FTFY Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Also ‘Après moi le déluge’ and ‘Plus belle qu’une Poubelle’, in memory of the man who tried to clean up Paris.
Paris is flooding for the exact same reason Californian dams are breaking. Instead of spending their public money wisely, and building needed infrastructure, they wasted their money on ineffective climate change policies. France, however, didn’t make the mistake Germany did, and at least they use Nuclear Power. That was a very wise decision, that is until they become a Califate and that nuclear material will be used to produce bombs. Open Borders and Nuclear Material is about as idiotic a policy progressives have ever devised, and they put all the world at risk.
This isn’t Paris. It’s only men here’ – Inside the French Muslim no-go zones where women aren’t welcome
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/17/french-bar-tells-women-isnt-paris-men/
When was the last time they drudged the river?
No river dredging allowed under EU environmental policies – which has been the cause of a lot of flooding in the UK in recent decades. And no doubt elsewhere!
Water voles are more important to these city functionaries than people and their homes and businesses
‘No river dredging allowed under EU environmental policies’ Then France should send the EU an invoice for the clean up cost.
“No river dredging allowed under EU environmental policies ”
Fake news.
All rivers in France have a regular yearly dredging schedule accessible to the general public (for navigation purposes), the schedule of the Seine bassin can be found here : http://www.bassindelaseine.vnf.fr/1-1-programme-des-dragages-2017-a904.html
Frederic ==> Thanks for giving us the straight scoop on dredging the Seine!
Better check the Drudge Report!
It’s a sad day when the Paris underground pumps stop and metro stations are flooded.
California is suffering from the same mental disorder, it is called Progressivism.
Hey California!!!, Wind and Solar Don’t Work in a Flood
I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. Climate realists like myself have been trying to call attention to how dangerous the misallocation of resources caused by this war on climate change truly is. Now California is finding out…too late. Live updates: Evacuations below Oroville Dam remain in effect as officials … Continue reading
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/13/hey-california-wind-and-solar-dont-work-in-a-flood/
Given all the civil works controlling the Seine, I am reminded of the Corps of Engineers and their role in New Orleans. link
Kip’s point is well taken:
I remember the earlier stalwart work of the Core of Engineers when they blew up a log jam in the Colorado river and ended diverting it about 100klicks further down the coast affecting oyster beds and causing massive coastal erosion because up coast there was no input of sediment…… power to you guys!
Jonny ==> Are you sure you have the right river? The Colorado flows (well, what’s left of it, which if often nothing) into the Gulf of California in Mexico, between Baja California and the Mexican west coast.
You must have been very young if this was the Texas Colorado. A log jam was removed allowing the flood of 1929 to break a delta out into the bay in 1932, across eastern Matagorda Bay by the end of the decade to the Gulf. Similar thing happened on the Red River in Louisiana, (blamed on one Captain Shreve, hence Shreveport) and much later the downstream Atchafalaya in 1973, the latter due more to sediment accumulation and diversion of Mississippi River water. Oyster reefs were destroyed from the Colorado event where diversion plans into the bay were later developed.
The biggest oyster reef (Pt. Au Fer Reef) in the world was at the mouth of Atchafalaya, destroyed well before these events, date uncertain. While there was some erosion, in both cases there was new delta formation. Oysters off the Atchafalaya River mouth now only grow in the Gulf to the west.
Not sure about the mouth of the Seine. A lot, maybe most of the fishery was in the south of France where it got fished out in the 19th century. The origin of the ecosystem concept (as in biocoenosis) came from study of oyster communities there by a German (Karl Möbius). While a different and a little more cold and less flood adapted oyster, it was subject to climate change, especially, like grapes, at it northern edge of its range.
Some super smrt guy told me it’s actually pronounced as, “Corpse of Engineers”.
Paris is there because of the river
tmitsss ==> Very apt. Like seaports that are exposed to sea level rise, high tides, and storm surge, river ports like Paris exist because of the access to the river and the transportation it supplied (more important in the past then the present — but in France, still important.).
River ports are by definition on the river and rivers rise and fall. River docks are always a foot or three above the mean river level for convenience.
If “climate change” didn’t exist as an excuse for not addressing actual problems, they’d have to invent it.
Oh wait, they did.
This is not climate change, this is building in a low spot that has a habit of flooding.
https://bangordailynews.com/2018/01/26/news/hancock/flooding-ice-blamed-on-climate-change-damage-acadias-birthplace/
On that note, in Maine, the Kennebec river has frequent floods. Ice jams being the culprit in most cases. Years ago when loggers were river driving, (floating woods down rivers to mills) they would have occasional log jams. If they couldn’t manually break the jams, dynamite did the job. Handy stuff…in the winter/early spring, they would use dynamite to clear ice jams. In more serious cases, the Army Air Corps would drop small bombs to clear them on the upper Kennebec river.
Alas, those days are long gone. As are the river drivers (my father ran the last one in 76).
Not gone are the buildings along the flood plain in the Hallowell/Augusta region now occupied by city slickers who have no clue about the rivers history.
Flooding will happen again and they will blame globull warming instead of their own stupidity.
Now about ice jams and environmentalists removing flood control and other dams. (Hint: it makes matters worse).
http://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ucldc-nuxeo-ref-media/971d5aaf-689c-4cb9-82ee-ea261ad64c1d
Why couldn’t they store a little less water upstream in the Spring in anticipation of the late Summer rain?
Must be some answer to this obvious question but I didn’t see it.
The water level in lakes are lowered in the fall to accomodate the spring runoff. The old timers had a pretty good handle on it considering the vast drainage areas involved, snow pack total during the winter and spring/winter rain.
Moving ahead, many of the old driving/flood control dams have either failed due to neglect or taken out dur to pressure from environmental groups.
Herein lies the rub. Back in the day, the flood control/ driving dams mitigated flooding and allowed folks to build waterfront homes/businesses in floodplains. Now that the old timers and many of the dams are gone, well, the rivers revert back to what they were and flood once again.
Back in the logging days, the thousands of square miles of drainage area was managed to provide flood control and water resources via thousands of smaller driving dams on brooks and streams, some even built on mountains to hold water back to drive wood down small streams to larger waterways later on in the summer months as it was not effective to have horses haul wood many miles to the larger rivers. This method kept the mills operating and as a plus, prevented flooding.
https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1116&context=mainehistory
Now that makes sense. Also, I guess they have to keep the water up to a certain level to make it navigable.
A very complex problem with multiple trade-offs.
Paul et al. ==> quite right. It is:
A very complex problem with multiple trade-offs.
Back to France…
Here’s the OECD Seine Basin flood risk executive summary.
https://www.oecd.org/gov/risk/Flood-risk-management-seine-river-executive-summary.pdf
If we are to see an end to heat waves in Summer, cold waves in winter, floods in Spring , droughts in Summer, …,some of it record breaking and unpredictable, there is zero evidence that it can be eliminated by anthropogenic CO2 control. Or as the IPCC might put that: extremely likely that 100 to 101% of it will not be eliminated by anthropogenic CO2 control.
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The cycle time of 86.5 years (GB, by my own result/ calculation) can vary because of various reasons.
I suspect that this \Paris flooding now is similar to the 1924 flooding.
Note that the tables 2 and 3 suggest that major US droughts are coming up soon….
http://virtualacademia.com/pdf/cli267_293.pdf
This is confirmed by my own investigations and history: i.e. dust bowl drought in 1932-1939 and 1845-1856
Pity everyone there, like Nero, is still playing the violin.
Must say,
I cannot find the Burroughs 1992 paper, showing the tree ring results proving the 90 year cycle [drought].
Anyone there who has a clue what happened to it?
” “Because of climate change, we can expect floods in the Seine basin to be at least as frequent as they are right now,”
Yikes!
It is the same, only different!
Perhaps the experts controlling the water have been convinced that global warming means no snow to melt in the Spring. So they keep the dams full all winter because the record snow this season should never happen ? Is this too simple ?
I highly recommend The Conquest of Nature by David Blackbourn. It is all about German water engineering. One of the unintended consequences of taming the Rhine was the exacerbation of floods due to the elimination of natural flood buffers.
Their system needs a “relief reservoir”… a basin into which excess water can be temporarily diverted in flood situations to lessen the effect on Paris. After the crisis has passed they pump the water out of that reservoir back into the river.
TD ==> Use Google Earth to view the Paris Basin. You’ll see the problem.
They have at least four dams designed to control the river level — but when the dams are full, the excess water must run free.
We saw this with Anthony’s Chico area dam last year, when overflow threatened to destroy the dam and flood a city there.
Just a simple emergency channel (tunnel) from where the Seine and Marne meet, south of the southern edge of the flood zone, to redirect a portion of the flooding river flow to a point further downstream from the flood zone