Reposted from the NoTricksZone
By P Gosselin on 17. July 2021
Harsh criticism of German authorities failing to act is mounting in the aftermath of the recent deadly floods.
Germany’s New Orleans
Many of the over one hundred people died in the recent flood disaster in Central Western Germany could have been prevented – had the responsible institutions heeded the warnings that had been already issued days in advance by the weather services. Authorities had been warned days early, yet they did nothing to prepare to evacuate and mobilize resources. The media did nothing to warn.
Veteran meteorologist: “much could have been prevented”
Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann told in a PULS 24 interview that “much of it could have been prevented” and that “people could have been warned”.
“The rainfall could not have been prevented” but the authorities and the “media could have warned the population.” The veteran Swiss meteorologist is surprised by the “surprise of the authorities” and says “people could have been evacuated or at least items moved to higher floors”.
“Let people drown” as “they broadcast shit”
Kachelman also commented to Germany’s leading national daily, Bild: “It hurts when the very people who would have the resources to accompany such a weather situation 24/7 do nothing to save lives. But they broadcast shit and let people drown.”
Unpreparedness becoming a German habit
Publicist Roland Tichy at tichyseinblick.de commented on what seems to be a state of permanent paralysis among the authorities: “Those who blame the flood disaster on the climate are arguing cynically: It is a matter of concrete responsibility and concrete measures and solutions. And so every weather hits Germany unprepared.”
Warnings already days in advance
Online FOCUS magazine here reported authorities claimed the flood came suddenly, and so it was impossible to prepare. Bur Jan Schenk from “The Weather Channel” told FOCUS that warnings began to appear already late last week:
Already on Friday, a heavy precipitation event was announced in western Germany. The weather models swung so strongly that one could already speak of severe weather due to heavy rain. By Monday at the latest, it must have been clear to everyone that there would be flooding in western Germany.”
“Monumental system failure”
FOCUS added:
The European EFAS flood warning system had even issued a warning of ‘extreme flooding.’ The fact that so many people still had to die was ‘a monumental system failure,’ British hydrologist Hannah Cloke, an EU Commission adviser on EFAS, told the political magazine Politico.”
Belgium and the Netherlands both evacuated citizens.
Climate change to deflect attention from failure
Meanwhile science editor Axel Bojanowski at “Welt” commented on claims that the flood was caused by German CO2 emissions: “The climate argument is used by politicians to deflect attention from their own responsibility for a disaster. Records show flash floods are less dangerous than before despite climate change.”
Building in a natural flood zone!
Another suspected problem not getting the needed attention is reckless planning and zoning. At Twitter, Stefan S. astutely noted that the hard hit town of Altenau in Rhineland Palatinate appears to have been built on an area that is a natural flood area of the Ahr River, satellite photos suggest:
Ich wüsste zu gerne was #Geologen in diesem Bild sehen! Als Laie würde ich behaupten, man hat in einem Flussbett bzw. in einem alten Überschwemmungsgebiet, gebaut. pic.twitter.com/NxL0QwfWWZ
— Stefan S. (@StefanSkibbe) July 15, 2021
Germany becoming increasingly paved over
Another major factor contributing to flash flooding is the amount of Germany’s surface area that is made impervious (paved over). A total of 19,743 km² (5.5%) of the country’s surface area is paved.
The recent German floods turned out to be where Germany is the most paved over, as the following chart shows. The colors shows the degree to which the surface is paved over:
Source: Leibnitz Institute
Deadliest floods occurred before 1980
Finally, climate alarmists like insisting that flooding today is far worse than before CO2 emissions reached higher levels (350+ppm). But of course this is nonsense. The 30 most deadly floods in the last 1000 years all occurred before 1980:
Top 30 deadliest floods in the last 1000 years:
Only all 30 of them occured before 1980.
Climate Change is REAL!
— 𝔻𝕒𝕨𝕟𝕋𝕁𝟡𝟘™ (@DawnTJ90) July 16, 2021
Also read: Hamburg’s disasters early warning debacle.
The inept authorities blamed the German people for the flood by mentioning CO2 as a cause. Cave to their plans to save the world and you won’t drown. Pathetic.
Nearly 2000 years since Jesus told the the parable of a wise and foolish builder but despite our explosion of knowledge people continue building on dangerous foundations and in dangerous areas.
Miami-Dade surfside does look a lot like building on sand.
The amount of paving is not what determines flooding. It is the degree to which stormwater management practices take into account the paving of areas within their watersheds.
Here in Florida, you cannot build anything without providing stormwater management facilities such as retention ponds, detention ponds, canals, etc. that are property engineered to reduce peak stormwater runoff flows to manageable rates. The areas of Florida that still flood anyway are the older areas that were developed before stormwater management practices became codified here in the 1970s.
So Florida proves that exactly the same rainwater falling on the same area produces very different flooding results, depending upon whether the local infrastructure is properly engineered or not.
The same would be true in Germany, except that Germany having been urbanized centuries before Florida was urbanized, they likely have much larger proportions of areas that lack proper engineering design than Florida, most of whose urban areas have been developed in the last 40 years.
Here in France it’s the same. Now we mosquitoe breeding ponds everywhere, at the same time they tell to no to leave saucers under plant pots !!!
How are those two sentences not contradictory?
An important parameter in all urban hydrological models, used for calculating the amount and speed of runoff, is the percentage of impervious area in each hydrological basin. Ask any urban hydrologist.
Daune is full of crap.
The idea that recently built-up places in Florida are impervious to flooding is ludicrous.
He just makes this crap up.
As as you properly point out, Clyde, the things he says are not even coherent.
I am starting to wonder if he has a chronic internetting while drunk problem.
There are some real wingnuts that show up here. Most of them, like griff, are definitely of the left-hand thread persuasion, but not all. Then, there are the ones that are thoroughly modern, and thread either way, depending on whether the day of the week ends in a “Y.”
A stationary COLD air bubble over Europe in the heart of summer. What could go wrong.
So the truth is that it was TOO COLD over much of Europe for the time of the year.
“Bubbles” is the new climate. Heat domes, cold bubbles, who invented this crap?
meteorologists – usual therm
Look here,
In 2012, Somerset was flooded. A lot of the locals blamed EU rules I wonder if the same can be said of the German floods?
As I wrote to a prior post, rain is natural, but, floods are caused by the human built environment. Flood deaths, as here, are a failure of government to protect their population.
More alarmist misinformation regards flooding!
Greatest precipitation was during colder periods like the Little Ice Age that drove Europe’s glacier expansions which also caused highest lake levels! from Holzhauser 2005
This was the first thing that jumped out at me when I saw the first photos. The whole down seems to be on the flood plane just 1 or 2m above the river.
I’m not familiar enough with styles of german architecture to tell how old these homes are.
Doubtless searching the “hinterland” upstream will reveal a lot of impermeable surface leading to flooding. The town of Altenau seems to filling up the surrounding fields and thus contributing to flooding downstream.
The flooding may be human caused but it’s the via CO2 emissions.
CO2 isn’t able to produce low pressure systems in Vb category., and no others too 😀
Just heard on Sky News: “Germany is reeling under nature’s fury.”
This is why I rarely listen to Sky News or any of the media organizations in their club.
24 hours for the BBK to get their act together! Why didn’t they? Who in the BBK was responsible and that begs the question, why?
I cannot believe that this was an ‘accidental coalition of events’ that prevented a huge effort to warn and help the residents of the zones already clearly identified. Particularly as the BBK had already had the benefit of a failed effort last September with 11 months to rectify the situation.
And please Herr Geier of the BBK, don’t blame the people, that is no excuse.
Historically check:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floods_in_Europe
Historically globally check:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floods
An exceptionally high “reply to griff” to “griff” ratio in these comments: 42:1, at least before I wrote this comment (which brings it to 44:1).
The essence of being stupid is not realizing that one is stupid. griff is oblivious to what people think about what he says. When he does reply, it is usually some off the wall remark that is often a non sequitur.
The damage caused by the German floods only goes to demonstrate that ‘climate change’ is less of a reality, but more of a political “The dog ate my homework” excuse for bad management and bureaucratic inertia when it comes to disaster planning.
No wonder ‘man made climate change\ is so popular among the political classes. It’s a cheap and easy toss-off answer to the complexities of weather and climate, although not cheap to the consumer nor good for the environment.
The Climate Liars just love love love their “extreme weather” meme, because it allows them to confuse, conflate, and confabulate completely separate issues. The floods in Germany were a “perfect storm” of issues, including, of course some very unusual and intense rainfall. However, that has happened before. So what else is going on that the Climate Liars like to pretend isn’t happening. There are several things, but it all boils down to human stupidity regarding the physics of water, and not only not planning for that, but actually making things much, much worse than they would otherwise have been. Building in flood plains. Paving surfaces without accounting for where water is going to go. Constricting waterways, channeling that water and making the flow faster and more deadly. Yes indeed, human stupidity is deadly, as is inertia. It is so much easier to not spend money and do nothing to help mitigate disasters ahead of time, and then, to top it all off, try to lay the blame on CO2.
Yeah, “Carbon” did it. That’s the ticket.
“The climate argument is used by politicians to deflect attention from their own responsibility for a disaster.”
Exactly what I’ve been saying for years. Politicians sit back and do nothing, then when something happens they blame “climate change” and promise to “do something” to “fix” it. Then they spend their time and their constituent’s money with fake fixes that accomplish nothing, and when the next disaster strikes, rinse and repeat.
It’s good to finally see people saying this publicly.
“Monumental system failure”
As there is no possible reason imaginable for this failure to warn and as we live in a time where we have good short term weather forecasting and instantaneous communication abilities via multiple means, I must wonder if it is possible that this was deliberate? Did someone think if there was a flood disaster, it would boost the case for CAGW and all of the Government’s insane and expensive “remedies”?
I know I may sound paranoid and I am more than will to follow the maxim, “Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence.” However, when the damn is full and it is certain a major rainstorm is on the way and the authorities do nothing but make a post to FB, that level of incompetence sounds unfathomable and malice becomes a more reasonable proposition.
I cannot believe in a nation such as Germany, especially, Germany, there are not, just like here, protocols in place that are activated when severe weather, esp., with the certainty of a damn overflow and imminent flooding. That people were not warned and evacuated is inconceivable and inexplicable and defies rationality. That is when one starts looking for other reasons to explain the inexplicable.