In his recent article in the LIBERAL PATRIOT, Patrick Brown explores the prevalent assertion that climate change is directly causing an increase in flooding events around the globe. This commentary delves deeper into Brown’s analysis, challenging the simplicity of media narratives and examining the multifaceted nature of flood risks as outlined in his piece.
Media’s Simplified Narratives vs. Complex Realities
Brown points out how media outlets often leap to attribute every major flooding event to climate change, suggesting a “new era” of weather-related disasters. He writes:
“When rivers overrun their banks or flash floods occur from extreme rainfall, many media outlets will reflexively report on the flooding as though we are in a fundamentally new situation due to climate change.”
This observation raises crucial questions about the accuracy of media reports and the responsibility they bear in shaping public perception. It suggests that there is often a disconnect between journalistic narratives and the nuanced scientific understanding of climate events.
Scientific Framework for Understanding Flood Risks
The article emphasizes the importance of using a comprehensive framework to assess flood risks, as adopted by the IPCC. Brown explains:
“The risk of impacts from a natural disaster can be thought of as resulting from the combination of natural hazards, exposure, and vulnerability.”
This framework highlights that the risk associated with floods is not only about increasing hazards (such as more intense rainfalls) but also about where and how people live (exposure) and how well societies can respond to these events (vulnerability).
The Complex Science of Flooding
Discussing the specific factors influencing flooding, Brown elaborates on the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship, which predicts that a warmer atmosphere will hold more moisture. However, he also notes the uncertainties in how this relationship translates into real-world phenomena:
“Studies have shown that, on average, globally, we do indeed see increases in extreme precipitation roughly in line with this seven percent per °C. All else is not necessarily equal, though, and the degree to which warming affects other parts of rainstorm dynamics can also play a role.”
This quote underscores the complexity of attributing flood events to climate change alone, suggesting that other dynamic factors also significantly influence these occurrences.
The Role of Countervailing Influences
Brown discusses how other factors might counteract the straightforward relationship between warmer air and more frequent floods. He points out:
“The same mechanisms that allow more rain to fall out of a warmer atmosphere will also cause more water to evaporate from the land surface prior to the rainfall event. This means that as the atmosphere warms, soil will often have more capacity to absorb the additional rainfall when it does occur.”
This aspect introduces another layer of complexity in understanding flood dynamics and challenges the assumption that more extreme precipitation will invariably lead to more severe flooding.
Revisiting Global Flood Data
Brown reflects on the global data on flooding, which does not show a consistent increase in flood events worldwide. He cites findings that:
“Most observational studies show no increase in floods globally and, if anything, show decreases.”
This statement is pivotal, as it highlights the discrepancy between popular perceptions fueled by media and the actual data observed by scientists. It also reinforces the IPCC’s stance, which holds “low confidence” in global trends concerning high river flows due to human activities.
Conclusion: A Call for Nuanced Understanding
Patrick Brown’s article is a critical reminder of the complexity and media distortion surrounding the discourse on climate change and natural disasters. While there is a knee-jerk tendency to link flood events directly to global warming, a serious approach that considers multiple factors—natural, human, and technological—is necessary for a comprehensive understanding and effective policy-making.
It is crucial to approach this topic with a balanced perspective, recognizing the multi-dimensional nature of flood risks. This approach will not only enhance our understanding but also improve our resilience and adaptive capacities in the face of future challenges.
Read Patrick Brown’s complete article here.
And for more information on floods visit our Everything Climate page here.
Most floods didn’t make the news before the IPCC promoted “climate” scare.
Also, with cellphone cameras, there are pictures and videos of floods that weren’t available to put on the news before.
In a warming climate, with areas of droughts, more flooding due to Atmospheric Rivers will occur. They are not a concern if droughts are not present.
In California, considerable variation in rainfall amounts and intensity are a historic fact. In 1861-62, flooding was so bad the state capitol, Sacramento, was under some ten feet of water.
Weather history is our friend. Weather history shows we are not experiencing unprecedented extreme weather today.
Tom Halla:
Yes, that flooding was caused by an Atmospheric River.
As was also the recent Dubai flooding.
People live in all kinds of long-term climates from Alaska which has a July average of 14F( -10C) to Dubai in Saudi Arabia which has an average July temperature of 106F(41C).
They are worried about a 1.5C raised in temperature and are even talking about spending $US200 trillion or $1 million per family in the developed to stop it from warming 1.5C.
It is mass madness like before the stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression that followed.
I moved from Cleveland Ohio in November where the average November temperature was 52F(11C) to Los Angeles where the average November temperature was 73F(23C) and the temperature increase of 12C wasn’t a problem at all.
In Cleveland I wore a jacket, in LA I carried an umbrella. Big deal, not worth a million dollars to change, and not something that humans should change.
Some people like it hot, some people like it warm, some like it cool and some like it cold, It probably depends on where your ancestors came from.
“Atmospheric Rivers” – a new scary way to describe heavy rain.
Joseph Zorrin:
They have been around for centuries. Always associated with drought conditions somewhere around the globe.
Atmospheric rivers are a known meteorological phenomenon.
It is not some new term although the media hypes it as often as possible.
Obviously the phenomenon has always been around- but what about that specific term?
Joseph Zorzin:
According to Wikipedia, the term was coined by a pair of MIT researchers in the early 1990’s.
California TV meteorologists used to call it the Pineapple Express as in rain coming from Hawaii.
OK, but I think the term wasn’t much- until recently. The alarmists like it- sounds scary.
Floods…droughts…starvation…whatever makes 50 cents a word and has some click baiter banner line…
The ocean is always flooded and no one does anything about that at all.
Patrick Brown doesn’t realise floods never happened in the past
I live near York, in North Yorkshire, England. York is around 10m above sea level and has flooded regularly since well before Roman times. The main river is the Ouse, which eventually flows into the River Humber, itself flowing into the North Sea.
The other river in York is the Foss, which flows into the Ouse just downstream of the city centre.
The normal pattern of flooding was that the Ouse would rise until flows in the Foss reversed, causing flooding upstream. Also many other properties were flooded directly from the Ouse via minor streams, drains etc.
By the mid 1980s, residents and businesses expected improvements to the old flood defences and a barrier was erected across the Foss, which could be lowered when levels in the Ouse got to a certain level, four large pumps being installed to deal with flows in the Foss, by pumping into the Ouse.
The barrier was completed and officially opened in 1988, after which many relaxed with the thought that flooding in York was consigned to history. Many details can be found in the Wikipedia piece on The River Foss Barrier. With some observations from me below.
Readers will be amazed to learn that in year 2000, very heavy rainfall (unusual but certainly by no means “unprecedented”) caused river levels in the Ouse to rise to the point that major flooding occurred upstream, even in districts of York considered to never have previously experienced flooding. Some weeks subsequently it was pointed out that removing shopping trolleys and old bicycles and suchlike from drainage ditches in the affected areas might have been a wise precaution.
More significantly, for property protected by the Foss barrier, (under its first real “test”), it soon became apparent that siting the main high voltage switchgear below water level, relying upon “seals” around cables to keep water out, was not very clever, even though “planners” had attempted to make the installation as low as possible for all the usual fluffy and cuddly reasons.
Electrical workers did their very best to keep the pumps running (and their friends and families dry) by working 24 hrs per day in conditions that were decidedly naughty from a Health and Safety perspective.
Meanwhile, flood levels were rising to levels where it was entirely feasible that water from the Ouse would overtop the ground near Clifford’s Tower and render the barrier completely useless. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
Fast forward to 2015 when another (somewhat smaller) flood occurred. This time, to the horror of those affected, the decision was made to raise the barrier and to consequently flood hundreds of houses and many businesses.
Why? Well, the “Official” reason given was that flows in the Foss itself were “unprecedented” (due to “Climate Change”, of course!). So they had to lift the barrier and stop pumping whilst they still had the power to do so.
I was asked (as a Chartered Civil Engineer) for advice by some of the businesses and did so free of any charge.
There were many problems, far too many to rehearse in comments far too long already.
Firstly, scant evidence that rainfall in the Foss catchment was actually unusually high.
Secondly, it became clear that after 2000, nobody had bothered much about sealing the high voltage switchgear basement, or had even carried out regular inspections. Let alone shifting the electrics above likely maximum water level.
Obviously, after 2015, something had to be done and a bigger barrier, larger pumps were fitted and the main electrical supply duplicated and switchgear put in a sensible position.
Needless to say, my observations were quickly brushed under the nearest carpet as it was politically much more helpful to state that “it was the Climate wot dun it!”
Remember the floods in Germany a few years ago that griff used to go on and on about? That area had a long history of flooding and many of the old towns and villages had strict laws and regulations about how they had to be restored to their former glory and so were not able to install measures to reduce flood damage.
They (media) will be busy this year, the world is cooling from the effects of HT water vapor cap at the top of the stratosphere opening up over the tropics / mid lats, and three years later exactly as predicted.
The lower troposphere (LT) is exchanging heat with the MT and the MT is exchanging heat with the LS. HT ended the La-Nina prematurely as well as the Australian Brushfire particulate effects, and started warming the world before the El-Nino warm pool even began. Thats what the data indicates, and it’s a pretty slam dunk case, this was not El-Nino effects, El-Nino was bitch slapped and taken along for the ride.
Mauna Loa Transmission
UAH Mid latitudes LS, MT LT, slopes, last 20 years.
From the article: “Brown points out how media outlets often leap to attribute every major flooding event to climate change, suggesting a “new era” of weather-related disasters.”
I would say media outlets always leap to attribute any major weather event to human-caused climate change.
Especially now that the UN does the very same thing.
The UN IPCC can’t prove CO2 is a problem, so they are reduced to claiming that every severe weather event in the world is caused by CO2 put in the air by humans. They don’t have any proof of this, or any demonstration of a connection between CO2 and extreme weather, they just make unsubstantiated assertions about the weather.
This is NOT how real science is done. Assertions are not evidence of anything. They are opinions, not established science.
Controlling CO2 is a political gambit which is really aimed at controlling human beings. All the Western politicians are onboard.
But the people are not onboard, so something is going to have to give eventually.
“Most observational studies show no increase in floods globally and, if anything, show decreases.”
They get round that one by claiming that there is a regional effect. They find areas with heavy flooding and claim that that shows there is a regional effect. Same with droughts. That’s how they are, to themselves at least, able to claim that global warming causes floods and droughts. More snow/less snow? It’s a regional effect. Heatwaves/cold spells? It’s a regional effect. Ice loss in the Arctic/ice gain in Antarctica? It’s a regional effect.
In other words, weather, whether we believe it or not.
“Brown points out how media outlets often leap to attribute every major flooding event to climate change, suggesting a “new era” of weather-related disasters.”
Alarmists need to take a good geology course.
From Brown’s article
“When it comes to inland flooding, however, the story is more complicated. The fundamental theory for why warming should increase inland flooding comes from the so-called Clausius Clapeyron relationship, which tells us that warmer air can “hold” more water—about seven percent more water vapor per °C. That means that, all else being equal, a warmer climate is one where there is more water vapor in the atmosphere and thus more water available to condense and rain out of the atmosphere when rain occurs. Studies have shown that, on average, globally, we do indeed see increases in extreme precipitation roughly in line with this seven percent per °C.”
Let’s take this opportunity to emphasize the power of variable water and water vapor in the atmosphere as the working fluid of its own heat engine operation. One inch of precipitable water (25.4 kg per square meter) corresponds to 17,600 Watt-hours per square meter of latent energy available to be converted to sensible heat and motion as precipitation occurs. A one-inch-per-hour rate of rainfall therefore represents 17,600 Watts per square meter of energy transformation.
So what?
The dynamic range of precipitable water in the circulating atmosphere is from near zero to over 60 kg/m^2. See the link below. It constantly changes as energy is absorbed, transported, released, transformed, and ultimately dissipated to space. The fixed relationship of the saturated vapor pressure of water to temperature is a key reason for the highly self-regulating action of the atmosphere in respect to absorbed energy and the resulting temperature at the surface.
So what?
This is one way to see that attribution of ANY of the reported warming to the tiny influence of incremental CO2 (a few Watts per square meter of static radiative effect) has been unsound all along. Some will disagree, but the atmosphere keeps demonstrating the power of its own operation as a heat engine at local to global scale.
Here is a link to a visualization of precipitable water globally.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/todays-weather/?var_id=pwtr&ortho=1&wt=1
Until a few years ago, not one flood was caused by climate change. Now all floods are caused by climate change
That increase is so large, I can’t figure out the percentage with my calculator.
What is the difference between an old fashioned flood and a NEW climate change flood?
Two differences:
(1) All climate change floods are
unprecedented,
worse than we thought,
will be much worse in the future,
are deadly for dwarfs and midgets,
and
will mainly affect people of color (previously known as colored people, in the old days of non-climate change floods),
(2) With an old-fashioned flood, you could escape in a rowboat or a canoe. With a climate change flood, you need an ark to survive.
You left out vulnerable trans women or so according the the UN Climate Youth Advisor.
“Climate change”. Anything blamed on those two words, highly overused and overrated, is straight out of the grifter’s handbook on how to get more taxpayer’s money to fund useless and nonsensical “scientific” research. All need to be confined to an island in the middle of somewhere and cut off from the sane citizens they pester with their BS.
Patrick Brown, in his recent article in the LIBERAL PATRIOT, says: “Sea-level rise is an unequivocal result of global warming, and the five inches of global mean sea-level rise we have observed over the past 50 years unquestionably exacerbates global coastal flooding.”
Let me clarify this statement. Sea Level Rise (SLR) in some places somewhere has been claimed to be about 5 inches in the last 50 years. We can just accept this, even though it is not strictly true. Does that stipulated 5 inches “exacerbate global coastal flooding”? well, yes, maybe, depending on local topography — but ONLY by that 5 inches. So, if your land/city/front yard can be flooded by an extra five inches of rise in sea surface height, then you were already in deep trouble from the sea.
The mitigation necessary for that 5 inches is an additional SIX INCHES of berm or sea wall, one concrete block tall.
As for “unequivocal result” — the general understanding is that the slight warming of the oceans causes sea water expansion and thus the 5 inches of SLR. Or, other factors as yet not understood. The five inches of SLR, if occurring in your exact location (check your tide gauge), is unequivocal. (but not necessarily the cause of that 5 inches). For you, the cause doesn’t matter. However, if your yard has seen 15 inches of SLR over the same time period, you’d better get busy finding the cause — sinkhole, severe subsidence, etc.
As the many recent studies have shown, using LIDAR and other advanced techniques, more than 1/2 of all Relative SLR is caused by local subsidence.
Note that the “5 inches” is taken from tide gauge records which INCLUDE subsidence.
Good points here, Kip. Thank you.
Very nice. It has gotten to the point that the mainstream media is the last place I go for the news. It is not that they have lost their way, they are reporting exactly what THEY want. They report the things they like in a positive light and the things they don’t like in a negative light. Either way they win. This is nothing new, news outlets have always had biases, personal opinions and so on. They have also let their biases and opinions shape their reporting. The problem today is that the vast majority of news organizations are owned or controlled by a few conglomerates who unfortunately all think pretty much the same and have squeezed out contrary opinions and reporting. Be careful who you listen to.