Michael Kile
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, but only in My Fair Lady. On October 29 and 30, 2024, however, it fell elsewhere with tragic consequences: the loss of over two hundred lives and widespread damage in the Valencia region.
Almost as surprising as the downpour’s intensity was the rush by agencies in this space to conclude it was caused by the bogeyman apparently driving all natural disasters today: “climate change”.
An alternative explanation is that the weather gods were up to their old tricks. After all, a so-called extreme weather event (EWE) happens somewhere in the world every day. So the probability was high they might conjure up one just a week before COP29, as indeed they did last year. Storm Bettina made landfall in Eastern Europe on November 28, 2023, just days before COP28, the annual UN climate conference. It too was attributed rather promptly to nasty anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
The COP29 Conference of the Parties is being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 11 to 22 November, 2024. After twenty eight years of talks, the event is being promoted, optimistically, as a Climate Action Summit. How many people does it take to change the climate of a whole planet to suit everybody everywhere and forever? At least 40,000, judging by the number of delegates this year. Good luck with that exercise of breathtaking hubris, the bureaucratic equivalent of collective hara kiri, at least for the developed world.
The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, had a familiar message for them: immediate steps must be taken to cut [carbon dioxide] emissions, “safeguard people from climate chaos”, and “tear down the walls to climate finance”, especially given what he described as this year’s “masterclass in climate destruction”. It was déjà vu all over again.
COP29 is yet another attempt by the developing world to monetize the climate and raise “trillions of dollars to protect lives and livelihoods from the worsening impacts of climate change.” Yet most countries were silent on the irony of China’s chutzpah: the world’s largest coal consumer, biggest solar panel manufacturer and now space explorer, still claiming developing country status and putting its hand out for billions of dollars of free money.
There is, of course, no suggestion here that the agency rush to judgment mentioned above might have been due to activist researchers so dazzled by confirmation bias – and now underwritten by fabulous funding from both governments and private entities – they could not resist making confident claims about climate causation, such as detecting the “fingerprint of climate change in complex weather events”; or that the MSM has become rather keen to provide them with a media megaphone without further scrutiny, or express any doubt about the veracity of their claims.
Nevertheless, dear reader, here’s an intriguing case for your consideration. On 31 October, 2024, just a few hours after the Spanish deluge, BBC’s climate editor, Justin Rowlatt, posted this article: Deadliest weather made worse by climate change – scientists.
Human-caused climate change made the ten deadliest extreme weather events of the last 20 years more intense and more likely, according to new analysis.
The killer storms, heatwaves and floods affected Europe, Africa and Asia killing more than 570,000 people.
The new analysis highlights how scientists can now discern the fingerprint of climate change in complex weather events.
The study involved reanalysing data for some of the extreme weather events and was carried out by scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group at Imperial College London.
“This study should be an eye-opener for political leaders hanging on to fossil fuels that heat the planet and destroy lives”, said Dr Friederike Otto, co-founder and lead of WWA.
“If we keep burning oil, gas and coal, the suffering will continue,” she said.
Just four days later, on November 4, 2024, WWA itself released a statement: extreme downpours increasing in southern Spain as fossil fuel emissions heat the climate. It had performed a “super rapid analysis” on the observational data. While it was “not a formal attribution study,” WWA was quicker than Wyatt Earp to identify what it believes caused the late October deluge.
To investigate if climate change influenced the heavy rainfall, we determine if there is a trend in the historic rainfall observations in the region. The three analysed datasets indicate that heavy 1-day rainfall events, as intense as the one observed, are about 12% more intense and about twice as likely in today’s climate, that is 1.3°C warmer than it would have been in the cooler preindustrial climate without human-caused warming.
These results are based on observational data and do not include climate models that are used in full attribution studies. However, the results are in line with existing evidence of climate change signals in similar past extreme daily-rainfall events that have been studied across Europe. They are also aligned with basic physics and the so-called Clausius-Clapeyron relationship, which outlines that a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, resulting in a 7% increase in heavy rainfall with 1°C of warming. We are therefore confident the changes in heavy rainfall are driven by human-caused climate change.
Only a seven percent increase in heavy rainfall with an increase of one degree Centigrade of warming hardly seems alarming. In any case, with what alchemy does WWA, or indeed any agency, distinguish the weather’s natural variability from “human-caused climate change”?
WWA’s analysis also “built on a relatively sparse literature on rainfall extremes in the region”. In other words, poor data. Why it included the following paragraph, which appears to contradict its conclusion, is unclear, at least to me.
Working group 1 of the sixth assessment report of the IPCC found evidence of an increasing trend in rainfall extremes in western and central Europe, but with low confidence of the human contribution to this due to limited agreement (IPCC, 2021). Furthermore, projected changes in such extremes vary strongly by location and season, especially in the study region in this analysis, which suggest a wetting trend in winter and drying in summer (Wood & Ludwig, 2020).
How did WWA decipher this EWE and reach such an emphatic conclusion in less than a week? Was its “super rapid analysis” driven more by a desire to turn the Spanish downpour into another scary storyline for the Imperial College climate research team to promote in Baku, when it presented there on November 11, the first day of COP29? The so-called facts in this case surely were not massaged to achieve other objectives.
Whatever the case, if the fate of humankind depends on the insights – and prejudices – of professional readers of the Earth’s atmospheric entrails, perhaps it would be prudent not to ignore their warnings. Yet, on the balance of probabilities, it’s hard to deny that the sequence of events outlined above has a fishy smell about it. A sceptic might conclude that a random EWE – in this case the rain in Spain – may have been weaponised to support the alarmist mood at COP29.
Such a view arguably becomes more credible on discovering that WWA’s main benefactor is The Grantham Institute. It sits “at the heart of Imperial College London’s work on climate change and the environment, with the mission: “to lead on world-class research, policy, training and innovation that supports effective action on climate change.”
The Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment entity was created in February 2007 with a multi-million-pound donation from the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment. It was the largest sum of private funding given to UK climate change research at the time. The aim: to create a global centre of excellence for research and education on climate change at Imperial College London.
The Granthams hope that their donation will motivate other individuals to support research into the causes, consequences and mitigation of climate change with a view to informing policy on an international scale.
The Grantham Family established the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment in 1997. The Foundation supports natural resource conservation projects both in the US and internationally. Jeremy Grantham is a well-known investment manager and chairman of Boston-based investment firm, GMO. Hannelore Grantham is Director of the Grantham Foundation.
The Foundation also supports our partner institutes: the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment (London School of Economics), the Divecha Centre for Climate Change (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore) and the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures (University of Sheffield). (Source: The Grantham Institute)
Jeremy Grantham remains the long-term investment strategist at the firm he cofounded in 1977, Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. (GMO). He still serves on its asset allocation committee and board of directors.
In an interview with Morningstar on October 9 this year, Grantham said he was as concerned as “every scientist in the climate business”.
Morningstar:You spend a lot of time thinking about climate and environmental issues more broadly. Renewables have clearly made a lot of strides, electric vehicles, and yet carbon emissions remain stubbornly high. As a climate solutions investor, what you’re excited about these days?
Grantham:Well, what I consider important is the ability of senior people to miss the point. Climate change is like some giant python. It’s got us gripped and it isn’t squeezing that tight yet. But each year it’s getting a little tighter and it shows no inclination to go away and we’re ignoring it. If we continue to take climate change this lightly, if we continue to protect our short-term profits and ignore longer-term consequences to the general world, we will have a very hard time maintaining a stable world, stable social, stable corporate, stable anything. And I would say, to me, on a global basis, it looks like we’re quite a handful of years into a destabilizing mode and the climate change has a lot to do with it.
The Grantham Foundation has 90% of all the money I’ve ever made: 50% is in venture capital, maybe closer to 60% today, and half of that is green. So, we get a ringside seat at what is going on.
As for the World Weather Attribution group, it was formed by Imperial and The Grantham Institute in 2014 with the explicit aim of “changing the global conversation around climate change, influencing adaptation strategies and paving the way for new sustainability litigation.” In other words, funding a smorgasbord of controversial extreme event attribution computer games, green ideology and climate politics. If the ultimate objective is litigation, perhaps “conversation” is the wrong word.
The group says it has “performed more than 80 attribution studies on heatwaves, extreme rainfall, drought, floods, wildfires and cold spells around the world.”
WWA is very much on the same page as its benefactors, as is clear from some of the comments made here: Imperial experts call for action on finance health and loss and damage at COP29.
Having an agreement about the amount of money and where that money’s coming from […] will be one of the most significant outcomes of COP29. Mike Wilkins, Executive Director, Centre of Climate Finance & Investment, Imperial Business School.
The shrinking carbon budget shows the importance and urgency of near-term emissions reductions. Professor Joeri Rogelj, Director of Research, Grantham Institute – Climate change and the Environment.
One of the important decisions that needs to happen at COP29 is who can access the loss and damage fund. Dr Friederike Otto, founder and lead of World Weather Attribution.
Grantham is right. Climate change has become a global “business”, presumably very profitable for “carbon” cowboys or green investors like GMO, at least unless the RE music stops for some reason, such as a decline in public gullibility about the “climate crisis”. There’s another python on the planet too: the sperm count.
Grantham:In terms of pessimism, in a sense, you ain’t heard nothing yet. Because in my opinion, there’s not just one python squeezing us, there’s two—the other is toxicity. If we do not move against toxicity, we are going out of business. And to give you the most shocking single number, our sperm count, which is the best indicator of general health, is down to a third of what it was in 1950—and 1950 was not a healthy place to be. Hunter/gatherers a few thousand years earlier would have been much healthier. And it’s falling at an accelerating rate. One of great epidemiologists who study this said, “It’s as if we mean to go out of business.” The drop since 2000 is over 2.5% a year from where we were. And the drop in the 20th century was closer to 1.5%. But no one gives it rat’s tail.
Amen.
Michael Kile
A version of this article was posted at the Australian site, Quadrant Online, on November 19, 2024, with the title: We’re all Doomed. Yawn
There is no mention of the word “dam”. Spain is the leader in removing flood-control dams. A simple strategy: remove the dams, then blame the “climate change”.
I expect the same thing to be happen regarding the Klamath River in California.
As for the health thing Kennedy will be worth watching
Ten more years.
Before Gore totally jumped the shark. Part 2.
I’ve been trying to find data on the history of floods that have hit Valencia going as far back as possible. As usual, Google’s search engine will only give me listings for last month’s flood (and a lot of them) when I attempt the history search. On Wikipedia, I found a brief reference to what I am looking for. The quote below is from their writeup for the 1957 flood:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957_Valencia_flood
“A large number of floods have been recorded in Valencia, from 1321 to 1897. Up to 75 floods are estimated to have taken place in the seven centuries prior to the 1957 flood.[1]“
….but no data providing any details of those floods. I won’t even bother trying to find any data on the long term trend line for rainfall in the Valencia region. It’s getting to the point where I’d like to tell Google what they can do with their search engine.
I loved Google at first because it made everyone think I was smart.
But then everyone learned to Google and Google started making them stupid.
So I broke up with Google and adopted ChatGPT.
Seriously. You tell it what to find and it will go find it.
Your question being a case in point, I will copy and paste the ChatGPT answer.
Unfortunately many of the links are to data in Spanish, but Google could translate that for you 🙂
finding detailed records of floods in Valencia between 1321 and 1897 requires delving into historical accounts, regional studies, and archives. While no comprehensive, single database directly spans this period, some resources provide insights into significant flooding events in Valencia:
For further exploration, the Spanish archives (e.g., Biblioteca Nacional de España) and studies on Valencia’s flood history could provide specific data. Additionally, journals like Scripta Nova and local Valencian historical publications offer in-depth analyses of specific events and their impacts. Let me know if you’d like more specific guidance or resources!
Be careful how you use it. If everyone figures it out then the PC people will put pressure on ChatGPT to make people stupid again. At which point I shall switch to Groc.
Thank you, David. It helps.
I looked for DANA (the weather events name) and Spain and found as one example
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-31/deadly-spain-floods-caused-by-destructive-weather-system-dana/104541098
You may find more, I used Duckduckgo
As that
https://blog.worldweatheronline.com/weather/storm-dana-unleashing-chaos-in-spain-an-in-depth-analysis/
That was written before the actual flood.
Thank you Krishna.
Grantham Institute for the Climate Insane from above.
Zero solar panels
Zero wind turbines.
HUGE numbers of air-conditioning units and chimneys.
One would think if we’re all doomed, doom would become the new normal.
You know, kind of like the old normal, now with even more doom!
It has been normal for millennia. Only the name of the cult collecting tithes is changing.
It’s not confirmation bias. It’s outright propaganda for “the cause”, as elucidated in the CRU emails. There’s no pretense of science.
Control the media, control the narrative …. until the people catch on.
“On October 29, 2024, more than 300 millimeters (12 inches) of rain fell in parts of the province, reported Spain’s meteorological agency, AEMET. In the town of Chiva, nearly 500 millimeters (20 inches) fell in 8 hours” (NASA), Chiva is 30 km up-stream from Valencia.
Up-to-date official Valencia city data for direct comparisons don’t seem to be available but via Extreme Weather Watch: “According to NOAA records, the most rain that Valencia, Spain has ever received in a single day is 26.3 cm which occurred on Saturday November 17, 1956.”
Rankings:
1/ 26.3 cm November 1956, 2/ 17.8 cm October 2007, 3/ 17.2 cm May 2022, 4/ 16.9 cm October 1938, 5/ 16.5 cm October 2000, 6/ 15.2 cm October 1950, 7/ 14.8 cm October 1966, 8/ 1965, 9/ 1971 and so on with millimetre differences.
Clearly October 2024 like November 1956 was a freak event bearing no relationship to the global average temperature trend or the atmospheric CO2 concentration trend, let alone the trend in human CO2 emissions.
But the Climate Change made it worse in 2024 than it could have been. Computer models certified by Science Authorities prove this.
Despite the hype, there is nor real evidence that CO2 has any effect on our global climate system. The AGW hypothesis has been faldified by science.Mankind does not even know what the optimal global climate is let alone how to achieve it. Hence spending money to fight climate change is just a big waste of funds. If they really want to cut nown on CO2 emissions than they should hold these meetings over the Internet. The technology to do this has been availabel for decades.
Yeah, but they’re there for the hookers and blow, the conference is just a way to get the government to pay for their trip.
They’re also there to shore up their fragile little egos and feel important. And they are important – to demonstrate to the sane world just how pathological they really are.
The whole idea that mankind can control global climate is complete hogwash.
Noting the sproradic nature of extreme rainfall events, and the huge variations in outcome with a very slight variation in the geographical position of an event, it is absolutely impossible to give any statistical weighting to the probability of a specific flood event occurring due to some slight change trend in atmospheric conditions.
Truly, climate science is purporting to have re-written the very basis of statistical analysis.
Climate attribution analysis is an abomination.
Just as the Medieval church held their congregations enslaved to an evocation of Satan should they slack on their devotions (and contributions), so the church of weather. So as to make the whole affair more real they even attribute names to their storming rants from the lectern as if those named are the souls of past recalcitrants from weather hell presenting themselves like Marley’s ghost.
The thing about excessive fear is that it is known to physically freeze people and this is what has happened; we have stopped thinking straight, with a good many totally floored by sermons from the blessed (as if they know what God intended, know all about visitations but only offer hope through indulgencies’; are the only people who have direct communication with the deity and can manufacture salves to propitiate their spirit interlocutors).
We cannot be held by fear and apparitions. We may be stultified momentarily by the brains of one generation who, at one appear un-opposable, only to be scorned and derided by the new generation’s intellect. The decline of the monasteries, the derision for the generational seer, all speak of the error of dependence and the necessity for free speech, of outspokenness of bravery to oppose the conjurer’s deceit.
Yes, a story can be concocted before a COP meeting but the Savenorolas of today are but pastiche, are risible in their games. A British premier who can soak his nation in climatic disturbance and penance, looked plainly silly as he shimmered through a gathering of world’s second level proclaiming leadership. As one enlightened American leader once said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” We have been shocked rigid and immobile by talk of a visitation from our Satan and given ourselves up to elements who have a stronger reason, secret, mystic for their conclusions to maintain. Satan never appeared to Henry VIII after destroying the source of tales from the underworld he put the plate and jewels sequestered from those Abbeys was put to earthly use and fear subsided.
re: “Just as the Medieval church held their congregations enslaved to an evocation of Satan ”
I would remind that the children of the Fatima apparition were shown h3ll; it may have been even worse than the early church depicted it … also remind of the “Mircale of the Sun” which was witnessed by many, including contemporary ‘press’ of the time occurring as the concluding Fatima apparition in 1917.
I’m afraid that Imperial College and ‘academic rigour’ have become somewhat separated in the 21st century.
ICSM has taken the money of that dispassionate enquirer, William Gates III, and given it to professional modellers like Neil Ferguson (he who thought that having an East End Shag during Covid lockdown was the behaviour of ‘a leader in society’ etc etc), whose economic vandalism during the Foot and Mouth Disease did more to harm British Agriculture than any single event in the 21st century. He then came out with such unbelievably nonsensical claptrap during Covid and what is worse, Bill Gates seemed to have total control of a purportedly sovereign nation’s response to that claptrap. If I’d been Prime Minister, I’d have told the self-publicist to shut up along the lines of ‘the Professor is in the happily irresponsible position of not actually having to bear the consequences of decisions taken based on his pontifications’…..
So when it says that ‘it wants to change the conversation on climate change’, what all sane and skeptical observers should immediately say is: ‘Prove that you’re not just evangelists looking for grants and prepared to pump out propaganda to order’. Grantham should also be required to disclose whether their ‘funding of research’ has any conflicts of interests in terms of their VC investments, since if the role of the ‘research’ is to enhance exit prices of his risk-capital investments, then it is not academic research, it is paid-for propaganda.
Imperial College of Science and Medicine should have a very great deal to answer for in courts of law over its Covid19 activities. There would be a very serious possibility of the organisation being bankrupted if legal due process were to continue to a logical, rigorous endpoint.
It’s why the UK legal system is world renowned for being able to be bought. Judges get chosen to ensure the right outcome. That sort of thing…..
re: “And to give you the most shocking single number, our sperm count, which is the best indicator of general health, is down to a third of what it was in 1950—and 1950 was not a healthy place to be. Hunter/gatherers a few thousand years earlier would have been much healthier. And it’s falling at an accelerating rate. One of great epidemiologists who study this said, “It’s as if we mean to go out of business.” The drop since 2000 is over 2.5% a year from where we were. And the drop in the 20th century was closer to 1.5%. But no one gives it rat’s tail.”
.
Okay, that last part ‘broke me’, and I have to make a comment; I will assert that there are a number of factors contributing to this, the least of which is ‘climate change’ …
I do not have measurements to prove, but have a reasonable guess that my sperm count has declined since the early 80s. Must be the result of Climate Change.
My sperm count went to zero in 1990. Voluntary sterilization. Does my count get included in the average?
Weather Attribution is made up of pure speculation, assumptions and unsubstantiated assertions.
They have no evidence that CO2 is causing the 1.2C rise in temperatures in the first place, and they certainly don’t have any evidence that CO2 is affecting regional weather events.
They are in the business of attributing weather events to human causes and that’s what they are doing here: Their job. They have a bias. They see a human fingerprint in everything they look at because that’s what they want to see, not because there is anything there.
According to a detailed analysis of the infrared radiation absorbed into the atmosphere by CO2 and water vapor, the increase in CO2 concentrations since 1900 would only result in a 0.17 C rise in global average surface temperatures.
The theoretical temperature rise is higher in cold and dry climates, and lower in warm and humid climates, which would result in slightly milder winters in middle latitudes, but little change in summer temperatures.
According to this model, the additional IR absorption due to an increase in CO2 concentration is only responsible for about 16% of the observed temperature rise since 1900 (according to GISS data).
The remainder of the temperature rise is due either to natural forces beyond human control, or to the “urban heat island” effect which causes local warming in or near large cities, where many weather stations are located.
This result strongly suggests that CO2 concentration is a very weak “control knob” for the climate, and human efforts to “control the climate” by drastic reductions in CO2 emissions from combustion are extremely expensive and futile.
It is far more worthwhile to adapt to the climate and weather we experience than to try to control it. For areas prone to flooding, building sea walls and/or dams is preferable to energy starvation for the entire world. If some environmental purists believe that dams destroy the environment, would they recommend killing all the beavers in the world?
Accusation
“”Weather Attribution is made up of pure speculation”
Retort
“According to a detailed analysis”
One man’s treasure…
The Devil is in the details. 🙂
From the article ‘“If we keep burning oil, gas and coal, the suffering will continue,” If we stop burning fossil fuels, the suffering will definitely increase.
“Working group 1 of the sixth assessment report of the IPCC found evidence of an increasing trend in rainfall extremes in western and central Europe, but with low confidence of the human contribution to this due to limited agreement (IPCC, 2021). Furthermore, projected changes in such extremes vary strongly by location and season, especially in the study region in this analysis, which suggest a wetting trend in winter and drying in summer”
IPCC and Met Office circulation models project increasingly positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) conditions, hence the expectation of milder wetter winters and warmer drier summers for western Europe.
For the UK there is no long term trend in summer rainfall. Since 1995 the summers have become relatively wetter, due to more frequent negative NAO conditions in the summers, and the warmer AMO phase. Increased negative NAO and warmer AMO is normal for a centennial solar minimum, like also in late 1800’s, so it looks like the Sun is charge,
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/month_nao_index.shtml
“changing the global conversation around climate change, influencing adaptation strategies…”
Perhaps they should be influencing countries to rebuild the dams they have removed which could be a cause of catastrophic floods in areas not prone to such events due to the dams
https://www.thelocal.es/20230424/why-is-spain-destroying-dams-in-the-middle-of-a-drought
As Spanish farmers warn they face the worst harvests in 30 years and parts of the country have restricted water usage, the government continues with its plans to demolish hundreds of dams. Spain has long been a land of reservoirs.
During the days of Franco, the dictator invested heavily in dam infrastructure as a means of storing water ahead of periods of drought. Many Spanish cities still get their drinking water from reservoirs commissioned by El Caudillo.
But this approach has been changing in recent years, even though the country is now facing its worst drought in 50 years.
In 2021, Spain blew up 108 dams, more than half of the 239 that were demolished across Europe that year, according to figures from the Dam Removal project, coordinated by World Fish Migration Foundation.