A flood of false climate blame [updated]

 

Animals adapt themselves to their environment. That's their way of survival. Humans by contrast adapt their environment to themselves. That's our unique means of survival. The availability of abundant energy has allowed that process to be turbo-charged -- to turn mere survival into full-on flourishing. 

Some argue that abundant energy has however been bad for the environment. Has made it dangerous. That is has already caused global warming, which is already causing untold natural disasters. Heatwaves in North America and recent flooding in Germany, China, and here at home, seems to some to suggest that's the case. "But such global warming claims are not supported by the facts and our best scientific understanding," and do not help us properly comprehend "a meteorological black swan event and how the atmosphere is capable of attaining extreme, unusual conditions without any aid from our species."

And as the historic record shows, catastrophic flooding is hardly new to any of these places. What has happened over the last century (on the back of increasingly abundant energy) has been the decreasing impact of such disasters. As writer Alex Epstein has been saying for at least a decade, the availability of abundant energy has allowed humans to change the environment in our favour. “We don’t take a safe environment and make it dangerous; we take a dangerous environment and make it far safer.” The production of abundant energy hasn't caused environmental disasters, its abundance has allowed human beings to begin avoiding their worst effects.

Consider the flooding. Tragic as recent flooding has been, even as recently as the 1970s, the casualties were measured not in the hundreds, but in the hundreds of thousands  ...

Catastrophic flooding is hardly new. What is new is the low toll of casualties -- and the accompanying phenomenon of blaming these catastrophes on atmospheric "warming" that even by the most juiced-up global record is barely 1 degree over a whole century. That's not just nonsensical, it ignores the real cause of these disasters -- which, as German media sources like Die Welt suggests, is not uncontrolled energy use but "inconceivable ignorance."

Politicians, authorities and the media point to climate change as the cause of the flood disaster. Yet severe weather warnings were not taken seriously. And disaster protection in our country is at the level of a developing country...
    The risk was known: Rainfall like this week’s has happened repeatedly in Germany, historical chronicles read like blueprints for the current flood disaster, and hazard maps show the flood risk. Yet politicians, authorities and the media point to climate change as the cause – while disaster protection in Germany is at the level of a developing country. An unbelievable scandal.
    At least 156 people have died because of heavy rain in Germany. Rain had fallen in amounts that have always been expected in Germany and have been an occasional occurrence since time immemorial. The same places that have been devastated by floods of rain this week have been hit in a similar way in the past, as chronicles show. 

Although past flooding was well known, and 

the heavy rains had been forecast days in advance, nothing was done to avert the inevitable destruction. Instead of taking responsibility, politicians are blaming climate change in a bid to shift attention away from their incompetence and gross negligence.

Shifting blame. That's something politicians and their supporters really are good at. That's their means of survival.

UPDATE: Germans are good at keeping records, even of historic flooding ...