Oh sorry, I thought everyone has seen that.
Thanks Komsomolez
Valencia was the most affected, itâs a tragedyâŚmore than 200 fatalities and theyâre still counting.
Iâm surprised it was mentioned only today here, seems folks donât watch the news.
There is a climate change component, warmer air can hold more water vapor than becomes stronger rainfall.
This time, politics and anti-science ideas seem to had a stronger influence on what happened.
The meteorological event (Dana) was first identified on Oct 20 by meteorologists from a Spanish government agency, 9 days before the flood. The night before the flood, there was a maximum alert for several cities and villages. The day of the flood at 10h00, it was the maximum alert for the whole Valencia region (equivalent to a canton around here). The rain started at 15h00. What happened?
Meteorologists did their job. They rose the alert the night before. Theoretically, people should have not worked, or gone to school or whatever on Oct. 29. Instead people should have been sheltering at home, and people from known hazardous areas should have evacuated to safer locations.
Apparently, the civil protection organisms under the umbrella of regional and local governments failed in several regions and municipalities. Only a few municipalities gave the order to shelter at home, be alert, road closures and evacuate from hazardous areas.
The sad part is that people shouting climate change are making things worse. What happened in Spain is a known meteorological event. Yes, it can be made stronger by climate change, but itâs something that already happens.
In the remote past of 2019 there was another flood, no deadly, but big flood in the same region. At the time, it was identified that the alert system was deficient. Some people developed a new alert system that relied on pre-developed SMS messages depending on the alert level and time during a meteorological event. It was not implemented. Something happened, the SMS messages arrived when people had already drowned.
This is a developing story and the whole world can learn this failure. Whole story in Spanish via El Pais
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There is an app for Switzerland called ALERTSWISS.
I donât know how good it is (as in quick) for people in the endangered area. I downloaded it sometime this year and it went on quiet often during summer when it rained so much (mainly for Thurgau. You can set the cantons you wanna know about).
It also sends all-clear SMS later on, which I find good.
After a couple decades working in natural hazards, I also see a very interesting psychological phenomena. People assumes the earthquakes, floods, tsunamis they remember as the upper limit of what may happen one day. When specialists look at historical records and statistics, the event we have seen during our lifetimes are only red flags, then the best guess of what may happen one day should be made and plan accordingly.
This is understandable. Everyone has already stresses in life to worry about. Relationships, health, money, workâŚwhy include existential horror of realizing the universe, nature or whatever you want to call it can kills us very easily? So, we people prefer to make harvest festivals, thank supernatural entities before every meal or every weekend, and forget about the killing part and awful uncertainty. Donât worry, the preacher says that God loves Us!
Itâs comforting to believe that the river that didnât kill you 10 years before will not kill you this time. But, these are pure comforting thoughts, not research and much less civil protection.
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Not pretty.
Shit. I remember when there were only 2 seasons in CA, and it rained from Halloween to late April. The Pineapple Express knocked out power in January, and fire season was July-Sept. Oh dear.
Trump likes to blame these fires on California forest management but often they are in the national (Federal) forests looked after by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service
âZero percent containedâ as of now says the fire chief because the winds are crazy.
Palisades doesnât have much waterâŚand itâs run dry for fire fighting. Shit.
Can someone please edit that image by replacing âmankindâ with Los Angeles? Thank you.
Just you wayt 'Enry 'Higgins, just you wayt!
Just LOL!
Justice Department officials who served under President-elect Trumpâs first administration may have influenced the 2020 presidential election through intentional media leaks targeted at Democratic state governors over COVID-19 related probes, according to a report released by the departmentâs Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
Inspector General Michael Horowitz pointed to three senior Trump officialsâ federal pursuit of pandemic-related negligence cases that spiked death rates in nursing homes located in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New York and New Jersey. The trio, according to the report released Tuesday, prematurely disclosed the findings to the New York Post in âa last playâ before the election.
As the LA fires have also re-ignited a debate whether this is related to climate change or not, here is an interesting perspective. I also recommend the original Nature article that is underlying this article.
Yes⌠And?
We have known with certainty what will happen if we continue to burn fossil fuel since the early seventies.
And it is happening as predicted. But try telling those in charge that.
Copernicus has said that for the first time, in 2024 earths median temperature was 1,6°âŚ! This is happening right now, this is our new reality.
Back then it was warned that if nothing is done to wean off fossil fuels the time will ocme where humanity HAS to stop the use of these fuels and the longer we wait the more painful any kind of solution will be.
At the moment I am worried that we have run out of time to actually find and implement a workable and scalable solution. There is no way out, our society as it is now will collapse.
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You donât need to worry anymore.
Though, part of the increase may actually come from longer geological/astronomical cycles.
But burning millions of years worth of stored carbon in two centuries certainly didnât help.
And almost everyone else. What compromises have you made to your lifestyle?
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And? I was trying to educate the discussion.
This is an example of events that have not necessarily been predicted, and science is still evolving. The Santa Ana winds have been there forever amd are not a result of climate change, but they interact with other things. There is hardly ever only one causality, but the bigger picture is that we see more drastic change than forecast in the linear models.
Agreed, they may not have caused the fires, but CC has created an environment where the probability is high and getting higher by the year.
The linear models can only be wrong, parts of the globe will suffer more than others and interestingly one theory that seems to be gaining ground is that the more we shift to renewables and cleaner emissions the more the globe will heat up due to the fact that we are blowing less pollution into the atmosphere, the more pollution, the more particulates to reflect the suns radiation. One of the main factors in the CC model is the planets albedo.
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