BBC Falsely Claim Climate Change Causing More Flash Floods
Today’s dose of BBC climate propaganda: Flash flooding affects cities across the world and has become more common because of climate change. Parts of London and the south of England were left underwater after heavy rain in July.
The BBC article states:
What is flash flooding?
Flash floods usually happen during intense rainfall – when the amount of water is too much for drains and sewers to deal with.
It can occur very quickly and without much warning.
Roads can become unpassable – with vehicles abandoned – and homes and shops damaged by floodwater.
Floods can affect key public infrastructure including transport networks and hospitals. In London, some hospitals had to ask patients to stay away after they lost power.
Why does it happen in cities and towns?
Urban areas are more likely to experience this type of “surface water” flooding because they have a lot of hard surfaces – everything from paved front gardens to roads, car parks, and high streets.
When rain hits them it can’t soak into the ground as it would do in the countryside.
An example was seen when New York City was hit by Storm Elsa in July, flooding the subway system.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57969877
You would have thought the BBC has answered its own question in those last few sentences, but, surprise surprise, they have to wheel out the climate change bogeyman:
In many places – including much of the UK – old sewer systems were built based on historic rainfall projections.
Dr. Veronica Edmonds-Brown of the University of Hertfordshire said the growth of London was also a problem as its Victorian-era drainage system “cannot cope with the huge increase in population”.
What utter drivel!
Victorian sewers were not built to channel rainfall, they were designed to carry sewage away. Can you honestly imagine some Victorian engineer working out how much rainfall might come down?
The harsh truth is that London and other cities have long ago outgrown those old sewers.
Much more of a problem though is that cities are now almost entirely concreted over. Back in Victorian times, large areas were bare earth and vegetation, so rainfall simply drained away into the soil rather than down drains.
Naturally, the BBC goes further:
Many factors contribute to flooding, but climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and so these storms become more intense.
According to Prof Hayley Fowler, of the UK Climate Resilience Programme, flash flooding used to be “relatively unusual”.
But she said warming means “these heavy short-duration bursts from thunderstorms which cause flash flooding are becoming more common”.
Ms. Fowler’s research suggests flash floods – measured as 30mm of rain per hour – “will increase fivefold by the 2080s” if climate change continues on its current track.
As is usually the case with these claims, there is no attempt to provide any data backing them up, only some dire warning of what might happen in sixty years’ time.
Where is the evidence that flash floods are more common now? And where is the evidence that rainfall in England is getting more extreme?
In fact, the study which the BBC links to, by Fowler herself, shows that there is no such trend here. This is based on another Fowler study, which concludes:
“Natural variability appears to dominate currently observed trends…”
If, of course, her theory is correct, we would expect to see clear evidence at the longest-running weather site in the country, at Radcliffe Observatory, at Oxford University.
But we don’t:
When the data does not fit the theory, change the theory!
All of this latest BBC propaganda is, of course, on the back of some flash floods in London on Sunday, where the highest daily rainfall was just 41.6 mm:
This, needless to say, is not an unusual occurrence.
In 1975, four times as much fell in the space of fewer than three hours over Hampstead. (Christopher Booker maintains that most of this fell in about 20 minutes, as he sat on a bus in the middle of it all!)
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-climate-extremes
In any other branch of science, no scientist would make claims without the facts to back it up.
But in climate science, the climate charlatans are allowed to make it up as they go along.
See more here: climatechangedispatch.com
Header image: The Economist
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Alan
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The same nonsensical arguments are used with temperature and rainfall.
If the atmosphere taps heat, then it is not at the surface and it is not heating the surface. Prof Andrea Sella, a chemist from UCL, conducted an experiment on TV with a light, a tube of carbon dioxide and gun cotton. He showed that the light contained energy and set the gun cotton alight. The gun cotton represented the earth’s surface and the light the sun, so demonstrating that the sun heats the surface. He then placed a tube a carbon dioxide in the path of the light and the gun cotton did not light. Hence showing that CO2 traps heat and causes the greenhouse effect. Ignoring the obvious that the greenhouse effect is supposed to make the surface warmer, but the gun cotton did not light. However, another part of his deception was to use a magnifying glass to concentrate the light beam otherwise without the CO2 it would not have burnt. CO2 scatters light so it was impossible to concentrate it in the second case. The experiment only worked because of the magnifying glass and the second part with CO2 proved the exact opposite of what was claimed. This is just one of many experiments claiming to show an effect that does not exist, and these professors know they can get away with it.
If a warm atmosphere holds more moisture, it is in the atmosphere not pouring down to earth. It is well known that most rain occurs when it is cold, because the atmosphere cannot hold the water. Tony Heller discussed this in detail in one of his recent videos.
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Andy
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Well said Alan.
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MattH
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The fire triangle requires oxygen, fuel, and heat (ignition). Remove any of these three things and you kill a fire.
The good professor removes the oxygen and replaces it with CO2, a fire extinguisher type.
Good Professor? Good conman.
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Monty
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My take is that the tube, made of glass, blocked the light to the gun cotton.
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Howdy
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Doesn’t matter what the subject matter is, the british brainwashing corp will twist it until it’s contrary to fact.
They would claim there’s no licence fee if it fit the narrative.
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sir_isO
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In the mean time, ignore “freak cold snaps” caused by geoengineering in say, brazil.
Forgot about china causing snow, forget about the effects of silver iodide, forget about using drones to “shock” clouds, forget about being able to go to state.gov site and seeing them explicitly detail some of their current practices etc.
So I dunno about you, but they’re 100% correct. All that that stuff IS because of anthropogenic climate change, quite obviously, but it has nothing to do with co2.
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F
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Climate change – it’s all about the upcoming Sunday Law aka Mark of the beast – https://youtu.be/sXtmnaQWXr8
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