More than ever, I keep reading about how hyperlocal water systems are, and IMHO it shouldn't come as a surprise anymore that the way we're going to experience the effects of climate change is in the form of more extreme versions of the things each region already had before (be it droughts, rain, heat waves or cold waves)
It wouldn't have helped in this case, though. No clever water retention system can cope with such a downpour. Maaaaybe it could mitigate the worst results.
> I can't help but think that our ancestors would judge us pretty harshly for treating rainwater like nuisance and not a resource to manage wisely.
Also considering that many cities are like wind channels...
In Toronto, there was a mandate a few years ago for all houses to disconnect downspouts from the sewer system (so that rainwater is absorbed into the ground of the sprawling suburbs instead of overloading the city plumbing system. They've also been building gigantic water reservoirs by the lake in anticipation of increased pressure in said plumbing systems.
I think at this point, it sounds like the people saying we're already too late are not really being alarmist, and that we are going to need to pay that price in the form of lots of infrastructure projects to deal with things like extreme floods. The scary thing IMHO is Germany clearly invested in such infrastructure[0] and yet here we are.
Most of these precede industrialization and were caused by storms:
That’s where climate change comes in: In the past, we had one "once in a century" flood per century.
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozan%C3%B3w#/media/Plik:Powod...
"This area was treated - also due to the fact that it is located in a depression - as a floodplain in the event of catastrophic floods that sometimes occur here, caused by the flooded waters of the Odra or Ślęza, flowing not far west of Kozanów. The decision to build up Kozanów with tall apartment blocks [14] made of prefabricated slabs turned out to be fateful. After twenty years, the catastrophic flood of the millennium of 1997 flooded Kozanów and its vicinity [15]. The estate was the most disadvantaged area of the city, the water was reaching the first floor in some places. During the 2010 flood on May 22, Kozanów was partially flooded again."
Whether that is because the floods were larger or because we had less robust engineering is unknown.
Also worth noting this event is still ongoing, so the "at least 120" number is likely lowballing.
This is flooding by rainwater in mountainous regions.
> Many factors contribute to flooding, but a warming atmosphere caused by climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely
To make an argument that climate change isn't a factor, I'd imagine one would need to look at the expected frequency of getting record breaking floods, fires and other extreme events worldwide simultaneously.
> To make an argument that climate change isn't a factor, I'd imagine one would need to look at the expected frequency of getting record breaking floods, fires and other extreme events worldwide simultaneously.
You have it backwards. To prove that climate change is a factor, you need to do these things. Storms causing floods that kill people precede industrialization.
If you want to argue that carbon offsets don't have as much direct impact on specific problems (floods, fires, whatever), sure, that's a valid question about resource prioritization, but the theme I keep hearing is that these things keep getting worse year after year and that in a lot of cases it's no longer at a scale small enough for infrastructure projects to even be feasible anymore.
The article definitely takes that position, at least implicitly. Half of the text is about climate change.
Do you see anything wrong with that statement? Seems pretty accurate to me...