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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

Pakistan foreign minister:

> "And while we understand that the new reality of climate change means more extreme weather, or monsoons, more extreme heat waves like we saw earlier this year, the scale of the current flood is of apocalyptic proportions. We certainly hope it's not a new climate reality."

Pakistan also had major record-breaking flooding in 2010, and rainfall patterns appear very similar to this event:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Pakistan_floods

It's probably a safe bet that Pakistan will continue to see these kinds of events at least once every ten years for the foreseeable future, with a likely increase in frequency and severity. Warming the planet means pumping more moisture into the atmosphere, which in combination with more random global atmospheric circulation patterns, means more extremes of flood and drought.

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They have been happening for the last century. The reason why is simple: that part of the country is very fertile, agriculture is a big part of the economy, lots of people build houses in an area that they know will almost certainly flood within a few years (and the reason the govt doesn't do anything about it despite flooding being a major political issue is corruption).

This isn't to say that climate change isn't happening, but: flood plain that has flooded for centuries floods is not surprising. And it is fairly normal in that region for lots of people to live in flood zones because they are fertile agriculturally (due, I believe, to the flooding).

> and the reason the govt doesn't do anything about it despite flooding being a major political issue is corruption

Could you provide evidences of governmental corruption that actually result into this?

Something like: * A given amount of budget were allocated to hire public sector workers to do necessary management work (coordinating, communication, planning of non-flood-hazard residential zones etc.)

* A proof that the above budget meets the required efforts

* Evidences that the people are cooperating with the government, if the government actually carried out such campaingh.

Corruption is everywhere. In the sense that individuals not doing what they suppose because of selfish motivations.

But to blame a government on systematic corruption, there has to be evidences that resources are available, but the government choose to neglect.

The liberal fantasy that "eliminating corruption, then your imagination will become reality" does not exist in reality at all.

> The liberal fantasy that "eliminating corruption, then your imagination will become reality" does not exist in reality at all.

Is that a liberal fantasy? That seems pretty bipartisan.

I think the parent comment is referring to how corruption seems to be a given for everything the government is involved in.

There are a lot of reasons we can come up with to explain this, but it does seem to be a fact that the more control the government has over something, the more inefficient and corrupt the process.

However, this inherent corruption seems to be ignored when (typically liberal) people argue for more government control.

Most "liberals" are aware that government structures tend to be inefficient in the best case. This is unavoidable simply because even the most "liberal" people want their government to stick to the rule of Law. Thus, stringent procedures, bureaucracy or political deliberations, and auditing are required.

However, this inherent inefficiency and risk for corruption is seen as a lesser evil compared to leaving a matter completely unattended, or in the hands of market structures that have evidenced that they are utterly uncaring about their impact on society at large. Entrenched market structures often exhibit the same behaviors that "conservatives" dislike in governments.

I think it is more than just “inconvenient”.

Government control can destroy value on a pretty massive scale, see Venezuela.

“small l” liberal, not the political faction

It's just politicians shifting the blame on climate change. Makes you wonder why the Netherlands don't have record-breaking floods.

The Netherlands are a rich developed nation. It helps. No monsoon there either.

What also helps is that they started building dams centuries ago.

With the loot from East Indies?

Probably. You only need mud and wood and to stop whining about the chilling cold to start. Concrete and iron can come later.

I don't see many gems encrusted in the dams in any case. Do they use cars and fridges in East Indies?

The Netherlands has some of the best water policy and technology in the world and they staked the land of their country on that. But, they did have a number of floods and they continue to be at risk for out-of-distribution flooding.

I wonder why pakistan doesn't have a sea barrier like Netherlands

This isn't flooding from the sea. Such a wall would make this worse.

> This isn't flooding from the sea. Such a wall would make this worse.

Dams have been extensively used for flood control, and some dam designs are explicitly designed for that specific purpose. Planning them to make things better doesn't make things worse.

We literally had that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_European_floods#Netherlan...

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