About Those German Floods

Most people understand that leftists take advantage of real or alleged crises to expand their power. But an equally important phenomenon is that they use crises of various kinds to excuse their own incompetence. (Covid has served such a purpose over the last year and a half; it has become a near-universal excuse for failure of performance.) The recent floods in Germany, which killed more than 150 people, are a case in point, as Die Welt and the No Tricks Zone report.

The starting point, of course, is the Left’s knee-jerk blaming of German floods on “climate change”–just as the current drought in the Midwestern United States is blamed on “climate change.” Any weather you don’t like is “climate change,” and “climate change” exists for the sole purpose of giving government more power over our lives.

Germany’s climate alarmist media appears to be waking up a little, and thus are not totally buying the claims being made by German leaders that the devastating floods were due to climate change. It’s becoming increasingly clear the human catastrophe was the result of unimaginable government incompetence.
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Today we are seeing unusually harsh criticism coming from a number of media outlets aimed at the German government’s ineptitude. For example, “Welt” science editor Axel Bojanowski wrote a commentary that the flood catastrophe was made possible by “inconceivable ignorance”.

Bojanowski comments further:

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.

Such floods have afflicted this area of Germany for centuries:

Those claiming that the weather catastrophe came unexpectedly and that there was no way to be ready for it are no longer being taken very seriously, and are only confirming their historical ignorance.

Dr. Karl August Seel provides a comprehensive history of the River Ahr flood events – going back to the year 1348.

The Ahr River, the ground zero of last week’s flood disaster, is the northernmost tributary of the Rhine and has a length of 90 km and a catchment area of 900 square kilometers.

As the chronicles show, flooding events happened dozens of times and the authorities were obviously comatose at the wheel.

For too many years a crusty old bureaucracy focused on climate protection while ignoring protection from the whims of the weather. Their strategy, as unbelievable as it may sound, was to try to produce good weather by cutting CO2 emissions. It’s that stupid.

The people who want us to think they can rescue the world’s climate couldn’t even manage a flood.

Were the political elites of centuries ago better at managing floods than today’s German greenies? I suspect they were. They lacked the universal excuse of global warming, and had to actually do their jobs.

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