Bollocks, Matey

What the Valencia floods actually show is that all those taxes you pay are wasted – in a true crisis, your neighbours step up to help before the state apparatus can draft a H&S risk assessment and get their boots on…

“The response was to divert the river away from the city center. ”

Worse than that. It looks like they filled the target diversion area with new building. Also covered the upstream area with new building so that rainfall would run off even faster.

I’ve always been confused as to the correct definition of “climate” and “weather”. In the good old days of Global Warming, before the rebranding, weather was what happened when it got cold and climate was when it got warm. Since it became the much more useful “climate change”, are the different definitions still necessary?

I’ve always been confused as to the correct definition of “climate” and “weather”.

It’s easy. If it snows in April and you remark “nippy today, so much for that global warming” then you are a stupid denialist peasant who doesn’t understand that it is WEATHER!

However, if it gets above 30C two days in a row in August, then this is a CLIMATE disaster!! and any talk of “summer” is anti-science denial and probably fascism, stupid.

@Marius
When I was a lad it once snowed in June and stopped the cricket. I’m pretty sure that was weather, but now it would be “explained” away as unpredictable weather due to climate change.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/rewind-to-1975-snow-stopped-play-462037

I wasn’t at the match but was watching it on TV . I also know someone who was watching the game in person.

It’s a bit cloudy today. It must be all that CO2 in the atmosphere.

I note that climate is only a concern in the “Christian” West. The others may find it a useful grift but really don’t care. So it will fizzle out soon when the millennialism declines. (About 2037 if previous hysteria is a guide.)

Ah, John B, if only there were a political party dedicated to “rewinding”.

Don’t forget Hunga Tonga lobbed 150,000,000,000,000 (150 trillion – I hope I’ve got the 0’s right) litres of water into the sky, increasing the amount in the atmosphere by 10 – 13%.

It’s going to go somewhere and I don’t think it’s up.

p.s. Also, for us tinfoil hatter nutjobs, let’s not forget HAARP………

I gather Valencia got hit with a gota fria. Gota frias happen when cold air on the high Spanish central plateau falls off at around Teruel because of its density & lands on the hot moist air above the Med, compressing it & making it even hotter.. Eventually the hot saturated air breaks through the layer of cold air above it & expands upwards. The consequent drop in pressure makes it cooler & the moisture precipitates out.
I’ve been through a fairly minor gota fria. About half a metre of rain in half an hour. What were dry river beds become raging torrents in minutes.
It’s not climate, it’s geography. Or more exactly geology. It’s been happening ever since Africa floated north & hit Europe. (Incidentally raising the mountain range inland from where I am) Gota fria’s have been a regular event for millions of years. You just need that cold stream of air across the central plateau. Usually the result of Atlantic storms.
To add, the Spanish aren’t exactly helping. For years they’ve been building on every spare bit of land available. You concrete over, you obviously get quicker run off because you’re putting drains in to clear water. So your water courses will fill faster & overflood. We’ve got similar here with our drought emergency. The area is subject to periodic droughts. You’re going to get that living next to a considerable mountain range. A small change in wind becomes a considerable difference in weather. Moist air doesn’t go where it was going before. Problem is the water demand here is now greater than what’s available during drought periods. We’re already capturing pretty well all of the rainfall this side of the mountains. The Guadalhorce runs through Malaga is a park for most of the year. Same with our river. The bit you see is a created feature. Where it flows into the sea it’s a trickle you can virtually walk through without getting your feet wet 50 weeks of the year. But they’re still building.

I went to Valencia earlier this year, first time. When I’m in a plane, I spend so much time looking out the window my neck hurts for days afterwards. The first thing you notice about Valencia from the air is that there is a very obviously dried up river bed, that has been built on, and runs right next to the old town, through the whole city. When you land, you can walk around the city and walk across “bridges” across this dried up, extremely wide, almost Thames-wide, former river bed, and down the old embankments to various tourist trap bars and restaurants in it. I think there is a bit of a drainage ditch at the bottom of it. It’s obviously never very wet very often but when it gets really wet, over millennia, it gets seriously fucking wet, and has done so often enough to carve a great big gorge where it was. If this never happened, then how did Valencia end up with this eroded estuary stretching for about 15 miles inland?

The second thing you notice is the long, straight, wide, clearly man-made replacement for the natural river. This is also quite dry (in early summer) and has likewise been built entirely around, entirely within, and has a kind of slightly wider drainage ditch in it.

Someone wasn’t thinking straight. Or was thinking too straight.