Valencia’s Deluge
Climate change, leadership and responsibility. 158 deaths … and counting.
Cruz Roja Española -> ES75 0128 0010 9701 0012 1395
Oxfam-> ES42 0128 7680 490100121372
Everyday people, you, me, buying groceries the wind picking up, then the children running to duck for cover as the rain changes from drops into a wet blanket, old people starting to prepare dinner in their ground floor apartments, the truckdriver having just half an hour left to reach his destination, the family getting in their car to leave the subterranean parking lot. The electrician driving home from work. Then, out of nowhere the wave of water, mud, cars, trash. Hell on earth. Death. Destruction. Nowhere to go. A terrible death just 1 minute away the only way out.
Who is responsible?
Someone has to be responsible. It’s human nature. A disaster doesn’t just happen, right?
Sometimes they do just happen. Is this such a case? I think here there is responsibility to go around. We can’t always foresee and avert disaster, but we should at least ask ourselves some questions. But first: the emergency response.
I would have expected 20,000 military personel with heavy equipment moving in, immediately. There were 20,000 volunteers. People from the neighbourhoods. No military. 5 days later there were 2,000 military.
As in most cases: although we want to point the finger at someone, it is more complicated than that.
The main question is: Do we take Climate Change seriously?
Because only if you take it seriously you take the planning of emergency response seriously. Emergency response to disasters just like this one. Let’s face it. We don’t take Climate Change seriously.
Do we vote for a party who wants to increase taxes so we can better deal with climate disasters? Of course we don’t. Although humans are the only species who can project into the future and use probability theory to know that we have to invest now for a better future, we will use probability theory to justify the outcome that we want. I.e. we will project a future without calamities or we will justify our ‘do nothing’-attitude with ‘we can’t prevent all calamities’.
The people we elect to represent us reflect that attitude. When we see that our representatives reflect our own weaknesses we will blame them. We will not blame ourselves for our weaknesses and voting for them because the reflect what we like to hear.
It’s like: Make America Great Again. Sure. You don’t like taxes being used to prepare for disaster? Just assume there won’t be a disaster. Why do you assume that bad things will happen? What? Because the best science says so? Science doesn’t have all the answers! They are more wrong than they are right. Right? Right!
Then, when there is a disaster, just blame the people you voted for!
Climate Science doesn’t even say that disaster awaits us, it just says that if we continue on the same footing we increase the chance of reaching and passing a climate tipping point. Passing such a tipping point would then, most likely, set off an unstoppable chain of events that has severe consequences for life on earth (hence ‘tipping point’).
Climate science has consistently been telling us that warming of the atmosphere and of the oceans will result in an increase in extreme weather events. Climate Science has consistently identified the burning of fossil fuels and the output of methane as the two main factors contributing to this warming.
So we can do two things: 1. We ignore the science (the best knowledge we currently have) and do nothing; 2. We ensure good political, economic and environmental stewardship in line with the best (but imperfect) knowledge that we currently have.
This ‘best knowledge’ is provided to us by a process that we call ‘science’. The key ingredient of this ‘scientific process’ that makes it the most successful method to understand reality is that it is based on the principle that if you can provide a better explanation than an existing one, than that explanation will replace the older one (because the new explanation explains everything the old one did, but it also explains things that the old one didn’t).
In other words if you prove that a scientific finding is wrong or can be better, than you win and science progresses. Science improves when science is proved wrong.
The so-called climate skeptics, have never proposed a better scientific model that explains past trends and events. All they come up with is anecdotal ‘evidence’ of why climate science is wrong, or imprecise. And the few times an individual comes up with a ‘better’ model they have been proven wrong either because they manipulated the data willfully, by accident or they used unscientific, non-reproducable methodology.
To the climate skeptics: climate science doesn’t say that it knows everything, it just lays out the best information that is available, outlines possible consequences and attributes best estimate probabilities.
Furthermore it doesn’t claim to be a faultless process either, just that in the long run it will correct mistakes and it steers us closer to real understanding. An imperfect process, but the best we have.
Non-scientific people (most skeptics use non-scientific methods if they use any method at all) have difficulty understanding that when an outcome has a 70% chance of eventuating, and it happens not to come true, that that doesn’t mean that the science was wrong. It can mean that the other 30% eventuated, see for example the Trump/Clinton prognosis of 2016, yet a lot of the same media who presented this 70/30 bet, after the election resulted in the Trump win, i.e. the 30% probability, claimed that the polls were wrong! No shit Buster. That is like saying after the fact that 14, the number the ball landed on, didn’t have a in 37 probabily….because it fell on number 14! So everyone who prior to ‘le jeux sont fait’ said that 14 had a 1 in 37 chance to come up was wrong! Yup that’s how stupid we are.
But, hey, do you really want to keep betting on the small percentage outcome according to the best knowledge? Like you can make 10 bets of $10 each and the 2 options are: you bet on ’14’ (1 in 37 probability) or on ‘not 14’ (36 in 37 probability).
Yeah that’s right, even the stoopidist won’t bet on the first option. But when it gets more complex, like betting on human behavior and climate events, we will bet, not according to the best available information, science, but on wishful thinking. Yes, we want to keep betting against the best knowledge that humanity has. And that is stupid.
Also, science does not like to deal with certainties, and unlike the so-called skeptics (see how they appropriated ‘skeptics’ instead of using the more appropriate term ‘deniers’?), climate scientists and meteorologists, because of climate systems being complex, deal with likelihoods. Therefore scientists say “An event of this extreme nature is likely to be related to climate change wherein the ‘once in a century’ natural events start to happen more often than once in a century”.
How much has the political leadership of Valencia (and Spain) taken up the role of responsible stewardship to act according to the best climate knowledge available?
With science predicting an increase in extreme weather events, what programs have the political leadership undertaken to prevent and mitigate them? And, knowing that climate disasters are now more prone due to the climate change, what disaster-response mechanisms have they put in place?
First of all, all communities need clear and improved emergency plans that are in-line with national and EU emergency plans. Then they need large scale disaster recovery plans at local, provincial and national levels. In the mean time the economy needs to be steered towards a non-fossil fuel economy, all in line with the best climate science available.
What have the chosen representatives of the people done on these key questions?
Let it be clear that chosen representatives have a stewardship role. If their constituents do not understand science, statistics, logic, climate, weather or probabilities, then the representative should not simply repeat the wishful thinking of their uninformed constituents.
Their role is to take the right actions based on the best information and to provide their constituents with the right guidance using information that they can understand. Regardless of how they got into their position of stewardship, once they are there, they have an undeniable responsibility to act in the interest of the people, and that can never be by ignoring data, facts and logic.
On top of that, it is their role to look further than the next electoral cycle. Responsible stewardship is a difficult task because populists have a much easier task: mirror the wants and needs of the ill-informed voters and provide them with simple illusions instead of real solutions (that are often complex, expensive and far from instantaneous). Again: “Make America Great Again” and “Trust me, I will make all your problems go away!” in the American elections, demonstrate the power and efficacy of slogans over policies.
The task of the responsible leader is to choose the long and arduous path towards real solutions.
It is no surprise that we are unprepared for climate disasters and that we are still not on the road towards carbon and methane neutrality.
When we choose our leaders, do we want them to use the best knowledge we have or do we want those who espouse an alternative (i.e. something other than ‘best knowledge’)?
202 deaths now… and counting….250 still missing.
People like you and me….shopping for their groceries, leaving the supermarket from the underground parking, driving a truck to its destination, the electrician driving home from work, ….
Politics work slowly and haphazardly, but these institutions bring relief. Therefore your donation to them brings relief.
Cruz Roja Española -> ES75 0128 0010 9701 0012 1395
Oxfam-> ES42 0128 7680 490100121372
Un abrazo.
