{"id":373332,"date":"2025-04-02T18:05:28","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T16:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=373332"},"modified":"2025-04-02T18:10:34","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T16:10:34","slug":"ancient-european-floods-were-much-worse-than-anything-in-the-last-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=373332","title":{"rendered":"Ancient European floods were much worse than anything in the last century"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From JoNova<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Jo Nova<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All that stuff about a 1 in 100 year flood, they have no idea<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It turns out the worst flood on the Rhine was not in 2024 but in 1374.  On the Severn, in England the worst year for \u201cclimate change\u201d was 250 BC. Obviously neither of them was due to man-made oil nor gas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A thousand news headlines have said modern floods were unprecedented, or were 1 in 1000 year events, or were caused by \u201cclimate change\u201d and they were all based on just 120 years of data (or less), and they were all wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some reason, even though climate change is the most important thing on Earth, hardly any researchers were looking for evidence of long term extreme flood events.  When researchers finally studied the sediments left at many sites \u2014 they found evidence that many ancient floods were just as bad or even worse. At least 12 times, ancient peak river flows were bigger than anything we\u2019ve seen in the instrumental record. (And they\u2019re just the ancient floods we know about, imagine if we put more scientists looking into fluvial sediments?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only thing unprecedented about modern floods is the gall of scientists who ignore the last 8,000 years. They say that Storm Blah was 8.3 times more likely, and enhanced 42% by beefsteaks and Renaults. But all those attribution calculations  assume that they know what \u201cnormal\u201d flooding is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If floods were worse 1,000, 2,000 or 4,000 years ago, nature is sometimes much meaner and nastier than most of us know. We could be hit with something terrible and be caught unprepared. But likewise, if we think these latest floods were due to coal-fired power plants, we might squander a civilization trying to stop floods with electrical Voodoo, which apparently we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change is NOT the main cause of floods<\/a> \u2013 and those today are \u2018nowhere near\u2019 the most extreme<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

  \u2014 Daily Mail<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Study author Professor Stephan Harrison at the University of Exeter said recent floods are not exceptional if we look further into the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018In recent years, floods around the world \u2013 including in Pakistan<\/a>, Spain<\/a> and Germany<\/a> \u2013 have killed thousands of people and caused enormous damage,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Such floods are seen as \u201cunprecedented\u201d \u2013 but if you look back over the last few thousand years, that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018In fact, floods we call unprecedented may be nowhere near the most extreme that have happened in the past.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s definitely not a hockeystick<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the worst flood of the Upper Severn river around 250BC, fifty percent more water was flowing at the peak, than in the floods of the year 2000AD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The more important question is why we spent so many trillions on pointless weather controlling talismans instead of hiring a few scientists to look at paleoclimate data. We could have saved so much money and suffering and ended so much grift and graft.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Harrison et al looked at found that most of the worst floods were in the warmest era\u2019s \u2014 like the Holocene optimum and the Roman warming times \u2014 which is what we\u2019d expect. Warmer times evaporate more water off the oceans and into the sky. But the worst flood was in 1374 and was due to snow and ice melting, proving that no climate is perfect, and we really need to learn to predict it.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Harrison et al say the climate modelers of attribution and detection studies were wrong. And that this it is \u201cthe first time\u201d anyone has put all these longer studies together. But all those sediments were there in 2010, just like they were there in 1990, but no one was studying them. That\u2019s a scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REFERENCE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harrison, S., Macklin, M.G., Toonen, W.H.J. et al.<\/em> Robust climate attribution of modern floods needs palaeoflood science. Climatic Change<\/em> 178<\/strong>, 71 (2025). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10584-025-03904-9<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out the worst flood on the Rhine was not in 2024 but in 1374.\u00a0 On the Severn, in England the worst year for \u201cclimate change\u201d was 250 BC. Obviously neither of them was due to man-made oil nor gas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":373343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691834227,691818056,691834228,691834226],"class_list":{"0":"post-373332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-691834227","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-professor-stephan-harrison","11":"tag-worst-flood-on-the-rhine","13":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/0word-image-2.webp?fit=2010%2C1104&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1z7u","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":210486,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=210486","url_meta":{"origin":373332,"position":0},"title":"The pitfalls of weather models","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"27\/07\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"By\u00a0Kalte Sonne Sven Titz discusses weather models in the\u00a0NZZ. 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