Why did so many die in Spain? Because Europe still hasn't accepted the realities of extreme weather | Friederike Otto
Why did so many die in Spain? Because Europe still hasn't accepted the realities of extreme weather | Friederike Otto
Severe flooding is, unfortunately, inevitable. What isn’t inevitable is how ready we are, says Friederike Otto of World Weather Attribution
At the time of writing, the death toll has risen to 214. Battered cars and other debris are piled up in the streets, large swaths of Valencia remain underwater, and Spain is in mourning. On Sunday, anger erupted as the king and queen of Spain were pelted with mud and other objects by protesters. Why were so many lives lost in a flood that was well forecasted in a wealthy country?
From the global north’s vantage point, the climate crisis, caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas, has long been seen as a distant threat, affecting poor people in the global south. This misconception has perpetuated a false sense of security.
Scientists have long known that heating the climate with fossil fuel emissions will result in the intensification of floods, storms, heatwaves, drought and wildfires. However, it was not until 2004 that the first attribution study formally linked a weather event – the devastating 2003 European heatwave – to our changing climate. Despite the evidence, people have been hesitant to connect extreme weather with the climate crisis.
The weather services did see this coming and were giving red alerts. Local governments were like "nah, it'll be fine." It's straight out the movies with the classic "we don't want to cause any panic in case the scientists are wrong." It's especially damning after the exact same ignoring red alerts already happened in Germany and Belgium.
At this stage, it's ignoring reality. Yeah, preparing and being ready for this kind of catastrophes is expensive but rebuilding everything isn't cheaper. It's why experts already said that in the end it's cheaper to prevent climate change than dealing with the consequences.
It's also a problem that I have an orange or yellow alert most of the year, either for wind, heat or rain, at some point there alerts lose all meaning.
Yea, my city started using tornado sirens for most decent thunder storms. So they are being used all the time. But there's no way to know when it's actually for a tornado...
I don’t understand this: at that level it’s not even climate change anymore, but the weather that is actually happening in the here and now
"Eh, what are the chances? Eggheads trying to spread fear again!"
Those people probably.
It's a bit of a shock after years of hearing that this thing will happen in the future, to realize that the future has arrived and it's within our lifetime. Kinda how you look back and suddenly realize that your favorite movie is now closer to world war 2 than it is to present time, but it still feels like last year.
It's going to get worse
Turns out there are conservatives in Europe too. Climate change is not real for conservatives, even when their lives are ruined by it.
One day in the future, our kids or grand kids will read about it and will be in disbelief how selfish and ignorant their predecessors were. But, as usual, it would be already too late to change anything.
I guess the days where we let them bury the dead with dignity have gone.
Dignity or not, climate change is unfortunately gonna be having us burying a whole lot of dead...
Can you fucking imagine? Your family pays for your funeral and has the service, says their goodbyes, and finally buries you, only to realize they forgot to put your dignity in the casket with you, talk about a whoopsie daisy!