More evidence that floods are not increasing in US, Pakistan, and elsewhere, further refuting UN IPCC claim being used to transform world economy

10/24/11, "Has the magnitude of floods across the USA changed with global CO₂ levels?" Hydrological Sciences Journal, Taylor and Francis online

Answer: No. In the US southwest, the evidence showed the reverse.

"In none of the four regions defined in this study is there strong statistical evidence for flood magnitudes increasing with increasing GMCO2. One region, the southwest, showed a statistically significant

• negative relationship

• between GMCO2 and flood magnitudes."...

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More:

4/18/11, "A decrease in floods around the world?" Roger Pielke, Jr.

"A new analysis of floods around the world has been called to my attention. The new analysis is contrary to conventional wisdom but consistent with the scientific literature on global trends in peak streamflows. Is it possible that floods are not increasing or even in decline while most people have come to believe the opposite?

Bouziotas et al. presented a paper at the EGU a few weeks ago (PDF) and concluded:

Analysis of trends and of aggregated time series on climatic (30-year) scale does not indicate consistent trends worldwide. Despite common perception, in general, the detected trends are more negative (less intense floods in most recent years) than positive. Similarly, Svensson et al. (2005) and Di Baldassarre et al. (2010) did not find systematical change neither in flood increasing or decreasing numbers nor change in flood magnitudes in their analysis.

This finding is largely consistent with Kundzewicz et al. (2005) who find:

Out of more than a thousand long time series made available by the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) in Koblenz, Germany, a worldwide data set consisting of 195 long series of daily mean flow records was selected, based on such criteria as length of series, currency, lack of gaps and missing values, adequate geographical distribution, and priority to smaller catchments. The analysis of annual maximum flows does not support the hypothesis of ubiquitous growth of high flows. Although 27 cases of strong, statistically significant increase were identified by the Mann-Kendall test, there are 31 decreases as well, and most (137) time series do not show any significant changes (at the 10% level). Caution is advised in interpreting these results as flooding is a complex phenomenon, caused by a number of factors that can be associated with local, regional, and hemispheric climatic processes. Moreover, river flow has strong natural variability and exhibits long-term persistence which can confound the results of trend and significance tests.

They conclude (emphasis added):

• Destructive floods observed in the last decade all over the world have led to record high material damage. The conventional belief is that the increasing cost of floods is associated with increasing human development on flood plains (Pielke & Downton, 2000). However, the question remains as to whether or not the frequency and/or magnitude of flooding is also increasing and, if so, whether it is in response to climate variability and change.

Several scenarios of future climate indicate a likelihood of increased intense precipitation and flood hazard. However, observations to date provide no conclusive and general proof as to how climate change affects flood behaviour.

References:

Bouziotas, D., G. Deskos, N. Mastrantonas, D. Tsaknias, G. Vangelidis, S.M. Papalexiou, and D. Koutsoyiannis, Long-term properties of annual maximum daily river discharge worldwide, European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2011, Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 13, Vienna, EGU2011-1439, European Geosciences Union, 2011.

Kundzewicz, Z.W., D. Graczyk, T. Maurer, I. Przymusińska, M. Radziejewski, C. Svensson and M. Szwed, 2005(a):Trend detection in river flow time-series: 1. annual maximum flow. Hydrol. Sci. J., 50(5): 797-810."

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More:

8/5/10, "Pakistan's floods are not just a natural disaster," UK Guardian, K. Shamsie

"Environmentalists have long warned of the power of the illegal timber mafia and the susceptibility of

• deforested areas to flooding, landslides and soil erosion."...

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Reference: 2/1/11, "Pakistan floods last summer could have been predicted," paper accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. Funding by National Science Foundation

Reference: 1/25/11, "Rogue storm system caused Pakistan floods that left millions homeless," University of Washington, EurekAlert, a service of AAAS

Reference: 8/18/10, "Illegal logging by Pakistan's timber mafia increased flooding devastation," Treehugger.com, Matthew McDermott

Reference: 9/29/10, "2010 Pakistan Floods: Climate Change Or Natural Variability?” by Madhav L Khandekar, via Roger Pielke, Sr.

Reference: 8/18/10, "Not just a natural disaster," China Dialogue, K. Shamsie, via TreeHugger
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Reference: 1/25/11, "Pakistan needs Rs 365bn annually to tackle climate change : Afridi," Daily Times (Pakistan)

• Pakistan's Minister of Environment says the floods were due to global warming, does not mention his country's role, says others must give him money:

"Pakistan is the most vulnerable country due to climate change that needs 365 billion rupees annually to arrest its affects. He said developed countries should come forward and provide financial and technical assistance to Pakistan for this mission. He said that this planet is created for human being but man-made activities are destroying it. "...

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Yale 360 environment advocates admit economic transformation has always been the group's goal. 'Climate' was tacked on in hopes it would aid the cause. Since it's not helping, they say, let's drop the climate bit and focus on our economic goals:

3/29/10, "Green think tank tells environmentalists: leave climate change science behind," The Hill.com by Ben Geman

• 3/29/10, "Freeing energy policy from the climate change debate," Yale Environment 360, by Nordhaus and Shellenberger.

Yale Environment 360 authors advocate dropping climate discussion, that it's interfering with its central goal of changing the world economy, that it put too much pressure on climate scientists to come up with a preordained outcome.

• That the important part is to transform the global economy.

"And understood in its proper role, as one of many reasons why we should

• decarbonize the global economy,

climate science can even help contribute to the case for taking such action.

• But so long as environmentalists continue

• to demand that climate science drive the
• 
  
• transformation

• of the global energy economy,

neither the science, nor efforts to address climate change, will be well served."...

• from The Hill.com by Ben Geman, "Green think tank tells environmentalists: leave climate change science behind," 3/29/10
• Essay on Yale environment 360,"Freeing energy policy from the climate change debate," by Nordhaus and Shellenberger, 3/29/10

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Among comments to post at the Hill:

• "These gentlemen have recognized the failure of a science-based approach, inasmuch as the facts did not support their arguments. Instead, I believe, they are actually recommending abandoning research-based analysis to sell their agenda
• without any rational basis." Eminence Grise

• =================================

"Do you really need any more proof than this? What this says in essence is that trying to use factual climate data to link green initiatives to non-existent global warming is hurting the economic goals of pseudo environmentalis ts.The real goal is not to mitigate adverse climatologicall y consequences

• but to initiate a global redistribution of wealth using the climate change movement as the catalyst of economic change.

The lights are on and the roaches are beginning to scatter." Paul Magel




via C3, via Tom Nelson, via Roger Pielke, Jr., via TreeHugger.com