Thread by @ShellenbergerMD

Year of Flood in China : Death Toll

1954: 30,000
1911: 100,000
1935: 145,000
1887: 1,000,000
1931: 2,000,000

Source: Angus Gunn, Encyclopedia of Disasters, 2007

But weren't past floods due to poverty whereas today's floods are due to excess rainfall?

No. "Whilst the roots of the 1931 flood lay in pattern of environmental history, the proximate cause of the disaster was extremely high levels of precipitation."

disasterhistory.org/central-china-…

Does that mean climate change isn't playing a role in China's floods? No. But its role has to be considered in context of urbanization, better infrastructure, and declining deaths and damages

thelancet.com/journals/lanpl…

"The area of land damaged by flooding each year since 1950 shows an increasing trend, which suggests that the potential impact of floods is also increasing, although mortality directly associated with flooding has been decreasing"

thelancet.com/journals/lanpl…

Flood management plays a decisive role. Hurricane Sandy (New York, 2012) was more expensive than Typhoon Winnie (Shanghai 1997) bc Shanghai "repeatedly updated its flood protection while New York City failed to do so"

ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/…

Around the world, nations fail to properly prepare for floods until catastrophe strikes.

The Dutch put off preparing for floods for decades, despite much of the Netherlands being below sea level, until 1,836 people were killed in major 1953 flood.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

What most determines how vulnerable various nations are to flooding depends on whether they have well-maintained flood control systems.

quillette.com/2020/07/08/why…

Does this mean we shouldn't bother reducing emissions? Of course not. Emissions are going down and should keep going down unless we do something stupid, like shut down/stop building nuclear plants, or make natural gas, the main driver of lower emissions, scarce & expensive.

https://twitter.com/rogerpielkejr/status/1417883506311503872