UCLA’s Daniel Swain and NPR’s David Romero Colluded to flood our minds with a river of anticipatory climate fear! – Watts Up With That?

By Jim Steele

There have been many news reports about the human suffering caused by the floods that hit the town of Pajaro in Monterrey County, California on March 11, 2023. But the NPR article Climate scientists warn this winter flooding could be ‘just a taste’ of major floods to come is the most disgusting example of how Daniel Swain and National Public Radio use any tragedy dishonestly to cause the climate crisis. allusion to CO₂ Climate change-driven climate change Swain states, “Despite how disruptive this year’s events have been, we are not near a worst-case storm and flood scenario that could happen. for California.”

However, the real story is about the government’s incompetence and people’s tendency to take risks when building in natural floodplains. When California’s county boundaries were drawn in 1850 when California became a state, the concern was not how to best manage a watershed, but rather the result of a compromise between interests. competitive politics. Thus, the Pajaro River and its main tributary, the San Benito River, become the dividing line between the four different districts.

The towns of Watsonville, in Santa Cruz County to the north of the river, and Pajaro, of Monterrey County to the south, were first developed by non-natives in the 1850s in the midst of the floodplains of Pajaro River. Flooding is common and unavoidable. Every winter, the rains return turning the flood plains into a mosaic of meandering streams, marshes, ponds and flooded fields. So dykes are built to prevent flood damage to buildings and agricultural fields. The first dikes were built to protect the relatively affluent town of Watsonville north of the river. However, these dikes were frequently damaged as evidenced by this man sailing down Watsonville’s main street in February 1922.

In the 1930s, the United States Army Corporation of Engineers began drawing up plans to expand and rebuild the Pajaro River dike system, but due to various delays the dikes were not completed until 1949. Within 10 years since the completion of the dyke in 1955 and 1958, two large works flooded beyond the design capacity. Unlike NPR, no honest scientist has claimed that climate change caused those failures within just six years of design.

In 1963, USACE admitted poor planning in levee design and Congress authorized rebuilding of the flood control system, but the federal government did not provide funding. Since 1949, seven major floods over the next 50 years have exposed flaws in the design of these so-called flood control experts.

In an interview with the NY Times, Mark Strudley, executive director of the Pajaro Area Flood Management Authority, said that “federal, state, and local officials have been talking since the 1960s about the need for it. There is a need to strengthen the water infrastructure around the Pajaro River, but property values ​​in the area are so low that they do not meet the repair threshold under the cost-benefit formula set by the federal government and the Army Corps of Engineers. troops in use.

After winning a number of lawsuits related to dike incidents In 1995, politicians finally developed a new plan to rebuild the dyke system, beginning in 2024. But the NPR simply fueled climate gloom and doom. when questioned, “does those plans account for climate change and the increasing frequency and intensity of hurricanes?” NPR ignored that. the 2023 Pajaro flood was undoubtedly caused by another broken levee, largely due to political battles over how each county contributes to the maintenance and repair of the aging dike system.

The origin of political battles dates back to the district boundary of 1850. To the west of Pajaro Gap there are 2 districts covering the lower river basin and on the east, 2 other districts covering the upper basin. Most of the precipitation occurs in the upper basin, then flows through the ravine into the floodplains of the lower basin to threaten Watsonville and Pajaro. Districts in the lower basin argue that rapid urbanization in the upper catchment has created an “tar effect” that increases runoff and river water volume. Therefore, those districts should contribute the most money to dyke upgrading in the downstream basin. The upper basin blames the lower catchment districts for failing to maintain the dikes and channels. For decades, such controversies have delayed funding improvements that could certainly prevent the 2023 flooding.

But climate alarmists have always pushed for the scientific fact that in a warmer world, the atmosphere holds more moisture, so CO2 causes greater flooding. But that fact is completely irrelevant here. They skip the rainy season in California which took place in colder winters and historically biggest flood for more than a thousand years happened in the cold little ice age.

And worse, NPR and Swain can’t share NOAA data shows that global warming has never caused the Pajaro River to reach flood levels. The flood stage of the Pajaro River is established at a level determined by a history of multiple floods. The Pajaro River does not exceed historical levels that have occurred naturally in flooding over the past century. The only honest cause of the devastating flooding was that the people of Pajaro became victims of political infighting between the county governments, who agreed to maintain the dikes necessary for Pajaro to survive in the area. this natural floodplain. Dikes and government promises have long been known to give people a false sense of security, only to have them settle in more dangerous locations.

NPR and Swain have never addressed any of the natural and political issues that led to the flooding in Pajaro, relentlessly choosing to fear climate change and promote catastrophic speculation about the future. They interviewed Antonio Hueso, a 72-year-old retired farmer whose home was damaged a second time by a dyke breach. Hueso wisely said “I will fix my house, and when everyone forgets about the flood, I will sell my house and move to Madera or Fresno”. Such a wise and simple solution to move out of the harmful zone did not fit the NPR story, so in the radio version they added “But in a warming world, Will moving to higher ground be enough?”, as if the climate gods had warned us of coming floods of biblical proportions.

Daniel Swain, who was prepared by climate alerters Noah Diffenbaugh and Michael Mann, chose to say that climate warming has doubled the likelihood of a major flood and each new degree of warming. will increase that possibility even more. What was once considered impossible in our lifetime “has become very possible.” Swain wouldn’t be surprised if four cataclysms occurred in this century alone. “We don’t have to talk about 100 years. We are talking about the next 20 or 30 years.” Of course, such dire predictions helped Swain greatly as he spooked California politicians into funding his flood modeling project.

NPR ended the interview with Denia Escutia, a high school student. “I think Pajaro deserves climate justice. I call this my home, but is it really my home if they don’t want to help us?” Her final answer to NPR was that her future was gone. NPR then ends with a scare tactic that ultimately blames the broken levees on climate change by saying, “has disappeared because of the climate that engineered levees no longer exist.” again.”

And again the climate alarmists obscure the real problems and real solutions. That’s disgusting!