Critique of Time mag’s suggested link of ‘climate change’ to recent flooding in Europe 

Danube/Inn flood marker in Passau, Bavaria

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The hunt is on for weather trends supposedly pointing to human causes. But the most obvious trend is the one towards dashing off a quick ‘study’, via a modelling exercise, claiming that a very recent bad weather event somewhere was made worse by ‘climate change’. By definition a single event can’t be a trend, as a professor quoted here acknowledges. Flooding in parts of central Europe is known to have been going on for centuries at least, while occupation or use of land close to flood-prone areas has often increased.
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Time magazine recently posted an article, titled “Is Climate Change Causing the Deadly Floods in Europe?” that, while providing some balance, still asserts that the recent flooding in Poland and other parts of Europe reflects a broader worsening pattern caused by climate change.

This is false, says Climate Realism.

There is no indication in the data showing a ‘pattern’ of increasing flood severity or incidence.

Time admits that it’s “difficult to draw a conclusive link between this event and climate change,” but then says “experts say the most severe floods to hit the region in at least two decades fit into a broader pattern of extreme weather events.”

Later, Time quotes a professor from the University of Bristol who recommends attribution studies to determine whether or not the flooding is caused by climate change:

“It’s really difficult to relate a single event to climate change impact,” says Paul Bates, a professor of hydrology at the University of Bristol who specializes in the science of flooding. Bates says that in order to definitively prove whether or not climate change contributed to the flooding in Europe, researchers will need to conduct an attribution study, which takes at least several weeks.

“Every time we do an attribution study, we tend to find that the events we see have been exacerbated by climate change, and I’m pretty sure that will be the case here, but we don’t yet conclusively know,” says Bates.

Several weeks for a peer reviewed study, that would be amazingly rapid.

As Climate Realism has pointed out before many times, attribution studies are over-trusted by the media and scientists, and are often used more like propaganda than science.

Attribution studies compare unverified, counterfactual models of the Earth’s climate and emissions, assuming ahead of time that any difference between the models is due to human-caused carbon dioxide emissions.

Neither model represents the world as it really is, and the modelers assume the conclusion before it is reached, using the models only to confirm their pre-existing belief. As a result, the models never discover anything other than a human influence on weather events, and almost invariably suggest that human activities likely contributed to each event studied.

While it is true that warmer air holds more water, that does not translate directly to an increase in intense rainfall.

Full article here.
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Image: Danube/Inn flood level marker in Passau, Bavaria