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“But the good news is that we know how to prepare for and mitigate the impacts of floods. “Of course, there is much more to do to reduce exposure and vulnerability,” said Pielke. And climate activists have an interest in blaming climate change. Individuals have an interest in blaming anyone but themselves. The designers and operators of the flood warning system have an interest in blaming individuals. Federal officials have an interest in blaming local governments for failing to properly manage dams. Local officials have an interest in blaming the federal government for the failure of the flood warning system. Such disasters will also make climate change even more of a “wicked problem,” meaning that many people have an interest in pointing fingers. Even poor, climate-vulnerable nations like Bangladesh saw deaths decline massively thanks to low-cost weather surveillance and warning systems and storm shelters. The decline in deaths from disasters occurred during a period when the global population nearly quadrupled and temperatures rose more than 1 degree centigrade over pre-industrial levels. “We’re at the very beginning of a climate and ecological emergency,” tweeted Greta Thunberg, “and extreme weather events will only become more and more frequent.”

The people who live in areas less likely to be flooded tend to be more urban, liberal, and alarmist. The people who live in the areas more likely to be flooded tend to be more rural, more conservative, and less alarmist. Psychological research suggests political ideology likely plays a role. While the large loss of life we saw over the past week was not uncommon in Europe as recently as the 1960s, the last period of elevated flooding in western Europe was more than a century ago.” “But maintaining preparedness in the face of very rare events outside our experiences can be difficult. “The management of flooding around the world has been a great success story of the past 100 years,” noted Roger Pielke, Jr., a leading expert on the relationship between disasters and climate change. Likewise, it was hard for many Germans to remember flooding as bad as they experienced, and thus ignored the risks. In 2007, it was hard for many people to remember a financial crisis like the one that was likely to occur. Is the memory readily “available” or “unavailable”? Part of the answer comes from something psychologists call the “availability heuristic.” People tend to evaluate the likelihood of an event based on how easily they can remember instances of it occurring in the past. Why do some people overestimate some risks while others underestimate them? Does it just depend on the person? On the risk? Is it just random? financial crisis, many investors believed the risks of severe collapse were low. One of the most famous cases was illuminated by author Nassim Taleb. Noted a scholar, “when asked to estimate the probability of a tail event, people tend to overestimate this probability.” For example, “people significantly overestimate the frequency of rare causes of death.”īut in other instances, people under-estimate rare events. “The EU’s Emergency Response Coordination Centre is in direct contact with the Ukrainian emergency services to monitor the exact needs on the ground, and stands ready to coordinate further assistance into Ukraine based on the emerging needs,” the EC said.Īt the same time, the EU’s humanitarian office in Ukraine is coordinating with its humanitarian partners to rapidly respond to the needs of those affected by flooding, including by providing food assistance and drinking water.This reality appears to contradict the scholarly consensus that people tend to over-estimate rather than under-estimate rare events. In addition, Lithuania and Germany have also offered shelter equipment, including tents, beds and blankets. Germany has offered 5000 water filters and 56 generators, and Austria 20 water containers and 10 mud water pumps, which are now on their way to Ukraine. In an immediate response, the EU is already channelling aid via its Civil Protection Mechanism thanks to first offers from Germany, Austria and Lithuania. While evacuations of affected populations are underway, Ukraine has requested international EU assistance in the form of equipment and machinery for relief efforts, the statement said.

Germany flood reddit