A disaster can be explained in many different ways. Many agendas can be furthered, and it can be used as in incontrovertible proof of any claim one likes.
Hydrology has been a major part of my graduate education. I know about 100 year return period rains, 200, 500, and 1000 year return period rains. I know about runoff, what accentuates a flood peak, and what attenuates it.
No, I do not accept that the floods prove the fraud called Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate disruption.
Because I know “it has always been like this.”
Because I have worked with the officers who used to narrate that in Bihar, as the monsoon started, whole villages used to shift, with their livestock, to railway lines as they were on high embankments, and would stay there for next four months. I have worked with the officers who used to spend entire monsoon at washout sites in the Northeast.
Because I know that in 1717, around Christmas there was a flood in Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia in which over 14,000 persons died.
Because I know that in 1862 there were continuous rains in California for 45 days and entire state had become an extension of Pacific. State Capital was shifted from Sacramento to San Francisco because Sacramento was under 3.5 m of water.
These are only couple of out of hundreds of such examples from various countries.
Therefore I say that no, industrialisation is not causing “natural disasters.” Natural disasters were always with us. What was not there are the TV cameras and screaming, hysterical anchors. Industrial progress has only made us better equipped to face them. Only because of industrialisation we have boats, helicopters, and personnel who can rescue the flood affected.
Of course filling up the ponds, cutting down of orchards, building in the waterways of rivers have caused some accentuation in flood peaks, but even that is nothing if a 100 years return period rainstorm or 500 year return period rainstorm decides to visit us. I don’t even want to think about a 1000 year return period rainstorm.
We now have over 150 years of well recorded data on rainfall and floods in India also. Study it and you would find that even 100 year peaks have not been exceeded in most cases. From that data, it can be easily calculated what would be the rainfall and flood with 100/500/1000 return period. And you would realise that as far as nature is concerned, current floods are just the usual, mundane occurrences.
We must industrialise even faster, so that we build better and higher homes, we get better and more helicopters and boats, and we have bigger teams of personnel to work in such situations. Honesty in municipal corporations and irrigation departments of states would help as then engineers would correctly study river waterways and keep villages and cities out of them.
With more industrialisation, people will plant more orchards, would cut less trees, and would not gobble up ponds; and that would attenuate flood peaks to some extent.
Yes, more industrialisation actually leads to more trees and less illegal behaviour like encroaching on ponds, etc.
But floods will always be with us. Stay calm, and deal with them.
