Don Valley Flooding - We Told You So

In this "Fact Check" video from the Climate Discussion Nexus, Dr. John Robson interviews Trevor Dickinson of the University of Guelph, back in 2019, on whether summer flooding in Ontario cities is due to climate change or poor urban planning.

[stevenboyd]

Storm water management is one of the most important issues in the history of humanity AND at the same time amongst the most ignored and overlooked

[James-lsk]

The climate cultists asserted this year would be extreme drought.

[sparklessconnectionselectrical]

It is easy to blame climate change since most people have the memory of a gold fish

[drewthompson]

It was called a valley long before there was "climate change". Where does water naturally go? And don't forget, many natural creeks in Toronto were buried centuries ago.

[reaality]

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Give me money to stop it!

[barryj]

Yes indeed. There's nothing they can do about managing storm-water but of course they can manage the climate.

[jons]

The main reason we see floods and flooding is land use rules were changed to "accommodate" the real estate industry. As long as realtors can sell "waterfront" property for higher prices they want to eliminate the greenbelts & wetlands that prevent flooding. Bring back greenbelts & wetlands & reduce or eliminate flooding.
Most municipalities *never* 'prepare' for the extreme events, 20-, 50-, & 100-year rainfalls.

[toolegittoquit_]

Reduce runoff areas, build in typical flood plains, inadequate Storm drainage, etc ...

Yeah, climate change is real 😬

[louisgiokas]

I live in a city, outside of Chicago, that took stormwater runoff seriously. Years before moving here I remember reading in the Wall Street Journal about this city and their strong zoning laws meant to prevent flooding of homes and businesses. The developers took the city to court and lost. Since moving here, I have seen the wisdom of those zoning laws.

Contrast this with the UK where I lived for a time earlier in the millennium. A few years after leaving there were some heavy, but not unprecedented, rain events and a lot of urban flooding. In this age of the Internet and access to copious amounts of data, someone there thought to look at the maps now available online. They found that 40% of housing in England was built on flood plains.

So, duh! Climate change my backside.

[johnwatt]

I wonder how climate activists would explain Hurricane Hazel when it hit Toronto in 1954. In addition, the Don Valley has always had a flooding or near flooding problem in that area.

[ronaldkemp]

Climate change is long term changes in climate. It's not the same as weather or natural seasonal changes in temperature and climate. there's no way to blame weather events on climate change yet every time the climate changes naturally between seasons it's always blamed on climate change. Like everyone's ignorant to natural changes from season to season. The changes from season to season occurring today is no different than the changes that occurred when I was a child, 60 years ago. The changes in weather and climate over the years has remained the same. It's wet in the spring and fall, it's hot in the summer and it's cold in the winter. The ice caps have not completely melted, the oceans didn't rise and destroy costal cities, hurricanes and typhoons are not more frequent and are not stronger, droughts and flooding always occur sporadically, forest fires have not increased, tornadoes have not increased, all the long drawn out climate predictions and warnings by experts never happened.

540 million years ago the atmospheric CO2 levels peaked at 7, 000 ppmpv and guess what, there was no humans around who were burning fossil fuels. The average temperate was the same as it is today. The long term climate has not changed and is not due to carbon dioxide. Coincidentally 540 million years ago when CO2 levels peaked is what sparked the largest increase in carbon based lifeforms on this planet. It's referred to as the Cambrian explosion because all of a sudden millions of new, never existing before began showing up in the fossil records. Meaning high CO2 levels and warm temperatures gave rise to carbon based lifeforms and they flourished, they weren't hampered.

The real climate emergency would happen if the CO2 levels ever dropped below 150 ppmpv because plants rely on high CO2 levels to ward off pests, diseases and to grow unhindered. When the CO2 levels drop too low then plants suffer and die. When the plants die off then animals relying on plants for food, die off too. When animals and plants are all gone then humans die off with nothing to eat.

This appears to be the goal of climate alarmists like the UN and others who think the world is overpopulated when it's not. Or those who think the Earth's resources like water, coal, oil, etc., are being depleted, when they are not. All Earth's resources are constantly being recycled by nature, and cannot leave the planet.

I know, I'm just preaching to the choir. But it's my 2 cents worth for today.

[jeremymilsom]

Thank you for introducing Truth, history and logic to this conversation.
I lived in Toronto for decades and can recollect several flooding events and the 1954 Hurricane Hazel devastation.
Today, right down to young school children, we are being indoctrinated and lied to on “extreme weather events” being new and caused by climate change.
All one needs to do is take time to examine the history, and use credible sources.

[Hudson-rsty]

CO2 doesn't cause heavy rain or flooding.

[davidhansen]

I took lectures from Professor Trevor Dickinson as part of my undergrad degree in water resources engineering, in 1979. Amazing to see him and listen to him again. (I would later teach hydrology myself, for 31 years.) Blaming every flood on climate change is relatively new in the MMS and govt propaganda. The role of water vapour has been debated amongst the climate panic crowd (and is not modelled consistently) because having more of it has obvious mixed effects. For example, more water vapour means more clouds and clouds reflect solar radiation. BTW I receive NO notifications of new Climate Nexus CDN videos. I wonder why.

[jeremyashford]

New Zealand experienced a cyclone in February last year.

My wife is still dealing with the consequences at what was her mother's house now hers.

The damage that occurred had not happened previously in the history of the street.

(I am the biographer of the man who designed and built the house and the one adjacent.)

Some of course would like to blame climate change but the reality is that the city council had recently restricted the rainwater runoff into the harbour and water built up in the pipes until it emerged onto the street at the top of the cliffs, running down between the houses and causing what probably amounts to millions of dollars worth of damage.

It was effectively the rainwater for a whole suburb bearing on just one street of houses.

[JohnWilliams-iwoq]

It's easier to blame climate change for forest fires instead of taking responsibility for mismanaging the forests, likewise with insurance, you zone unsafe areas as residential then blame climate change when things go wrong. When things turn against the politicians and media for the lies they have perpetrated they will blame the scientists. It's a heads I win and tails you lose situation.

[mpearce]

You see what happens when the politicians tell the engineers what to do.

[richarddobreny]

News reported this as a once in a hundred year event and then says it last happened in 2013! A hundred years ago, or it may just seem that way

[jakobusphsteyn]

That is true for not only stormwaters but also for developments in low lying areas, river banks and valleys as well as recovering swampy areas by draining etc. Also human migration pressure on city environs escalate damage caused by the fact that there are just so much more infrastructure many times not well designed and/or hastily built.

[garrymartin]

I was confused as I thought he was referring to Don Valley in the UK !