Under water, in denial: is Europe drowning out the climate crisis? | Climate science scepticism and denial

In that untimely week between Christmas and New Year’s, two Spanish men in their early 50s (who had been friends since childhood and were popular in the city) went to a restaurant and did not come home.

Francisco Zea Bravo, a mathematics teacher who is active in a book club and rock band, and Antonio Morales Serrano, the owner of a popular cafe and ice cream parlor, went to Malaga to have dinner with their friends on Saturday, December 27. But as the duo headed back to Alhaurín el Grande that night, heavy rains turned the usually calm Fahala River into what the mayor later called “an uncontrollable downpour.” Police found the van overturned the next day. After an agonizing search, their bodies were tracked down.

“We’re used to some floods. Not many,” said Conchi Navarro, principal of Los Montecillos secondary school, who is expected to replace Zea Bravo after she retires at the end of the school year. “But since December these Borrasca [low-pressure storms] They came one after another.”

The quiet reflections of a disrupted climate—a book club missing a member, a rock band without a bassist, a café without a pastry chef—have been echoing across Western Europe for weeks. Storms that hit Spain one after the other killed at least 16 people in neighboring Portugal. Soils across France have reached unprecedented levels of saturation, with weather forecasters issuing flood warnings requiring “absolute caution”. Records have been broken for the number of days without a break in the rain in some parts of the UK.

This is the new reality of Europe: underwater in winter, faded in summer. But even as extreme weather conditions worsen, voices of denial become louder and more effective.

“We are moving towards the self-destruction of the planet,” Navarro said, adding that at the age of 60, he witnessed the effects of climate change firsthand. “This is not something ‘they’ told me, it’s something I saw. How can anyone say this is an invention?”

The answer, especially in the United States, is breathtaking ease. President Donald Trump has stepped up his attacks on climate policy in recent weeks — once again abandoning the Paris agreement and repealing a finding supporting pollution controls — while going global with his “taste, baby, drill” policy. Chris Wright, the U.S. energy secretary and former fracking executive, has pressed Europe to roll back methane standards and sustainability rules that could threaten America’s liquefied natural gas exports. On Wednesday, he called on those tinkering with spreadsheets at the International Energy Agency to “remove climate” from their models.

Even in Europe, where polls show that an overwhelming majority of citizens accept climate science and support stopping planet-warming pollution, a silent but deadly form of denial has emerged.

Far-right parties have gained ground across the continent, even as they have made tackling climate policy their second priority after immigration, with the help of the Heartland Institute, a US think tank funded by fossil fuels. Alarmed by their success and anxious to appease polluting industries, centrist leaders are rolling back green rules with a force that surprises even some lobbyists. This month, ahead of a meeting in Antwerp between European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and business leaders, the EU’s carbon price – a cornerstone of pollution-cutting efforts – found itself in the crosshairs of the powerful chemicals industry.

Meanwhile, phones ring with evacuation warnings and rivers begin to overflow as new storms form before the last of the water recedes. The storms that meteorologists named Alice, Benjamin and Claudia were the storms that started the season in Southern Europe in October and November. David, Emilia and Francis endured a wet December. January had five consecutive storms: Goretti, Harry, Ingrid, Joseph and Kristin; In February, there were as many storms in the first two weeks: Leonardo, Martha, Nils, Oriana and Pedro. The season is a whirlwind short of the record 17 set in 2023-24, with forecasters reaching the second half of the alphabet in much less time.

The storms that have ravaged the Iberian peninsula and the incessant rains in the UK are the result of a southward shift of the jet stream, a conveyor belt of fast-moving air that coincides with high pressure over Northern Europe and clogs weather systems. Global warming increases damage because warm air can hold more moisture. The risk of flooding increases exponentially as water weighs down soils that do not have time to dry.

Scientists complain that European governments deny the extent of the threat. Christophe Cassou, a climate scientist and research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research, said the flooding in France was unprecedented in terms of area and was the result of record cumulative rainfall since the beginning of the year.

“What is surprising is that the authorities were surprised by such a result,” he said. “We are not experiencing the worst possible scenario, just a possible scenario, completely within the range of what can be expected from climate simulations.”

In Spain, the consequences of such negligence are fresh in people’s minds. On October 29, 2024, Empar Puchades listened to the lunch press conference of the Valencia president, in which he said that the storm in the region would soon continue. Puchades still felt distressed. The 70-year-old former healthcare worker examined the rainfall amount on official meteorology platforms. Concerned about the volume of water and conscious of living on flat farmland in a highly urbanized area, the woman spoke to a friend living in a higher village who told her an “unimaginable flood” was approaching.

Puchades dutifully warned his neighbors and asked his middle son not to work the night shift, but he left early, saying he had to pick up a colleague’s job. “If my son had left at his usual time, he would have been caught by the full power of the water,” she said.

That evening, 229 people lost their lives in the flood in Valencia. The disaster sparked public outrage at authorities who delayed issuing warnings and highlighted the damage fossil fuel pollution is doing to rich countries. Global warming has increased rain intensity by 21%. to work A study published Tuesday in Nature Communications expanded the area under 180 mm of rain by 55%.

On the night of the flood, Puchades caught the dog, went upstairs, and when he opened the shutters he saw a tongue of water approaching his house, “not very high, containing much debris, making a very strange noise, and having an unrecognizable odor.” It came slowly at first, then quickly. “I will always say what impressed me was how fast he was.”

Spain’s lack of preparation mirrors Germany’s situation three years ago, when worsening rains due to the climate crisis killed 134 people in the Ahr valley after failed warnings. The disasters are among many examples that have led the EU’s scientific advisers to condemn Europe’s efforts to adapt to a warmer planet as “insufficient, largely incremental”. [and] In a report released Tuesday, officials were told to prepare for a world 2.8-3.3 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels by 2100 – twice the level of global warming that world leaders targeted when they signed the Paris agreement in 2015 – and to stress test warmer scenarios.

Maarten van Aalst, a member of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change and head of the Dutch meteorological institution, said that climate risks would increase rapidly in such a scenario, but Europe still has a choice on how to manage these risks.

“Despite the much milder but very significant warming we’ve seen so far, we’re already seeing extreme events that surprise us and kill people when we probably shouldn’t have seen them had we waited better,” he said. “I hope we don’t get to 3C… but there’s a good chance the world at large won’t achieve their goals.”

Temperatures are approaching the 1.5 degree threshold. The world has warmed about 1.4 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial levels, and few experts think that target is still achievable. As losses mount, climate scientists warn that “every fraction of a degree” of warming still matters.

Navarro, who turned to Zea Bravo for reassurance when busy school became too demanding, said she will remember her talkative character and calming presence. The school held a memorial service for him in early January when term resumed, which he said left students silent and inactive. He added that after the “terrible” first two weeks since the flood, they were starting to recover.

“We will now wait for the fires in the summer months.”