When disaster strikes, the normal empathetic reaction is to save those in danger, succour the injured, hungry or dispossessed, protect those threatened with harm and then draw lessons. But when bad weather strikes, the alarmists strike with unseemly speed and glee, including blaming Texas floods on climate change before the bodies have even been recovered from the tragic flood that swept away a Christian camp for girls in Kerrville, “Camp Mystic”. And making statements that were factually wrong rather than just a questionable interpretation. We realize the legacy media have their script. But have they no decency?

Euronews was quick to feast on the carnage with “‘A 100-year flood’: How climate change made the Texas flood disaster more likely”. And Bloomberg Green, for instance, rushed to judgement with:

“Texas has been at the epicenter of extreme weather events in recent years. In 2024 alone, Hurricane Beryl knocked out power to millions, a windstorm punched windows out of Houston skyscrapers and a massive wildfire blazed across the Panhandle. The onslaught of disasters has come as warmer ocean waters and moister air, two results of global warming, add fuel to storms. Climate change also makes it harder to predict the speed at which disasters can spin out of control, like in the Maui wildfires that killed dozens in 2023 and the ‘rapid intensification’ that accelerated Hurricane Milton in Florida last year.”

Barely one word of either is true. Euronews is quite wrong that such floods are becoming more common in Texas, which makes an explanation of why they are doing so worse than fatuous. Likewise the Bloomberg Green thing about Texas being at the epicentre “in recent years” will do until a lie comes along, since it clearly implies an intensified situation whereas Texas has always had violent weather including because it is, and always has been, in “tornado alley”, not to mention “flash flood alley”. Nor is it remotely plausible that prior to the 1980s human beings in Texas, or anywhere, had a good grasp on how quickly a given disaster was liable to “spin out of control”, whatever that phrase is even meant to mean.

The piece is also a remarkable exercise in shoddy science. It claims that:

“Climate change has driven more extreme rainfall around the world. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water, upping the odds of deluges like the one that struck Texas. Scientists haven’t yet examined these floods for the fingerprints of climate change. A rapid analysis by Colorado State University climatologist Russ Schumacher shows the six-hour rainfall totals made this a 1,000-year event – that is, it had less than a 0.1% chance of occurring in any given year.”

So is climatologist Russ Schumacher not a “scientist”? And what sort of journalist would describe a deadly flood, say climate change was making rainfall more extreme, and then say science had no idea whether climate change made this flood more severe before claiming it had?

That piece even tried to rubbish Trump at the cost of undermining its own argument, by printing “Disaster capital” and then “190” in large print, followed by:

“From 1980 through 2024, Texas has logged this many weather disasters costing $1 billion or more, according to the US National Centers for Environmental Information. That’s the highest tally in the country. The US has stopped collecting data on these disasters after Trump started his second term.”

No, they still collect the data and they still publish it, they just stopped producing an inaccurate index that mismeasured disaster trends. And unless you claim man-made climate change hit and hit hard before 1980, the fact that Texas has had the highest tally for expensive disasters for nearly half a century proves the devious falsehood smuggled into the piece up front with “in recent years”. And the author knew it.

The Bloomberg mother ship also went after Trump via innuendo with:

“Some politicians have already raised questions over the accuracy of weather forecasts and the possible role of staffing cuts at the National Weather Service for the disaster.”

Yes. And some politicians think vaccines don’t work or indeed that climate alarmism is off-base. But they don’t get pressed into this kind of polemical service.

Heatmap pulled the same dirty trick of saying you can’t attribute it to climate change but it won’t stop us from doing so, emailing:

“Although it’s far too soon to definitively attribute the disaster to climate change, a warmer atmosphere is capable of holding more moisture and producing heavy bursts of life-threatening rainfall. Disasters like the one in Texas are one of the ‘hardest things to predict that’s becoming worse faster than almost anything else in a warming climate, and it’s at a moment where we’re defunding the ability of meteorologists and emergency managers to coordinate,’ Daniel Swain of the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources told the Los Angeles Times. Meteorologists who spoke to Wired argued that the National Weather Service ‘accurately predicted the risk of flooding in Texas and could not have foreseen the extreme severity of the storm’ ahead of the event, while The New York Times noted that staffing shortages at the agency following President Trump’s layoffs potentially resulted in ‘the loss of experienced people who would typically have helped communicate with local authorities in the hours after flash flood warnings were issued overnight.’”

Then, on reflection, Heatmap further emailed: “Early analysis concludes ‘natural variability alone’ cannot explain Texas floods”. Early, yes. Analysis, no.

As with a New York Times “Climate Editor” swooping in cawing:

“One of the most difficult realities of living in a warmer world is that the atmosphere is more likely to unleash worst-case scenarios on us, particularly when it comes to rain. Indeed, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which means that when a storm forms, it can gather more water than is typical and then release it like a sponge on the land below. That is what seemed to have happened to the Texas Hill Country Friday morning, when flash floods engorged the Guadalupe River, killing at least 100 people, including more than two dozen children.”

That such floods are not becoming more common or more devastating in the Texas Hill Country is not discussed or even apparently cursorily investigated. It’s dirty journalism and it’s dirty science. Roger Pielke Jr. took up the cause of common sense here with pointed reference to another New York Times story by a “climate reporter” with no obvious formal credentials that began:

“Colossal bursts of rain like the ones that caused the deadly flooding in Texas are becoming more frequent and intense around the globe as the burning of fossil fuels heats the planet, scientists say.”

Oh. Scientists say, do they? Which ones? Well, that same Russ Schumacher, here promoted from “climatologist” to “professor of atmospheric science”. But as RPJ retorted:

“If you look close enough, RCP8.5 is always behind these stories/ Always”

You do have to look closely, and you have to know what you’re looking for, because such journalists are not in the business of informing, they are in the business of persuading. Even the academic activists know not to put it in the convenient handout for media shriekers. But if you look, you find it.

As you’ll find the can’t attribute/did attribute two-step, including in that story, which included:

“the warming climate is creating the conditions in Texas for more of these sharp, deadly deluges.”

As Michael Shellenberger wrote:

“Within minutes of Texas floods killing dozens of girls, the media said it was because of Trump budget cuts and climate change. In truth, the deaths occurred in ‘one of the highest flood-prone regions in the entire state,’ warnings were issued, and the underlying cause was the failure to install flood warning sirens. Climate journalists are cultists.”

We do not hold with those who call climate change “a religion” as if that term automatically rendered it moronic and beyond the pale. But here “cult” isn’t far off including the rigid chanting of mantras to exclude all doubt, and the dismissal of contrary facts as heresy. In this case, for instance, Bjorn Lomborg posted “Flooding in the US 1903-2018: less costly, not more” with a link to “my free 2020 peer-reviewed article”. But where in all the breathless finger-pointing and feasting on corpses do we find a hit that flooding in the United States is not getting worse?

As for the question of staffing, well, for starters, Chris Martz corrects the record with:

“The National Weather Service (NWS) office in Austin / San Antonio was staffed with five meteorologists throughout the storms on Thursday and Friday, according to NWS meteorologist Jason Runyen. Most offices usually have two on staff when the weather is benign.”

And there were warnings, though not always of just how much rain would fall. The Independent wrote that:

“The National Weather Service had predicted between 1 and 3 inches of rain, with some areas possibly getting 5 to 7 inches. But the reality was a torrential downpour along the Guadalupe River late Thursday that led to unexpected flash floods, with parts of Kerr County getting pummeled with 10 to 15 inches in just a short span.”

But another way of describing that situation is that the vaunted U.S. weather service Trump is mindlessly and heartlessly gutting botched the prediction with lethal consequences. But Euronews says:

“Authorities have come under scrutiny over whether proper warnings were issued to camps and residents in an area long known for severe flash flooding. Officials defended their actions, stating that they had not expected such an intense downpour, which was equivalent to months’ worth of rain for the area.”

As if not having seen it coming were a good defence against not having seen it coming.

Martz also noted that warnings were issued. But the particular county in Texas where Kerrville is located, and which has the sort of thin rocky soil especially prone to flash flooding, lacked the outdoor sirens present in neighbouring areas. A failing of government not of lack of government, and not of Trump.

As Roger Pielke Jr. also wrote:

“Many have been quick to politicize the flooding in an effort to support whatever agenda that they were promoting before it—climate change, DOGE budget cuts, operations of the National Weather Service, the Biden administration. The one political implication of the disaster that I’m ready to call for is to reassert the importance of establishing a U.S. Disaster Review Board, a case made by Mike Smith on my Substack, The Honest Broker, last March…. This tragedy occurred in a location that has among the greatest risks of flash flooding in the nation, where kids in summer camps have previously been swept away to their deaths, and where warning systems are – apparently and incredibly – not in place. This tragedy never should have happened, and it should never happen again.”

Moreover, Martz points out pointedly:

“Camp Mystic and neighboring communities like Hunt and Kerrville are located on the floodplains of the Guadalupe River Valley. The sediment that they're built on has been deposited by hundreds of floods over the last several thousand years.”

Egad. Thousands of years of constant flooding. Who knew? Not climate reporters, climate scientists or government officials, apparently. Even though Shellenberger, under the caption “Myth: ‘unprecedented.’ ‘nobody could have predicted it’” passes on yet another piece of Tony Heller archival research that, horribly:

“During July 1987, a flash flood on the Guadalupe River in Texas killed a number of campers from the Pot O Gold Christian Camp.”

If only journalists had Google on their computers. They might even discover that, as Roger Pielke Jr. also pointed out:

“The flood took place in a region of Texas that has long been called, ‘flash flood alley’… The documented record of extreme flooding in “flash flood alley” goes back several centuries, with paleoclimatology records extending that record thousands of years into the past.”

Whatever can it mean?

And another thing. Martz adds that:

“there have been no detectable increases in either the frequency or magnitude of river floods in the Texas Hill Country since 1965. In fact, they have decreased over the last 60 years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).”

Instead, he shows that flooding records in the area often date back decades, even a century or more, and indeed in Kerrville itself the peak flood crest ever came on July 2… of 1932.

So why no sirens? Well, as Matt Ridley chimed in from Britain:

“Climate change has become an easy excuse that those in power reach for when their incompetence results in disaster. As with wild fires in California and floods in Spain last year.”

So there’s an ugly alliance between journalists seeking to sow panic rather than information and politicians seeking to dodge blame rather than fix problems. Exactly the sort of thing real reporters would be keep to expose not participate in.

Even some journalists accidentally discover something factually relevant. Including the New York Times, which in an unguarded moment noted that:

“The deadliest natural disaster in the United States was caused by flooding. In 1900, a hurricane hit the island city Galveston in southeast Texas with 125 mile per hour winds and 15 feet of standing water, ultimately killing about 8,000 people, according to the National Weather Service.”

There’s just no way to blame that one on Trump, climate change or both. And it would be obscene to try.