Canada’s West Coast has been hit by storms resulting in alluvial flood plains being flooded, roads built on alluvial benches being eroded and major highways on alluvial flood plains being covered by debris torrents adding to naturally occurring alluvial land.
The key is that most of the violence is natural, but the even more destructive Sumas Prairie flood is due to political distractions, that have been impractical.
Regrettably, activist politicians and their media have laid the blame upon “Global Warming”. Locally, the ploy is to divert attention from decades of neglecting sound engineering advice to maintain and raise the height of the Sumas dikes.
Dedicated to globalism rather than local responsibilities
Dedicated to globalism rather than local responsibilities, governments have been spending millions promoting CO2 and warming. And regarding the lower Fraser River, did not protect ordinary folk and farmland from real weather threats. Instead, they spend taxpayer monies propagandizing threats some thirty years from now, which ironically activists have been promoting for the past thirty years.
Resulting in taxpayers having to pick up the bill – twice – one for repairing flood damage, the other for improving the dikes. With routine maintenance, those costs would have been distributed over time with any repair or insurance hits being less.
While disruptive and costly, precipitation in the order of many hundreds-of-year events occur but are not geologically unusual. British Columbia’s “Lower Mainland” is indeed a flood plain deposited by the mighty Fraser River.
And as Mark Twain pointed out that if the Lord had of taken more than six days to create the Earth, he would not have to be constantly rearranging it. Of course, he was referring to the Mississippi’s tendency to inconveniently move sandbars around, as well as to destroy farmland on one bank of the river, while creating gravel bars on the other.
The Fraser Canyon ‘Valley Of Death’
Twain’s acerbic wit prevailed between periods of massive superstitions about weather and climate. Under the naturally occurring cooling trend following the Medieval Warm Period, Northern Europe suffered many severe-weather events that at times forced local famines. Also, the cold rains reduced the quality of feed, so livestock suffered as well.
Dreadful times during the 1500s and governments needed scapegoats. With certain knowledge that witches caused severe wind, rain and hailstorms, magistrates legally convicted and executed thousands of them. As with now, the magistrates were highly educated, but today’s certain superstitions are more democratic – all men, women and children are blamed for adverse weather.
It’s been almost child-like: “Do as I say, or heat and drought will get you”.
With scheming versatility, “Climate Change” covers the guilt trip from inconvenient precipitation to cold weather. On the latter, too many articles claim that “Global Warming Causes Colder Weather”.
However, the implacable power of geology and weather has nothing to do with morals or political passions. On the very ‘Wet Coast’ in November and December the storms, now appropriately called “atmospheric rivers”, are initially cool enough to dump feet of snow, ending with the weather system turning to rain on snow, forcing a sudden and violent deluge. In varying degrees, skiers and resorts face this early in every season.
When trying to find a comfortable place to sit, mountains seem overly solid. But on the West Coast, after being depressed by the massive weight of ice the land has been rising for some 10,000 years as the rivers have been just as relentlessly cutting their channels and depositing the debris and sediments downstream.
Published in 1966, The Fraser Canyon ‘Valley Of Death’ seems a lurid title that records the efforts going back to the 1860s when England’s Royal Engineers carved out a sketchy road to the goldfields. Subsequent deadly slides and floods prompted each reconstruction to be hopefully better than the last.
Just north of Vancouver on the Whistler highway, there was a short bridge across a rubble chute that failed one night in late October 1981. A torrential rain brought down decades of debris accumulation with enough force to destroy the bridge. Late at night there was little traffic and at separate times in poor visibility, five cars drove into the abyss. Tragically, cars and passengers tumbled into the ocean below, never to be seen again. Then a driver saw that the bridge was gone in time to stop.
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Having little respect for opposing views on history, science or engineering today’s control freaks instantly claimed that the November flooding was due to “Global Warming”
The new bridge was made longer and is intact forty years later.
Which one can hope that today’s devastated highways will be as successfully rebuilt. One can also hope that government accountability returns in doing the required maintenance on the Sumas dikes. It can be done, as about one-third of the land area in the Netherlands is below sea level and the region has been diked for thousands of years.
Having little respect for opposing views on history, science or engineering today’s control freaks instantly claimed that the November flooding was due to “Global Warming”. The New York Times headlined: “Vancouver Is Marooned by Flooding and Besieged Again by Climate Change”.
Fortunately for the record, WUWT published a well-researched piece outlining that last summer’s drought and forest fires had nothing to do with November’s “atmospheric river”:
With La Nina conditions, the surface temp of the Pacific is lower than otherwise. And the local snowpack was above normal before the storm hit. As usual, the rain on snow melt added to the sudden deluge.
When governments get back to protecting taxpayers instead of controlling them
When governments get back to protecting taxpayers instead of controlling them, dikes will be properly engineered, and roads will be improved. The latter has been going on since the 1860s Gold Rush.
Beginning in 1860, John Allison established the first ranch in the Similkameen Valley. At what is now Princeton by 1894 it included some 14 outbuildings, a home and extensive land for vegetable gardens.
Then with a substantial snowpack and a late spring, in that fateful June hot weather arrived forcing a massive flood. As the bank of the river was eroding, they sawed the home in half, hoping to save part of it.
Practical idea that was overwhelmed by the unrelenting flood.
It took everything including garden land, leaving the stable which provided temporary accommodation.
However, one can look to the practical side of debris torrents. The Okanagan Valley is an ancient fault running north/south that was scooped out during the last ice age. Some 8,000 years ago, Okanagan Lake was 110 miles long.
At the scenic town of Penticton, where this writer grew up, the original lake divides in two. Okanagan to the north and Skaha Lake to the south. And the filling in of some 600 feet depth of former lake is due to torrential debris slides from local creeks draining into the valley. Further, the topographic map shows the impressive carve-out of canyons with the former solid rock turned to debris and flowing down to the alluvial valley floor.
Hospitable lately, and despite the semi-arid climate, the old debris slides were caused by torrential rains. Rare, but over thousands of years they provided enough real estate to host an attractive town.
Since the 1860s, British Columbians have repaired severe weather damage, and it would be equally practical to reform nihilistic politics.
Bob Hoye (BobHoye.com) has been researching investments for decades, which eventually included the history of financial and political markets. He considers now to be the most fascinating time for both since the Great Reformation of the 1600s. Bob casts a caustic eye on all promotions and, having a degree in geophysics, is severely critical of the audacity that a committee can “manage” not just the economy, but also the temperature of the nearest planet. He has had articles published in major financial journals and, as a speaker, has amused assemblies in a number of cities, from London to Zurich to Tokyo.
Canada’s West Coast has been hit by storms resulting in alluvial flood plains being flooded, roads built on alluvial benches being eroded and major highways on alluvial flood plains being covered by debris torrents adding to naturally occurring alluvial land.
The key is that most of the violence is natural, but the even more destructive Sumas Prairie flood is due to political distractions, that have been impractical.
Regrettably, activist politicians and their media have laid the blame upon “Global Warming”. Locally, the ploy is to divert attention from decades of neglecting sound engineering advice to maintain and raise the height of the Sumas dikes. 
