Climate change as excuse: Spain's 8M and Valencia DANA

Climate change as excuse: the 8M and the Valencia DANA

The first response to the disaster was not a reservoir or an early warning. It was a tweet. The initial message of the topic at hand—dated with the code "Elbichito-8M"—dismissed the catastrophe in two sentences: the floods were the fault of deniers, and the Government would fund scientists to combat climate change. Zero mention of dams, riverbeds, or protocols. From there, the conversation shifted to something more uncomfortable: the suspicion, held by several participants, that climate functions as a budgetary cover.

What was said in the initial message

The approach was simple and textbook: attribute the catastrophe to those who doubt the climate narrative and announce public money for research. The most repeated response did not dispute the existence of global warming. It disputed how it is used. Climate change kills, reads the headline naming the topic, and everything else was built on that phrase: adapt to reality, yes, but with what works?

The paradox that opens fire is simple: if the phenomenon has been known for decades, why build in ravines? A participant asked this bluntly: Valencians have always known what a cold drop (DANA) is, so why are there tens of thousands of homes in natural evacuation zones?

The cold drop wasn't invented in 2024

The historical argument was the most repeated and hardest to refute. Previous episodes were cited: the 1957 flood, the 1982 one, and records from previous centuries. One participant recalled that the Albufera of Valencia is an ancient bay filled with alluvial materials dragged over millennia, making the area a recurrent flood delta, not a recent anomaly.

Another provided a direct quote from a 1795 book, Observations on the natural history, geography, agriculture, populations, and fruits of the Kingdom of Valencia, by José Antonio Cavanilles, as documentary proof that the problem predates cars, industry, and energy labels. The irony circulated on its own: global warming in the 18th century, blamed on carriages without energy labels.

Why insist on climate and not on dams?

Here lies the economic core of the issue. The thesis held by several participants is that the climate narrative allows spending without accountability: subsidies for research, adaptation, green plans, with the advantage that demanding results automatically turns you into a denier. This is the classic critique of public spending labeled as noble.

The most repeated contrast was that of the 1957 Plan Sur, the major hydraulic work that diverted the Turia River after the flood. The implicit question: why isn't something equivalent undertaken today? The answer given by many: because building reservoirs and cleaning riverbeds yields no electoral return nor allows for television announcements.

The unsettling data: fewer storms with more heat

One of the most cited contributions was a study on the Little Ice Age (1300-1840). According to that material, during that period storm activity was far superior to current levels, with colder seas and CO₂ levels of 270 ppm versus the current 425 ppm. It was, according to that source, one of the most intense periods of the last 11,000 years.

The logical corollary of that data is uncomfortable for the official narrative: if there were more storms with less CO₂, the simple relationship between temperature and extreme precipitation does not hold. It does not deny climate change. It denies that it serves as the sole explanation for what peine.

Criticism of management: alerts, riverbeds, and competencies

Beyond climate, the topic shifted to concrete management. Hydrological warning protocols, flows that went from tens to thousands of cubic meters per second in hours, and internal emails between agencies were mentioned. The recurring accusation was not meteorological but administrative: nobody warned in time.

There was also criticism of the profile of technical staff and institutional response times, with an argument repeated in any catastrophe: hiring more civil servants fixes nothing if the protocol fails. It is debatable, but it is the type of objection that cannot be answered with a tweet about deniers.

The close: two narratives and one same dead

The summary of the topic fits in a phrase repeated with different words: the Government has a narrative and the affected have a question. The narrative is climate. The question is why the water arrived without warning and why construction continues where the water arrives.

As long as that question lacks a technical answer—reservoirs, riverbeds, alerts, land use planning—the debate will keep spinning in circles. And each rainy season will bring it back to the table. How many more times?