Is Brazil's flood catastrophe a climate warning? - The Global Story podcast, BBC World Service 

I've seen hardly anything about this story in the U.S. news online. I had no idea it was this bad. Thanks for sharing and making me aware. My heart goes out to the suffering people.

Yet "its not impacting me" attitude prevails, till it does impact us directly

Absolutely grim, I just don't think people are even remotely prepared for what is coming, down the line, with climate change and the devastation it will bring.

Warning? What warning? It's consequences here and now. Media insist on using this 'infantilizing' language to talk to the public. Stop.

Looks like we've worn out our welcome mat with the Earth

It’s soo sad to me seeing my home state back in Brazil going through this situation 😢

The English-speaking viewer will not get a real sense of the scale of the events, the desperation, and the natural and historical characteristics of this iconic state from the correspondents in the video. Their descriptions were superficial, particularly in the case of Mr. Daniel Gallas, who seemed like a random passerby. They could have provided a better understanding of certain aspects, even with limited time. For example, they could have mentioned that the floodgate and pump system completed in the 1970s, designed to prevent floods like the one in 1941, was meant to be the most efficient in Brazil. However, after many decades of calm, people forgot the risks, and even mayoral candidates promised to tear down the wall to reconnect the urban landscape with the river. Over successive administrations, the lack of priority led to serious neglect in maintaining the system. They could have also highlighted the importance of wind in retaining the Guaíba River, explaining that this body of water is controversial because it has characteristics of both a river and a lake. Furthermore, it is connected to a lagoon, commonly referred to as a lake, which has a single narrow outlet to the sea affected by the tides.

Several regions were hit by more than 700 mm (27 inches) of rain in just one week. Neither the population, governments, infrastructure or animals were prepared for this. Most of the rescues were done by the population and by their own means. The situation came to the point that if you don´t need help, you need to help. The population its taking the lead, improvising shelters, bringing food and clothes for those in need, rebuilding roads and even bridges. Thanks for everyone who is helping in someway.

South Florida is under water too, 50cm of rain in the last 3 days.

meanwhile the Pantanal is burning - the world's largest wetland mainly in Brazil (and invaded illegally by Cargill!)

This kind of situation hapens in the country every year, killing people and destroying their homes, but what happened in Porto Alegre is quite shocking. It´s a whole diferent story. The country is not prepared for this, and it will only get worse.

It was so heartwarming to see South American athletes give their strength support let alone others to help their fellow countrymen Bless you All I myself have some beautiful South American friends and feel for you all ❤️🙏🏼

I really thank the BBC for producing this compelling and chilling work of Journalism. I watched this on June 14, 2024, and up until now I was not aware of this unprecedented catastrophe. Caitríona Perry does a great job at presenting this, and it's easy to see her heart and genuine concern for our rapidly changing climate is sincere. The shear scale of this should have put it front and center on every news channel in the world. Nearly, 1 million people displaced is distressing and portends a coming catastrophe that we are simply not prepared for. Caitríona - does a great job with her thoughtful questions, and video footage - in bringing the scale of this into focus. I am sure that the vast majority of people have no doubts that our climate is changing and it's accelerating faster than previous models predicted. The key area of confusion is that there were always hurricanes, big supercharged storm systems, flooding, and wild fires long before we realized that humans were dramatically changing the climate. The manmade changes (via burning fossil fuels) essentially adds a great deal of energy in the form of heat to our existing climate, so the amount of water dropped in a rain storm is amplified. The same is true with extensive drought and wild fire events that always were a part of our climate, but as you increase heat - energy - you evaporate more water, and much faster. Day by day our climate models are being updated as more data is compiled, and we are experiencing catastrophic "consequences" Now. This isn't a phenomenon of some distant dystopian future climate change theory. It's affecting the world in a big way Now. The most up-to-date supercomputer generated models are showing major parts of the world underwater (not by the end of the century) but in the next 15 to 25 years. In the here and now we are seeing an acceleration of extreme weather events world wide day by day. At some point the magnitude of destruction will be insurmountable - crops fail - our ability to rebuild infrastructure is exceeded and civilization as we know it collapses. Clearly, we are on the brink.

My God...are we still thinking we are being WARNED. We are in the middle of the failing Earth on which we have managed to poop and move on until the human species leaves itself and the world that sustained dying at our hands.

So Happy to see Caitríona Perry who I follow from Ireland and now she at The US BBC talking about my country Brazil. 🇧🇷 I feel glad that at this hard moment dear ones are looking at us.

Voted for allowing clearing Amazon has consequences. Keep the indigenous guardians safe

The world weather pattern has changed and we are experiencing these horrendous effects ...on a global scale.

Its not an if or maybe. It’s happening right now as we speak. And we are still arguing about its existence.

Save Our Planet Now!

I can't say for sure but I believe that the tragedy in Rio Grande do Sul is unique and unprecedented in modern times (last 200 years) if we take into account the size of the affected area, the size of the affected population and the depth of the impact on life of millions of people. Eu não posso afirmar com certeza mas acredito que a tragédia do Rio Grande do Sul é única sem precedentes em tempos modernos (últimos 200 anos) se levarmos em conta o tamanho da área atingida, o tamanho da população atingida e a profundidade do impacto na vida de milhões de pessoas. .

Report from Japan. I've been worried about the weather forecast not being accurate since last year, and I saw the same video on PBS in the US. If this is a global symptom, then it is truly evidence of climate change. When it rained a little bit last year, it used to stop after a few hours, but it kept coming back and forth for about 20 hours straight. As a result, water overflowed from the river where construction was underway, causing partial flooding. That's why floods are scary not only in violent storms, but also in continuous rain. Hail is also rampant in many parts of the world. Floods and hail destroy crops all around. If individuals do not save more energy and slow global warming even a little, food shortages will lead to war. I recommend a passive cooler like my icon.

Now you should investigate how the German based Fraport is dealing with their contract obligations regarding that airport underwater

Click here to subscribe to our channel 👉🏽 bbc.in/3VyyriM

Sending prayers 🙏 to Brazil... Didn't know they were going through this....its flooding everywhere.... Stay safe everyone

'Climate refugees', get used to this term.

A candidate who ended in second in the race for mayor of Porto Alegre warned more than 4 years ago about the lack of maintenance on hydraulic pumps and had promised to address that issue. Did people willing to vote ever thought about hydraulic pump maintenance? The current governor wanted to tear down the wall that protects the city downtown from flooding…people are just being fooled by politicians.

A beautifully presented, compassionate account of an appalling tragedy.

The Brazilian city Curitiba took steps to climate proof their city since the 1970s already. Since most people will live in cities by 2050, city planners, developers & managers need to become water sensitive (too much or too little water). You can't plan for extreme weather while its happening, you have to prep years in advance. Ignore the climate crisis at your peril.

Still want to buy that house in Florida?

Us scientist's have been warning for decades of the suffering from fossil fuel use. Still emissions rise. Insane governance

Your podcasts are much better with images, thanks.

All 5 Counties at the southern tip of Florida are now underwater. In Mexico City they are shutting off drinking water to whole neighborhoods and talking about being a month or two away from being out of water period. Meanwhile in Southern Mexico and Central America the poor howler monkeys are falling out of the trees unconscious because of the heat and habitat degradation in general.

And Florida is in a flooding catastrophe along with countries More shall follow as no country is safe 🕊🌏🙏🏼

It’s absurd that the media in the US haven’t covered this catastrophe. An area about the size of England was affected.

Help is on the way! Praise Jah!

Really nice they took a football rivalry and help the people! 🎉❤

It's happening in Minnesota, Iowa too

These poor people. How horrible. Is the government not going to do the right thing and help people rebuild their homes? I understand some have little $ but that’s exactly why the government should be helping people out, get them back on their feet.

But he did not answer (at 13:55) the question completely. P. Lula is far away and yet help came faster from the federal government than from the state and the city government. In fact the mayor and the governor, with their neoliberal choices, are the real culprits for the calamity. They have pushed against environment protection laws and neglected our flood prevention system, which were designed to withstand a flood this size. They ignored reports and warnings from scientists and the city and state own technical expertise. Their only focus is how to sell more of the city and state public lands and companies, and how to support inescrupulous developers who with their help bypass environmental assessment and regulations. The population of the city and the state have zero value for these people.

The real disaster here was the government. You should be talking about the authorities' incompetence in responding to this tragedy. It took more than a week for them to realize the magnitude of these floods. While the floods were affecting most of the population in the south, the mainstream media was concerned with reporting on Madonna's concert in Rio de Janeiro

This is just beginning. Huge amount of refugees, less and less stable places to go. This is what obsession with growth, industrialism and capitalism has done to us.

Please, don't use the sound wave visual effect. It is horrible and could cause seizures.

Super Sad Situation 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾

Stop cutting down the trees!!!

We don’t have to talk about if it’s climate change anymore. It’s already real and the problem of weather getting stuck to one region is just the start. Heatwaves in the east, drowning in the west…. what else do we need!? Buckel up everyone, or maybe start to see that’s no question if you are left or right, big or small, black or white or whatever, we all live on this planet, and it’s an angry one.

Its almost like they shouldn't have cut down the rainforest and put concrete over top of it? We humans deserve every bit of wrath Mother Nature is going to give us.

Thank you for letting us know about all of this

Anyone in the world wants to see life is beautiful. No one wants to see life bad . Mental health with Doctors Mike

"We'll wade into just what that means..."? There's a time and a place for light-hearted puns, and it's not during a disaster.

It’s sad a major life changing event not is talked about. The BBC has done well on this reporting coverage but poor in informing us in the UK. I would like to hear of these important events.

How to dilute a important conversation of catastrophic consequences ¿ talk about how football was affected.

As warmer temperatures and catastrophes increase, loss of many lives will cause more diseases. On top of the planetary destruction to feed more animals? Humans could rethink what they are doing and the ultimate costs

Here are all the ways I could think of what people can do to protect themselves from the extreme heat and cool down the earth. ❄️ 1. Replace dark coloured roofs with white roofs to get high sunlight reflectivity to keep much cooler automatically. 2. Use insulated curtains, but make sure those insulated curtain colour is pure white to get a high albedo for the sunlight to be reflected to keep cooler. 3. Use a fan to air circulate some basement cooler air upstairs and place a fan from your window outside during night time to in bring that cooler and fresher air. 4. Use plants to regulate humidity and to provide that slight cooling effect through their leaves. 5. Try using cooling fans that is required to use through only ice but if you are in a dryer climate then use evaporator coolers. 6. Wear pure white, to reflect heat off of you and have it be slightly wet to keep cool and have a fan blowing on you with it to feel even cooler. 7. Have cold drinks 8. Reduce your using your electricity on things that releases the most heat out of them. 9. Plant trees around your house and if possible try making it so some of the trees can be providing shade on your house roof to keep temperatures from rising on sunny days. 10. Take cool shower. 11. Paint your walls white if possible to reflect some extra heat. 12. Paint certain entrances like the outside of your garage and doors white or even a lighter color to reflect the heat to reduce urban heat island effect to keep heat from entering your home. Bonus: Even have your driveway painted a lighter colour over a darker colour to reflect more sunlight and reduce the urban heat island effect from your outside surrounding area so your home can stay a little extra slightly cooler. Thank you 😊 and for the extra bonus, let more people know about this so that when they do these ideas and strategies too they can protect themselves from the extreme heat and also help the Earth’s temperatures get reduced faster because all these ideas causes the air conditioners runs much less often which leads to less pollution of CO2 and because with the help of planting more trees it is absorbing more CO2 pollution and storing it into their trunks as food which means less warming for the planet + the trees slight cooling effect through their leafs that is being released into the air overtime helping regulating the temperatures from getting too hot and rising. And another one because there is more sunlight being reflected by using white and even lighter colours helps to reduce urban heat island effect and keep the Earth cooler automatically. 👍

Yes. Didn't it just happen in Florida too?

Very nice, enjoyed the presentation, and the information.

And I’m depressed for no reason. These folks have no options. And yes, the US is becoming expensive and as I’ve said before, there’s a correlation between increased homelessness and eviction/foreclosures, prior to an economic collapse. It’s coming…….

Great work! Please cover the now of Derna in Lybia.

Another climate porn post with no attack on the peoples behaviors causing this or even a mention of a sustainable carbon budget, incredible .

What Was Desert Will Become Ocean

😢

They can't even take the time or care about something relatively small ike how to pronounce "alegre" it's just a story, a job for them. The story, the people enduring this tragedy will be forgotten in days if that. Our planet’s climate knows no geopolitical boundaries. A report issued just yesterday rather than data showing fossil fuel reductions, we hit a record high for global consumption. Humanity is speeding up towards our own species demise and we've no one to blame but ourselves, some significantly more than others.

Shame better have a boat .God Bless them and their country. Praise GOD. .

Thanks for posting

Really? You’re gonna make a pun about this story in the opening? 🙄

I don't know why the government won't tell people what going to happen ? So I'll tell you I live in Comanche county Oklahoma all my 63 winters tornado ally I have been praying and meditation to mother earth for all my life. so this is what I know more earth quiets and more wildfires droughts tornados flooding volcano think about it like this every day is worth than the last ! One half of the country will be flooded and tornado like f-15 f20 and the side droughts and wildfires so we need to be thinking about growing are own food for Americans !!!! Please believe me !! Share this then I tell more !

Yes it all ends up on floodplains. It's what they are, and how they were formed. Easy to build on, and fertile but

We got to quit building homes and businesses in FLOOD PLAINS.

How much has deforestation for soya and animal farms contributed to this massive flooding?

Nature can be wonderful if we treated fair. It’s a tragic event and more to come this coming summer and it’s only June the agricultural season is going to be wiped out if this continues .All over the world.

An excellent interview to understand how people are feeling here in Brazil, but sadly, it never touches on the actual matter: not just federal but also state and local govt responsibility, as well as how denialism destroys everyone else´s lives. Since 2015, climate models have shown that this region in the south of Brazil would suffer significantly increased rainfall by 2023/2024, and it was spot on! Unfortunately, it was swiftly left forgotten, hidden in no one´s sight. Other than that, both the governor of the state and the mayor (and vice) of Porto Alegre are climate change deniers. During these last years, not a single dime has been used to reinforce mitigation strategies and infrastructure. The dams have already shown signs of being worn down and failing for a while, and nothing was done about it. It was a catastrophe announced beforehand, yet no one did anything about it. The vice mayor is in cahoots with this weird far-right conspiracy group known as "Brasil Paralelo.", a group that pumps out unbelievable amounts of money, videos, and fake news about climate change, vaccines, etc...

It was supposed to be a world drought now it's a world flood .

❤❤❤❤❤

NOT a warning… it’s already too late.

😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢

People in that area are lucky it happened during President Lula's administration. If it was still Bolsonaro in the presidential office he would go there to test a new jet ski and leave people in desperate need, without having a second thought about the conditions of the citizens. And we can't forget the geography of the land. It is a flatter part of Brazil.

Please, this is very bad, it is tasteless to make puns around a catastrophe. "We'll wade into just what that means... for those who are told their homes will never be rebuilt", made me want to stop watching. Whatever reporting aside, all eyes should be on the rapidity of the changing global climate.

This is terrible but I think it's earth building itself up again. Places that were dry will change to become lush again and on and on. We've seen it throughout history where a whole city moves from lack of water, too much water etc

QUIT STRIPPING THE AMAZON BASIN OF THE JUNGLE

Sad part is that its inevitable for all peaks to erode into the valley below. Water will reclaim the Earth at some point. All land above sea level, unfortunately fits within the depths of the Ocean. Without plate uplift from impact extinction is INEVITABLE ! Talk about bleak!

Everyone wants to go back. The great sadness of losing your place in the world.

It is not just climate change! It is the duty of government at all levels to discourage building homes, businesses and nuclear plants just inches above the river. All dams eventually collapse. all levees are eventually overtopped by a record rainfall. There is plenty of high dry land available in most countries.

& California at 101 ° f 🔥

I would say its an el nino warning. During el nino seasons the sound of brasil is always a disaster land slides floods etc.

Mental health with Doctors Mike

People used to build houses on stilts to avoid the floods for thousands of years or build houses on the top of mountains for a reason .

Olympic come soon in Paris you good player Brazil city

Durrrr "Nope, no global warming here" durrrr

Ola

Hot as the SUN Wet like the RAIN Electric Dreams worldwide 🇬🇧 🗽 2024 🙏

Maybe they shouldn't have fucked the amazon up so much.

But amazon is having water shortage?

Usb?😂😂😂😂

Interesting reporting, but somehow misleading, as the Governor of Rio Grande do Sul and the Mayor of Porto Alegre are the true 'government', not Lula. In other words, their images and pictures and discourse should have been aired, not Lula's.

No Dams....Huge rivers..lots of water..!!..,No Planning...??..To live near Rivers..??..

😢😥💔🙏✌🏻

Diego el negrito pichabrava😂😂😂😂

You build near rivers and oceans and they will flood.

Have a word with china, how many coal fired power stations, oh yes and the seed cloud stuffers

No not al all, people need to understand the effects of El Nino and La Nina and these cycles.

Oh, well, perhaps the BRICS nations can crowdfund some relief for them.