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Sadmadalan sums it up nicely, I think
as far as the Somerset Levels are concerned, the EA officer in charge of the region decided that the local rivers authorities were no longer needed,
Is this not as a result of Tory cuts? If someone asks you to cut, then you say you're already at the bare minimum, and they still cut your budget - what can you do?
One inconvenient truth now being spoken about is that we will have to abandon areas of development (infrastructure, housing and industry) where it is no longer financially sustainable to keep defending it. It will mean innovative solutions to infrastructure that are not being used in this country yet.
We also have to face the fact just because the sort of maintenance has always been done we cannot afford to keep doing it. That is both a financial and ecological cost. Before humans thought that they could control everything a balance was maintained in these dynamic systems and habitats, rivers, wetlands, etc. moved around the landscape. Humans now want to stay still, not move and guess what? Nature does not work like that. On a small island with cramped infrastructure we have relied on a relatively stable climate to keep this status quo (even this is not the case as we keep building stuff and changing agricultural practices). Now that we have a more dynamic climate (to put it mildly) we are reaping what we have sown.
I really do think that you can’t blame any one organisation/sector/government, but we can at least stop making decisions solely on business grounds and start to use sustainable practices and try and take some better long term decisions.
A couple of things I don’t understand when there’s flooding:
1. Why don’t people park their cars on higher ground?
2. Why after all these tragic floods that affect people on here personally and seem to hit forum members emotionally, do we usually have 2 threads down - “where should I fly away to for a couple of days break?” What will it take to change behaviour?
1. Why don’t people park their cars on higher ground?
Because not everyone has that choice, time to make that decision or the foresight to consider it. And it might not help anyway: high up places still flood or have landslides. By the time you've got round to considering your car (over and above your house, family, pets, possessions...) you may not be able to get it out the village if the river is rising around you or there are other stranded vehicles blocking the way.
2. Why after all these tragic floods that affect people on here personally and seem to hit forum members emotionally, do we usually have 2 threads down – “where should I fly away to for a couple of days break?” What will it take to change behaviour?
I dunno, maybe for budget airlines to stop with cheap flights, maybe for people to earn less money so they don't have disposable income for holidays, maybe for the feeling that, you know what, that plane is still going to fly to Malaga whether I'm on it or not so **** it, I'm going to Malaga for a few days in decent weather rather than being rained on (yes, I know there's some irony there....)
“where should I fly away to for a couple of days break?” What will it take to change behaviour?
we need another number of airports gleeful boasting thread.
My take on this is hopefully things will change for new developments etc where things are built where there is less risk of flooding etc, minimum height above water courses. Also, flood defences in my view just pass the problem further downstream, there needs to be proper flood plains to take the excess water away, not farmland but genuine flood plains.
My take on this is hopefully things will change for new developments etc where things are built where there is less risk of flooding etc
I wouldn't bet on it
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Developers will build if people buy their houses. It is really down to the buyers to do a bit of thinking and not buy the new houses in high risk areas. Expecting people to do a bit of thinking is unfortunately taking it too far.
Buyers wouldn't buy flood prone houses if Developers couldn't actually build them in the first place because planning was denied.
We're moving house at the moment. Our current house is 100m above sea level, at the top of a gently sloping road. Flood risk wise it's as good as it gets. 1950s build.
When I've been looking at new places I've ruled some out because they're newish build in obviously shitty bits of land not developed in the past because they're floody. I've cooled on another because it would be at risk from moderate sea level rise. I doubt I'd haven taken this much interest in flood risk 5 years ago. I assume I'm not alone so it should start to filter through into prices and new developments.
In theory new developments themselves shouldn't flood?
The ones in our village (previously tiny village, now seemingly 10x bigger than it was 10 years ago) are obviously on lower ground than the original village. And plenty of local roads flood. But the developments don't flood, they drain all the water to retention ponds which are sized to offset the amount of land they've concreted over. Judging by the local fields at the moment it's probably fair to say those areas have the potential to flood, but they don't.
Assuming each new development adds more holdup capacity in the form of retention ponds than it takes away in concrete I don't really see the problem.
Note that on the news most of the floods are in older houses. So either they've always flooded, or land use/management upstream has changed, or most likely both.
This is our bushfire moment.
But anger isn't as widespread in Britain though as the fear and misery is concentrated tightly along the streets next to the rivers ..the general population aren't experiencing the same pit of the stomach visceral dread that very many Australians were at the height of fires earlier in the year.
So politicians aren't being forced by media to confront the consequences of their action/inaction, and many folk are merrily eyeing up a new Nissan Childpoisener on PCP when they drive past the main dealer on their 2mile / 20 minute drive to work.
This is our bushfire moment.
Except it's very VERY difficult to pin this particular event on climate change.
We've had two winter low pressure systems close together, wetter and more frequent than usual due to the location and speed of the jetstrem at the moment.
yeah right and arsonists cause bushfires
We are gonna see more of this and more often everyone not directly proffiting from fossil fuels and even many who do directly profit from it admit that....- that this particular raindrop can't be directly atrributed to my trip to malaga so **** it I'll still drive to tesco is not a defensible position anymore.
Lets remember that climate deniers are effectively saying don't waste more money on flood defences cos this stuff is so rare it'll never happen again, don't increase Fire Service water rescue assets as these risks we are currently seeing are very unusual and won't become more frequent or god forbid bigger.
Dont worry about building large car dependent housing estates on flood plains as this will probably never happen again its an abnormal one off
Dont worry about locating care homes in flood risk zones as they'll probably never need to be evacuated in the dark by huge amounts of fire service teams effectivley removing cover from the rest of the county.
This sort of stuff is deeply disingenous and misleading
But the developments don’t flood, they drain all the water to retention ponds which are sized to offset the amount of land they’ve concreted over
There's a contentious new build site in our village, 300ish houses. Green field site. Boggy fields essentially. The HUGE balancing pond they have built has already overflowed, silted up the existing local drainage schemes, flooded surrounding houses, gardens etc. And they've not even laid any tarmac on the site yet. They've barely sorted the access junction and started on half a dozen plots! But I'm sure they'll just keep building rather than think, was this a good idea? Someone else's problem isn't it.
Except it’s very VERY difficult to pin ANY particular event on climate change.
Fixed that for you. Feel free to bury your head in the sand a bit deeper now.
We are gonna see more of this
Didn't deny that, but pinning an individual winter low pressure system (or two formed in two weeks by the same set of conditions) on climate change is somewhere between foolhardy and impossible. If these had gone a bit further north or not been supercharged by the jetstream they'd have been nothing newsworthy. Even in a slow news week that link hasn't really been made/explored much.
The bushfires on the other hand are a different matter, they're coming off the back of a summer that's breaking all sorts of records as the longest, hottest, driest etc, coming off a series of summers like that.
That Britain has rain isn't really a new thing, we're f****** famous for it. I mean, we're (mostly) talking about flooding on floodplains............
Lets remember that climate deniers are effectively saying
Straw man.
Fixed that for you. Feel free to bury your head in the sand a bit deeper now.
Must be the lack of oxygen getting to you on that high horse?
There’s a contentious new build site in our village, 300ish houses. Green field site. Boggy fields essentially. The HUGE balancing pond they have built has already overflowed, silted up the existing local drainage schemes, flooded surrounding houses, gardens etc. And they’ve not even laid any tarmac on the site yet.
Correlation isn't causation? Unless you've missed something out you've implied they've built some flood mitigation measures, they've been overwhelmed, implies they weren't anywhere near big enough to mittigate against this weather but doesn't make them at fault?
The aim of them AIUI is to offset the change in the land use. So the pond offsets the quicker drainage. If the pond overflows that (to me) implies the land would have been saturated anyway and the runoff (pond overlflow) would have resulted in flooding anyway.
That Britain has rain isn’t really a new thing, we’re f****** famous for it.
One of the wettest, warmest winters follows 18 months of abnormally dry weather, with record high temperatures in the UK.
The rain outside doesn't suggest that the climate is changing - the fact I haven't needed my proper mid-winter riding kit for several years just might.
Had to nip out to the shops at lunch and I drove past an estate of newbuilds. The water was well up the grass at the front of them and not that far away from front door level. Can't see the site sales office doing much business this week.
Also, they are proposing 2,300 new houses in the village where I live. These houses are on land slightly lower than the M62, which had lanes closed due to flooding at the weekend. The name of the area (real name as on the signs, not just an unofficial local one) is the Wetlands!
When the motorway was built in the 1960s it disrupted the drainage in the fields to the south of it to the extent that they are submerged a couple of times every year. There were once industrial units, farm buildings and football pitches there. All are now long since abandoned. It also shows up on the EA Flood Map.
How is it possible to get a mortgage or insurance on these properties?
Madness.
the fact I haven’t needed my proper mid-winter riding kit for several years just might.
You've got a very short memory (or have a very strong definition of proper winter kit).
2017/2018 winter was the "beast from the east", even in the sub-tropical south east it was minus double digits.
Winter 18/19 I was working away several days a week (Manchester, nowhere particularly northern) and remember feeling glad/smug I'd put winter tyres on when it snowed on quite a few of those trips.
One of the wettest, warmest winters follows 18 months of abnormally dry weather,
Regression to the mean?
Last winter was particularly dry because the jetstream was sending weather systems away from us, this last month it's sent them straight at us. That's an oscillation, not a trend.
Global warming might make individual events worse and/or more likely, but pinning an individual weather front on global warming.............
That Britain has rain isn’t really a new thing
Eye roll.
but pinning an individual weather front on global warming………….
Isn’t possible. We’ve established that. So you can be happy with your head deep in that sand. Please keep it there, out of the way, while people’s lives are being hit all over the UK, and some people want to encourage planning for the future… without the shrugging of shoulders and waiting for the data (ie more lives being hit) before we act as if climate change has an impact on us.
Please keep it there, out of the way, while people’s lives are being hit all over the UK, and some people want to encourage planning for the future… without the shrugging of shoulders and waiting for the data (ie more lives being hit) before we act as if climate change has an impact on us.
The problem is that most people, even the ignorant ****wits in Government, now know that climate change is real, it does affect people and it's generally a bad thing but they're desperately trying to believe that things will change without them really doing much about it.
Electric vehicles "are coming" (as they have allegedly been for the last 20 years), we'll soon all have autonomous / self-driving cars, airplane techology is cleaner than ever, we've built another windfarm... Every single aspect of that is designed to sort of shrug shoulders and go "well we're better than we were..."
Climate change is being monetised - buy more shit (ethically sourced shit obviously), carry on driving round as much as you want in a nice EV (again, ignoring the massive elephant in the room of the energy that went into producing it, the mining of copper, lithium etc for the batteries and the "oops, WTF do we do now with all the dead batteries"), carry on flying because Ryanair say they're the cleanest / lowest emissions airline, build more houses on floodplain because "we've mitigated it / built some flood defences" (again, using a shedload of concrete and energy in a futile attempt to redesign nature).
No-one (especially no-one in power) is willing to actually say "stop this madness". No-one knows how to stop the consumerist merry-go-round and ultimately, no-one wants to.
Isn’t possible. We’ve established that. So you can be happy with your head deep in that sand.
Get your head out of your own arse.
Where has anyone in this thread denied climate change exists?
You've even accepted that two storms in the UK in a fortnight is down to a peculiarity in the positioning of the jetstream (you think this is bad, you should see what the Canadians have had this season). And if those storms had hit anywhere other than the UK you would never have know anyway. That's why looking at individual weather events is not a good way of looking at climate trends. You need much bigger sample sizes, either spatially or temporally.
So what's your problem?
some people want to encourage planning for the future… without the shrugging of shoulders and waiting for the data (ie more lives being hit) before we act as if climate change has an impact on us.
Acting like your house is on fire doesnt prevent fires.
Making claims that a short term weather event is the result of climate change when it's at best an impossible to prove maybe, doesnt stop people commuting by car.
So what’s your problem?
Your climate change denial.
And by that I mean, your denial that climate change is impacting us.
We know that you can’t prove that any single weather event is down to climate change. We need to act now as if an increase is such weather events (as has been predicated) is coming our way, not wait for it keep coming, to give us the “data”.
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sadmadalan
I used to live in York. It floods. Regularly. They spent a lot of time and money to create an upstream flood defence (Clifton Ings).
Indeed. And anywhere called Ings, Carr, Marsh, Foss, Meadow or similar should give you a clue as to what that area has done for generations.
I moved to Yorkshire 27 years ago and York itself 17 years ago.
Yer man has it. York floods. Always has and probably always will. Sometimes more sometimes less.
I work in electricity and up until 2000 we didn’t really have a problem with flooding of our substations. Then we lost Osgodby 132/33kV under 12 foot of water. It had been there 30 years or so with no problems.
So a bit of a surprise. Until someone found an old map - and the area was marked as Osgodby Ings. Quelle surprise, 50 years ago it was thought of as an area that flooded.
There are cycles in weather as well as the present change in climate.
I have been told, but I’m not able to verify, that there is a 40-50 year cycle to flooding in Britain, that the 50s to the 90s were a dry spell - but we don’t remember the previous wet bit as we’re all too young. That may of course all be a handy story - if anyone actually knows could they tell me.
Tbf he’s not denying climate change at all. He’s pointing out that longer term trends are more significant in accounting for the change rather than a short term jet steam adjustment.
The jet stream is in itself interesting, as a conveyor belt to effectively equalise the earths heat from pole to equator. Personally I think the suns cycle plays a far greater role in longer term climate change and am looking forward to the data pinged back from the solar explorer mission launched a couple of weeks ago.
Denying climate change is pointless-it’s been changing for decades, centuries, eras etc etc. But as humans have royally f***ed this planet the idea that we’re causing/accelerating any change can only be a good thing so as a race we can right a few wrongs.
Yeah, let’s look at pre 1950 weather patterns, that’ll help us plan for what’s happening now.
Eye roll.
It's fine. It's not like sea levels are rising or anything. High spring tides and some wind is going to make life damp on many areas of coast shortly too. ☹️
Kelvin - assuming ‘‘twas me that got the eye roll, no, don’t look at 1950s weather patterns, but old maps, area names and road names frequently do tell you about areas that used to flood.
The weather patterns / cycles bit was me wondering why places that used to flood enough to have names that mean marsh or seasonally flooded or the like stopped flooding for a bit. Maybe they didn’t but the names often suggest otherwise.
Why after all these tragic floods that affect people on here personally and seem to hit forum members emotionally, do we usually have 2 threads down – “where should I fly away to for a couple of days break?” What will it take to change behaviour?
Bit late to the party, but agree with this.
Reminds me of the story on the BBC the other day about a French ski resort helicoptering in snow because it all melted. My irony meter was almost off the scale.
On the housebuilding front, if I was building a new house in a flood risk area I'd just build it up off the ground - maybe a couple of metres up with a storage area underneath. Expensive maybe, but worth it if it doesn't get ruined by floodwater at increasingly frequent intervals in the decades to come.
Correlation isn’t causation? Unless you’ve missed something out you’ve implied they’ve built some flood mitigation measures, they’ve been overwhelmed, implies they weren’t anywhere near big enough to mittigate against this weather but doesn’t make them at fault?
Apologies, I failed to clarify that they have been struggling at the sight of 'bad' weather over the winter, long before these last two storms.
I am sure that once the whole thing is tarmacked, the sites new sewerage system will be more than able to meet the demand in conjunction with the lake.
You raise a good point though. Maybe these sites should start considering the ability to mitigate against extreme conditions that are becoming more likely due to climate change, rather than making conditions worse for others. Especially in flood prone areas.
I dunno, maybe for budget airlines to stop with cheap flights, maybe for people to earn less money so they don’t have disposable income for holidays,
All sorted in 2021 when the transition arrangements end, we're barely going to afford to feed ourselves due to points based immigration.
if I was building a new house in a flood risk area I’d just build it up off the ground – maybe a couple of metres up with a storage area underneath. Expensive maybe, but worth it if it doesn’t get ruined by floodwater at increasingly frequent intervals in the decades to come.
But most people don't build their own houses. It would hopefully be the case that new house building in flood effected areas has stopped / will stop. We don't live in the Irrawaddy Delta I'm pretty sure a large percentage of the UK landmass isn't underwater just now. In recent decades developers have built in flood effected areas not because preferred or necessary but because the land is cheap - the houses they build aren't sold at a discount to the customers though.
But if you built houses obviously equipped to withstand flooding nobody would buy them. Nobody would buy a property on the expectation it will flood. Even if your carpets survive anything parked outside won't and people generally want to be able to come and go from their own home. Even with free porn people can't wait to get off a cruise ship just now - anywheres a prison if you can't get out 🙂
Some new build in Willington, Derbyshire seem to have avoided the flooding - maybe 100 metres from the Trent on a good day, pics seem to show the road to the estate underwater but they seem to have raised the houses up
While there's some environmental points well made already, I'd also like to call out anyone with 3 or more kids (and anyone with kids and since separated and living apart from their kid's other parent) who is complaining about the building of new housing.
All the good bits of land are already taken. I work in the Thames basin, Thames Water are incredibly hot on the drainage run off from any new or extended development. While on an individual scale this may be farting into a hurricane, there's a long term goal that they are, to their credit, working towards.
On the housebuilding front, if I was building a new house in a flood risk area I’d just build it up off the ground – maybe a couple of metres up with a storage area underneath. Expensive maybe,
Im always reminded of this when these come up ..... cost more than my house by a long way just to get to ground level.
I’d also like to call out anyone with 3 or more kids (and anyone with kids and since separated and living apart from their kid’s other parent) who is complaining about the building of new housing.
But not calling out people without kids, or kids that have moved on, but love having the status symbol and feeling of self satisfaction that you get form a 5 bedroom house, with double garage, and gardens front and rear… maybe a lovely crescent shaped drive… second home in Cornwall…
You’ve got a very short memory (or have a very strong definition of proper winter kit).
2017/2018 winter was the “beast from the east”, even in the sub-tropical south east it was minus double digits.
Winter 18/19...….. I
They were very short term events around here - how long did the Beast from the East actually last? All winter, or just a few weeks?
Well if any of those affected vote Tory, well they bloody deserve it. Bad news for the others that the country is basically held ransom to continual stupidity.
Revealed: how Tory cuts are wrecking UK flood defences
"Many of Britain’s flood defences are being abandoned or maintained to minimal levels because of government cuts that could leave almost twice as many households at “significant risk” within 20 years, according to a leaked document submitted to ministers."
"Councils had suffered budget cuts of more than 40% since 2010, leaving them with little or no option but to reduce or withhold funding to drainage boards, other organisations and landowners who managed river levels, the document suggests."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/02/tory-cuts-wrecking-uk-flood-defences
Typical Tory bullshit of "saving" money today by borrowing it from the future.
For those flooded it's pretty horrific but the actual number of properties flooded is very small. It was interesting hearing from a woman (in Calderdale I think) who took 8 months to get back in after their first flood, after the recent floods she was expecting a couple of days as the work done after the last flood meant the house just needed a clean and not all the plaster replacing.
As for all the cuts, would have happened who ever is in charge, the biggest problem is they don't know where the next floods will be.
Anyway nothing will change whilst were shipping sand from the UK to the Middle East to cover horse racing venues, with that sort of environmental idiocy going on meaningful change is a long way off.
An alternative view to that tweet is someone justifying their job and salary. Everybody, well, nearly everybody loves to make themselves indispensable 😉
On the climate change front. And right from the get go here, I’m not denying that climate changes or is changing dramatically to the changes we’ve been witnessing since we started observing and recording climate changes from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, decade to decade, century to century.. just on that last one, so we can’t go millennia to millennia because we haven’t been observing and recording the same exact data for that long. So, my questions for the oracles are:
Where’s it changing from?
What was the old normal?
How many years worth of data was used to establish the normal?
How do we deduce that change is dramatic enough to hashtag it as climate change/emergency?
I have more questions, but let’s get these sourced first as they may well address the other queries I have.
A couple of points earlier alluded to both jet stream and solar cycles as being very likely candidates to be climate influencers. How long have we been observing and recording these to ascertain how they may be affecting any dramatic changes. How does one be affected by the other? How are we able to influence the jet stream? Increased air travel? Fossil fuel burning? Clear felling swathes of North American forest on a daily basis to make wood pellets to ship to the UK so we can fill up Drax and charge up our electric vehicles?
As I said, I’m open to all sides of the argument/discussion but it does seem to me sometimes that not enough information is present to form a reliable indicator as to what, why and how do we deal with change. The
The mistake you may be making is believing that your questioning carries the same weight as the global scientific community who assert that it is a true measurable condition.
don’t take this personally, my opinion that it is absolutely happening and driven by man’s actions carries the same value - virtually nil.
Clearly it’s measurable. We have specified units of measure for atmospheric pressure, temperature, precipitation and wind velocity to name a few of the most important ones.
Admittedly, my e perience of business forecast modelling was circa 30 years ago, however, the basic premise was historical data, or rather, verifiable and relevant historical data and the more that was available, the better the guess and the better the trend analysis. In a cosmological scale of things, we have **** all verifiable historical data, so the normal has to be established somewhere. Where that’s established will affect the changes quite significantly.