The rain in Spain

On a related note, anyone else remember those insane BMX videos of Ruben Alcantara riding the storm drains around Malaga on a BMX?

@thisisnotaspoon

Private jets make up 10% of all UK departures according to the below, so a bit more than your 0.0000001%!

https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/money/article/1-in-10-flights-taking-off-from-uk-are-private-jets-k0ts0wd5v

They are completely unnecessary so if the goal is to reduce emissions caused by aviation then surely we should at least start there.

Separately I’ve seen stats saying about 12% of commercial airline passengers are business travellers and that 7% of all flights are cargo flights.

So in total that leaves 71% of flights as commercial leisure flights. Within that you’ve still got a load of first & business class seats for which carbon emissions per seat are about four times higher than economy. Again, surely curtailing these unnecessary luxuries should take precedence?

Then you have people who fly a lot. I can’t find any stats on that but I’m sure there are is no shortage of moderately wealthy people flying around all over the place on a regular basis.

All in all it seems to me like ordinary people taking an occasional holiday probably make up about 50% of all aviation, which itself is only responsible for 2% of global emissions.

I understand that the science says we need to cut emissions, but stopping ordinary people taking holidays and enjoying their life feels like an odd category to focus on when there are so many easier and bigger tickets wins that should surely take priority.

Not wishing to be flamed for unnecessary flights but genuinely looking for advice.

5 of us booked to go to Prades (NNW of Tarragona) on 24th November for some biking/climbing type fun.

Does anyone with local knowledge have any advice in terms of practicality and whether it is better not to travel or better to go and spend tourist dollar?

Private jets make up 10% of all UK departures according to the below, so a bit more than your 0.0000001%!

That’s was actually a reference to Trumps big plane being one of a handful of the most egregious tip of the melting iceberg.

Does it give any details of what that 10% entails behind the paywall? Because looking out the window (not a million miles from Heathrow and Farnborough) I would have put it at that if it included anything not a commercial jet (so everything from the military to a single engined cesna) .

I’m not saying we shouldn’t tax private jets into extinction. I’m saying what’s the point in saying “I’m not changing anything to help society untill that sociopathic private jet flyer does”. Because the problem there is you just know they won’t so you won’t have to ever face your end of that bargain.

i cant talk for the specific area, but i’ve not seen any advice against travelling, keep an eye on the news.
unless you are hoping for weather related reassurance, three weeks is a long time in weather forecasting IME.

I stopped singing “rain rain go to Spain, in a chocolate aeroplane” last week.

Would never cancel plans based on weather forecast, I live in Scotland!

I find the necessity vs. proportion of emissions argument interesting, Facebook has taken to feeding me American monster truck/hill climbing videos recently.

So as not to sound like a kill-joy I’ll admit the actual videos are great fun, but it signified to me just how impossibly far we still have to go if anyone thinks it is at all reasonable to be burning buckets of fuel just to get a very souped up car to the top of a dirt pile in the most spectacular way possible (or worse, revving your monster truck to death whilst slowly sinking into a mud pit).

You could argue that hill-climbing events (or dare I say it, something like the six day trial in Scotland? An event I was quite prepared to drive around behind spectating…) are a vanishingly small proportion of global emissions, but when weighted by actual necessity they’re probably not far removed from literally just pouring the fuel down the drain.

So how do you weigh ‘must holiday somewhere with guaranteed sun’ or ‘must have a laugh getting drunk and racing cars up dirt piles’ against ‘must stay warm’ or ‘must ship raw materials around the globe’. Opposite ends of a very broad spectrum I suspect.

We’re screwed either way though, can you imagine the politician who tried to ban any form of petrol fuelled entertainment? Banning F1 or WRC? Good luck…

I’d ban F1 as it’s incredibly dull and it’s followers are often the same (but I’d hide that in a Climate Change narrative)
😉

@LD Prades is in a stunning location between the vineyards of the Priorat and mountains of the Montsant with rock climbing at Siurana and Margalef and hundreds of km of mountainbike trails. The Volta a Montsant is 170km of fairly difficult terrain that I did over 3 days with MrsPB a few years ago. Prades itself won’t be busy this time of year but is rammed in the summer, I’m assuming you have transport as it’s worth exploring places like Montblanc, Escaladei, Castellfollit and Poblet monastery.  Wikiloc is the best resource for rides of every type, PM me if you need any more help, I’m up for showing you round if you like.

So how do you weigh ‘must holiday somewhere with guaranteed sun’ or ‘must have a laugh getting drunk and racing cars up dirt piles’ against ‘must stay warm’ or ‘must ship raw materials around the globe’. Opposite ends of a very broad spectrum I suspect.

The problem comes when you try and allocate that carbon footprint. No one want’s to own it.

Someone on the last page complained that it was global corporations that emitted the most.  Which is true, but those are your/our emissions.  Shell aren’t sat there burning oil for the sake of it, it’s just that they have to burn a proportion of the oil that comes out the ground to create the energy to process it into diesel to run your car.  For every gallon that you put in, somewhere int he production chain they’ve probably burnt about an extra pint to get it to you in a useable form.  If you want Shell to cut it’s emissions, stop buying Diesel.

Same with motorsport.  it’s a global circus funded by viewers.  The carbon footprint of you watching an F1 race isn’t your 100W TV x 2 hours = 0.2kWh converted into CO2 by whatever the grids current mix is.  It’s the footprint of the whole shebang, divided amongst the consumers.   Otherwise where would it stop, blaming HGV divers for truck emissions?

I’ll post this and a link to an old article on Murcia Today it’s stuff to be aware of whilst planning your winter get away to parts over here.

It’s a thing I’d not known about till riding/walking around here and the locals warning me to be careful…

The Gota Fría is the popular name given in Spain to a meteorological phenomenon which can cause devastating flooding, especially in the south-east of the country along the Mediterranean coast, and which often occurs either generally or locally in the months of September and October.

Although the native population is accustomed to the heavy autumn storms, these can be terrifying for those unaccustomed to Spanish autumn weather, and can also be extremely dangerous for foreign visitors/residents who are unaware of the potential dangers, hence the need to know what constitutes a Gota Fría and why it is so dangerous

https://murciatoday.com/what-is-a-gota-fría_120983-a.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crk4zlkdgk8o.amp

Flooding in Girona now. 🙁

thanks for the link dudeofdoom, good article on the gota fria.

Feel a bit sorry for the authorities that are being criticised for not predicting these flash floods, the ground is completely sodden now and the rain hits with such ferocity that it has nowhere to go except into the barrancos that have become parking places for those seemingly incapable of walking 3 metres to their houses or the shop. Given the events of what is nearly 2 weeks now, surely the sensible thing to ro would be to leave cars on higher ground away from these flooding pinch points. In other news, the Valencia residents who have lost cars last week have been promised a foc replacement by the government rather than relying on insurance companies, irrespective of the level of cover they had, small but significant but no recompense for the loss of life.

 Facebook has taken to feeding me American monster truck/hill climbing videos recently.

I bet Facebook itself uses far more energy than monster truck racing.

Private jets make up 10% of all UK departures according to the below, so a bit more than your 0.0000001%!

Globally private flights is 10%, so about 4million. which is pretty much small potatoes against the 40 million other flights.

This video explains in detail just how badly the authorities dealt with the problem.

I’m suprised the death toll is as low as 200 given the level of destruction and how quickly it unfolded.

Death toll is low now, but they reported that a couple of thousand are still missing. Whether those missing fled to family, or are buried under the wrecks only time will tell. But the figure is likely to climb as time goes on.

Globally private flights is 10%, so about 4million. which is pretty much small potatoes against the 40 million other flights.

Ten percent is ten percent, it’s not insignificant. If we’re serious about reducing emissions from aviation, I think we should start by cutting those – the most unnecessary of all flights – and if it still needs to be reduced further we should then move onto unnecessary ‘business’ flights, then first and business class seats.

The biggest challenge is catchment related. Debris in the storm drains is usually transient, the water will transport that material to the closest area of deposition. Although, badly constructed bridges can become pinch points. Forget rivers being about water, they are sediment transport mechanisms, most sediment you see will be moved each time the river hits bank full. A project I worked on, saw a 1m^3 chunk of slate moved 45m downstream due to a flash flood. Water is powerful stuff.

During Storm Desmond, the River Lune was clocked at 1,300cumecs at Caton. That is 1,300 cubic metres per second, it would fill an Olympic swimming pool ever 2seconds, with change. I haven’t seen any figures for Valencia, but there’s little you can do to mitigate for that volume of water. After Desmond, some people in Kendal were demanding the reviver was dredged to accommodate all the flows. We calculated it would have taken a canyon of 100m wide and 50m deep to have no flooding. Interestingly, aside from the larger gravel shoals at designed deposition points, the bed of the river never changed, showing that the existing 60s defences had worked, but were just overwhelmed. Unfortunately, these events will become more common, so we really need to look at keeping as much higher up catchments, but that would mean wholesale changes to how our catchments are managed, which the antecedent land use is unwilling to do.

comments are exactly what you would expect

After a weekend of relative peace,  it’s back again, phones blaring with government warnings and torrential rain about 10min later. Lord knows how the places that were flooded last week will fare, the ground is as wet as I’ve seen it in our 10years here.

comments are exactly what you would expect

Daily fail, innit..  anyone who lives in the area knows damn well it’s a local/national government issue rather than an EU issue.