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Bob Bingham Blog page.

A series of opinion pieces on, mostly climate change and related subjects to do with New Zealand.

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UK floods and climate change.

30/12/2015

4 Comments

 
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The December 2015 floods in the North of England come only two years after the December 2013 floods which inundated the Somerset levels and the Thames Valley.  A Northern Newspaper emphasised the Northern regional nature of the current floods and said that the South had money spent on floods defenses while the North was deprived.

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While it is true that London has the Thames Barrier this will not be a lot of help in a rainfall flood as it is designed to keep out sea water from storm driven high tides and cannot help control a rainfall flood. It does highlight the danger and cost from these exceptional rain storms which are becoming more frequent and shows that the threat from climate change cannot be accurately forecast or budgeted for.

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The Thames has a huge drainage area and although it has always had floods the new situation puts the whole conurbation at risk and the potential cost to London is huge. If in an exceptional series of rainstorms totaling a hundred millimeters or so of rain fell within the Thames catchment area, it would overwhelm the current defenses and flood massive amounts of infrastructure.
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The known risks from rainstorms is very high and recent events now show that they are becoming a reality. With the current frequency of rainstorms, it must be a question of 'when' rather than 'if' and this risk is becoming a reality in every country in the world. Politicians are not good at dealing with long term strategic planning because of the short term costs and unrecognized benefit but one good thing from the Paris COP21 agreement is that all the countries in the world have now recognized that climate change is a real threat. 

Politicians who try to deny climate change and then suffer a disaster cannot survive in power.
4 Comments
Bob Bristow
30/12/2015 07:35:11 pm

Thanks for a well timed and topical article Bob, with a new violent storm "Frank" just hitting the situation is only going to deteriorate further.

We are beginning to suffer the consequences of those companies that spent enormous amounts of money obfuscating and suppressing known science in the 1970's. It is all very well criticizing the U.K government, but how do you plan for unprecedented events that just keep on increasing.

A sensible article in the Manchester News . .


"Prof Kevin Anderson, of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester, told the M.E.N. there is already so much carbon dioxide in our atmosphere that more flooding is inevitable.

And he called for the government - and individuals - to do more to stop pollution.

He said: “The flooding events we are seeing around Greater Manchester are in line with what our climate change modelling tells us about what will occur if we carry on burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon dioxide at the current rate we are doing."

We can not engineer ourselves out of all consequences . .


http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/greater-manchester-floods-happen-again-10663578


Reply
Bob Bristow
30/12/2015 07:40:49 pm

Hopefully the penny will drop on the effect of GreenHouse gases on our atmosphere, it was discovered by scientists in the later 1800's.


"Many new and expensive flood prevention or mitigation schemes did not fail in Carlisle, Kendall, Lancaster, Cockermouth and other places – they worked to capacity and were then simply overwhelmed."


http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/those-calling-bigger-flood-defences-dont-understand-complexity-uk-flooding-1535246

Reply
Bob Bristow
30/12/2015 07:44:17 pm

Certainly insurance companies will take note now . .

With more storms on the way it could get towards as large as anything that we've had in recent history, certainly in terms of insured loss," said Simon Waller, managing director at JBA Risk Management, which assesses flood risk for companies and governments globally.


http://www.trust.org/item/20151229153704-wa05h/?source=fiOtherNews2

Reply
Bob Bingham
30/12/2015 09:59:13 pm

Thanks for the contribution Bob. I understand that the UK insurance companies are going to pay out for a flood once and then not accept more risks. Not good for a house holder who's home is his biggest investment and something he can not walk away from.

Reply



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    Bob Bingham 

    Occasional blog posts on topical news items concerning the climate.  Please click the RSS feed to receive updates.

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