Guest essay by Tony Brown
The sun was warm and the wind a friendly zephyr as we enjoyed coffee and a cake on Dawlish sea front. A place known to millions of British holidaymakers as a pretty, if rather faded, seaside resort
Black swans –a symbol of the town-and perhaps a metaphor of this time and place*- glided serenely by, whilst the first daffodils showed their faces to the sun.
Just across the road, Brunel’s railway from Paddington to the far west of Britain at Penzance hugs the coast of scenic South Devon. At Dawlish it picturesquely threads it way through a series of tunnels along the amber coast of red sandstone in one of the most spectacular train rides in Britain.
Here the sea is a constant companion, sometimes washing the sea wall with a frivolous salty spray that glistens in the sun, and at other times is a treacherous and dangerous companion that threatens to overwhelm trains that edge circumspectly along the track. This is perhaps the only main line railway in the world where it useful to consult a tide table in conjunction with the railway time table.
But on Tuesday, three days before our morning coffee, Dawlish had become known worldwide when a giant storm hit the area. As luck would have it this storm- unlike many others-arrived during a Spring tide-when tides are extra high-and the winds came howling in from a direction-roughly from the south-which causes most damage to this part of the coast. From another direction, or at a lower state of tides, the storm would probably have passed unremarked except for a paragraph in the local newspaper. But this one… This one smashed a large hole in the sea wall which carries and protects the main railway line to the South West of England, causing a gaping chasm to open up under the railway, leaving a 30 metre length of track hanging in the air.
Several of the houses directly behind the sea wall and the railway hang precariously close to the void, exposed to the elements and which caused evacuation of the residents. Fortunately no one was hurt-although many were traumatised- and tribute must be paid to the community spirit of this town and the efforts of the council, the emergency services and those involved in the railway in a textbook response showing a high degree of compassion and professionalism.
This line is of prime importance to the economy of the West country. There has however been talk of rerouting it for decades as its tourism value and scenic beauty is precisely because of its vulnerability as trains scurry along just yards from the ocean. Talk has been renewed as obviously the initial reactions to this disaster are that this was due to climate change and with rising sea levels it would be foolish to invest too much money in reinstating the old, when a new inland solution is surely needed.
The history of Brunel’s Great Western railway is well documented and is entirely relevant in examining whether the events of Tuesday-and indeed this winter as a merciless conveyor belt of Atlantic storms have marched in to Britain- are a harbinger of climate change. These few references below are taken as the most relevant for our story, but readers will find the entire history, linked below, to be fascinating.
http://www.greatcliff.co.uk/pages/railway_history.php
Firstly, Brunel never wanted to run the line along a sea wall as he foresaw problems with the sea. He wanted to run it inland, but due to environmental reasons-including protests from landowners- and no doubt cost concerns, he had to defer in agreeing to a new route next to the sea and through tunnels.
It is highly ironic that the first year of operation in 1846 also saw the first breach in the line. In that year Brunel personally inspected 8 breaches in the line, The original newspaper report from 1846 is here.
https://twitter.com/LeoHickman/status/431559126838030336/photo/1
In a space of 15 years from 1853 the line was breached continually, with many other breaches since. Just prior to the history linked above, I note that there were great storms locally in 1817 and 1824, the latter described as an ‘extreme hurricane’.
Perhaps the most significant event in the lines history was 1901 when part of the sea wall was rebuilt 5 metres further out into the sea. It was noted this had a dramatic effect on lowering the beach levels. Sand is an extremely good ‘soft defence’ and we mess with levels at our peril. The groynes along the beach that gather sand around them have been left to decay all along this part of the coast as more fashionable –but less effective- methods of coastal defence are implemented.
A local resident next to the breach tells me of large heavy objects sucked off the ground before hurtling sideways as the storms fury vented itself against the sea wall, the railway line, and the houses that huddle alongside it. A curious echo of the 1824 reference.
The 1901 reference is especially interesting as the remainder of the wall –badly constructed of stone backfilled with rubble-was scheduled to be re-built at that time, but never was. It was that old part that collapsed . This can be clearly seen in the picture below where the sea wall drops to just above sea level (where us locals scurry quickly past at anything other than low tide)
(Full story and many pictures are partway down this article here)
No doubt other breaches would have occurred in this papier mache thin wall if, over the years, the storms had coincided with spring tides and the winds came from the ‘wrong’ direction. One can only imagine the hammering it has taken over the many years of its existence. That a key section of the country’s only main line railway to the South West should be of such flimsy construction will be a surprise to many, and I suspect will be the main cause of delays in the line reopening, as clearly it does not begin to meet modern standards of construction.
So, has modern climate change caused the damage? The historic record shows numerous breaches and damage from severe storms in the past. This link shows the breach in the line in 1855; London Illustrated news
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/victorian_periodicals_review/v046/46.1.fyfe_fig02.html
This next more modern photo shows a train stranded in Dawlish station with mountainous waves crashing over it and is often touted as proof of climate change. 
Those able to visit Teignmouth Museum –just along the coast from Dawlish- will see a lithograph there from around 1850 showing an identical scene.
In 1846, Brunel went to inspect sea damage to the railway at Dawlish, as reported in The Standard. Brunel personally inspected 8 breaches in the line in 1846, the first year of the railways operation!
It seems that storms are no different now to those over the last couple of centuries. The real story is that an already inadequate sea wall structure which carries the main line railway, has taken numerous hits from waves and storms since its inception and has become steadily weakened. Sand levels have been allowed to drop, thereby reducing soft protection to the base of the wall.
The line was clearly built to a budget in the 1840’s and the measures needed to compensate for its problematic location have only sporadically been implemented ever since. Decaying infrastructure-from sewers to roads to sea walls- is the plague of this country, with its make do and mend philosophy in sharp contrast to the high profile expensive grand follies beloved by our Politicians. The latest planned is a £50 billion project for a new rail line from London to Birmingham to shave 20 minutes off the journey. As Dawlish residents bitterly note, a tiny fraction of that budget would enable a proper sea wall built to modern standards to be built here, that would provide protection to the railway for a century.
That modern climate conditions seem no different to the past may be of no concern to those deciding the future of our railway. A new inland route may ultimately be more appealing than properly repairing and maintaining what we have already got, as the siren voices of climate change are loud and strident and emanate from influential people.
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*black swans. The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
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The ultimate problem is that politicians don’t get as much praise for maintaining existing infrastructure as they do for building new. There is no glory in shoring up an existing line as it does not promise an injection of new money into a different constituency, instead, it simply maintains the status quo. The politician is always better rewarded by constantly repairing the weak infrastructure and building new.
Tony:
Thankyou. Excellent.
The air link is intermittent, the railway is gone, and there is still only a single carriageway on the A30 over Bodmin Moor. Cornwall is technically another country from England and if the Plymouth road gets blocked we may as well be on a separate island down here.
But as you say
Add to that the insane stopping of the dredging of the Somerset Levels and one is forced to wonder if the South West is wanted any more.
Richard
crosspatch
You are so right. Given the choice between Politicians showing off a 30 metre stretch of new sea wall in the pouring rain, or travelling in a glitzy high speed train whilst chatting to the other great and the good, there really is no contest!
Which doesn’t get away from the fact that our infrastructure-much of it Victorian and a great deal more from the 1960’s is of key importance and needs renewing.
tonyb
Richard
I was thinking of you at one end of the Great Western
I was genuinely shocked by the thin ness of the sea wall at the breach point and was amazed it has stood up so long. With a team of 30 labourers and the willingness, the breach could be repaired in a week (although how long huge amounts of concrete would take to dry is another matter. )
However I can see no way that just the breach could be dealt with as presumably a survey will reveal other currently hidden weaknesses and I suspect a major rebuild will be needed.
I see Flybe are putting on extra flights from Newquay airport.
I have some knowledge of the Somerset levels as for nine years I was on the Flood defence committee for the South West as an appointee for Defra. The policy of non dredging dates back to Barbara Young. Smith was merely a political appointee and although an academically gifted man is a spectacularly bad chairman of the EA which is plagued with political correctness although the people ‘on the ground’ are fantastic. The powers that be were told of the Somerset levels problems over 3 years ago but the wildlife was more important than people
.
tonyb.
Very good post. There’s a reason why no other line anywhere has been built to be so picturesque.
Also remember Dr Beeching’s cuts have reduced the options for the rest of the railway system in the South West.
Although that was noticed in the press when the landslip cut off the line at Crewkerne.
Join up with your cousins in Brittany – France only wants their taxes.
Excellent post…
Personally, I don’t see that beautiful stretch of railway being used for much longer… Engineers will probably fashion a repair of some sort, and then the politicians will plan an inland route, rather than address the underlying weaknesses of the Brunel construction.
As a huge and massive sidetrack, I read a blog earlier this morning by a person who has become interested in lichens. He refers to an article on a website built and maintained by the Royal Botanical Society in Edinburgh… “Lichens don’t lie”, the article apparently stated that the pollution caused by coal burning during the industrial revolution and up until the 1960’s, had all but wiped out some varieties; but that recently since the atmosphere was no longer thick with sulphur, they had been making a comeback.
The blogger’s pointer no longer works, so I went to the site and made the above search… The article is no longer there, instead there is an article that states that the above scenario is caused by “climate change”.
It is no longer about lichens, responding to different conditions, such that have occurred throughout the history of this planet. Stories that suggest that a variety of lichen can come and go dependant upon the local environment are much too vague, they don’t categorically state that “climate change” is the villain, as in everything… apparently.
Incidentally there was a new (to me) phrase there to be added to the new lexicon, that I found amusing…
…”climate gradient”.
Good article. Howver, in an act of vandalism the southern railway mainline to link Plymouth was closed by British rail and the tracks ripped up. This was an odd thing to do because the Dawlish line had as you have shown always had problems. By the way one of the main reasons for Brunel choosing the line through Dawlish was because he wanted a very flat line to route his atmospheric railway (driven by a vacuum pipe laid in between the rails). This lasted less that 2 years because the local rats ate the leather vacuum seals and breakdowns were common. Remains of the atmospheric pumping stations can be found along the track near Starcross.
All the swans here in Australia are naturally black actually!
plague of this country, with its make do and mend philosophy in sharp contrast to the high profile expensive grand follies beloved by our Politicians.
_______________________________________
I would beg to differ.
Our main problem is that Tony Blair did absolutely nothing for the UK infrastructure while in office, be that repairs or new projects. Just what did Blair’s administration build? Anything?
And the most criminal element is that he dithered over nuclear power for 14 years, simply because he wasted to be ‘nice’ and uncontroversial, and get reelected. The consequence being that we now have a looming energy gap, and the lights WILL go out at the end of this decade.
Thanks Blair, you were the biggest political waste of space the UK has ever had the misfortune to be governed by.
R
All three main political parties in the UK seem to have decided that the rural vote does not count and it is more profitable to court the tree-huggers that live in cities.
climatereason (February 9, 2014 at 12:58 am)
The Telegraph also reports that the EA prioritises wildlife over people in the Somerset Levels.
“
climatereason says at February 9, 2014 at 12:58 am.
Tonyb:
Thankyou for your reply to me. You will understand that I am in a rush to fulfill some duties I have, but I write to draw your attention to a recent debate on another thread because I was not aware of your involvement in the Somerset Levels issue.
I do not want to deflect from your excellent article above, but I think you will want to read the other thread.
An extremist insisted that the Levels flooded because of “climate change” and that dredging would not have been a solution. I explained the reality (see here) and – knowing you – I think you will want to read the link I provide in that post.
The eco-loon persisted in his assertions and I said it is “madness” and “lunacy” to insist that a bird sanctuary is more important than the homes and lives of hundreds of families. Several regular contributors to WUWT then complained that I had been abusive and had been ad hom..
Clearly, the complainants have no idea about the issues behind the problems illustrated by your above article. And they lack sufficient outrage to do anything about it.
Must now go. Again, thanks for your fine article above.
Richard
Tony berry
The atmospheric railway connection is why I suggested people should read the link to the history.
I wonder if it would work today given the new materials available? Jeremy Carlson is interested in Brunel and I thought of approaching him to see if a bit of the line could be recreated to see if it would work with modern materials.
There is a piece of the leather piping in teignmouth museum together with other artefacts. The star cross pumping station building is in good condition and is the hq of the local sailing club.
Tonyb
Politicians almost always prefer grand gestures to basic maintenance.
We all remember Nero and his grand madness – but who remembers the Emperor Claudius, who rebuilt the dockside, ensuring Rome’s supply of winter wheat from Egypt could be landed in the middle of a storm?
Tony berry
Jeremy clarkson is even more interested in Brunel than Jeremy Carlson! iPad auto correct is a strange thing…
Tonyb
Mr Watts
I believe your require accuracy to be a part of your website’s enduring appeal.
Your author here is slipping in blatant lies about High Speed II, which should see them removed from your list of contributors for wilful lying, the highest crime you can bring against your bete noires of the climate change brigade.
The cost of HS2 is £50bn from London to Manchester AND Leeds, via Birmingham: a Y-shaped line of around 300 miles (100 miles common from London to Birmingham and 100 miles on each of the Y branches).
Furthermore, that £50bn contains a very large contingency budget, such that the actual basic budget is under £30bn.
Lies such as this are a common part of the wholly disreputable campaign to destroy this project.
I have no issue the project not going ahead if its opponents tell the truth, eliminate their own self-interests and totally remove all London-centric bias from their arguments, given the unique advantage to London of High Speed Rail I, the latest shenanigans from the London brigade to stop HS2 becoming connected directly to that High Speed line to Europe (see today’s Sunday Times for that) and their myopia when claiming that the annual budget for Crossrail (a line going from West of London to the East of London via tunnels under the centre) is affordable and essential, whilst an identical annual budget for HS2 is unaffordable in the future.
The aim of London is to impoverish the rest of Great Britain whilst ruling over them. It is typical British politics and part of the reason we are bankrupt and despised. Pathetic animalistic dominance complexes, a glorification of the slavery and subjugation of the former British Empire and a deliberate starvation of the housing supply to elevate land- and house prices to the detriment of the majority are their core principles.
Now I suggest, very strongly, that you do not allow British scribblers to write on your site any longer if they wish to spread lies to those who probably won’t know better.
It’s down at the level of the warmers you love to hate and if you have any integrity whatever, you will deal with this decisively, vigorously and permanently.
The black swans mentioned. Are they your actual UK black swans, statistical freaks, or are they a gift from us down under?
Otherwise we are putting up with similar sort of catastrophe porn here in Australia over DEADLY BUSHFIRES which happen for about 6 months of the year over late spring-summer-early autumn. A big part of the problem is that many if not most of our flora species are either fire tolerant or fire dependent to start with and us dumb whitefellas ignored what the indigenous peoples did continent wide for tens of millenia, effective preventative burning. We also build mac mansions out in rural areas then whinge when the rural fire brigades, farmers and government departments want to back burn off in benign conditions. We then howl like two year olds when the mac mansions burn down and the msm goes into hyperdrive with the bushfire porn. It gets the sort of coverage that wars usually get.
Like the head of your Met Bureau ( Dame Slingo?) recently slungoed out an opinion about climate change being ‘linked” to your recent extreme rain event we get the same crap about bushfires from our resident loonar sciencologists and of course the Greens MP’s.
Actually the increased risk is about the increased exposure of larger asset base increasingly under protected and an increased intolerance for any thing to go wrong. In essence we overbuild and or underinsure.
Of course, this will all be given a name soon when diagnosed as a psychological disorder and we will be marketed a pill to take during the ad breaks in the 24/7 flood/fire/iceover reality porn.
Steve (Paris) says:
February 9, 2014 at 1:06 am
Join up with your cousins in Brittany – France only wants their taxes.
Steve, not sure what you mean but if it’s the fight of the ‘bonnet rouge’ against the eco-tax then I hope they win. I don’t think they will because socialist need money to spend and Hollande more than most. Thet eco-tax arrives across france on the 1/1/15. 0.085€ on a litre of diesel and 0.05€ on essence.
This is why politicians want the CO² warming to continue. No matter that they will kill many of their elderly and their young through lack of food and energy. Just give them the money.
That’s an interesting report Tony!
I think you point about the point where the damage at Dawlish occurred is valid – though otoh, I guess the weakest point will go first and I have first hand reports that the damage is extensive, both the platform and more of the sea wall being damaged.
However, for further context readers need to know that rail travel to the SW is now blocked in several places. By floods on the levels, and by a landslip at Crewkerne. Pretty unprecedented I’d say.
Living near the Teign Valley I can also say there is NO chance the railway there will be rebuilt and likewise to the longer west Dartmoor alternative. It’s, imo, the coast route or no railway.
The weather of recent weeks has been astonishing. The River Teign has now broken banks three times this winter – more than is does normally in three decades plus. Wind and swell have damaged not just Dawlish but many long standing structures, man made and natural, around the SW coast.
I really think this winter’s weather deserves more of an explanation that it simply being no different to the past.
It was only a matter of time…
http://www.somersetcountygazette.co.uk/uk_national_news/10997639.Climate_change__lies_behind_storms_/?ref=nt
In 2011 the sea wall was identified as needing urgent improvement. This would have gone ahead had the Environment Agency not insisted that a long study on the possible effect on seabirds of works to strengthen this short length must be done before it could be allowed. The delays that caused have led to this catastrophic failure.
That is the same environment agency that stopped dredging the rivers in the Somerset levels, and that has caused the current flooding to be as devastating as it has been. They defended themselves by saying they didn’t have the £4million available in last years budget – yet spent £20-£30 million (published figures vary) on removing sea defences nearby in the West Country to allow a large area of farm land to flood and provide another haven for birds. Easy to see where their ‘priorities’ lie , and it ain’t with people or agriculture.
20 years ago the EA stopped maintenance of most rivers. The river running round one boundary of my land had willows planted by the National Rivers Authority (the EA’s predecessor) to prevent bank erosion. They maintained the river and ensured that it was clear and free running. Not so the EA who have done nothing to it in 20 years leaving the willows to grow across and block it causing flooding to 9 or 10 acres of my land and neighbours land every time there is heavy rain. For the last few years we have complained and they ignore it.
The EA has, to my mind, been captured by the extreme end of the green movements and now seems to have a primary focus on schemes which will return land to 12th century landscapes.
The NRA had it’s own faults. One of those manifests itself along the river Thames in the Old Windsor and Chertsey areas. In 1991 the NRA produced plans for a flood relief channel to protect Maidenhead and Windsor by carrying water parallel to the Thames from Maidenhead and returning it further downstream. At one of the consultation meetings I asked “if you take a large amount of the flow into a second channel and then recombine that further downstream doesn’t that mean that you are delivering a far greater volume of water than normal at the point they will meet? And doesn’t that suggest it may cause floods in areas that haven’t flooded before?”
The answer from the NRA was that they had modelled it and it couldn’t possibly happen. Hindsight in the real world, rather than the world of modelling, proves they were wrong and the areas below where the channel rejoins the Thames now have horrendous flooding.
As an aside the situation in the West Country has worsened since yesterday with a slippage now closing all rail routes into Devon and Cornwall. Amidst all of the calls for British politicians to divert some of the billions in overseas aid to help flood defence work to protect communities and lives one thing shone out like a beacon. An aid group from a Sikh community in Slough (Khalsa Aid) was the only UK aid charity to go to Somerset to help people. Working in the Philippines, Haiti and the Punjab they diverted resources and people to help the communities in the Somerset Levels. All credit and sincere thanks to them.
rtj1211 says:
February 9, 2014 at 1:31 am
“Mr Watts
I believe your require accuracy to be a part of your website’s enduring appeal.
Your author here is slipping in blatant lies about High Speed II, which should see them removed from your list of contributors for wilful lying, the highest crime you can bring against your bete noires of the climate change brigade.”
It’s too bad that you don’t cite him because all I see is he said
“Given the choice between Politicians showing off a 30 metre stretch of new sea wall in the pouring rain, or travelling in a glitzy high speed train whilst chatting to the other great and the good, there really is no contest! ”
And that’s too much for you to stomach? Are you a crazy person?
Yes! It HAD to happen. The BBC and Prime Minister blames the floods on – guess what?..
February 9, 2014
You just know they were gagging to say it, and now it’s been said :
Met Office: Evidence ‘suggests climate change link to storms’
Climate change is likely to be a factor in the extreme weather that has hit much of the UK in recent months, the Met Office’s chief scientist has said.
Dame Julia Slingo said the variable UK climate meant there was “no definitive answer” to what caused the storms.
“But all the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change,” she added.
“There is no evidence to counter the basic premise that a warmer world will lead to more intense daily and hourly rain events.”
More than 130 severe flood warnings – indicating a threat to life – have been issued since December. In contrast, there were only nine in the whole of 2012.
More than 5,000 properties have been flooded over this period, although the Environment Agency says investment in flood defences over the past decade has protected a further 1.3 million properties.
‘Exceptional’
Speaking ahead of the launch of a Met Office report – produced by the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology – into recent climatic events, Dame Julia said the UK had seen the “most exceptional period of rainfall in 248 years.”
Unsettled weather at this time of year was not unexpected – but the prolonged spell of rain, as well as the intensity and height of coastal waves, was “very unusual.”
“We have records going back to 1766 and we have nothing like this,” she said. “We have seen some exceptional weather. We can’t say it is unprecedented but it is exceptional.”
The report links the recent extreme weather in Europe and North America to “perturbations” in the North Atlantic and Pacific jet streams, partly emanating from changing weather patterns in South East Asia and “associated with higher than normal ocean temperatures in that region.”
“The attribution of these changes to anthropogenic [caused by humans] global warming requires climate models of sufficient resolution to capture storms and their associated rainfall,” it says.
‘Makes sense’
“Such models are now becoming available and should be deployed as soon as possible to provide a solid evidence base for future investments in flood and coastal defences.”
David Cameron has said the UK must be prepared for more extreme weather.
At Prime Minister’s Questions last month, Mr Cameron said he “suspected” that the recent storms to batter the UK and the extreme weather in North America were connected to global temperature changes* – an argument challenged by some Conservative MPs and peers.
He subsequently clarified the remarks, saying that although “you can’t point to one weather event and say that is climate change”, many scientists were talking of a link between the two.
“The point I was really trying to make is, whatever you think – even if you think that (climate change) is mumbo-jumbo – because these things are happening more often, it makes sense to do all you can to… prevent these floods affecting so many people and that is exactly what we are doing.”
* It’s the same old “Global Warming = Global Cooling” stupidity.