This is definitely climate progress. Next up: urban rickshaws to reduce emissions?
From a Newcastle University press release:
Growth versus global warming
A three-year project led by Newcastle University for the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has outlined how our major cities must respond if they are to continue to grow in the face of climate change.
Using the new UK Climate Predictions ’09 data for weather patterns over the next century, the research looks at the impact of predicted rises in temperature – particularly in urban areas – increased flooding in winter and less water availability in summer.
The report “How can cities grow whilst reducing emissions and vulnerability” focuses on the particular challenges facing London but can be used as a model for other UK cities on how policy-makers, businesses and the public must work together to prepare for climate change.
As well as protecting our homes and buildings against the increased threat of flooding from rising sea levels, the report emphasizes the need to reduce our carbon emissions, reduce our water usage and move towards cleaner, greener transport.
Newcastle University’s Dr Richard Dawson, one of the report’s authors, said: “There’s not one simple solution to this problem. Instead we need a portfolio of measures that work together to minimize the impact of climate change while allowing for our cities to grow.
“Most importantly we have to cut our carbon dioxide emissions but at the same time we need to prepare for the extremes of weather – heat waves, droughts and flooding – which we are already starting to experience.
“The difficulty is balancing one risk against another while allowing for the expected population and employment growth and that is what our work attempts to address.”
Led by Newcastle University’s Professor Jim Hall, the project is the result of three years’ work to decide how our cities should respond to the threats of climate change.
Promoting the development of cycleways and public transport, low-carbon energy and water recycling it also shows how solving one problem can exacerbate another.
Dr Dawson explains: “Heat waves like the ones being predicted to occur more frequently in future are extremely serious, particularly for the eldest members of our population.
“To combat the problem we often resort to switching on the air conditioning. This is not only energy intensive (and therefore has potential to raise carbon dioxide emissions that drive climate change) but works by cooling the inside of the building and expelling hot air outside, raising the overall air temperature in the city as well.
“This can amplify what is known as the ‘urban heat island’.”
To reduce this problem, the authors show that one option might be to stimulate growth along the Thames flood plain as the water helps to keep the overall temperature lower.
“The problem then is that you are building in the flood plain so you have to prepare for a whole different set of challenges,” explains Dr Dawson. “Houses built on stilts, flood resilient wiring where the sockets and wires are raised above flood level, and water resistant building materials are going to have to be incorporated into our building plans.
“Good planning is the key – we have shown that land use planning influences how much people travel and how they heat and cool their buildings, and hence the carbon dioxide emissions.
“Land use also determines how vulnerable people will be to the impacts of climate change. Our research enables policy makers to explore these many issues on the basis of evidence about the possible future changes and to analyse the effectiveness of a range of innovative responses, so they can better understand and prepare for climate change.”
The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council.
Mosquitos ?? Number of deaths ?
Thursday (Sept.1) 1768
“At twelve o clock it began raining, which continued one hour; ’tis now fair. It did not hold fair for a quarter of an hour, & after the rain began again it never ceased, and about 8 o clock it was with a violence I never heard.. I don’t suppose theere could ever fall a greater quantity of rain in a time. My Workmen, when they returned to town, could not go by Knightbridge, the water lay too deep. It continued to rain all night”
Friday
“When I got up this morning I saw two rivers, the grounds two or three miles all being under water, & the Thames made a fine appearance. My servants tell me two houses at Knightsbridge have been washed away & one of the bridges on the King’s Road. It has almost carried away all my gravel walks, and my garden is th epicture of desolation”
from the diary of Lady Mary Coke 1767-69
That such calamity strikes, and none has struck this area since I moved here some 20 years ago to Notting Hill, is a notable thing, although its interesting to speculate on weather extremes from the past that are written in diaries and journals, but not recorded in climatology departments. given the period, which was during the LIA, it leads me to think that weather extremes occur during cold periods more than warm periods.
“The Burchardi flood of 1684 was a Storm tide that struck the North Sea coast of Nordfriesland (Germany and Denmark) on the night between the 11 and 12 October 1634. Overrunning dikes it shattered the coastline and many thousands of lives (8,000 to 15,000 people drowned) while causing catastrophic material damage. Much of the island of Strand washed away, forming the islands Nordstrand, Pellworm and several Halligen.”
However, water has the unusual property of expanding as it cools from 4C downwards, and then its volume increases as it chills. This isn’t a problem for 90% of ocean beneath the thermocline at 0-3C.
Lord Monckton states: “The Thames flood barrier has been closed more frequently in the last few years than since it built, but the reason has nothing to do with “global warming” or rising sea levels. The reason is a change of policy by which the barrier is closed during exceptionally low tides, so as to retain water in the tidal Thames rather than keeping it out.”
This business of sea-level changes just seems so weird. I kinda thought I had the general outlines figured out. Like a bit would come from thermal expansion but that’s not really all that much.
Conventional scientific wisdom says it’s mostly from thermal expansion – 70% from memory.
Although, someone posted here that you could account for almost all recent sea level rises from aquifer extraction. In addition, dam storage and irrigation water volumes are comparable with the water volumes involved in sea level rises (or not rising as in the last few years).
So like much about the climate, the uncertainties are so large that an honest answer is we don’t where the extra water in sea level rises comes from.
BTW, most of what you say about glaciers is correct.
I would like to echo the comments from tallbloke, Stoic, etc,
Many of the flooding issues in the UK are due to poor planning policies, abandoning preventative measures like dredging rivers, riverbank clearing and adequate, well maintained drainage, plus going down the route of flood barriers which simply push the problem downstream until lesser defences can be overwhelmed or there are no defences.
Unfortunately the above practices exaggerates flooding which reinforces the climate change danger stories. Flood barriers contain the water pushing river levels artificially higher. Not dredging rivers reduces the flow capacity similarly pushing levels higher than they would have been when the landscape was being managed properly. Both serve to make flooding appear worse and more frequent.
Nothing to do with a changing climate. Everything to do with increased surface run-off, building homes on floodplains and not maintaining the waterways.
There is one positive aspect to this report – it does acknowledge that humans adapt to changing circumstances. That is the right course of action to any climate change, man made or otherwise. Being a bit damp didn’t prevent Venice from flourishing. The will was there. A solution was just a matter of engineering.
RexAlan (03:47:25) : “When I first came to live in Oz from the UK in the mid seventies I lived in Brisbane and all the old colonial houses were bilt on piles/stilts. …
To let the breeze blow through, Rex (AirConditioner Mk. 1).
Perhaps the people of the UK should demand a refund for any tax payer monies spent on this study?
On the other hand, when obviously stuck-on-stupid studies are produced by the AGW promotion industry, it only serves to further lower the credibility of what the promoters and their promotion.
“A three-year project led by Newcastle University for the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has outlined how our major cities must respond if they are to continue to grow in the face of climate change.”
So where’s the report? The press release didn’t link to it, poking around yielded things like:
http://www.ceg.ncl.ac.uk/profiles2/njh57 [Prof. Jim Hall]
current work
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research: Programme 6: Engineering urban systems: how can cities grow whilst also reducing vulnerability and emissions?
[No mention in the list of papers, some might be interesting. Many from 2008, none from 2009.]
http://www.ceg.ncl.ac.uk/profiles/slb6 [Dr Stuart Barr]
2009-2010 Tyndall Centre Phase 2 Transition
Engineering Urban Systems: How can cities grow whilst also reducing vulnerability and emissions? Co-I (£273,826).
[Hey, that’s only two years! Was 2008 Phase I?]
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/tyndall-intranet/calendar/how-cities-can-grow-whilst-reducing-emissions-and-vulnerability
ow cities can grow whilst reducing emissions and vulnerability
Wed, 10/07/2009 – 13:58 – Asher Minns
Date:
Monday, October 12, 2009 – 17:00 – 19:00
Stakeholder Briefing and Reception, University College, London
[Dang, missed it. Of course, being in the states, I wouldn’t have gone.]
This is the BEST ONION story EVER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What ?!?! It’s real ?????????
Why not just live UNDER the water? That way the oceans can rise all they like. Problem solved.
Oh, right, that would undermine the stilt industry.
But seriously, we need more government-funded studies about how the human race can live underwater.
The wretched fellow who did this report is my namesake, he should change his name.
I propose a cheaper alternative to stilt houses, which should work for a few decades – shorter trousers, knickerbockers and mini-skirts.
I want to know why the rooftops on those grass huts are not painted white.
If Al Gore believes in seas´ level rise why has he bought a beach house?. Followers and believers should know this.
It would be significantly easier to build dikes.
Morons.
That image above seems a mix of New York with the Belen neighbourhood at Iquitos, Peru, in the middle of the amazon jungle. It would have been a good place for a global warmers international meeting.
The fact they “studied ” this for 3 years – and someone gave them grant money for it – is astounding. I think most of us could have made this crap up overnight, given the assignment. Unrealistic solutions for an imaginary problem. Nice.
From this study alone, you can see why the general public will ultimately reject trying to “solve” AGW (even if it is real) & choose to adapt instead. You know, people are pretty adaptable. We span climates from the Arctic to the desert & everything in between & we all somehow manage to survive.
…. but of course, if we adapt, then the greens cant control our lifestyles, which of course is their ultimate unspoken goal. They could care less about the climate, as long as they can tell everyone else how to live their lives, which is also why their whole agenda will fail.
I suggest Nobel Prize for Climate Science for this work.
Its a good thing that they released some ideas/proposals after the 3 year mark.
There is less chance now they will get to the 6 year mark with ideas like “we will have to move London to Greenland” or something like that.
I mean, who says that flooding risks will increase greatly and then simultaneously says we need to build more housing in the flood plains. That is not something a normal thought process would come up with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
I have had numerous sailboats which have cooking and general rest room equipment. Living in a boat is an option. Some of my friends live in one between houses or in California where they can’t come up with money to buy. It takes less A/C when a boat is on the water. We can manage a while without shore power. We do have electric pumps at the waste water pump out station. Our docks are floating and we use “pins” which are very large pipes that slide in large sleeves. The pipes go into the mud and allow the docks to float up and down with water level changes.
whats happened to all the ice sites dmi cryosphere etc all down for days now also jaxa seems to be old data? lets await a major re-adjustment once again?
Perhaps these guys were among the 38 guests that drank all that wine that got Herr Becker in such difficulty.
Whodathunkit that the movie Porky’s was so cutting edge?
Some of you may remember back in the ’60s when scientists were forecasting undersea cities with undersea schools and businesses as well as homes – the frontier of the future! Then environmental consciousness got in the way. How shortsighted to put houses on stilts – why not go back to the future and build buildings on the floodplains that will adapt as undersea homes when the waters rise? Jack Simmons entry above about past scientific fantasies reminded me of this one. I hope someone e-mails the Newcastle University researchers a link to this site so they can see some true peer review!
UK Sceptic (02:52:28) : The guy is completely barking!!!! He may be a geologist, but it doesn’t stop him from being a nutcase either. Storing CO2 in such huge quantities under ground making it highly concentrated, so that if it escapes, it becomes potentially dangerous close to the gound. Equally barking! I recommend just letting it emit into the atmosphere, thus removing the incredibely expensive & difficult to build storage issues altogether, where it will rapidly dissipate, improve crop fertility, & make life on Earth a little more comfortable, save huge amounts of taxpayers money (no expensive alarm systems to design, install, monitor, & pay for, no emergency services disaster action plan to prepare & pay for, etc). Talk about job creation, they create an imaginary problem, create solutions to it, then cause more problems in the process, typical government thought processes.
Patrick Davis (04:41:44) : I definitely do remember it, that summer was apparently very warm & such action had never been undertaken by the school previously, ties were to be worn at all times other than in exceptionally warm periods, oh & PE classes. As to the Vulcan Bomber, never got to Biggin Hill Show, but saw it at the Greenham Air Show one year – we lived quite close so got a free view, along with the English Electric Lightening, which likewise deafened me.
It is a shock to us because we are still questioning the basis for these assumptions. These people are two to three steps beyond the assumption that man is causing catastrophic change in our climate. One has to feel a bit sorry for most of them for they have been led down the garden path by their instructors who have been led down the same path.
“To combat the problem we often resort to switching on the air conditioning…[which] works by cooling the inside of the building and expelling hot air outside, raising the overall air temperature in the city as well.
“This can amplify what is known as the ‘urban heat island’.”
To reduce this problem, the authors show that one option might be to stimulate growth along the Thames flood plain as the water helps to keep the overall temperature lower.
In this study, apparently air conditioning is causing the whole outdoors to be heated up. So these brilliant academics suggest living in a flood plain, in order to keep the overall temp lower.
I just wonder if you will get to keep your air conditioning, once you have your stilt houses, or if the water under your house IS your new a/c? It was left unclear.