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.
=================================================================
*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
Gareth Phillips
For you 1850 is “deep time”?
Oddly I didn’t notice anything above isostatic rebound in your replies, other than puerile abuse followed by silence on the idiotic sea level story.
But of course the AGW Khmer Vert, of which you are apparently now spokesman, dont believe in ice ages do you? Only in a static unchanging Edenic “preindustrial” climate. You can argue, just like 6-day creationists, that nothing is really clear so long in the past.
You comment on current high population density hints at you underlying motivation of misanthropic Ludditism.
Enjoy the 6 nations BTW – are you Welsh?
This was linked at Bishop Hill: http://cehsciencenews.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/record-breakers-climate-change.html
The story there is the same as most scientifically-based conclusions: not extreme. The theoretical idea that extreme rainfall events will increase is borne out by some studies, but mostly using localized gauges rather than widespread events. It is not definitive. There is no trend in significant river floods, in any case events are too sparse to come to sound conclusions.
Costs and other effects of extreme weather are flat or slightly declining worldwide, see: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/2013.38.pdf
The is an notion that “atmospheric rivers” will somehow increase due to “low Arctic sea ice” or Arctic warming, or some related factor that allegedly slows the polar jet and makes it more wavy. But that is a particularly half-baked idea as amply pointed out in other threads here. The man problem with that idea is that climate models all predict the opposite will happen in the long run.
If the one inch per decade sea level rise is a problem over there, please let us know, so we can take up a collection and contribute a few dollars per year to help mitigate.
Gareth Phillips:
You provide yet another of your delusional posts at February 9, 2014 at 8:14 am.
Most of us here are opposed to AGW because we support and promote science. It is the pseudoscience of AGW which we refute; e.g. see here
Your suggestion that we try to post on warmunist propaganda blogs is laughable. Many of us have tried but have been banned for citing empirical data. RC bans anybody who provides scientific information; David Ball says he is banned, Willis Eschenbach is banned, I am banned, etc., etc. etc. Like you, these warmunists refuse to confront reality, ignore it when it is presented to them, and attempt to prevent others from information about it.
There is NO evidence for discernible AGW; none, zilch, nada. Three decades of effort conducted world-wide at a cost of more than $5 billion per year has failed to find any. Ben Santer tried to pretend he had found some in the 1990s but it was soon observed that he had chosen a selection of data from the middle of a time series and the full data refuted his assertion.
If you find any evidence for discernible AGW then you will be the first and you will certainly be awarded more than one Nobel Prize for your discovery.
You are living in a fantasy which exists in your mind. And you are promoting wicked actions on the basis of your fantasy.
Richard
On another blog I posted a short extract from a Welsh newspaper article on the climate published in 1903 which mentioned in passing a disagreement as to whether an exceptionally wet summer had been caused by sunspots or by “electricity.” If electricity had been the cause then that wet summer would have been an example of man-made climate change!
The Weather and the Rain. 1903 Smashes Some Records.
Cambrian 30 October 1903 p3
You can find consolation for most evil tidings if vou look hard enough, and assuredly there is gloomy comfort in the reflection that never in the lifetime of this generation has it rained before as it has done this summer. Such endless deluge, such ceaseless streams and floods. Some put it down to sunspots — freckles on the face of old Sol, the exact cause of which nobody can define as yet…
Others hazard a guess that it is the electricity stored up which has wrought the invisible revolution, the consequences of which have turned every street into a running brook, that like Tennyson’s rivulet, goes on for ever. The record of 1879 has long … been broken; the other record – an unofficially registered one, of 1859, I think will break in a couple of days.
gareth said
‘The recording of those times is also not as accurate as currently available, so I agree, these things also happened in the deep time scale, but would you be….’
Nonsense. Historic References need to be checked and ideally put against a scientific paper, but you must agree that weather was of crucial importance to our ancestors as it fundamentally affected every aspect of their lives and they recorded it diligently (with some exaggerations by grandstanders like Pepys). Fortunately Britain has some of the finest and most detailed records in the world and I am working my way through them at such places as the Met Office and the Scott Polar Institute at Cambridge.
You did not comment on sea level rise. Do you think sea level rise is suddenly going to accelerate immediately ten fold in order to reach the levels you suggest in the time scale you outline? Do you not agree with the evidence showing oscillations in levels or that isostatic rebound etc has a fundamental impact on levels?
tonyb
Folks,
Forgive me if this is old news – maybe I missed this earlier in this post or earlier ones, but our Gareth Phillips appears to be a professional with a stake in the promulgation of the “Big Scary Story”. Gareth, this is you, right?
http://www.sindicatum.com/author/gareth-phillips/
I was wondering why you are so present, polite, and well, professional (if vague) in your replies. I didn’t take you for a loony (though I’ve run across a few rational seeming ones). I figured you for a paid troll, and I think I’m right on that. But, you are in “The industry”, a lot of what you say makes more sense now.
Surely the point is that back in the day when the infrastructure was built it was adequate for the expected frequency of failure. Today the cost of individual failure is higher and someone needs to take a view on the expense of significant failure vs the expense of engineering against it.
The only real change has been the investment by man that is at risk. Brunel and the old engineers weren’t wrong in their designs and events are no worse, unfortunately the cost of failure are higher because we forget the extremes over time.
Tony,
Once again thanks for the history lessons, please keep them coming.
David Ball says:
February 9, 2014 at 8:17 am
Gareth, even the brightest here have made grammar errors. Please show me one of your posts from say, three years ago. I do not recall seeing your name here before three months ago.
Hi David, I’d be happy to show you posts from years ago, but I’m not sure how to retrieve them. Any ideas? I was a bit more sceptical in those days until Monckton convinced me that the science was probably correct. By the way , we all make grammatical errors, but it’s amusing to make one when commenting on another posters intelligence I think.
climatereason says:
February 9, 2014 at 7:49 am
Your research into extreme WX events prior to 1850 (ie, during the LIA) corroborates the fact that a colder world is stormier than a warmer one.
It gets like a swirling mass of crap being flushed when there is only one post to comment on. Time to go back to programming.
@ur momisugly Randle Randle Dewees says:
February 9, 2014 at 8:42 am
Folks,
Forgive me if this is old news – maybe I missed this earlier in this post or earlier ones, but our Gareth Phillips appears to be a professional with a stake in the promulgation of the “Big Scary Story”. Gareth, this is you, right?
http://www.sindicatum.com/author/gareth-phillips/
I was wondering why you are so present, polite, and well, professional (if vague) in your replies. I didn’t take you for a loony (though I’ve run across a few rational seeming ones). I figured you for a paid troll, and I think I’m right on that. But, you are in “The industry”, a lot of what you say makes more sense now.
Thanks Randle, not one of my papers or comments. You are correct, I do have a few papers to my name, but that is someone different. I’m not a paid lobbyist in this area, but I do lobby on a political basis in other areas. I try an remain polite because I believe that civil discussion brings out the best in people and is the most productive approach. It also drives the trolls crazy which is a bonus.
Gareth Phillips says:
February 9, 2014 at 8:54 am
Googling your name & WUWT, I found one comment by you from Aug 2011. All the others are from 2013 or this year.
I have a friend who is a civil engineer. She says that she wishes cities would put away a small percentage of tax receipts each year in a maintenance fund to replace various bits of infrastructure as they wear out and fail so that they don’t need to scramble for funds when it becomes a crisis. They seem to do it for roads, but that is about all. Most do not plan in advance for other major infrastructure replacement as it fails due to age. She is also worried that if they actually tried to do that, the fund would get raided for other things before it actually had a chance to perform its function.
Gareth Phillips says:
February 9, 2014 at 8:59 am
“…It also drives the trolls crazy…”
_____________________
In that case, I urge you to seek help from mental health professionals.
Randle
You could be right. I have no problems with Gareth other than I wish he would actually read the things we bother to post and comment on them, rather than continually opening up new subjects.
I am looking forward to his comments on the rapid acceleration of sea level rise he seems to be expecting.
If it IS him he seems to be involved in clean energy. Well Gareth, we could do with a parallel sea wall next to the existing one in which are mounted turbines to capture the energy from the waves and tides. Our MP is interested. Green energy AND a protective sea wall would mean we keep our railway. Can you oblige? 🙂
tonyb
From the Met Office website:
“As yet, there is no definitive answer on the possible contribution of climate change to the recent storminess, rainfall amounts and the consequent flooding. This is in part due to the highly variable nature of UK weather and climate.
Nevertheless, recent studies have suggested an increase in the intensity of Atlantic storms that take a more southerly track, typical of this winter’s extreme weather. There is also an increasing body of evidence that shows that extreme daily rainfall rates are becoming more intense, and that the rate of increase is consistent with what is expected from the fundamental physics of a warming world.
More research is urgently needed to deliver robust detection of changes in storminess and daily/hourly rain rates and this is an area of active research in the Met Office. The attribution of these changes to anthropogenic global warming requires climate models of sufficient resolution to capture storms and their associated rainfall. 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.”
Thank you Tony, for a most enjoyable historical reality-based perspective using contemporary reports – yet the Met Office wants ever more complicated computer ‘models’ to “attribute changes to anthropogenic global warming”!
daddylonglegs says:
February 9, 2014 at 8:34 am
Gareth Phillips
For you 1850 is “deep time”?
Oddly I didn’t notice anything above isostatic rebound in your replies, other than puerile abuse followed by silence on the idiotic sea level story.
But of course the AGW Khmer Vert, of which you are apparently now spokesman, dont believe in ice ages do you? Only in a static unchanging Edenic “preindustrial” climate. You can argue, just like 6-day creationists, that nothing is really clear so long in the past.
You comment on current high population density hints at you underlying motivation of misanthropic Ludditism.
Enjoy the 6 nations BTW – are you Welsh?
HI Dadylonglegs. I can’t comment on your reference to AGW Khmer vert as I’m not familiar with the group and would need to do a Lit. search to update.
Yep, I’m Welsh, so the six nations is a bitty of a trial at the moment. The Irish game was a bit of a disaster for us, still we live in hope. But back to the conversation.
By deep time I mean back to ice ages etc, In other words, pretty well anything has happened before on the planet of ours. I’ve also tried to convey the idea that just because something has happened before does not mean that it is not a problem now, and extreme weather events may have well happened before, even in living memory, but they are becoming more frequent in a different situation resulting in a much more damaging impact.
With regard to Glacial rebound, I completely believe in to, we see it all around us. Castles in Wales show some great examples, but that does not mean that sea levels are not also rising. My point about population density is that it facilitates greater negative impact in any climatic event. I referred to Vesuvius earlier. It has erupted previously, famously burying Herculaneum and Pompeii and causing major loss of life. However, if the same pyroclastic flow occurred today, the deaths would be of an unknown magnitude worse due to population expansion. It’s the same event, it’s happened before, but the impact is potentially very different. By the way, apologies for not answering every post individually, I’ve tried to look at the general themes and include them in this response. By the way, anyone read the Met office paper yet? It answers a lot of the questions being posed here.
I am praying for snow, because when that happens all the AGW supporters become very quiet!
There is nothing unusual about the weather we are having, it is a typical British winter when the jet stream is running north and pulling in wet weather from the Atlantic.This weather is certainly not unprecedented, what is making things dramatically worse is that rivers have been allowed to silt up and flood plain land has been built on, so there is nowhere for the rain to go, that is why there is flooding.
The climate in the UK is great, but the weather is terrible!
Carbon 500, what the Met Office wants is more money!
Randle Dewees:
Sincere thanks for your information in your post at February 9, 2014 at 8:42 am.
Clearly, I was mistaken in thinking Gareth Phillips was a sincere but deluded eco-loon. In fact he is a professional troll promoting ‘green’ investments and is using WUWT with its large readership to advertise those business interests. This explains why he repeatedly ignores what has been said to him and pretends he has not said falsehoods when called on them.
So, he is not the sad little man seeking self-worth by promoting a ’cause’ whom I had thought him to be. And he is not blind to the sufferings imposed on others by the things he promotes: he does not about such things.
Gareth Phillips is now exposed as being a dishonest businessman seeking to promote his business interests with no regard to the suffering imposed on others by the actions of himself and his business associates. And he is using WUWT to promote those business interests.
I think it important that all the comments from Gareth Phillips are considered in light of what he is and why he says what he does.
Thankyou, Randal. You have been most helpful.
Richard
crosspatch on February 9, 2014 at 9:01 am
I have a friend who is a civil engineer. She says that she wishes cities would put away a small percentage of tax receipts each year in a maintenance fund to replace various bits of infrastructure as they wear out and fail so that they don’t need to scramble for funds when it becomes a crisis.
I’m sure many like myself find it alarming that infrastructure items can be neglected and ignored with no-one accountable. A country’s whole infrastructure should be like an airliner – every single component on a monitered schedule of inspection and replacement.
If it means more cost and employment, so be it.
I intended to write
he does not care about such things.
Sorry, Richard
Gareth Phillips says:
February 9, 2014 at 8:54 am
David, he’s been around. Gareth, it’s not too hard to find early posts, The best I was able to do was Google |”Gareth Phillips” 2010 -2013 site:wattsupwiththat.com| and then skim the hits for the earliest month of your 2010 comments. What I found is at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/22/bill-oreilly-hosts-bill-nye-the-science-guy-and-accu-weathers-joe-bastardi-in-fox-news-debate/#comment-325915 but you were snipped.
There was another comment by “Gareth”, I don’t know if that were you. I also saved http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/19/ash-cloud-models-overrated-a-word-on-post-normal-science-by-dr-jerome-ravetz/#comment-372027 (not snipped) which also has a comment by just “Gareth”.
I could hunt down my first comment in 2008. I think it was quickly followed by a request to fix a stupid typo I made.
The problem is deep. First the politicians you speak of are more likely than not to be baby boomers. When you speak of history to a boomer and the date that you reference is prior to their childhood, they have no idea what you are talking about. Anything prior to the formation of the earth and universe, ie prior to 1948 is irrelevant. You are wasting your time.