There’s quite a hullabaloo in the UK as the Met Office tries to link recent flooding in Bridgwater, Somerset with global warming, with Lord Lawson even calling Met Office Julia Slingo’s claims “absurd”. Josh even has a cartoon at Bishop Hill about it.
But, even more instructive than the row is this historic map that shows flooding would likely be a normal occurrence in Bridgwater in the county of Somerset, UK, located on this map at right.
Now look at this map from 878AD. “Swamp or Alluvium” anyone? The arrow notation is mine. This is the Danelaw map, from 878 AD, drawn in modern style:
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw
People have been draining the area known as the Somerset Levels since before the Domesday Book in 1086AD. The Levels were frequently flooded by the sea during high tides, a problem that was not resolved until the sea defences were enhanced in the early 20th century.
So, is it any surprise that the water wants to follow the path of least resistance with gravity rather than it being a new feature of “climate change”?
h/t to Jabba The cat
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Does this mean sea level has been falling?
Love it. 🙂
I find it amazing that people believe climate is all about these floods.
The rivers that drain the Somerset Levels are 8 to 10 feet above the farmland and houses. Pumps are needed to get the water up to the rivers.
Dredging is not a cure all. But in the local drainage areas, where they have dredged, the water levels are lower, and the floods last a shorter time. In the areas where the Environment Agency is reposnsible for dredging, the pumps don’t work, becuase they have silted off.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2554940/Agency-flooding-puts-greater-water-parsnips-voles-local-people.html
I find this report particularly offensive. The dredging was not done as it might have affected a local shellfish. And EU directives made it too expensive to dispose of the dredged silt.
Amazing stuff.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2558087/So-wasnt-Thames-dredged-In-case-rare-mollusc-disturbed-despite-region-described-one-undefended-flood-plains-England.html
The American Revolution started for less; taxation without representation. I expect that the next revolution will be due to environmentalism without representation.
I have lived near the area of the Somerset Levels for over 25 years and it floods every winter. The media, as usual; have blown the story way out of proportion.
When King Alfred The Great was obliged to flee from the Danes in 878, his refuge was at Athelney (lit: princes island) in the Somerset Levels. It stands a few feet above the general level.
Reports The Guardian, ever so subtly: “The former chancellor Lord Lawson has attacked the Met Office’s chief scientist for making an “absurd” link between the floods and climate change, as global warming sceptics *DENY* growing warnings of a connection.”
Absolutely correct. All those areas marked as swamp were marginal areas of ‘not quite land, not quite sea’, in which prior to the 17th Century or so the inhabitants faced constant battles with the sea. The Romans made some attempts to drain the Fens (the area north of Cambridge), but it was a battle that was often lost – and there is some suggestion that sea level fluctuations were part of the problem. The importation of expert drainage engineers from Holland in the 17th Century onwards led to comprehensive drainage of the Fens and the Somerset Levels, but these areas’ continued existence as ‘dry land’ relies on constant pumping and expert management of the drainage. There is now criticism of the UK Environment Agency, which has taken over responsibility for drainage in the Somerset Levels in recent decades, in that it has abandoned long-learned drainage practices and prioritised nature conservation over traditional drainage (sounds familiar, eh?). There are some reports that farmers have even been threatened with prosecution for clearing out the drainage ditches that have been in place for centuries. Many local farmers have now been flooded two years in a row as a result…
“In November, the Met Office said there was a “slight signal for below-average precipitation” for December, January and February.”
Morons. If there’s a link between anything, it’s the tendency for poor reasoning skills to be associated with globals warming alarmism.
To Ah Clem, there is isostatic uplift in NW UK (as in Scotland and UK to Morcombe Bay in west/Hull in East, there is the reverse in SE, following melt of Scandinavian Glacier (long-term, over Holocene) to consider, this is looked at in the Horton et al. paper in 2000 QSR (I worked on one of the sites).
Somerset Levels is a famous Neolithic wetland site, seemingly the UK Met Office has not heard of it. It is published in numerous places, incl. Antiquity. I am surprised this has not been mentioned, as preservation of Neolithic trackways is dependent on continuous submergent (H2O reducing) conditions in places since the mid-Holocene.
In other words, the flooding is not unprecedented.
It will not be an ordinary flood.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=-9.20,64.95,635
This, even more than various brushfires in Australia and the American West, is the clearest example yet of what happens when you let the watermelons get effective control of some critical bit of human habitat or resource.
Look at this.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/02/14/1800Z/wind/isobaric/850hPa/orthographic=8.38,58.17,963
Viral ridicule. Make it so.
http://iceagenow.info/2013/09/epic-massive-flooding-europe-ice-age/
Now is this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26166796
Now let’s see how we can drive up the price of water with scary water shortage models and desal plants, run the dams too high, flood towns, and claim it is global warming. #WivenhoeDam2011Australia
The environmental activists’ prophecies of water shortage or drought always have alternative explanations in bad water management. Bad water management can be traced to environmentalist activist doctrines, AGW policy, or the almighty overpopulation paradigm.
This a clear case of Senna the Soothsayer strikes again.
Woe, woe and thrice woe
I’ve posted this before, just to remind everyone that historical records are available through Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34439/34439-h/34439-h.htm
NORFOLK ANNALS: A CHRONOLOGICAL RECORD OF REMARKABLE EVENTS IN
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, VOLUME I 1801–1850
(Compiled from the files of the “Norfolk Chronicle”) by CHARLES MACKIE
August 8, 1808: A remarkable storm occurred at Norwich. Streets were inundated and cellars flooded. “The roaring of the waters in falling from the roof to the lower leads of the Cathedral was so tremendous as literally to drown the noise of the thunder that accompanied it.
January 28, 1809: In consequence of a rapid thaw, the low lying parts of Norwich were flooded. “Some of the houses were six or seven feet under water,” and boats were rowed in the street at St. Martin-at-Oak. The marshes below Norwich were so inundated that the course of the river could not be traced, and the barge proceeding to Yarmouth had to return, in consequence of the men being unable to find the channel.
Etc….Reading about it in the Norfolk Chronicles and SEEING in on the BBC just MIGHT have a different effect on one’s viewpoint…
These frequent storms in the UK are actually a sign of global cooling.
Very cold air moving south from Canada and western Greenland have caused major instability over the North Atlantic ocean during recent weeks. With cold air moving south this strengthens the jet stream and moves storms east usually towards Iceland. The very cold air instead has moved the storms east towards the UK.
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Rtavn001.gif (current image, will change)
Usually these would often move towards Iceland during warmer climate periods, but now they are one after another hitting the UK instead. This happened often during the Little Ice age, but it is now starting to happen in 2014 after a recent number of cold/very cold winters in the UK. This is exactly the type of weather pattern that occurred during the LIA, with more often cold winters and even the mild ones had the usual frequent storms hitting the UK instead of Iceland, giving very wet winters when Atlantic driven.
Global warming increases gravity too, it’s weighing us all down.
Some Dutch also drained some vital later great wine areas in Bordeaux.
Matt G says: @ur momisugly February 13, 2014 at 1:47 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Matt, do you have any references for that? (As you probably know by now I am a reference junkie)
I know that Tony B. has been doing a lot of research in the archival material.
@CaligulaJones, texts available on the Gutemberg project? Surprising these have not been “corrected” by a model…/sarc
Further proof of the swampland in Somerset.
Part of all these supidities is the human desire to be thought intelligent. So anything and everything, is due to that GD’d global warming. There is enough ignorance out there to
let such an explanation be thought plausible. Humans will often lie and mislead rather than
simply say “I don’t know.” This tendency reaches its highest magnitude for humans who are supposed o be authorities (like news media folks, or govt officials).