Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Top British government officials have predictably blamed Climate Change for severe flooding which has afflicted England in recent weeks. But there has also been strong criticism of river management policies.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald;
London: Climate change is forcing England to re-assess its flood defences in the face of unprecedented river level surges, one of the United Kingdom government’s most senior environment officials says.
“We are moving from a period of known extremes into a period of unknown extremes,” said David Rooke, deputy chief executive of the UK government’s Environment Agency, which manages the country’s rivers.
“We will need to re-assess all the defences right across the country.”
He linked the devastating Boxing Day floods, still engulfing swathes of the country, to climate change.
“What we are seeing are record river levels,” he told BBC Radio. “We saw in the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire levels that were a foot to two feet higher that we’d seen previously. We’ve seen similar again in Cumbria and elsewhere right across the north.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/unprecedented-flooding-in-britain-prompts-renewed-discussion-about-climate-change-20151228-glw0lw.html
There is another side to this story. Local farmer, historian and author Phillip Walling provides some background on the disastrous river management policies imposed by the bureaucratic European Union, which likely exacerbated the floods (h/t James Delingpole).
It was obvious to people, who depended on the land for their living that failing to keep the rivers clear of sand and gravel would cause them to burst their banks and destroy in a few hours fertility that had taken generations to create, wash away their houses, and drown their livestock.
Last century the obligation to dredge out the rivers was transferred to local river boards, consisting of farmers and landowners who knew the area and its characteristics, and who had statutory responsibilities to prevent or minimise flooding.
But all this changed with the creation of the Environment Agency in 1997 and when we adopted the European Water Framework Directive in 2000. No longer were the authorities charged with a duty to prevent flooding. Instead, the emphasis shifted, in an astonishing reversal of policy, to a primary obligation to achieve ‘good ecological status’ for our national rivers. This is defined as being as close as possible to ‘undisturbed natural conditions’. ‘Heavily modified waters’, which include rivers dredged or embanked to prevent flooding, cannot, by definition, ever satisfy the terms of the directive. So, in order to comply with the obligations imposed on us by the EU we had to stop dredging and embanking and allow rivers to ‘re-connect with their floodplains’, as the currently fashionable jargon has it.
And to ensure this is done, the obligation to dredge has been shifted from the relevant statutory authority (now the Environment Agency) onto each individual landowner, at the same time making sure there are no funds for dredging. And any sand and gravel that might be removed is now classed as ‘hazardous waste’ and cannot be deposited to raise the river banks, as it used to be, but has to be carted away.
Read more: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/12/26/what-the-authorities-wont-tell-you-about-the-floods/
What’s disappointing, is that this is not the first time the EU directive which discourages proper dredging has been identified as an issue. However, there is very little ordinary people can do to fix this mess.
The European Union, which has ambitions to bind members into a new superstate, which would include all of Europe, parts of Asia, and potentially also include Russia and her allies, is not a very democratic institution. There is no “EU River Management Official” whom ordinary people can vote out of office. While there is an elected European Parliament, the parliament is virtually toothless – it has no real oversight powers, and no power to source new legislation. All new laws are proposed by a soviet style central committee, the European Commission, which also has responsibility for overseeing implementation of the laws.
Back in October, WUWT reported how an Egyptian official tried to blame flooding on climate change, in my opinion to deflect attention from the disastrous state of local drains. The Egyptian official was forced to resign. It seems unlikely anyone in Britain or Europe will be forced to resign, because of mismanagement of Britain’s waterways.
The UK Environment Agency will spend $2000 on an office chair, $3000 to re-home a water rat and their recently departed chairperson declared that the flooding in 2013 / 2014 was down to a new type of rain that he’d discovered (he’s an “expert” on 19th poetry and political influence peddling). They have over 2 leased new cars foe every 3 employees and enrich the lawyers to the tune of £££millions every year with their inept and occasionally criminal antics.
Their record of screw-ups when it come to water management is as epic as their efforts to protect nature soar to rarefied heights of black comedy and farce.
Nobody ever carries the can
So you build a town at the confluence of two rivers and it sometimes floods…what a surprise !
Some nice photos in the press of Clifford’s Tower surrounded by water….which is how it was supposed to be when it was built in the 14th century and has been many times since.
http://yorkstories.co.uk/why-does-york-flood/
What’s the guvmint going to do about it ?
Perhaps tell the population of York to get a grip….tell them they live in a flood zone, their choice.
It all looks very pretty when the river trickles through but sometimes you have to pay the piper.
Slow news day and heavy rainfall over Christmas. Plus standard bureaucratic over reaction.
I walked to a local bridge at Ramsbottom, north of Manchester. The police stopped me from crossing before I could even see the river because the bridge was deemed “structurally unsound” by some jobsworth. So I walked 1/2 a mile downstream to find another bridge where I could observe the river. It was actually about 10 foot lower than the recent high water mark a couple of weeks ago.
Yeah, some people will experience flooding where it didn’t happen two weeks ago. Sorry about that. But it is still better than being shot dead by IS terrorists.
If you live in north-west England, you know that it rains a lot in the dark months. A bit like Seattle. But darker. And the wind blows.
Move along.
see theeuroprobe.org 2014 -017 From the Somerset Levels to the EU to the UN to the Club of Rome
Incidentally, the critics of the UK Environment Agency’s policy of non-dredging in Somerset were eventually vindicated by the results of the Environment Agency’s own computer assisted analysis.
Unfortunately this remarkable finding was buried in a local news article and did not receive any publicity from national mainstream brainwashing channels:
“Nine out of ten homes in the worst-hit area of the Somerset Levels would have stayed dry if the Environment Agency had dredged the rivers and installed temporary pumps, officials have finally admitted.”
Read more: http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Better-pumps-dredging-stop-floods/story-27574691-detail/story.html#ixzz3vgUkdoR0
This is such a perfect example of why the Ruling Class absolutely loves “climate change” (or AGW, usw): It allows politicians and elites to blame a big amorphous, globally caused boogeyman – collectively called climate change for all of their abject ineptitude and functional screw-ups. And….as a big bonus, there is no way to assign accountability to them for their narcissistically (and ideologically) driven policy failures.
“It’s all the fault of the big bad wolf that I have no control over unless we agree to ‘action’….um….and some big funding for me and my friends.”
And that, quite simply, is the sole rationale driving the “leaders” of AGW. Sadly, their millions of useful idiots still don’t have a clue.
Time to call their collective bluff as often as possible.
Ha spot on. I wish WordPress had a Like button like Farcebook has, then I’d click Like, Tom. There is also an agenda to get rid of people from remote areas, along coastline etc so the elite can mine it, frack it or whatever they want.
Here you go, CAGW morons utopia, Australia.
Major flooding in the north, all major roads cut, train derailments, 200,000 litres of sulphuric acid split, people abandon their homes as flood waters encroach.
In the south, 116 homes lost to bush fires. People left homeless. Abandon towns. Record high temperatures (???).
All due to climate change. What more do you need to prove ACC, everything, all disasters in the one place, at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Even George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago, is blaming land use for the increased flood damage in recent years. His article, as far as I recall, didn’t even mention climate change.
George seems to have softened his hard line in these latest months, a change in the air that I welcome: I don’t like being made angry so often.
What a shame that George has to mislead millions of Guardian readers and BBC viewers in the process of slowly learning the basic facts about basic things and then coming to a more sensible conclusion.
As he learns about the world, he leaves a trail of delusional wrong-headed thinking.
Some people prefer to be quiet until they grasp the basics and form an opinion.
Yes agreed indefatigablefrog, George and other writers of his like have some explaining to do. He wrote a piece about Fukushima nuclear power disaster in 2011, saying it was good that it happened, as it shows us how safe nuclear energy is compared with coal fired power stations! Meanwhile cesium 137 and other nuclear isotopes are washing up on the shores of the USA and fish are found with cancers, including sock eye salmon in Alaska. Sailors on the US Ronald Reagan that sailed to be on standby to assist, are suing TEPCO for radiation exposure and they have leukemia etc, meanwhile the thing still leaks.
The media here is actively assisting the officials by blocking any attempts to put the case that if man made climate change is to blame then it is climate scientists fault for suggesting for well over twenty years we would have a Mediterranean climate.
More likely it is the environmentalist lobby and EU legislation that blocked any dredging activity for the last decade as well as the wind turbine lobby that blocked any forestry activity because it reduced wind speeds locally.
Tear down the Thames embankment. Bring back the mud!
Cheers.
They implemented policies meant to cause flooding and then issued false propaganda to coverup their responsibility and shift blame on the public so they can then implement even more disastrous policies?
How sweet to be an idiot.
http://youtu.be/54mf61KN7wA
It is needed to deceive in all things supportive of climate warming because once you give in to a spurious claim you have to recant all spurious claims. It is important to the party agenda that this lie be defended. The Baghdad Bob syndrome is a fundamental tool in the alarmist kit. The good news for the alarmist party is the press are party members.
Maybe it’s time the Brits learned how to boycott green businesses. Nothing gets their attention like telling them to sod off. Just do it – it’s for the elderly who are likely to die this winter from deadly green policies.
Far from claiming EU/EEA faultless with or without UK/EA in its boards and committees, but blimey. When is the next election for the head of the British Commonwealth? Or is the Malthusian cAGW hypocrite so irresistible that the election can be suppressed from Australia to Zambia?
The Commonwealth doesn’t get to decide river management policy.
Of course not, unless the member states agree. And that’s also how the EU works.
For this reason in my opinion ‘Act of cAGW’ and ‘Act of EU’ are both ‘It’s Not Me’ escape clauses.
You missed one of the better suppressors of elections by one vowel … Zimbabwe. 🙂
If we’re contemplating a possible role for climate change in recent UK winter flooding, then surely a sensible question to ask is: ‘has winter precipitation increased in the UK recently’? After all, the England and Wales Precipitation (EWP) records go back to 1766: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/download.html
The short answer is ‘yes’. Winter rainfall across E&W has increased in recent times by most measures you can think of. Yes, there were previous peaks in the 1920s and 30s; but the present decade starting 2011 to date (without counting this current winter yet, of course) has been wetter than anything before it. The 20th century was much wetter than the 19th century. The linear trend in the monthly data is positive, both overall and since the start of the 20th century (though less so because of the wet start in the 20s and 30s).
What about very wet winters? Let’s call ‘very wet’ anything a standard deviation above the average winter over the whole period of measurement. That’s anything wetter than ~300mm. Again, whilst there are a cluster of these around the early 20th century, both the overall trend and the trend from the start of the 20th century are upwards (wetter). Three of the 5 wettest winters in the UK record have occurred since 1990, with the wettest being 2014/15.
So whilst there may be issues re dredging and basic water management in the UK, there is also an increasing trend in winter rainfall, including extreme winter precipitation events. That fact can’t be ignored in the overall picture.
When assessing flood prevention works needs by comparing present and past rainfall pattern Then, and only then, can you properly determine what, if any, additional and/or amended flood defence works are needed!s, it is first necessary to put the river system back into the state it was in during previous flood events, i.e. fully dredged. In other words the river system now should have the same flow capacity as it was then.
Untrue.
The rains that started just after Easter in 1315AD and continued almost without break until 1317AD leading to ‘The Great Famine’ were far worse. But then you don’t want to know that I suppose?
“Seven weeks after Easter in A.D. 1315, sheets of rain spread across a sodden Europe, turning freshly plowed fields into lakes and quagmires. The deluge continued through June and July, and then August and September. Hay lay flat in the fields; wheat and barley rotted unharvested. The anonymous author of the Chronicle of Malmesbury wondered if divine vengeance had come upon the land: “Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath stretched out his hand against them, and hath smitten them.” Most close-knit farming communities endured the shortages of 1315 and hoped for a better harvest the following year. But heavy spring rains in 1316 prevented proper sowing. Intense gales battered the English Channel and North Sea; flocks and herds withered, crops failed, prices rose, and people again contemplated the wrath of God. By the time the barrage of rains subsided in 1321, over a million-and-a-half people, villagers and city folk alike, had perished from hunger and famine-related epidemics. Giles de Muisit, abbot of Saint-Martin de Tournai in modern-day Belgium, wrote, “Men and women from among the powerful, the middling, and the lowly, old and young, rich and poor, perished daily in such numbers that the air was fetid with the stench.” People everywhere despaired. Guilds and religious orders moved through the streets, the people naked, carrying the bodies of saints and other sacred relics. After generations of good, they believed that divine retribution had come to punish a Europe divided by war and petty strife.
The great rains of 1315 marked the beginning of what climatologists call the Little Ice Age, a period of six centuries of constant climatic shifts that may or may not be still in progress.”
From “The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization” By Brian M. Fagan
Stop using your ignorance of history as a vehicle to support your ideas that there is anything at all exceptional about the rain in the North of England. The floods are due to the EA craven following of EU mores to ‘Make Space for Water’ and destroy people’s homes.
Ian
From my own records; As can be seen, during the 13th Century the weather was far worse than today as it transitioned (temporarily) from the MWP to LIA type stormy conditions. Especially look at 1249….
—— ——- —–
1228 inundations of rivers in Dec Jan and Feb –in Worcester- such that no one then living had ever seen the like in their time
1229 severe winter ‘unusually bitter, waters so frozen horsemen could cross upon the ice, great snow afterwards earth covered for several days.’
1231 March to October hardly any rain anywhere in England-great drought
1233 wet summer from 23 March with great inundations of rain through the whole summer destroying warrens and washed away the ponds and mills throughout almost all England. Water formed into lakes in middle of the crops where the fishes of the rivers were seen to great astonishment and mills were standing in various places they had never before been seen.
1233-1234 severe frost from Christmas 1233 to Feb 2 1234 destroying roots of trees to four foot down then rest of year very unseasonable
1234 third unseasonable year
Wet weather in autumn choked the seed and loosened it.
1236 great floods in Jan, Feb and part of March that no one had seen the like before. Bridges submerged, fords impassable, mills and ponds overwhelmed and sown land meadows and marshes covered. Thames flooded Palace of Westminster so small boat could be navigated in the midst of the forecourt. And folk went to their bed chambers on horseback
Followed by dry summer with intolerable heat that all lasted four months. Deep pools and ponds were dried up and water mils useless.
1237 great rains in February, fords and roads impassable for 8 successive days
Turbulent year stormy and unsettled
1238 great floods in many parts probably December
Cloudy and rainy in beginning until spring had passed then the drought and heat were beyond measure and custom in two or more of the summer months. Great deluge of rain in the autumn that straw and grain became rotten and an unnatural autumn which is held to be a cold and dry season gave rise to various fatal diseases.
1239 very wet weather continually from Jan to March, it has continued for four months without intermission.
1240 dry Jan to March, wet from April to December but fruitful and abundant but wet and rainy autumn greatly choked the abundant crops.
1241 drought from March 25 to Oct 28 drought and intolerable heat. Pastures withered, herds pined away from hunger and thirst
December very cold and bitter weather the like of which no one had seen before, binding the rivers killing large numbers of birds
1242 dry and hot
1243 floods
1244 dry autumn wholly without rain
1245 unseasonable summer
1246 rainy year
1247 very unseasonable weather in late winter especially cold and rainy and windy
1249 very mild winter so that neither snow nor frost covered the face of the earth nor bound it in their customary weather, trees were seen to be sprouting in February. Winter was turned into summer but intense cold came at end of March and lasted until middle of May that made people shiver that casting off linen they were compelled to resume double clothing.
tonyb
As I mentioned in my post, I am referring to the period of instrument measurement, which for England and Wales begins in 1766.
The current decade so far, starting January 2011, is the wettest on that record as far as winter precipitation is concerned. That’s just a fact hat anyone can check from the link I provided above.
To suggest that the recent flooding across the UK is entirely down to poor river management (and by extension, the dreaded ‘EU’), and that it’s not at all anything to do this observed increase in winter precipitation is transparently silly.
This suggests the UK maybe, possibly, perhaps, no not really a bit wetter during the 20th ………
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/long-term-rainfall-trends-in-england-wales/
Dwr54
Some time ago I examined the rainfall figures back to 1766 . They covered a very few locations most of which weren’t in the upland or wettest parts of the country anyway, as, by definition, few people lived there, let alone had time to keep records.
Also rainfall these days is often recorded at height rather than at sea level so there is considerable variance there. Comparing the 1766 data to today is comparing apples to oranges.
Tonyb
During global cooling spells the North Atlantic jet stream moves south and more often and for longer lies across the UK instead of flowing past to the north of Scotland.
If the process continues then in due course it sinks even futher south and the uk gets drier but colder winters once more.
This season, the trough line associated with the jet has been regularly draped across Cumbria and northern England for many hours at a time with the inevitable and not unprecedented consequences.
The study of history shows this to be a common feature of the uk climate over centuries.
During the MWP and for much of the 20th century the jet was further north and less wavy than it now is and I have been pointing this out since 2008 having noticed the change begin around 2000 as the sun declined from the peak of cycle 23 to a less active regime.
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/
Stephan,
I would like to restate what you just wrote and see if you think I understand it correctly.
I think you are saying that over time (centuries perhaps) we see small changes in the Sun produce changes on the earth in the weather machine’s response in how it redistributes warmth around the globe. Or, in other words, these small changes in the solar state produce changes in advection, along with several other things, here on the earth. Advection (the transfer of heat or matter by the flow of a fluid, especially horizontally in the atmosphere or the sea.) is a greatly misunderstood and little noticed part of the climate puzzle.
I understand you to say that the solar state could well effect the Advection on the planet to the point that a “warm period” or a “little ice age” could result given enough time and magnitude. Note: you are leaving room for several other things to be part of the puzzle.
Do I have your message right Steven?
~ Mark
The sun causes cloudiness changes which affect the proportion of incoming solar energy able to enter the system and drive the air circulation.
Posted to the Guardian, but probably will get deleted because it breaches ‘community standards’.
“Time after time, UK governments have denied the dangers of climate change”
No, time after time in recent years they have been persuaded to spend money that should have been spent maintaining sea defences and drainage channels on subsidies to the alternative energy industry.
The result has been that the poor are having their electricity taxed so that small scale solar panel owners can be paid 10 times the wholesale rate for electricity which they generate at exactly the time when it is neither needed nor useful. Wind farms are also paid well over the going rate for their intermittent and useless generation.
Not only do the poor pay for this nonsense through a tax on their electricity, they are also exposed to flooding because the money that should have gone on flood prevention has been paid to rich landowners in the name of meeting the goals of the Climate Change Act.
This piece of idiocy was passed under a Labour government, with the approval of the Liberals, so the stupidity is across the entire UK political establishment. The SNP has also endorsed alternative energy on a grand scale. Its universal in our political class.
When you point out to people that the Climate Change Act is the biggest single financial obstacle to spending money on flood defence, they start getting very upset and talk about the need to ‘tackle climate change’ or to stop denying global warming.
Global trends are simply irrelevant to this. You can argue about whether there is global warming and whether if there is it has anything to do with recent flooding till you are blue in the face. It does not matter, since there is nothing whatever that the UK can do about global warming. The Climate Change Act does not in any way ‘tackle global warming’. We are emitting around 500 million tons of CO2 annually, and its fairly static. The Chinese are emitting 10 billion tons, and rising. The Climate Change Act should be renamed as the UK Flood Promotion Act.
Installing alternative energy schemes at vast expense will not materially affect our own emissions. But even if it did, we are doing less than 2% of global emissions and falling, so even if it did, it will have no effect on global temperatures.
Yet this insane project is being represented as somehow having some useful effect on flooding in Leeds!
Surely it is now obvious that we cannot do anything about flooding in the UK by lowering our emissions? Surely it is obvious that the right thing to do is take the money we are wasting on this futile endeavour and spend it on sensible protection of our own people?
One fears not. The Green lobby is fixated on the politics of gesture. Its called being in denial.
It has just been reported by the BBC that communities north of Manchester are , in desperation, applying to the EU for money to restore the damage from the flooding. During this month , which has seen billions of damage done here , the UK is giving away 1 Biilion pounds to Third World projects , for which we receive no formal accounting that I am aware of, and so we have to beg the EU for money .
The financial page of the Telegraph has a clock showing the increase of UK debt . It seems to be about £1000/ sec , and yet we are giving away tax revenues which are desperately needed here.
Many of the commenters here , above and below ,are coming up with important information on the weather changes and the causes of flooding and it is so depressing to know that none of this information will be regarded as acceptable at the BBC or in Westminster.
+ 1
In York the River Ouse which is tidal has only risen to a level 1 metre or more less than it did in the floods of 2000, yet the flooding within the city is more severe than then. Why? Simply because a barrier isolating the River Fosse, a branch river connecting into the Ouse within the city, which is closed to protect a large area of the city from the rising tidal Ouse flooding had to be opened. The reason given for this was that the pumping system used to pump water over the closed barrier during floods had electrics below the flood level and water was threatening to seep in and short the electrics. Added to this, there is apparently no manual over-ride or highly geared manual opening or bypassing system to later drain the Fosse if the pumps electrics fail. The EPA say they had to open the drain before the electrics failure as otherwise the barrier could not be opened!
No one, and I stress no one, on the BBC TV or Radio is even mentioning dredging
“……….classed as any sand and gravel that might removed is now classed as ‘hazardous waste’ What? How stupid is that?
In the UK House of Commons very recently…ask questions, get no (or dumb) answers.
CC and Flooding – Facts
Well even a cursory look at the DATA says that what we see now is little different to the past. The long, long distant past as far as Politian’s on a 4 year cycle see.
And where’s the Chairman of the Environment Agency ?
Barbados.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/12071885/Environment-Agency-chairman-criticised-for-no-show-in-communities-hit-by-floods.html
I see an opportunity here.
Get the UK to blame the floods on climate change.
Then tell the EU you can no longer give it any money since your now “victims of climate change” and you will be spending the money locally on said “victims.”
If nothing else, it would be fun to see the green mafia inside and outside the UK at each others throats over the money.
Smart Rock’s comment above is on the money here.
If you remove forests from hills you will get increased flooding down river……land use (or more like land miss-use) is doing this. They can’t pin this on the small amount of Anthropogenic Climate change we’ve had
And yes George Monbiot did write about flooding and land use in the UK leading to the extreme floods in 2014. see http://www.monbiot.com/2014/06/05/ripping-apart-the-fabric-of-the-nation/
“Soil erosion and an associated problem, soil compaction – mostly caused by using heavy machinery in the wrong conditions – is a major contributor to floods. Rain percolates into soils whose structure is intact, but flashes off fields where the structure has broken down, taking the soil – and the pesticides and fertiliser – with it. This means that the rivers fill up more quickly with both water and silt (which is what we call soil once it has entered a waterway). Siltation blocks channels and smothers the places where wildlife lives, including the gravel beds where fish spawn.
In some parts of Britain, soil erosion is now so severe that it causes floods without the help of exceptional rainfall, as saturated fields simply slump down the slopes into the houses below. In some places, soil compaction has increased the rate of instant run-off from 2% of all the rain that falls on the land to 60%.”
of interest here are some other articles on the topic by George.
http://www.monbiot.com/2014/06/05/ripping-apart-the-fabric-of-the-nation/
and
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/17/farmers-uk-flood-maize-soil-protection
and here in early 2015
http://www.monbiot.com/2015/02/25/slip-sliding-away/
Absolutely.
What hit Carlisle was a Flash Flood. Entirely typical of places (usually called deserts) with very low vegetation cover and zero soil-organic matter.
The road (Warwick Rd.) in Carlisle that has been flooded 3 times in the last 10 years is NOT a ‘new-build’ on a flood plain. Those houses have been there a long time, probably 100yrs+ and would not be there if the area flooded that much.
Cumbrian rivers do not need any great dredging effort, the place is too hilly and the rivers rub fast – apart from where the Eden flows after it leaves Carlisle.
My farm is on a tributary of the Eden (Carlisle river) and for the last 45 years I’ve watched it. Back then, when it rained heavily, the water rose and reached its peak maybe 18 to 24 hours after the rain started. Now it turns to a horrible raging torrent of mud just 3 or 4 hours after the rain starts and is all finished and gone 24 hrs later.
(The EA come to count the (remaining) fish in the river every year. There are hardly any and no wonder. if you put some tadpoles in a toilet and repeatedly flushed it, there’s not be many tadpoles left in there after a couple of years.
But of course, the EA, MSM, DEFRA, Natural England etc etc will tell you the fish have all gone because they were poisoned by fertiliser, weed-killer, sheep dip, cow slurry, whatever.
And so, already costly restrictions get ever more costly and restrictive.
Then, the river and all its tributaries are ‘Site of Special Scientific Interest’. Fine
What that means is that if us peasants do ANYTHING to even slightly muddy the water (literally), we have the full force of law coming down on us and the primary sanction is removal of our Single Farm Payment (subsidy). Without it, we are bankrupt – the Govm’ and EU cronies all see to that. Effectively it becomes one huge Tragedy of the Commons, the SFP links us all even though the farmers seem independent and can manage their land as they see fit. They Are Not
There are too many sheep. The place is horribly over-grazed and primarily because of the demand for Cheap Food. There used to be lots of dairy farms, mine included, but Cumbria is following the well worn path of sub-Saharan countries – where they kept bovines until the forage was eaten, then kept sheep as they eat closer to the ground plus the rubbish cows won’t eat and then ultimately the farmers keep goats. Goats eat everything and create deserts.
And there-in lies the Climate Change. Farmers changed the vegetation, this changes the way the soil (dead plant material) handles water and as water controls the climate, you get Climate Change.
The creation of the desert changes the climate, the climate does not create the desert. And the (dead and alive) plant material that was in the soil is now in the sky, as in CO2. Simple. Don’t allow yourself to be confused by LWIR, down-welling, up-welling, watts per square metre or that garbage. The worlds ocean is The Greenhouse, the atmosphere spreads that warmth around and cools the planet. Not least, a cold object (the sky) cannot raise the temperature of a warm object (the ground or the ocean) especially when the sky only got its energy from the ground/ocean in the first place. The Emperor really is stark bollock naked.
What about the people demanding and eating the Cheap Food – will they admit it or take responsibility? Ask any individual and you get the “I only eat organic, fairtrade, free range, British, farm assured, etc etc” Basically, they won’t, don’t and never will.
Hypocrites the lot of them because it would mean admitting they caused The Flood.
And as we know, no matter what happens at any time or any place in this modern world, It Is Always Someone Else’s Fault.
Mistakes were made but not by me.
Sorry peeps. You demanded cheap food, farmers/producers were rail-roaded into providing it but now you pay – via the flood,
What happens next, when the ensuing floods happen and wash away all the topsoil/dirt so that nothing grows at all, now that will lead to ‘Interesting Times..
Peta,
+1
Your story of Cows then Sheep then Goats then Desert is a nice story, but I don’t believe a word of it. Perhaps in Africa, but it doesn’t happen like that in a place with an ocean temperate climate and high rainfall. But if I were to believe your story the solution would be to abolish the SFP which as you describe it, is a measure which distorts the market by artificially lowering food prices and which provides a perverse incentive to engage in poor farming practices. It could be done without bankrupting you all by buying you out of the scheme. Make scheme membership an asset – fairly value it – and then buy it back off you via a lump sum payment.
Yes he seems to be improving with the realization that climate change doesn’t cause everything. I wish other journalists would wake up before they irreversibly damage the profession.
A radio story broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2012 can be cited to demonstrate. The news trigger was a serious bacterial outbreak after floods in Queensland. Instead of a bacteriologist as expert source to the story’s crisis point, a climate scientist is sourced instead, bringing a different frame to the conclusion as set to discuss a looming public health emergency. The inaccuracy in the choice of this source is that climate change was not the cause of heavy rain in the La Niña event of 2012; rather those record floods were similar to the even wetter La Niña cycles in Australia in 1974, 1975 and 1976.
In the interest of public health, this story should have more information in the frame on leptospirosis and its potential deadly spread, instead of building the irrelevant climate frame in this final section:
RACHEL CARBONELL [radio journalist]: With climate scientists predicting more extreme weather events, some experts say [SIC] outbreaks of lepto-spirosis are likely to become more of a problem. Philip Weinstein is profes-sor of ecosystem health at the Barbara Hardy Institute at the University of South Australia.
PHILIP WEINSTEIN: We’re likely to be seeing more and more of these events as more extreme climate events occur more frequently and as urban populations grow (Carbonell 2012).
For accuracy, there must be double-checking of facts by senior staff. Special care should apply to avoid writers being hostage to deliberate spin from press releases and biased news agencies (Australian Press Council, 2008). International newspapers such as The Economist and The Washington Post have requirements in multiple source triangulation and validation. Everyone should do so.
An unusually high amount of rainfall effecting a relatively small area of Britain, which is itself s very small island in global terms, and the global warming siren has to be sounded by those who think they know what causes ‘weather’. The world should know that 95 per cent of the British land mass has not been effected by excessive rain, The floods are local and most of us are enjoying a pleasantly dry winter period. It is difficult to understand why these people ignore the official temperature records that show no warming for almost 20 years.
This article appearing in the Daily Mail is well worth a read;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3376939/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-gilded-elite-betrayed-sodden-masses.html
Climate change is just an excuse to cover up bad management. About 10 years back it was being blamed for hose pipe bands in the South of England. The water authorities and environmental agencies claimed that Climate change was leading to more droughts and hence water shortages. In fact there has been no statistically significant change in UK rainfall, and to the extent that there is a trend it was for slightly more rainfall. The real reason for the water shortages and hose pipe bands was that the population in Southern England had increased by about 10 million and not one single new reservoir has been build these past 20 to 25 years to meet this extra demand.
Now the UK is experiencing floods, so Climate change is again rolled out as the excuse to cover up poor management; building homes on flood plains, cutting back on flood defences, stopping dredging etc.
The job of government is good management. Not political ideology. Get the basics right before moving onto ‘dreams’ But before a problem can be addressed, it has to be admitted to, and in this PC world in which we live, where no one takes responsibility, it is very difficult to get to the truth.
Don’t expect anytime soon to see the environmental agencies acknowledge that heavy rainfall is just a way of life and that it can be managed with foresight and planning. No expect to see the excuse du jour of Climate Change rolled out and business to carry on regardless, ie., further ineptitude both at local and governmental level.
If only politicians were not PPE or English Literature majors, and if only some were engineers or had real life experience, things could be a lot lot better.
I am not British, nor is Canadian Dr. Tim Ball, but perhaps the following would help some of the British officials and their long suffering serfs (miss-called as “citizens” at times).
Dr. Ball quoted a retired geophysicist named Norm Kalmanovitch at Dr. Ball’s blog some time ago. It was a long quote of Norm’s work and the following is just a small part of it but this post reminded me of it even after all this time since I first read it:
Now we all know that politicians and bureaucrats will use any lie to cover their own rear ends when the smelly stuff hits the fan, but blaming warming that has not happened since 1997 does seem a little far fetched don’t you think? And in the periods when natural variation does favor us with some warming, how does that excuse bad planning on the part of the departments charged with being ready for weather events?
Every time they holler “global warming did it”, we should holler back, “what global warming?” Note: don’t let the lying dogs get away with saying “climate change” when the whole argument is over global warming. And don’t let them forget that even their own
theoryspeculation is about global warming and not regional weather occurrences.