UK
FLOODS
updated as appropriate
JUNE 26 2007
We
can all share the frustration of the council official today who said
his problem was there was nowhere to pump the water so that he could
even start to help the residents of his flooded town. In the decades to
come, we have to be prepared to deal with periods of excessive drought,
excessive heat and excessive rain and a shortage of energy at peak
periods. That is why I wrote in ENERGY SUPPLIES IN THE 21st CENTURY
that we must prepare raised water storage facilities at many locations
throughout the UK where excess water can be pumped and stored for later
use, either as a source of stored hydro-electric energy or as a source
of stored water, or as both. We should have started a few years ago. It
will be a programme that must run for years until every urban area at
risk of flooding has a nearby system of reservoirs fulfilling this
role. They can also be linked to a system of hydrants for fire control.
Just DO IT please.
JUNE 28th
Although we have heard and seen a lot about the effect on housing of
these floods, the effect on agriculture may well be as consequential
and costly to the nation, and disastrous for the farmers affected.
JULY 22 2007
We have now had even worse flooding and although the rain held off all
of today, the water levels will go on rising with some dangerous surges
in many areas. The immediate action required is to get everyone to a
place of safety where they can be supplied with enough food and clean
water. Then they must just wait until the water has drained away, and
that will take a long time. Unfortunately further rain is forecast for
next week.
We have to work toward a medium and long term solution to handling the
risk to property in flood plains. These events should demonstrate there
are limits to the urbanisation of low-lying ground unless revolutionary
methods are found to protect them. Further than that it should make it
clear that expanding the population of the UK through either breeding
or immigration does not in any way guarantee a corresponding growth in
the availability of places to live. Of course all new houses could be
built with the lowest floor 10 feet off the ground, with the space
underneath available as garden, or open sided garage for movable
vehicles and objects etc. The point is that all over the world human
society must realise it cannot rely on growth either in population or
unsustainable commerce and production to solve the problems humans make
for themselves in their perverse insistence on the right, rather the
possibility, of a life that fulfills their personal desires.
JULY 23rd 2007
The good news is that these particular events, as well as the general
warnings we have now had from environmental catastrophies elswhere, are
striking home. The leaders of our institutions and politcal
organisations now realise they have to take a revolutionary approach to
growth and development if society is not to collapse under the force of
natural consequences to our abuse or neglect of the environment. While
there are some religious leaders who are ridiculed for talking about
the 'wrath of God', those more enlightened clerics who understand that
God is Nature and vice/versa, and none the less impressive for that,
can take heart that it is 'working its purpose out' in the good old
traditional way. It is the challenges set to life by the changing world
that have brought life from the primordial soup to everything we can
experience and achieve today. Our reaction to the environmental
changes, whether it be more in mitigation and control or in adaption to
fit unstoppabe change we have triggered, will shape the future and, as
we can see from the past, this will not be more of the same, which is
just as well. The good news is the excellent way in which so many
people who are in very great difficulties right now are being helped by
their fellows. But there will also be looters, and some people who just
get in the way of those struggling to save power stations and
waterworks etc. More rain and more trials lie ahead.
INTERIM JUDGEMENT
While most flood defences could not
have prevented most of the damage,
it is the maintenance of the rivers that is primarily the cause of the
disastrous outcome. Rivers are no longer regularly dredged, due to
pressure from ecologists. Banks are poorly maintained and fallen trees
are left to block and rot, preventing the full flow. To put it simply,
the rivers are not up to the job. They could be. They need to be
enlarged, have bye-passes built to be opened as and when required, and
modern pumping and storage systems added.
JULY 28th 2007
On Any Questions this week the first question was about the floods: "Is
human behaviour to blame?".
That such a question is even asked shows how confused our society has
become. If thousands of people are killed as the result of an
earthquake in San Francisco, human behaviour is to blame. If thousands
die when Vesuvius next erupts, human behaviour is to blame. However, we
all have to weigh up the risks, the costs and benefits, of any action
or inaction we take. Just before the Falklands war a Canadian family,
concerned about the direction of world events, decided to sell up their
property and business assets and move to to a safe place. They chose
the Falkland Islands. Individually, we can take all sorts of
precautiions and still be struck by lightning or an onfreseen disaster.
In the case of flood victims, they could not all sell up and move just
because they were apprehensive about climate change and the failure of
their local government to maintain the drains, dredge and enlarge
the rivers and supply better flood defences. So they took the risk,
hoping that an extreme event would not, for statistical reasons, repeat
in 7 years. They got it wrong. Even a 1000 year statistical event could
occur next week, of course, without any prgressive or consistent
climate change or global warming.
But we DO have global warming and we DO have climate change. So what we
have to do is decide how we agree on mutual support for those
communities that find themselves in 'the wrong place at the wrong
time'. This is not easy. Indulging in a blame game is a waste of time.
What we need to do is render the vulnerable areas economically
inhabiltable in the future, not just for the local population but
in the interests of the country as a whole. They cannot all be expected
to sell up and leave; indeed they would find it difficult to sell at a
reasonable price just now. We need to think long term and with national
solidarity.
AUGUST 3rd 2007
To put the above in perspective...
In Southern Asia 20 million people
have just been forced to flee their homes and over 250 are know to have
died as the result of floods.
nnnn