Is the flooding related to global warming?

[superstarheartbreaker]

thoughts please?

[Twattyzombiebollocks]

I think that periods of extreme weather have occurred across the globe throughout the course of history, and we are definitely in one now. The bugger of it is that we only actually have about 150 years of actual recorded temperature and rainfall to go on, so who knows but that this type of weather has been seen several times in the past only to recede back to "normal" conditions again. Certainly there are many historic accounts of drought and flood conditions.
I do believe that our recent and current abuse of the environment is a factor in the present climate change, and that it may well be the catalyst that tips the balance so that nature is not able to return to normal conditions, and God only knows where that will lead.

[roundtable]

Yes I think that's it hester!

They must have done it me than once surely?

[HesterShaw]

Exactly. How can we pump so much shit into the atmosphere and not expect it to have an effect.

I expect the rabid deniers will be along in a minute.

[roundtable]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1516880.stm

Here's the link to the article.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

I don't know much about cloud seeding but I can't see anything in our current weather pattern that suggests its a factor. Downstream, in the States they are also having some very unusual weather patterns.

[DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen]

These threads are worse than the woo threads, everyone's positive they are right and are snippy to anyone who doesn't agree with them. Shame as it spoils the potential for discussion.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

I'd like to see some evidence that its not anthropological climate change presented rather than just broad opinion.

[LurcioLovesFrankie]

This site- Real Climate - is a good site for providing useful and accessible accounts of the science, and debunking climate change denialists.

One of the central things you have to get a handle on if you want to think about this sensibly is the distinction between signal and noise. The odd unusually cold or warm winter in a long time series (noise) doesn't matter if the overall trend (in a clearly understood statistical sense) is upwards.

The other thing to remember is that while the earth has gone through warmer and colder periods in the past, as far as we can tell from paleoclimate records (ice cores, for instance) the rate of change - the speed if you like to think of it that way - is unprecedented. The change in global mean temperature over the space of just over a century is an incredible amount in such a short time period.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Lots to look at on that link :)

For a more 'bloggy' read I quite like skeptical science

[Dromedary]

There was a "discussion" about climate change on another forum recently. One man proudly announced that everyone who believed that it was man-made was being taken in by a worldwide conspiracy. He said he had read a particular book by a brave lone scientist, which debunked what all other scientists were saying. Someone else quickly came on with evidence that the brave lone scientist was receiving a salary from the oil industry.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Funny that dromedary! People really need to look at the agenda behind the climate sceptics.

[bellasuewow]

Tallwivglasses I think you have made an excellent point England is bald compared to even a few decades ago vegetation acts like a sponge and intensive crop farming has an effect of crating baldy hills that water runs off.

[ComposHat]

It isn't global warming it is gays. I tell you god is angry with the gays and gay marriage so he is flooding us. Just like the UKIp said

I can only assume that Somerset is a hotbed of same sex love action so they are taking the brunt of it.

[Quinteszilla]

My dad said something about the weather being "locked" in a pattern. It is apparently quite rare. But the effect is that the arctic has not had any rain/snowfall since December. It has been dry and clear, and no wind. Usually January is a mixture of all, but now the weather is locked in a pattern it cant get out of. Something about atmospheric winds, and stuff. He read an article about it, and because his short term memory is a bit shot, this is how he explained it to me.

theweatherprediction.com/habyhints2/450/

[TheGreatHunt]

We do need more trees but farming and house building puts paid to that.

Anecdotally, houses on our road have experienced more flooding after the council cut down trees which backed onto the gardens. The houses are at the bottom of a gentle slope.

[hootloop]

I thought that extreme weather had always happened but climate change is making it it happen more often. So you can't say this individual flood is caused by climate change as it might have happened anyway but the fact these type of events are now not once in a lifetime is due to climate change.

[threebats]

I am with twatty We do not have records that go back far enough to be able to say this has not happened before and several times. The earth is so old compared to us fools and we do not know if this is just a normal cycle or not.
The earth will constantly throw weather and change at us and change how the globe looks - its a slow old process that we will never see in our lifetime but if we all come back in 5,000 years, maybe GB will be 2 islands not one!
I am not denying we need to take more care of how we live here, that is is causing damage to the environment. But you can't accurately say this set of storms is due to climate change or whatever the acceptable term is for it now.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

We do have a pretty good feel for what happened in the past; geology, tree rings, ice cores are all good sources of information.

We also have suprisingly good records of arctic sea ice back to around the 1600's. maritime records were kept in meticulous detail by those trying to find the NW passage.

[ShadowOfTheDay]

I think everyone just likes to think that it is climate change, because then there may be a possibility that we can be in control and do something about it....

otherwise it is just the weather and outside our control... there are and always have been extremes of weather

[MoreBeta]

Oh FGS shut up about Global Warming or Climate Change or whatever they now call it!

The flooding of Somerset Levels and elsewhere is due to a lack of drainage and building houses where people shouldn't. The weather will be extreme some times so we have to either a) have good drainage and flood protection or b) build houses on higher ground.

Look I work in the energy industry and you are all paying 25% more for your energy than you should be because of stupid environmental and green energy policies.

Its insane that people on low wages struggling to make ends meet in a recession that is still going on are being made to pay 25% more for energy than they should be on the grounds of some totally unproven theory that the data doesn't even support.

Building wind turbines at vast expense and imposing green taxes is not going to even reduce CO2 emissions. If you must do something then build combined cycle gas turbines that emit only 40% of what a coal fired power station emits.

I'm sick of hearing about it and frankly socialists just love the whole thing because it allows them to control and manipulate the economy by regulation, taxation, subsidy allocation and central planning. Funny how so many of them also make a very nice living out of it as well - they aren't exactly going to be objective are they?

[MoreBeta]

Oh and before you accuse me of being in the pockets of the energy industry - the energy industry makes a very nice profit out of global warming. Its you that pay for the energy and the energy industry keeps a lot of the money. I wouldn't mind if we just had green taxes that were used to pay off the national debt but it doesn't.

The extra money is virtually all collected and kept by the energy industry or landowners who build wind turbines or management consultants or lobbyists or academics who work on climate change research.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Surely the wettest January on record is going to have some part to play in it?! The flooding though truly terrible in Somerset is not limited to just there. I've spoken to people around our area who say that the local flooding is the worst in living memory. Nothing to do with land management, but purely down to the weather table being higher than the ground.

[LurcioLovesFrankie]

Good point, BadKitten - some of the villages flooded on the Somerset levels are centuries old - they're not new-builds on flood plains. And there are some very long records to use. I went to a talk yesterday about last summer's flooding on the Danube and surroundings. One town hit an all-time record in a 500 year long timeseries.

[Jaisalmer]

Blimey MoreBeta that's not like you to get so angry.

It's all moving deckchairs on the Titanic anyway, we are just a blip in the earth's history but I do think we are accelerating the issue of climate change in an alarming manner.

The planet will be fine - been here for 4.6 billion years - but I do think we are making life very hard for the poorer parts of the world that will not be able to cope financially with severe conditions.

ShadowOfTheDay I think we have absolutely no control whatsoever over the climate as it happens - it's too late, like trying to turn an oil tanker on a sixpence. The effects of pumping all that CO2 into the atmosphere will take a long time to filter through and halting it would assume that everyone stopped using any fossil fuels tomorrow which let's face it isn't going to happen.

I'm with James Lovelock, we may as well crank up the heating and burn all the fuel as we are buggered anyhow .

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Great - so fiddle while Rome burns is what you are saying Jaisalmer. Lets watch nations like the Philippines suffer devastation after devastation whilst making no attempt to halt the damage we are causing.

The more greenhouse gases we release, the worse the problem will be. We have to try and do something.