To be fed up with floods and think it's climate change?

[malificent7]

Live and work in Somerset. Can't get home due to floods. This is the 3rd time in 2 months that the commute has been dangerous. Aibu to think that this is climate change and to be scared and pissed off about it? Yes...i am a contributor to the oroblem. I know.

Can you be any more specific?

Well if we didnt have climate change increasing the number of severe rainy weather incidents then we wouldn’t have an issue with the drains being blocked. They go hand in hand- councils will
have to start implementing their climate adaptation plans.

It’s a little bit of everything. Yes climate change but always that basically the countries gone to shit.

Drains are left blocked or collapsed. They don’t seem to be upgraded or fixed and maybe leaf sucked once a year. See those storm drains in America woosh what do we have tiny little things the telly tubby hoover sucks clean.

Houses being built on flood plains is just fucking stupid. Everyone wanted to slab over/astro turf their gardens leading to less drainage again. So many trees chopped down for what reason? Another housing housing estate full of tarmac and Astro and now it floods. Slow hand clap to the planning committee there.

Yes, the warmer Atlantic leads to more storms and rain unfortunately. It's physics.

VolcoFan
**
They're not underfunded, they're incompetent and mismanage everything they get involved in. Why do you think councils have gone bankrupt”

Oh, please.

A nearby small river is half the width it was twenty years ago and is no longer dredged, thanks to the Environment Agency. Internal Drainage Boards used to be local people who had an interest in keeping watercourses clear, but no longer exist. Yes, things are getting wetter, but unless ditches and drains are cleared (and the spoil taken away, not just dumped on the bank) and rivers maintained as they used to be, the problem of flooding is exacerbated. The EA should realise the environmental impact of flooding is worse than that of keeping water moving away. But their employees never get their wellies muddy, as Somerset discovered in the big flood a few years ago.

I think I naively thought that climate change deniers were pretty much dying out, a very small minority of people wilfully denying scientific facts and outliers.

im genuinely surprised there are so many on this thread. It’s baffling how people can still hold the position that climate change (man made) isn’t real

flooding wise, yes of course climate change is having an impact. This is exacerbated by the fact we should be improving drainage and flood defences is the face of this, but in a lot of areas it’s gone backwards.

I think the risk & the fact it’s happening more is due to climate change.

The impact is greater due to bad planning. For example I live at the bottom of a hill , for years the fields at the bottom flood but no impact to the housing…..until they decided they could build on part of the hill. The water then no longer flows the way it used to - it travels faster due to the concrete . The fields still flood but not as much - the homes sadly do.

We’ve seen an increase in flooding with new houses being built, our sewer system can also not cope (which has made the cellar particularly nice).

Road are flooded as the drainage ditches aren’t being emptied as they are now left to wild over the year.

One road has had its drainage ditch removed to make the road wider now an industrial estate has been built, it’s been impassable for the last couple of days.

I would say it’s a mix, the seasons no longer seem to be a ‘thing’ now, the world is warmer and wetter, but we are not managing the water systems properly, we go from flood to drought, surely there must be a way of harnessing the water rather than it being destructive.

I agree. They don't dredge the rivers or carry out regular maintenance which essential to stop rivers flooding.

It’s probably both. Drains and other urbanisation changes plus climate related

I remember someone posting climate would increase the three fs

Flooding being one

This. Blaming it on not being able to dredge and blocked drains (which probably contribute to a minor extent) is indeed for the flat earthers.

that all said another contributor is poor urban planning eg building houses on flood plains. And as happened near me building a flashy new road with inadequate drainage. Guess which road floods every single time there is heavy rain? Council has admitted it was poor planning and there is no affordable solution.

Same in my area (or we live in the same town). We aren’t on a flood plain, the river is a few miles away. The flooding we have is caused by run off from the fields, heading too quickly into a series of dykes, or straight onto the roads into town. The roads look like rivers in heavy rainfall. It means we get flooded regularly, 3 times since end of October, and the whole town is cut off for a day or two until the water works its way to the river.

Currently the river has burst its banks. It’s always a couple of days after the rain, as the water works its way along the system, and there are lots of houses and businesses near the flood plains that have now been flooded by that too.

It’s just a fact that warmer climate means more water (science of evaporation), and we’re not really tacking the issue very well, which leads to more and more flooding incidents. Yes, we’re building in flood plains, but also building more in general, and water runs off concrete much faster than forest/grass etc. We really need a comprehensive national plan for land management to make sure our land has the right characteristics to hold/slow down water to prevent the massive swelling of the rivers.

Is all the radiation emitted by 3G, 4G and 5G (in which the whole of the U.K. is currently bathed) not in any way contributing to climate change? Humans are destroying the planet for themselves. Prehistoric climate changes led to mass extinctions. New, better adapted species evolved which included us humans...but now we’re destroying ourselves and the planet. Would be better off left to less “intelligent” species.

Yes we need trees and planning. Trees are also good for heat if it gets back to those 40 days at any point

Stop building over everything and conserve and manage

Imo the part that will make people notice climate change is fast rising insurance premiums or lack of altogether

Flood plains are going to flood.

You'd only be unreasonable if you claimed it wasn't connected to climate change.

To answer the question, why are the drainage ditches no longer maintained, when the land was farmed, the farmers maintained the ditches to ensure their spring grazing. Centuries of knowledge of how to deal with floods. Their livelihoods depended on it.

Then the land is bought by developers, who build houses, put in as little flood management as they can get away with and then absolve themselves of all responsibility.

The new owners don't know what is needed, the land isn't publicly owned so the councils aren't responsible and are generally unaware, and so it floods.

Our parish employs a full time lengthsman, whose job is to clear ditches, advise home owners on what is needed etc. He spends his year reminding and advising groups of home owners to clear the ditches on their estates, organising working parties, monitoring drains and culverts, arranging for fallen trees & branches to be cleared and new ones planted etc.

One of the pubs round here has a door marking all the flood levels and years. Floods are a constant and peaks really do vary over the decades.

It's currently flooded and just over half way up the door.

Yes its Climate Change @malificent7. We knew this was coming but it was cheaper to convince people it wasn't real than to take the measures necessary to deal with it.

And now we have Climate Change with all the issues it brings and a further problem with Reality Deniers.

I’m not convinced building proposals that are incoming are a good idea

Surely we need green spaces, trees and what management we have

Poorly maintained and ancient, inadequate drains that can’t cope with modern demands in urban areas,

poorly maintained canals/ rivers/ drainage ditches ,

proliferation of houses, shopping centres, industrial parks, roads etc built in areas known to be in danger of flooding,

concreting over of gardens to provide parking spaces so surface water can’t drain naturally and is pushed into already over stretched drains (see above.)

It's getting wetter and warmer with climate change. This compounds a problem the UK has been storing up for 100 years around increasingly poor management of river catchments (for example, culverting rivers, straightening them, taking out hedges and woodland and 'messy' areas of farmland), concreting over everything (parking in front gardens anyone?) and building on flood plains. The loss of native species like beavers which perform natural land management.

My understanding is that dredging shouldn't be necessary if land is correctly managed and is a sticking plaster on another problem.

I grew up in a seaside village at the bottom of a wooded river valley. It flooded regularly on a spring tide, and the buildings in the flooded area were designed to cope with that. When they culverted the river and built a massive concrete carpark over the valley it flooded much harder, faster and higher. Most of the country has done idiotic things like that.

We are an island and I’m pretty sure floods happen every single year without fail, I certainly remember lots of news stories about them when I was a child so 20+ years ago. Nothing new.

I definitely think climate change is contributing to it. But also, where I live, all the places where water used to be absorbed and held have now been concreted over, and the water is pooling nearby where it never pooled a few years ago before the concreting over. I don't think we can pin that on climate change.