Floods, persistent heavy rain, climate change ?

[whiffey]

Can anyone supply a debate that this weather is not inflicted on the earth by its most advanced inhabitants ?

It's not merely a matter of flooded houses, it's the long-term effects. House prices will collapse near rivers, insurance prices will rocket in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Gloucestershire. These are wealthy areas (or were).

I am frightened. Croydon/Sutton where I live was at the epicentre of a deluge on Friday and I saw rivers flowing down streets in a way I have never seen before.

I also believe as in so many areas of thought where I am a prophet of doom, that it is too late to do anything about it. When I go shopping, I look at everything to see where it was manufactured. It is remorselessly China, China, where 2 new power stations start up evey week. We have gleaming cheap goods, but a drowning world.

Henley is now threatened by floods. That'll do a bundle for property prices there.

[whiffey]

Something I'd like to put into this debate. There are too many of us, there is talk of more and more and more houses. I suggest a tax, a high tax, on couples (assuming one or other has not scarpered) having more than 2 children. We cannot support this load of humanity. A single house at the end of my road has been converted into THREE new dwellings, and FIVE new cars have turned up. It's unsupportable.

[Ethel]

What are currently experiencing is nothing like the floods of the 1940s.

It is normal climate cycles.

[Whickerman]

there are arguments here:
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/moregw .htm

[NORMANTHEDOG]

whiffey,get a life.

[whiffey]

Turn on the tv Norman, see the effects of the endless striving to buy more and more gleaming things ever cheaper and cheaper. Look around the shops. Made in China. In Britain it is raining and flooding. There is no connection, I am just prone to think aloud.

[beerbelly]

Only 8,000 years ago , one could walk from Britain to france .
( If one wanted to ) as it was all one continent .
8,000 years time , all that may be left of this island of ours may be a tiny little island called Ben Nevis .
It's just the way it is .
Dont buy a house on a flood plain , or suffer the consequences . Get on with it .

I dont actually blame the Chinese , or their shoddy workmanship !

[Loosehead]

It is apparently the worst flooding for 60 years, what caused it 60 years ago? Just natural planetary cycles whiffey, only the arrogance of mankind would induce any other theory.

[LeMarchand]

I read Michael Crichton's 'novel' "State of Fear" a while back (I say 'novel', though it was little more than a bunch of speeches by characters trotting out MC's views) and thought it was rot, paid for by Dubya to quell the masses. Now I'm not so sure - we know very little of how climate works. Yes we could be affecting the change, but it could equally be a natural cycle. If we stopped using any technology whatsoever immediately, we don't know whether things would slowly return to 'normal' - we don't really know what 'normal' is.

I'm all for expansion into space myself.

[jake-the-peg]

I don't think you can point to these floods and directly blame global warming.

True, as the planet get warmer there's more energy in the ocean and you may see more extreme weather but I don't think we're there yet.

You get extreme weather events anyway but what you can point to is excessive development in the south east.

All this Britain is Overcrowded stuff is poppy-****. Take a drive to the North and you'll soon start to see nothing but open fields.

We are building so much in certain areas though that the water doesn't slowly seep into the rivers any more but rushes straight down the storm drains and before you know it there's a flood.

Every garden grabber building a new house in his back garden, everybody tarmacking over their front lawn for parking contributes to this.

Yes Global Warming is a major challenge but the solution to these floods is not to be found in China but in the planning departments of councils in the South East.

And what are they looking at doing right now? loosening planning controls - Genius!

[Paulst30]

I blame monoblock!!!

If people didnt cover thier driveways, pathways and gardens in monoblock paving then the water would have somewhere to go. Also, like Ethel so rightly put, the world like women is on a cycle and although a womans cycle is 1 month, that could be in world time, 100 years lol

In all seriousness, its a shame, because those houses are worthlesss now, who wants to live at the bottom of a bath.

[xud]

If it rains too much - global warming
If it doesn't rain enough - global warming
If it is too windy - global warming
If it's too sunny (unlikely) - global warming
Big 4X4's - global warming

It's far too easy just blame every freak weather occurence on global warming.
Unfortunately, there's no getting away from it now beacuse:
a) All the politicians are on the bandwagon
b) there is money to be made from global warming.

It's all well and good doing your 'little bit' for the environment
but when you consider what effect (or good) it will do when countries like India, China and the USA are by far the hightest polluters.

Ok, so the Chinese are building one or two coal fired power stations every week. Can you blame them? They have an abundance of coal and a thriving coal industry (like we once had) It's their Industrial Revolution now, like the one we had 150 years ago. Did you hear about the Chinese complaining to us then?

Just out of interest, were the floods in 1947 caused by global warming???