With the events in Boscastle yesterday can anyone still deny climate change is well underway?
Last Monday every fire crew in the Notts and Lincs area were scrambled to deal with floods. 60 seperate floods in Newark alone.
And has anyne else noticed that the leaves are already turning on some trees (horse chestnuts mainly)
Is climate change a natural cycle or have we shafted planet earth.
Any meteorologists care to discuss.

John

Mark Allanson... is it Ok where you are?

look at this picture for a clue as to why it might have flooded....

The village has been built in a friggin river valley!!!!


save the world, chop up your unnecessary 'for fun only' locost now




When I was at school, (it was only the week or two mind) I was taught that 20,000 years ago it was the ice age. Suppose it was all those mammoths farting that caused the damage.

I was also taught that 400 years ago the thames used to freeze over. Where were all the planes, cars, factories etc then to stop it 400 years ago.

I think people underestimate the NATURAL changes the earth goes through anyway. Im not saying that global warming doesnt exist, just that perhaps its a bit overplayed.

A few months aog I saw a program on tv that said about 500ad there was a huge climate change in the whole world as a volcano blew up in the south of asia. several hundred species died out and the world was pretty much darker for a couple of years.

52 years ago, lynmouth in devon flooded and 34 people died.

200 years ago massive storms hit the anglian coast and hundreds died.

50 years ago, a tornado.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/21/newsid_2966000/2966457.stm


killer volcanoes in iceland..... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3745749.stm



stuff happens that you cant control.



atb

steve



[Edited on 17/8/04 by stephen_gusterson]
Rescued attachment Boscastle.jpg

i think iits down 2, 2 things, the 1st is that there are more ppl, living in areas which normally flood, and the second, is that the earth goes though cycles of which there is high co2 and bad weather, and i think we r just going through of them. but where we live, we have had rain every 34 days expet for 2 days and we r in the middle of sumer but this time last year we had a heat wave

Lynmouth in Devon got wiped out by a very similar flood in 1952-53 (roughly), so it's not a new thing by any means.

Many people killed that time...

David

sposed to get the remains of huricane charlie tommorow,a lot of the prob is every where has been tarmaced/concreted over so the rain cant sink in so flows to the lowest point and the drains dont get cleaned anymore

Good job Prescott is so worried about the flooding that he's allowing 400,000 houses to be built in the south east then

That'll help

Just spent a week in the south of france. Every 100 years or so they get a flood down the Ardeche. It raises the river by 9 (yep, 9) metres.

No one complains about global warming, they just looked back at the records, realised it was every hundred years and swore a bit.

They just showed pictures of it on the morning news, Showed a military helo plucking folks out of the water...looked bad.

David

it says on the bbc news site that water streaked down the steep streets of boscastle........... in the piccy its all flat!


I think the water streaked where it should have - down the course of the river valley. Its just that someone seems to have stuck houses there!


use google images for more pics of the place.

atb

steve

Talk about bad weather anyone heard from ALAN B

building contractors used to approach the planning department for permission to convert land into housing developments. The organisation who is responsible for saying yes or no to these property developers/contractors used to ask the Environment agency for advice on flood risk etc.


If the Agency said it was a high flood risk area it had absolutely no bearing on their decision to let it be build upon or not. They were just paying lip service to the procedures.

NOW though if the agency says it is a flood risk then they HAVE to put that into the equation. Reason being its costing milions and millions of pounds to protect the existing properties from flood damage and they dont want to put any more properties in the way and increase the flood protection costs moreso.

In Bridgnorth shropshire about 5 years ago they knowked down a small garden centre by the river which used to flood at least once a year. in its place they built contained flats for dissabled elderly folk. The town were up in arms about it because even as it was being built they had to stop work on the first floor because it was all flooded out - where do people get these stupid ideas from.

If it wasnt bad enough to convert it into dwellings WTF are they doing earmarking it for elderly infirm folks who will definately NOT be able to rescue themselves from it even in minor flooding thus putting even more strain on the local emergency services - ferkin idiots i say

I feel more sorry for the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the hurricane in florida last week who can't afford the insurance and have lost everything. It's not quite to easy to move out of a whole state as it is to move off the flood plain.


As for global warming and climate change, the scientific community is swaying towards believing it's all part of a natural cycle. Governments don't seem to be listening to that though. I'm all for reducing polution but I think motorists get a bad press as cars get cleaner and more efficient all the time and their's no hard evidence to say that cars are heating up the planet.

There must be global warming - otherwise, as Steve has pointed out, we would still be living in the ice age.

I agree that there are many things about the way we live which must be altering the climate, but history shows the world is warming up and has been for a long time.

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Originally posted by mangogrooveworkshop
Talk about bad weather anyone heard from ALAN B

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Predictable views from a bunch of 'petrolheads' One that I share also. From reading and listening to non sensationalist TV/radio programs it seems to be a natural cycle as the planet swings around its axis.
However the pollution we have pumped out in the last 100 years is undeniable. The impact of this is harder to ascertain. Personally I feel it must be contributing to and accelerating any natural climate shift.

John

The biggest threat to life on earth is the removal of trees and mass deforestation in rainforests.

An average Beech tree produces enough Oxygen for 45 people but we seem to cut them down as soon as a housing estate or toll road is required.

I may come across as a bit of a tree hugger, but I think its important thats all. Cars I don't believe are the evil that governments say they are, its the extraction and transportation of crude that causes big problems environmentally.

Just my 2p

Cheers

Mark

It seems clear to me man has an impact on the environment and weather. Whether - no pun intended - warming is caused by us or not I think we should moderate our impact, since the consequences can be so severe. Ignoring our contribution seems foolhardy and selfish, so I try to do my part.

I think it is part of a natural cycle of weather change paterns, but, they are happening unaturally fast. With all the crap we are dumping into the air (yes I love my fume spewing cars) how can anyone say that it wasnt our own doing. Just look at the ozone layer and the big hole we opened in it.

The ozone layer also proves my point. Back in the 80's scientists were saying that it would take hundreds of years for the ozone layer to fix itself, butin a mere 15 years since 80s ended the ozone layer is well on it's way to being near full capacity. I saw it on a tv show, something like 80% of its estimated strength has returned, not sure but it was a good number. And thats just from teen drama queens not being able to have hair that is rock hard.

Like I said I dont think we are the cause of the problem, but we definatly gave it a nice size nudge.

I herd somewhere that air transport was the big problem making cars seem insignificant in terms of pollution. Its also dumped at high altitude which can't be good

I agree we should do what we can to reduce the negaitve impact we may cause, but also think things happen which man has no influence over.

I do wish that some of the real tree huggers would stop worrying abuot cars quite so much though as they are not as much of a problem as many think - it is industry which is the real polluter. After all, half the pollution a car creates in it's life is caused during it's manufacture - just don't know how this relates to a Locost though We recycle bits so saving new being made, but then make a car all over again!

for a month they would not kick out as much crap as a 747 crossing the Atlantic taking people to Disneyland so they can moan about how bad it was when they get back. Cut down on aircraft pollution and I might have a bit of sympathy for Govt. policymakers. Give people longer holidays and let them go by boat. The aircraft are up there in the bloody ozone layer so they can't be doing it any good.

I can't remember where I heard it, but some "authority" said that more energy is consumed in the making of a car than is ever used during its working lifetime.

This includes all the steel & aluminium refining, rubber and plastic production, shipping all the raw materials & parts around, and so on.

And what are the car producers doing at the moment? Over-producing so much that they have to sell off new cars at below production cost!

It's a crazy world!

rgds,

David

[Edited on 17/8/04 by David Jenkins]

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Originally posted by spunky
With the events in Boscastle yesterday can anyone still deny climate change is well underway?
Last Monday every fire crew in the Notts and Lincs area were scrambled to deal with floods. 60 seperate floods in Newark alone.
And has anyne else noticed that the leaves are already turning on some trees (horse chestnuts mainly)
Is climate change a natural cycle or have we shafted planet earth.
Any meteorologists care to discuss.

John

Mark Allanson... is it Ok where you are?

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have you got a boat to get to the cars washed out too sea mark?

I am going to build a Locost dingy in case the rain keeps up.

I watched an interesting program on Sky about the last ice age and the amazon forrest, apparently it hold's 90% (or something like that) of the world carbon, locked up in all them tree's and then one day it just thought bugger this and dumped it all back into the air, resulting in instant Iceage (ok over several hundred years).

A couple of rather brainy (but boring) guy's worked out that if there was something like 10 inches less rain over the amazon each year the same thing could happen, rather quickly.

That's not really a problem cause in 3056 a rather large asteroid is supposed to wipe out the earth, and in several million years the sun's gonna run out of energy and expand to 30000000 time's it's size and evaporate us. Nice

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That's not really a problem cause in 3056 a rather large asteroid is supposed to wipe out the earth

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