Oh well. I suppose we have drifted off-topic then. No doubt @El Toro can chop out all the global warming stuff and stick it in a more suitable thread in the Lounge. If anyone cares.
it's not the only thing i have sussed out recently loz, :Angelic::smileys: right. thats a totally bogin exhaust on that 959.
There was a major flood in 2005 which triggered the building of the flood defences in Carlisle, Cockermouth and Keswick designed to withstand a 100 or 250 year event (I have heard both figures quoted) which were obviously not built tall enough. Some years back there was a not quite so severe event and the defences held. Maybe a too optimistic model was used to determine the design height of the flood defences, maybe and extra meter of height would have made the difference, maybe that extra meter would have doubled the cost, who knows ? The flooding was due to heavy rain falling upon already saturated ground, coupled with this improvements to drainage reduces the transit time of water through the catchment and increases the peak flow. I don't think that flooding in itself is proof of anything. The weather pattern for most of this year has had the jet stream further south than it ordinarily would have been which has produced the wet and windy weather we have seen. It could well be as a result of climate change or the the chaotic nature of the atmosphere,it's more likely a combination of both.
Slight muddle there I think, @gliddofglood . Surely Euro 1-2-3-4-5-6 standards have nothing to do with CO2 emissions, or climate change. These standards are about air quality, and the effects of harmful substances in the air upon the health of people breathing it. Historically exhaust gases have contained lead, sulphur, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and carbon particulates (among other things). There has been a sustained worldwide effort for decades now to eliminate, or at least minimise, all of those contaminants. There is good evidence that many of them have seriously harmed the health of billions of people. There has been a great deal of progress, although the process is not simple or cheap. Cars, trucks, buses, trains and ships are all at various stages, and it would be unrealistic to imagine that motorbikes could be exempt.
There are over 20 million dwellings in the UK, and in an average year roughly 20,000 of them are flooded to some degree, which is 0.1%. Most of those are flooded to a depth of only a few inches, and often the same ones are flooded repeatedly. Each time thousands of houses somewhere are flooded this is, of course, bad news for the inhabitants, but it is not by any means unprecedented. More curious is that way that builders keep on building new houses on low-lying ground near to rivers, and they choose to build them with the ground floor set at a low level. Buyers keep on buying them. Then they seem to be surprised when, after a few years, they get flooded out. Amazing.
A little out of context....but not maliciously I'm sure. that the current rate of unprecedented climate change.... Only volcanic eruptions have caused such rapid rate of change, but that was over a much shorter period (just a few years). But may be you deny that there is a rapid change at the moment?
The lovely riverside house in the middle of the first picture I posted was built a few years ago on the site of an old wooden building that was bought and knocked down. The total cost would have been quite high for what was a holiday home yet the inevitability of this event just didn't register with whoever built that house, or maybe they didn't care.
Flat land is much cheaper to build on and is cheaper than land with a good view (on a hill). Exception to the rule is riverside properties.
Now, had you written "the current unprecedented rate of climate change" I can't see that there would have been anything much to complain about. It's the rate of change that is alarming, not the fact that there is change.
I took this photo when visiting my parents this year. Nice-looking houses on the Thames. Unfortunately, last winter they were nice-looking houses in the Thames. I can't help feeling that this will be a frequent occurrence. You can see that the water level doesn't have to rise a whole heap to flood them out. But you can also see that they are old dwellings. They would have been abandoned years ago if they had constantly been flooded out. They might not even have been built.
Our climate is changing, some of that change is probably due to human activity increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but I don't see any rapid or even significant change over my lifetime. Desertification has been an ongoing process for centuries. It is the increasing demand for resources that is a much more significant problem. Here are two articles on water which have absolutely nothing to do with climate change. Saudi Hay Farm In Arizona Tests State's Supply Of Groundwater : The Salt : NPR Saudi Wells Running Dry — of Water — Spell End of Desert Wheat - Bloomberg Business
I have read that Rolf Harris owns a house beside the Thames - though he is unable to live there at the moment. The lower floor is usable only for rough storage, gardening items, etc. because of the possibility of occasional flooding. The upper floors are luxuriously furnished and never flood. This seems a reasonable arrangement, and is rather like houses in places like Amsterdam and Venice. Floods cause only minimal damage, and householders don't moan too much about them.
