UK News
Britain suffers continued flooding as Brown blames climate change
Jul 23, 2007, 13:39 GMT
A man takes to using a canoe for transport in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, west England, 23 July 2007, after heavy rain over the last few days caused severe flooding in the area. EPA/GEOFF CADDICK
London - Britain's already dramatic 'summer floods' were set to worsen this week as further rainfalls were forecast and the Environment Agency said the situation could reach crisis point in some areas of central and south-west England.
In Gloucestershire, in south-west Britain, up to 350,000 people were left without drinking water Monday after a treatment plant was flooded, the local authorities said.
Up to 250 tankers were despatched to supply drinking water to residents in and around the city of Gloucester, where the threat of dwindling water supplies had earlier sparked panic buying in supermarkets.
Local authorities said up to 350,000 people were affected by the floods in the Gloucestershire region, where 150,000 homes were without water and 43,000 residences were left without power.
Meanwhile, the Environment Agency warned that the situation could turn 'critical' with further rises in water levels expected on the rivers Thames and Severn.
Severe flood warnings also remained in place for the British Midlands, and the counties of Oxfordshire and Befordshire.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who visited Gloucester Monday, said funds to tackle the crisis would rise to 800 million pounds (1.6 billion dollars).
Responding to widespread criticism of inadequate flood defences, Brown said it was clear that existing structures needed to be reviewed.
Brown acknowledged that the floods that have been hitting various parts of Britain over the past month were related to climate change.
'Like every advanced industrialized country, we are coming to terms with the issues surrounding climate change,' said Brown.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
Politicians cannot keep blaming 'Global Warming'. It has been raining and flooding in this country for millions of years. The main problem is political though, 'THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY'. Also, why do we keep building by the rivers and then moaning when it floods.
If Brown wants to make a mark in world politics, he should start by emptying the majority of sponging foreigners who land on our doorstep. If they want to come in, they need to have something to offer, and if their families want to come, the same applies to them.
I'm sorry Gordon but ofcourse it's climate change everything to do with weather is down tot he climate, wether it's down to the human race that the climate is changing well, is a small way i'm sure that io true but perhaps most of it is just the natural erossion of our planet.
surely we all have a life span and the planet is no different as with ourselves we start to die from the moment we are born and evolution will continue to adapt us and the planet to deal with the changes in our climate.
Surely it is only natural that some lifeforms will die out whilst others are born and evolve. that is the way of life.
Why do we (Humans) try and play GOD and save everything or try and keep things the same. we are not now or ever will be big eneough to make a different to natural occurances and the circle of life..
As a resident of Gloucestershire I can state on behalf of myself and my neighbours that Gordon Brown's 'headline grabbing' photoshoot in Gloucestershire has been treated with utter contempt. The claptrap he then delivered back in Downing Street really leaves we Gloucestershire residents totally unmoved and unimpressed. He spent more time looking for a good photoshoot than on anything else.
Good to see that the Government and Gordon Brown are blaming climate change for the floods. So it has nothing to do with flood defences or building houses on flood plains. I guess the following fits in with the Government philosophy. www.demotivate.org/pages/posters/blame/blame.htm
check the records. this has not happned before. methinks there is nothing very natural abut this. ever heard of cloud seeding? wheather control? HAARP? wake up people you are being had. OTOH sleeeep you're probably not capable of doing anything to protect yourselves.
Along with the rats
I'm with you SIMON WARD I think we both should support the BNP.
And jackdaws
If you think the Open in Scotland was anywhere near the flooded areas, you must have a very strange atlas
I agree. the problem in this country is there are far to many people in it. Ie After before WW2 there were approx. 45 million people in UK, less than 70 years later over 60 million. More houses, schools, jobs, hospitals etc etc needed and where are they built? on land not fit for purpose.On thing this government should do is to stop promoting teenage pregnancies.This creates a huge demand for single adult households with kids. Everyone know's that the majority of so called single mothers have a partner living with them (unofficially of course) and this partner will already have a house elsewhere not being used. In such circumstances the SO CALLED single mother should not have been allocated a home in the first place.If the government changed the tax and benefit system in faviour of 2 adults living in a household together, there would suddenly be a huge decrease in single parent housholds and more houses for everyone else. Also we simply cannot keep taking people form other countries in, unless they are urgently required or at severe risk of torture being killed etc. It is simply not sustainable.
American world atlas showing small territories on fringe of USA
Thats like saying the flood was caused by water---oviously--climate not warming
1st - Okay, welcome to weather patterns, not global warming.
2nd - Stop moaning, just get on with it. Your alive are you not? Get your head down and sort your own problems and stop blaming government for not helping.
3rd - Why buy a house near or on a flood plain and not have adequate defenses and or insurance.
4th - ITS YOUR obligation to resolve your issues, not anybody else's. Stop moaning and people may have some sympathy.
5th - I hope that £800million is going on flood defenses and to help the truly needy. OAPs, the homeless etc. Not some idiot who forget to get insurance.
Harsh but fair I'm afraid, and if you want to condemn my comments. How many of you donated time and money to the Tsunami victims, the flood victims in Sudan, Mud slide victims in China, flood victims in Bangladesh, fire victims in Australia and the USA, I could keep going, but i think you get my point.
'On thing this government should do is to stop promoting teenage pregnancies.'
WOW - Amazing - tell us how they are doing this
AND ...
'the majority of so called single mothers have a partner living with them'
More details please.
AND
'there would suddenly be a huge decrease in single parent housholds and more houses for everyone else.'
Oh - I get it - you're just an idiot.
Houses - single parents
You ask me how teenage pregency is promoted. It is promoted through the tax & benefits system (the system is grossly unfair to 2 parent households)
Most people would agree there is a fraud on a massive scale regarding having a partner, it is just to easy. Sort out the unjust system and 2 parent households would increase at a massive rate and fraud would be reduced at the same time.
However please do not call me an idiot. This is my opinion only and you have yours which I respect. Thank You.
If we get rid of single parents we would have more room for immigrants wouldn;t we ? It must have been a socialist that wrote that.
This is not about single parents. It is about those who declare they are single parents and are not. It is about those who cheat the system. It is not about genuine single parents. It is about more and more homes needed as a result of such people officially declaring that they do not have a partner but actually do, therefore more and more houses on the face of it are required when in reality it is not as bad as made out (just high levels of dishonesty)
why does no one ever want to talk about working towards LOWERING the birthrate worldwide?
constant growth forever is not a sustainable policy. but it seems to be the one that all politicians and governments want to promote. 'we must grow, we must increase the tax base, we must have more more more jobs and growth'.
this planet is not infinitely expandable. are we going to keep growing and growing till we just ruin everything and we all die off?
This is how the little ice age started...We have been getting models of drought...standby there will be a global warming causes floods and rain study/model soon...Remember the Hurricanes?...Get your jackets ready, you been had again.
It's about immigrants and unwed mothers, and people who are too lazy to work or get flood insurance. How dare anyone suggest that it's about governments controlled by corporations that are only concerned with making profits. The earth is NOT a complex system, and we have NOT dramatically changed the atmosphere and water so drastically that it's about to change to a climate quite different than we evolved a fitness for. It’s ludicrous to suggest that the primitive technology of burning things for energy may have also provided the means to gain a global perspective, and we could have changed course. Changing course would have been too painful, it’s much easier to coast along until we pass the tipping point. We’re all as qualified to opine as the majority of those pinhead scientists who overwhelmingly say that we’ve destroyed the environment, and now it’s just a matter of damage control. England is a big Island. Let’s all fight the immigrants and unwed mothers for the crumbs until the floods come, and the Thames along with everything else we loved is just a memory.
You need to review your little ice age history, the plague, french revolution...Warming leads to prosperity,more food, people etc ...Cold leads to ?...
This is not the mini ice age.
That caused famine and revolution, and it was mini and natural. This is not natural, it will not be mini. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report didn’t include water rising based on melting of the polar caps.
Society will not bounce back and take advantage of this, because society is a system that depends on the natural system known as the world. We have steadily broken that host system, but have been sheltered from observing the effects, since all of our understanding is derived within the confines of society.
Evolution will not happen – man does not evolve physically, he attempts to adapt the environment to himself – it’s faster, and less painful (than dying off until a new species is evolved).
Major global climatological cataclysm will kill off the many of best people, because intellectuals are specialists, and society has deemed to feed them, but society will break down at breathtaking speed when the climate shifts. Intellectuals are generally not the vicious self-interested types who may get through the bottleneck. Man’s only hope would be to adapt as a species – change our behavior as a group. Won’t happen. Since this is only going to affect other people, and be good for society, I assume you have decades of food and water stores, and the means to defend them? Do you live on very-high ground, and have a plan for food production?
500 years is mini?...It started to rain and never let up...It is going to happen again and we can't fully explain it. The ice age will happen. Global warming leads to prosperity, food and a population explosion. Rain, snow and cold lead to what?...A worse scenario than warming. Get your jackets ready...you missed the boat.
Brown blames global warming for all our wet weather and many people are sceptical about this, but the rainfall we are experiancing was predicted several years ago as a consequence of global warming. Whether you believe this or not it is up to the individual, but one thing I will point out is that our new prime minister although obviously convinced that global warming exists and is begining to effect us all but fails to comprehend that mass immigration will only make things worse. The last thing you want in a world faced with an uncertain future is an overpopulated island.
There is a roumour that half the worlds oil deposits have already been used and grain prices tell us that we can no longer rely on a consistant flow of cheap food. The world has not produced enough food [grain] to meet demand for 7 out of the last 8 years and grain stocks are very low.
It is obvious that we are not immune from the effects of global warming but we are also not immune from the fact that there are 6.6 billion human beings on this planet and they are rapidly expanding at about 75 million each year.
STOP IMMIGRATION NOW and repatriate anyone who should not be here. Or suffer the consequenses.
Ahhh..perhaps we are on the same page and didn’t understand each other. Global Warming is causing Global Climate Change. An ice age in Europe -- a desert wasteland in Africa. The living earth has a fever, and needs to slow it’s metabolism (the Deep Ocean Conveyor Belt). Yes, 500 years is quite short in geologic time, and I think we are in for something much bigger. There has not been this much carbon in the atmosphere for MILLIONS of years. My main point is, that society will break down because we are going to have a major climate shift, and most of the assumptions that spawned and supported our society are going to change. Going back to the land won’t be an option either, because the conditions necessary for food production will be gone, and hunting will fail quickly, because large mammals will die off, or be hunted to extinction by a starving populace.
I laugh at the government stating it could cost 2 billion pounds in flood damage costs. This is nothing however to the 9 billion pounds it has cost the taxpayer in overpayment, mis-management and massive fraud of the Tax Credit System.
Iceland's population fell to half its previous numbers during the Little Ice Age. Numerous crop failures in Scotland and Norway are also attributed to this cooling. Before the Industrial Revolution, 'Agriculture in Europe was profoundly marginal -- farmers literally lived from one harvest to the next,' 'In May of 1315, after the planting of the harvest, it started to rain. And it kept raining. The crops failed, and people started eating seed from the next harvest.' The famine of 1315 killed more than 1.5 million people.
snapshots of human suffering caused in part by the Little Ice Age: the Irish Potato Famine of 1847, shipwrecks in Scotland in July of 1596, punishing gales on the southeast coast of Ireland in July of 1695, the Paris bread riots in 1780.
Bigger like a real ice age, they last 10,000 years historically or maybe a meteor or asteroid?
NUMPTIES.
My son Adam has the waters lapping at his front door .He lives in Church Street, Tewkesbury,...YES ...right in the middle of the Flood.
Theres no fresh drinking water. He filled up his bath and all containers and after spending most of last night with other 70+ locals, spent the whole day sandbagging.
They may have saved 13th Century Tewkesbury Abbey from major damage to the ancient artifacts painted and built into it.(Well done all)
At least they goy a free curry which seems cosideribley more than the government supplied ,despite theie emerngencey plan.
The latest is that the waters are level but further rain,which has now flooded the cellars of the ancient 13th c Bell Inn, may finally overcome the medieval part of this ancient town.
Unfortunately many of the ancient oak timber built houses and dwellings (14th-181c), of this most undiscovered quietest delightful backwater Town.
'Tewkesbury
Many walls are built in part of Wattle.
Wattle is an ancient way of building made from clay ,dung and straw plaster,
no matter if their 400-700yr old town can do
we will stand.
Simon Ward, you are so right
England is no longer the place where I was raised, we have too many people coming to the UK to sponge on the state that was created by my parents, grand parents etc. Two World wars we were told would keep England for ever England. What have we now, a Country full of spongers and people that could care less about what England stands for, all they want is to free load on our families hard work putting in place a Country that we could all be proud of. We have had to build far to many houses in places that we should have left to nature and for us to enjoy. Send them back to where they came from and leave England to the people who built it and stop this crazy building program that we as British people have no need for. Stop building on 'green belt lands' or in fact any lands that we know are unsafe because they flood, or are in places of outstanding natural beauty etc. We have far too many people coming to the UK demanding housing which we haver no room to build them. How many people are leaving the UK each year? I can sure see the reason. Oh how i would love to live in the Englkand that I grew up in in small cuomunities where people could speak to and know their neighbours.
Stop the stupid building and the rat race
Regrets and melancholy for bygone days are not fertile thoughts to build a better future I am afraid .Blaming the floods on immigration is even more grotesque .All investigations conclude the same;global warming is largely to blame for the heavy rainfalls as more water evaporates from the oceans .Great Brittain is the unlucky recipient for it while the bulk of Beurope is suffering from yet another heathwave .
The present flooding in Enhland is probably the worst in a few decades .Also blaming the victims for living in a flood area is is cruel .For thousands of years the riverbanks were the first places colonised for human habitation .It is the excessive rains that are new in this equation .I fear blaming the victims is just the first step in distorted minds unwilling to stare at the first consequences of global warming,just another vain attempt to continue ignoring the problem .
Re- Tonny from Belgium.
You are missing the point. More people in the UK means more houses. More hoses means more roofs drives and patios. On roofs drives and patios the water drains off and rapidly reaches the rivers quickly. On open fields the rain soaks into the fields and is slowly released.
Global warming means crop failures and a shortage of arable land and high food price seven when it is available. A densly populated country with a reliance on imported food puts itself at risk. Don't criticise people for remembering the past, criticise yourself for not looking at the future.
To fake tonni not from belgium, the last flooding rains were during the little ige age...get of msnbc and get the facts...quite believeing everything bush and gore tell you...use your mind...
The tiny country of Tuvalu is not cooperating with global warming models. In the early 1990s, scientists warned that the Pacific coral atoll of nine islands - only 12 feet above sea level at its highest point - would vanish within decades, swamped by rising seas. Sea levels were supposedly rising at the rate of 1.5 inches per year.
However, new measurements show that sea levels have fallen 2.5 inches since that time. Similar sea-level declines have been recorded in Nauru and the Solomon Islands.
Sea levels are very difficult to measure because land also tends to rise and fall. Volcanic islands are very good at doing this so sea level mesurements from them are only local and relative. The best data that can be gained from satelite and satelite data tells us that sea levels worldwide rose 1 inch from 1945-95. They then rose another inch from 1995-2005. Currently they are rising at 1 inch every 7 years.
The more different we think we are from the rest of the world the more we are the same. Every generation since 1900 has told the story of the good old days. Now I hear it in the UK and from Europe--not just the US.
We as humans everywhere have been fooled by our respective governments to believe they know best and will take care of us.
We must realize this as a way to gain taxes and power over us and reclaim the power to the people. It is true many things in our youth and the youth of our parents and grandparents were much better than now.
Why is this?? Families stayed in the same area generation after generation--had pride in the area--supported each other, and their neighbors.
In this modern age a family with only 1 wage earner can not survive--it takes both and families are broken apart in order to keep both parents employed. People are forced to move away from family and structure. Take away the family and you take away the morals, proper up bringing for kids(they baby sit themselves instead of the grandparents doing it)Neighbors today seldom know each other, compared to the past where they knew every member of your family for generations, and had made emotional commitments
We must realize this as a way to gain taxes and power over us,we need to reclaim the power to the people.
Problem is the posters on here want these same governments to takke
action ie:tax you , into compliance with the global warming hoaxAs we get colder it will be interesting to see what these terror deniers do.
First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.
Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).
Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that Earth's current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades.
Scientists who probed two kilometers (1.2 miles) through a Greenland glacier to recover the oldest plant DNA on record said Thursday the planet was far warmer hundreds of thousands of years ago than is generally believed.
DNA of trees, plants and insects including butterflies and spiders from beneath the southern Greenland glacier was estimated to date to 450,000 to 900,000 years ago, according to the remnants retrieved from this long-vanished boreal forest.
That contrasts sharply with the prevailing view that a lush forest of this kind could only have existed in Greenland as recently as 2.4 million years ago, according to a summary of the study, which is published Thursday in the journal Science.
The samples suggest the temperature probably reached 10 degrees C (50 degrees Fahrenheit) in the summer and -17 C (1 F) in the winter.
They also indicated that during the last period between ice ages, 116,000-130,000 years ago, when temperatures were on average 5 C (9 F) higher than now, the glaciers on Greenland did not completely melt away.
'These findings allow us to make a more accurate environmental reconstruction of the time period from which these samples were taken,' said Martin Sharp, a glaciologist at the University of Alberta, Canada, and a co-author of the paper.
'What we've learned is that this part of the world was significantly warmer than most people thought.'
May 2007 will go to history as one of the coldest starts to climatic winter ever observed in South America. A brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow and major energy disruption. The death toll for the 10-day cold wave was the highest for any single weather event in Argentina in recent history.
Since all cold weather reports are old oil spin, thought I would throw one in:AN UNUSUAL cold snap in Italy has knocked out cellular telephone
links, killed homeless people near St Peter's Square and, to the
population's growing alarm, caused mysterious ice blocks to tumble
from the sky.
Experts have been puzzling over the chunks of ice since since last
weekend, when the first blocks crashed on to a school in the northern
city of Padua.
On Tuesday a man in Ancona had a narrow escape when a block weighing
3.3lb landed on his head as he walked to work. Massimo Giunchi, 24,
suffered only minor injuries because he was wearing two hats to
protect himself from the cold.
In Marino in the Alban Hills, south of Rome, the groundkeeper of a
golf club discovered an ice block said to have weighed 11lb as he was
making his early-morning rounds. Just before midday in Milan, a
'pumpkin-sized' ice chunk crashed on to a street.
Rome's city council and the Vatican have earmarked special funds for
the homeless after the deaths of seven people living rough in the
capital since the Pope declared 2000 a special Holy Year to mark the
advent of the third Christian millennium. The victims included a
devout Austrian Roman Catholic woman, who died close to St
Peter's Square.
The owners of mobile telephone handsets were told not to leave them in
cars or outdoors as the freezing temperatures could damage the liquid
crystals in their displays.
Record temperatures were registered around the peninsula including
-27C in Livigno in the Sondrio province of Lombardy, -17C in Umbria
and -23C in the Abruzzo ski resort of Ovindoli. Reports from the
Vatican said that it was the coldest weather in Rome for 200
years.
While much of Europe seems to have been stuck in a depression for weeks on end now, summer 2007 is surely going to go down in history as one of the coldest on record. Currently above 3000m, you would be forgiven for thinking that Christmas was just around the corner! Last week in the Mont Blanc region alone, nearly 70cms of new snow fell around 4000m and another 30-40cms has come down since Sunday. As a result, all this new snow is creating a very unstable snow pack at altitude and many of the rescue call outs in recent days have been resulting from avalanches rather than rockfalls.
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British OpenJul 23rd, 2007 - 14:33:33
was spectacular even though it rained some. Those guys are really good.
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