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SuperKimi

Flooding

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After seeing the news 24 channel and bbc news website, i just wondered if any british members here have been badly effected by the recent weather. Being in the midlands, we had quite bad flooding a few weeks ago, but it seems to have gone south now, so we are okay now.

Any problems with flooding where you live?

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Yes, I hope no one's had too many problems involving the flooding I've heard about :)

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Wednesday is suppost to be bad. Heavy rain practically non-stop all day, all over the country

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The weather in England is just as bad in Ireland but no floods here! My Dad rang me yesterday & said that there was sojme tornado in the Irish sea beside this town called Rush & his gf lives there!!! She said that the rain fell, very, very heavily but it was actuall water from the beach slammed into a small town :blink::blink::blink: !

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I was heavily affected... bloody trains.

Heavy rain on Wednesday? Fecking 'ell I guess that's Friday's travelling made tricky too. Can all the Hamilton fans PLEASE stop crying, thank you.

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I was heavily affected... bloody trains.

Heavy rain on Wednesday? Fecking 'ell I guess that's Friday's travelling made tricky too. Can all the Hamilton fans PLEASE stop crying, thank you.

Lol, at least you take it with humour. I hope it stops raining there soon, it's been at it for a lot of time, right? Good luck with that ;)

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Rain? Flooding? Be serious. The all-knowing Al Gore says that shouldn't be happening. It's just your imagination.

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Rain? Flooding? Be serious. The all-knowing Al Gore says that shouldn't be happening. It's just your imagination.

You'd know wouldn't you, living in america? <_<

Wtaching BBC news 24, some pictures are horrific, poor animals, they won't know what is going on. Good to see them being rescued.

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You'd know wouldn't you, living in america? <_<

Wtaching BBC news 24, some pictures are horrific, poor animals, they won't know what is going on. Good to see them being rescued.

Indeed I would know. Americans know Al Gore far better than those of you abroad. We know him for the fool that he is. Now Mother Nature is proving him a fool to the rest of the world...interesting to see if any of you are taking note...

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Indeed I would know. Americans know Al Gore far better than those of you abroad. We know him for the fool that he is. Now Mother Nature is proving him a fool to the rest of the world...interesting to see if any of you are taking note...

That's just typical of Britain, isn't it? Global warming and we get colder and wetter.

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:lol: Yes it's funny! But seriously "global warming" can and probably will make some parts of the world cooler and some parts of the world wetter. This is actually totally consistent with the predictions. So perhaps "human-induced climate change" would be a better name for it, but it's not as catchy.

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:lol: Yes it's funny! But seriously "global warming" can and probably will make some parts of the world cooler and some parts of the world wetter. This is actually totally consistent with the predictions. So perhaps "human-induced climate change" would be a better name for it, but it's not as catchy.

Well if we keep building and concreting stuff over etc then flooding will get worse...

I'm sure the weather isn't that much worse than years ago, we've had a few good summers recently, but this year we had an early one.

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:lol: Yes it's funny! But seriously "global warming" can and probably will make some parts of the world cooler and some parts of the world wetter. This is actually totally consistent with the predictions. So perhaps "human-induced climate change" would be a better name for it, but it's not as catchy.

Yep, the theory is that the British Isles will get colder and many parts that are not much higher than sea level will get flooded. Or something like that.

Well if we keep building and concreting stuff over etc then flooding will get worse...

I'm sure the weather isn't that much worse than years ago, we've had a few good summers recently, but this year we had an early one.

Yes, I think it goes in cycles too, because there has nearly always been a colder, hotter, wetter, drier month in years gone by.

It is the problem, as you say, that all these new housing estates are built, but the drainage system is never upgraded to cope.

There will still be a hosepipe ban by mid August, though!

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Yes tbh I don't think anybody really knows what will happen, if anything. One theory which I've heard quite a lot of scientists endorse is that the Gulf Stream of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the UK may be affected by climate change because it depends on temperature differences between equatorial and polar regions.

I think it's a bit like the convection currents we get taught about in school where you heat one side of a beaker of water up more than the other, put a drop of some purple dye in the water and watch as the dye gets carried around the beaker! Basically hot water expands, becomes less dense, rises, and draws cooler water behind it. As the hot water rises it cools and gets drawn back round to its original location in a continuous cycle.

The main difference in ocean currents is that the concentration of salt can be another cause of a density difference, leading to convection currents in a similar way, except it means often the currents go the other way! As you can imagine trying to understand exactly what will happen is pretty hard!

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I still can't help but remember that in the 70's it was 'Global Cooling' that was supposed to do us in. Hogwash, the lot of it.

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I've heard about this before but never looked into it, so I just read up a bit on it. I'm glad I did - it's a great story and really shows how science progressed. I think the story of these controversies will make a great book one day. There's a really fascinating article on Wikipedia on Global Cooling, with lots of links. As this article suggests, there's a lot of misuse of information on this issue.

Firstly, there was no scientific consensus on human-influenced climate change in the 1970's, despite what you've probably heard on Fox news! Instead scientists were trying to understand the issue properly for the first time, and there was huge uncertainty and disagreement. For example, in 1975 the hugely prestigious US National Academy of Sciences published their report "Understanding Climate Change: A Program for Action". They conclude as follows. "We do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate. [... ] The climates of the earth have always been changing, and they will doubtless continue to do so in the future. How large these future changes will be, and where and how rapidly they will occur, we do not know. "

Secondly you have almost certainly been misled by the media because the very same year Newsweek published a dramatic article claiming "the evidence in support of these predictions [of global cooling] has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it"! Last year(!) they published a correction, with some qualifications. This should come as no surprise because the media always gets things wrong in science. I'm sure you notice these things in anthropology(?) articles. Wiki has another great example from the Washington Post on global cooling where they totally change the meaning of another report, this time by the US National Science Board (governing body of the NSF) in 1974.

It is true that there were warnings by some scientists of a possible cooling but these were perfectly reasonable at the time. Lets take the 1974 report above, which said as follows. "Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end ... leading into the next glacial age. However, it is possible, or even likely, that human interference has already altered the environment so much that the climatic pattern of the near future will follow a different path. . ." The Washington Post only quoted the first sentence, obviously changing the meaning completely. The second part is crucial and is precisely the bit which is now thought to cause global warming.

Another example of these warnings was a report in the journal Science in 1971 which discussed different types of pollution, some of which would cause global warming and some cooling. In the end they concluded that cooling was more likely in the short term, based on predictions of relative rates of pollution of the different chemicals, which clearly turned out to be wrong. However every scientist knew that it was just a best guess at that stage, not a prediction of imminent catastrophe. Taken together with the above quotes from the NAS and NSF, I think we can see that the scientific consensus in the early 1970's was one of caution, mixed with speculation and theorising.

Another fascinating thing from Wiki is the chance to look at the evidence as it appeared in the 1970's and how it looks now.

Anyway, thanks for the comments Mike! I really enjoyed learning a bit about the history of this area of science. As you probably know, you don't learn much about the history of science at uni, unless you're an historian rather than a scientist.

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Yep, the theory is that the British Isles will get colder and many parts that are not much higher than sea level will get flooded. Or something like that.

Yes, I think it goes in cycles too, because there has nearly always been a colder, hotter, wetter, drier month in years gone by.

It is the problem, as you say, that all these new housing estates are built, but the drainage system is never upgraded to cope.

There will still be a hosepipe ban by mid August, though!

Well, you guys are atleast so lucky to have early warning systems. Floods kill hundreds of lives here in India and goes unnoticed. Even when the concerned authorities know there is a chance of disaster, they don't even care to evacuvate people unless it is a city that is in danger. Two little kids were among the few dead when a dam gave way near my town a week back. I almost got into its (flood) when I was driving alone to the next town to get my car serviced. Thank God, my cellphone works! My cousin warned me not to try anything heroic by passing such places.

Yes, kay has pointed out one reason well. It is because of too many buildings and concrete floors. We are not letting the ground absorb the water, instead, the water is trying to find other ways. No drainage system wil be able to cope up with big floods.

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Wiki again has a good article. Orbital variations and atmospheric composition are important, but it's not well understood.

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if its true that all the ice is melting, then perhaps Britain will be under water at some point?

It is possible. Where is the world going to put 60 million pomes :D

Though from what ive heard the biggest problem in the near future will be Bangladesh which is very close to sea level and will be one of the first countries to go completely underwater. Where on earth are we going to put 150 million people?

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