Britain's Rivers to Run Dry?

[Anderoo]

Very good post, Richard.

 

How anyone can still believe that either (1) climate change isn't real, or (2) climate change is real but it isn't our fault, is quite amazing to me. Scientists aren't people who live in the spires of Oxford drinking fine claret, laughing and pointing at the rest of us, and believe it or not, not everything in the world is designed to rob us via taxes.

 

It IS real.

 

It IS happening.

 

We CAN make changes to help.

 

The right-wing media has (as always) a lot to answer for. What hope is there if even anglers - who are supposed to be conservationists at heart - won't accept it?

 

Or is it another case of choosing not to believe it because it might cost money - like the annual moaning about rod licences? Anyone here belong to the ACA?

[gozzer]

I do believe it's happening, but I don't know the extent of man's role in it.

Most reports say that all we can do is slow it down a bit. I've not read anywhere where it says we can prevent it.

So if we can't prevent it, what do we do? Try and slow it down in the hope that some future 'miracle' discovery will reverse it?

When I read predictions like the article in question, then read things like,

 

Britain's rivers could run dryFlows in Severn and Mersey might drop by up to 80 per cent by 2050, experts warnDavid Smith The Observer, Sunday October 5 2008 Article historyBritain's rivers could nearly run dry because long hot summers caused by climate change will not be sufficiently compensated by wetter winters, researchers predict. It is a scenario that would endanger wildlife and send household water bills soaring.

 

Flows in the Mersey and Severn are likely to be reduced in summer by up to 80 per cent by 2050, according to a study by the Environment Agency. The Thames's flow is likely to decline by up to 50 per cent during the same period.

 

It had been hoped that, as global warming leads to more extreme seasons, summer droughts would be offset by an increase in winter rainfall. However, while wetter winters are expected, they will not be damp enough to make up for the lack of rain during the hotter summers.

 

The news might come as a surprise to people in towns such as Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, who have suffered flooding due to extraordinary downpours during the past two summers. But the agency claims that, while such extremes are a hallmark of climate change and wet summers will still occur, the overall average trend is towards drastically reduced river flows across the country.

 

Ian Barker, head of water resources at the Environment Agency, said yesterday: 'For a long time, we've known climate change would result in wetter winters, which would increase winter flows in rivers, and that it would also result in drier summers.

 

'The received wisdom was that the two would balance each other out and overall we'd end up with the same amount of water, just distributed differently throughout the year.

 

'But we wanted to understand how much extra rainfall we might get in winter, and how much less rainfall we might get in summer. The net effect is that overall, although winter rainfall might increase by 10 per cent, the period of higher river flows is reduced, so it's perhaps only December, January, February, maybe into March. The period when you'd see lower river flows because the rainfall is significantly less would extend from April right through to November in some parts of the country.' Barker warned: 'Overall, it means that, by the 2050s, there's a net reduction in the amount of water resources available for water companies to pump out of rivers, farmers to use for irrigation and also to support wildlife in rivers.

 

'If you get reduced flows, in summer the temperature of the water will increase, there's less water to dilute pollution, and that will also affect what is in our rivers.'

 

The research used climate projections from the UK Climate Impacts Programme and shows that by 2050 river flows in winter may rise by 10 to 15 per cent in England and Wales. But river flows in late summer and early autumn could fall by as much as 80 per cent in some places. These patterns would result in a drop in total annual river flow of up to 15 per cent.

 

But Professor Stuart Lane, executive director of the Institute of Hazard and Risk Research at Durham University, issued two caveats. 'First, something that's quite clear in the IPCC [intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report issued last year is that our ability to forecast rainfall precipitation is particularly poor when compared with our ability to predict temperature,' he said.

 

'Second, these kind of average figures often overlook what most people will experience - indeed, a lot of people find it very difficult to relate to predictions like these because we will always have both wet summers and dry summers, and wet summers are actually quite normal.

 

'What that means is these are average changes and it's quite possible that the kind of drought scenarios that are being talked about here could be much worse or not as bad on a year-to-year basis.'

As they say it's likely to happen if x event leads to y conditions.

 

If this predicted scenario is going to happen, I can't see how the whole world is going to change enough to make a difference in the next 10-20yrs, so if it's going to happen anyway. All I think we can do is get prepared for it.

 

As for so called 'Green Taxation' all that means is 'you can pollute as much as you like, so long as you've got the money'.

 

John.

Edited October 6, 2008 by gozzer

[Peter M]

Global warming is happening? Yes, is mankind having a significant impact on speeding that up? Well most leading climate scientists say that the jury is out on that one; sure there is much speculation and a lot of bad science, misrepresentation and the like but not what you would call gold standard evidence.

 

Is our cutting back on global emissions A) possible or even going to make any difference? Now the scientists really don’t know the answer to that question and are strangely quiet on the question.

 

What are the effects of these changes in global temperature? Well they don’t know that either. Al gore put in his film an “inconvenient truth” that there are a number of natural phenomena (floods, hurricanes and the like) and said this was caused by global warming and yet a high court said that there were so many factual errors in the film it can’t be shown in schools in this country. Most leading climate scientists distance themselves from Al Gore as he is seen as a bit of an embarrassment.

 

I will leave you with these quotes as they seem to sum up my view of the debate.

 

Dr. Richard Lindzen--Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T., member, the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, says global warming alarmists "are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right."

 

Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov--head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science's Pulkovo Observatory and of the International Space Station's Astrometria project says "the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."

 

Dr. Richard Tol--Principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University, calls the most influential global warming report of all time "preposterous . . . alarmist and incompetent."

[Anderoo]

Yes, it's working with the best science we have available. Nothing guarenteed. It doesn't actually matter whether we caused it or not really, we're in a position to slow it. We have responsibilities.

 

If my car seems a bit different, I'll take it to the garage. If a mechanic tells me there's something wrong based on empirical evidence, I have to believe him. I'm not a mechanic. I'm also not a scientist specialising in climate change, and I'm willing to bet nobody else here is either!

 

This isn't the same as blindly trusing people in 'power'. The media (especially right-wing) has got us to a point where we're conditioned to immediately reject anything from somebody in authority. This does us no good at all. I know a bloke who's an archeaologist at Oxford University (and as a 6' skinhead with a Bradford accent, he's probably not who you immediately pictured!). He spends his time reseaching climate change. He's explained to me in far too much detail for me to follow (I'm not a scientist) how it's happening and why it's happening. Rather than simplistically believing that these people are in the pockets of a government who's only intention is to tax us into poverty, personally I thank god they're doing their job and doing their best to get us all out of a very serious future problem.

 

Believe what you like, of course, but it's not as simple as some would have you believe.

[chesters1]

enjoy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

 

note the words "after the medieval warm period"

 

it matters not if were now hotter history shows after it it will get colder again ,man cannot change nature only prepare for its more nasty side effects nor can we stop natures cycles just as we cannot wave a magic wand and stop the rain!

 

dont take any notice of gores crap his bit of ice he got so excited about breaking off the ice cap "the size of rhode island" if taken in perspective is tiny and completely ignores the increase of ice on the opposite side of the ice cap

 

why is greenland called greenland? our distant ancestors were not colour blind perhaps as indeed the south pole was much further back ice free

perhaps it was eeerrrr green

 

a quote from wiki

"Main article: History of Greenland

 

In prehistoric times, Greenland was home to a number of Paleo-Eskimo cultures. From AD 984 it was colonized by Norwegian settlers in two settlements on the west coast on the fjords near the very southwestern tip of the island. They thrived for a few centuries, but disappeared sometime in the 15th century.[4]"

 

perhaps this "disapearence" occured to the little ice age i mentioned earlier ,when greenland became covered in ice and thus to cold for the dwellers so they went back home!

 

the medieval ice age wasnt just a british phenomena it was world wide ,huge floods in egypt and the rest of the world followed by famines ,"global warming" is historical and as now stated by statistics (showing a speed up) it happens very fast (instantly by the earths timeline) but has nothing to do with man nor can man stop it if we went back to living in caves today it would still come just as its come and went myriad times before just as it did when we did live in caves.

our biggest responsibility is to replant the trees in the now depleted rain forest where carbon is locked up that at least would help restore natures natural balance ,but as natures has no qualms destroying life then rebuilding the planet it wouldnt really matter if we didnt ,we may go all the animals may go followed by the fauna but this as well has happened several times in the past as well not by man and his use of oil just a natural cycle of the earth.

Edited October 6, 2008 by chesters1

[gozzer]

Andrew, how are we in a position to slow it?

It's a global issue, so it needs all the countries of the world to come together and fight it.

Judging by past and present cooperation between countries, can you see this as a possibility?

Just a small part of the world doing it, will make little or no difference, to the predicted events, apart from a feeling of 'well, we did our bit'.

 

As I've said before, I think of the world as like a big dog, and every now and again it has a good scratch to get rid of some of the parasites that live on it.

This just might be a bigger scratch than usual.

No matter how science tries, I don't see it beating nature.

Man's reluctance or inability to live with nature will eventually lead to his downfall.

So far we have been able to adapt our surroundings to suit us. Now maybe it's time we learned to adapt to our surroundings.

 

John.

[Anderoo]

Yes, it is a global issue. Some countries therefore have to take the lead and lead by example. Individually any difference we make is virtually insignificant, it's the spirit and committment behind it that counts. No-one's suggesting there's a quick fix.

 

Would all the doubters here recycle if their councils didn't make them? Too much effort?

[corydoras]

Yes, it is a global issue. Some countries therefore have to take the lead and lead by example. Individually any difference we make is virtually insignificant, it's the spirit and committment behind it that counts. No-one's suggesting there's a quick fix.

 

Would all the doubters here recycle if their councils didn't make them? Too much effort?

I think a lot of the doubters think that the financial cost of doing nothing is zero!

[chesters1]

Yes, it is a global issue. Some countries therefore have to take the lead and lead by example. Individually any difference we make is virtually insignificant, it's the spirit and committment behind it that counts. No-one's suggesting there's a quick fix.

 

Would all the doubters here recycle if their councils didn't make them? Too much effort?

 

what the hell has recycling got to do with anything?

if you think trundling your ali cans in lorries to wales ,your plastic to germany and your paper to kent then recycling them harms the planet less than chucking them in the ground your very mistaken

just how many lorries are trundling about burning fuel to wales are there 3 ? 4 no theres thousands going there with ali then returning empty ,then theres the fuel spent remelting them ,where does the waste go? into landfill in a far more concentrated form than it ever would before

paper recycling is a highly fuel using way of getting paper not to mention the toxic chemicals needed to remove the old print then make it white again and where do you think the by products go space? no landfill or storage

 

some people are easily fooled into the recycling way of life before looking a bit harder into the realities of it

 

and if you think sending containers full of rubbish abroad is "recycling" when they arrive in china or asia do you think they are going to extract the needed bits ethically or safely ,nope ! it may look good here with less waste but if we handled it as they did we might as well burn the lot in a pile here saving fuel costs taking the container to th e ports.

 

just how many millions of gallons of fuel are burnt picking up your "recyclables" then taking them to your local recycling depot then into lorries to the recycling plants etc? far cleaner just to take them up the road to a landfill site!!

recycling is a con ,it shows only the good sides never the far more poluting parts doing it ,money is in recycling remember

 

cars in a local scrappies no longer get stripped for resale the whole car is crushed and shipped to china ,how can technology seperate plastic from copper from iron and steel fom a conpressed lump of car ????? they burn them getting rid of the plastic causing pollution ,your recycling frenzy actually does more harm than good and thats not even mentioning the fuel burn getting those cubes to the other side of the planet!

Edited October 6, 2008 by chesters1

[Anderoo]

Well, I'm convinced!