Britain's Rivers to Run Dry?

[chesters1]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/sep...vironment.china ,not a gaurdian reader it was the first amoungst many in the search ,how can that be planet friendly?

remember china doesnt need to follow EU or anyone elses recycling guidelines they just do it the way they want and bugger the consequences to the planet or their own people!

and remember when it comes to plastic it can rarely be recycled twice

Edited October 6, 2008 by chesters1

[gozzer]

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?

 

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I can't see it happening.

How can Nations agree on a solution when some don't even see a problem?

Even scientists disagree on the severity/cause of the situation. Some even don't think there is a situation!

How can we in the west argue that the 'developing' countries can't do, what we've done for the last 100+years. (Especially when we see them as a source of cheap goods, and therefore greater profit margins).

 

We live in a world that is lead not by Governments, but by business interests, and profits. Until that changes, we will not make any significant impact on the predicted situation.

 

We would have to take it a lot further than compulsory recycling.

How many would agree to stop using their cars for pleasure trips? How many would stop flying to their holiday resort? How many would volunteer to have just one telly in their house?

In fact how many would willingly change their whole way of life?

Again, I may be too cynical, but I can't see many (if any) doing it.

These are amongst the many things I believe we would have to do to make even a slight difference.

 

We've built our whole existence around consumerism. To change that would involve such a massive

shift in the way we live, that the only way I can see us making the shift, is if some catastrophe on a global scale actually happens.

This may (or may not) be just the thing that makes us change.

 

John.

[chesters1]

compared to the victorian era here when every chimney in the land belched forth toxic fumes we are clean ,in the fifties the smog changed things albeit reluctantly and the changeover from town gas to natural gas did its bit.

if cars are to blame make it mandatory to install a co2 filter ,the catalytic converter was supposed to save the world but it didnt so i doupt cars are the problem ,a co2 filter retrospectively installed would soon show it isnt cars but something else is a problem but as with cats it would be nothing more than a hidden tax on the car user.

Edited October 6, 2008 by chesters1

[Guest tigger]

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

 

 

 

 

Talking about the annual moaning about rod licences, I saw something yesterday that completly disgusted me. EA supposed to be environment consious.......... . We went for a walk to see the state of the local small river after the heavy rain during the night and spotted SEVEN EA workers( ) floating a raft in the middle of the river to moniter the flow. Why Seven peoples wages being paid, on a Sunday, when it would only take two people to do the same job.

Not only that but EACH person was driving their own EA vehicle ; fuel, vehicle tax, insurance and wages supplied courtesy of our rod licences !

 

I live on planet Earth Anderoo, where do you live?

[Ken L]

Anyone who suggests that our rivers are running dry through lack of rain really hasn't been paying attention for the last three years.

We are living on one of the most consistantly rained upon islands on the face of the earth and that's not about to change any time soon.

Where we do have a propblem is with the management of water resourses because we have massivly increased our population but large scale reseviour creation schemes essentially stopped in the 1960's.

 

A combination of dam building and the reforestation of the upper reaches of rivers like the Severn would go a long way towards achieving a consistant flow and reducing the risk of future flooding.

 

As to global change. Michael Chicton's book "State of fear" makes some very interesting points about long term temperature trends. In essence, he points out that very accurate thermometers were available as far back as the 16th centuary but the people owning them and recording the data that we still use to this day were gentleman scientists living on the outskirts of the big cities of the day. Over time, urban expantion means that those areas are now well within the urban sprawl so that although you may very well have accurate temperature records going back centuries for a whole raft of given locations, the original measurements were not subject to the urban heat island effect but the current readings are. Even with no other factors to consider, you would expect that to be responsible for as much as a 2 or three degree rise of average recorded temperature.

[Anderoo]

Talking about the annual moaning about rod licences, I saw something yesterday that completly disgusted me. EA supposed to be environment consious.......... . We went for a walk to see the state of the local small river after the heavy rain during the night and spotted SEVEN EA workers( ) floating a raft in the middle of the river to moniter the flow. Why Seven peoples wages being paid, on a Sunday, when it would only take two people to do the same job.

Not only that but EACH person was driving their own EA vehicle ; fuel, vehicle tax, insurance and wages supplied courtesy of our rod licences !

 

I live on planet Earth Anderoo, where do you live?

 

I've always found the EA to be very responsive, why not contact them and ask for an explanation? Do you know exactly what they were doing, why they were doing it, why on a Sunday, why seven people rather than two were needed and whether all their expenses came from rod licence money?

 

Where do I live? In a modest shack made of sandals, lentils, Guardian newspapers and beards, all held together with left-wing liberal cement

[Tony U]

Did anyone bother read the last few paragraphs vis:

 

"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'."

 

 

With regard to the last paragraph in particular they are basically telling us what we know already, If you look at river flows over the past ten years this is exactly what has happened.

 

Tony

[Leon Roskilly]

As to global change. Michael Chicton's book "State of fear" makes some very interesting points about long term temperature trends. In essence, he points out that very accurate thermometers were available as far back as the 16th centuary but the people owning them and recording the data that we still use to this day were gentleman scientists living on the outskirts of the big cities of the day. Over time, urban expantion means that those areas are now well within the urban sprawl so that although you may very well have accurate temperature records going back centuries for a whole raft of given locations, the original measurements were not subject to the urban heat island effect but the current readings are. Even with no other factors to consider, you would expect that to be responsible for as much as a 2 or three degree rise of average recorded temperature.

 

Oh well, seems that we have absolutely nothing to worry about

 

(Although, I'm struggling to understand how that relates to the informatio taken from ice-core samples, tree growth rings, pollen deposition in sediments etc etc etc etc, all of which tell roughly the same story.)

 

I really must give up worrying about all of those scientific reports (as opposed to the writings of hacks), the drying up of the Murry and Darling River basin (it'll never happen here it seems!) etc etc etc, and put my head back in the sand (it's nicer there, nothing at all to worry about!).

[gozzer]

Did anyone bother read the last few paragraphs vis:

 

Tony

 

Yup, I did Tony, as I mentioned in my posts.(did you read them? ).

 

John.

[Anderoo]

Oh well, seems that we have absolutely nothing to worry about

 

(Although, I'm struggling to understand how that relates to the informatio taken from ice-core samples, tree growth rings, pollen deposition in sediments etc etc etc etc, all of which tell roughly the same story.)

 

I really must give up worrying about all of those scientific reports (as opposed to the writings of hacks), the drying up of the Murry and Darling River basin (it'll never happen here it seems!) etc etc etc, and put my head back in the sand (it's nicer there, nothing at all to worry about!).

 

There you go again Leon, muddying the waters with your damn facts and evidence.

 

Scientific reports are so booooring, give me a snappy headline any day