Hope this isn't affecting any of AD's English friends!!!

[Cole Parker]

This looks terrible!

Flooded British villages ignite climate debate

By JILL LAWLESS4 hours ago

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THORNEY, England (AP) — As children climb into boats to get to school and scores of hoses pump floodwaters from fields day and night, one corner of southwest England is trying to reclaim its land. Other Britons watch and wonder: How much can you fight the sea?

Here on the Somerset Levels — a marshy, low-lying region dotted with farmland and villages and crisscrossed by rivers — thousands of acres have been under water for weeks.

Some villages have been cut off for a month, leaving residents who have been forced to make long detours or take boats to school, work or grocery shops frustrated and angry. Some blame government budget cuts and inept environmental bureaucracy. Others point to climate change. Some wonder if flood defenses for major cities like nearby Bristol or London will take precedence over protecting their rural hamlets.

"I'm used to seeing floods on the Levels, but this is just something else," said 28-year-old Kris Davies, who was dragging sodden carpet from his cottage in the village of Thorney. He, his wife and two daughters have just returned after a month staying with family in a nearby town.

He said when the area flooded less severely last winter "we were told it was a one-in-100-year occurrence."

"The following year it happens again — only worse!" he said.

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In this photo taken Sunday Feb. 2, 2014, people take photos and look at the flooding from the River …

The disaster has put the Levels at the center of a debate about the effects of climate change and the cost of preserving an agricultural landscape created over the centuries since medieval monks began draining the wetlands around nearby Glastonbury Abbey.

Meteorologists say Britain's future will involve more extreme weather.

Rainstorms have battered Britain since December and this January was the wettest in more than a century in southern England. The region was due to be hit by more rain and gale-force winds starting Monday.

Floods have already inundated an area covering some 25 square miles (16,000 acres or 65 square kilometers). The River Parrett and other waterways have burst their banks and fields that normally sustain crops, dairy herds and beef cattle are under several feet (more than 1 meter) of water.

Many roads are impassible and the village of Muchelney is now an island reached only by boats run by firefighters.

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In this photo taken Sunday Feb. 2, 2014, Cattle try to graze amidst the floodwater of the River Parr …

On one road, the top of a car peeks out above the water.

Davies' home in Thorney, a hamlet of sandstone-colored buildings and thatched cottages, is normally a few minutes' drive from Muchelney. It now takes 45 minutes to get there unless you take a boat.

"Having to kayak to your front door is a bit of a novelty," Davies said. "The kids loved it for a couple of days but the novelty has worn off."

No one in Somerset thinks floods can be avoided. Much of this land is below sea level, and it's as marshy and porous as a sponge. But many locals blame this year's devastation on the Environment Agency's decision, in the 1990s, to abandon a policy of routinely dredging local rivers, which are now clogged with silt and running at between a third and two-thirds of capacity.

They say this disaster has been building for years.

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In this photo taken Sunday Feb. 2, 2014, floodwater from the River Parrett blocks a road from Thorne …

"A really carefully constructed landscape which works quite well, which has worked for 800 years, has suddenly been left untended," said Andrew Lee, founder of a "Stop the Floods" advocacy group.

"There are fields I can see from my house that were underwater for 11 months between 2012 and 2013," he said. The anger around here is that it has taken another major disaster for it to get any attention at all."

Some say spending cuts by Britain's Conservative-led government have made things worse. The environment department has seen its budget reduced by 500 million pounds ($820 million) since 2010.

The Environment Agency says budget cuts have not weakened its flood protection efforts. But agency chief Chris Smith, in an article for Monday's Daily Telegraph, conceded that the relentless demand on resources means "difficult decisions" about what to save: "Town or country, front rooms or farmland?"

The government also argues that dredging alone is not the solution. It speeds up rivers and can cause flooding downstream and it disturbs the habitats of fish, otters and water voles, an endangered rodent.

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In this photo taken Sunday Feb. 2, 2014, an emergency support worker wades through floodwater in Tho …

That attitude infuriates some locals.

"They have got to stop worrying about the water voles, stop worrying about the birds — just do the job," said Conservative lawmaker Ian Liddell-Grainger.

Somerset's flooded landscape has lasted long enough to become a tourist attraction. People clamber up the muddy hill known as Burrow Mump to look out over fields that now resemble an inland sea, with the tops of hedges, gates and trees poking out from the water.

The waters have receded only slightly, despite having 65 pumps running around-the clock to drain almost 400 million gallons (1.5 million tonnes) of water a day from the land. Prime Minister David Cameron, stung by the uproar, has promised to resume dredging.

Some environmentalists and scientists say in the long run, as ocean levels rise, it's a doomed effort. They talks about "a managed retreat" — abandoning some farmland and letting marsh and sea reclaim it.

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In this photo taken Sunday Feb. 2, 2014, Kris Davies gets rid of carpeting from his house after it w …

"Retreat is the only sensible policy," Colin Thorne, a flood expert at Nottingham University told the Sunday Telegraph. "If we fight nature, we will lose in the end."

Others, though, want to be as ambitious as those medieval monks who transformed a marsh into valuable farmland.

"You've got to think big," said John Wood, a parish councilor looking out from an elevated churchyard as the sun glinted on the silvery floodwaters.

"It looks beautiful," he said — asking why not keep the water, collecting it in giant reservoirs? "You've got boating lakes, you've got fishing. Tourists will come."

He says that's a better idea than rows of pumps fruitlessly trying to compete with nature at a current cost of 100,000 pounds ($163,000) a day.

"What are we doing at the moment? We're pouring banknotes into that river and watching it go out to sea," he said.

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[Merkin]

If the ice melt continues at the rates projected, we'll all be heading for high ground:

'Are sea levels rising?

When water warms, it expands and takes up more volume. This effect is called "thermal expansion." Long-term measurements demonstrate that sea levels are rising worldwide both from thermal expansion caused by warming temperatures and from the addition of water from inland glaciers, which are melting nearly everywhere at accelerating rates. Increased melting is also occuring at the ice caps in Greenland and West Antarctica.

Many scientists now think that sea levels will rise by at least one to two feet by 2100. A rise of two to six feet is possible, if emissions of greenhouse gases remain unchecked and significant melting of the ice caps occurs. A rise in sea level of just a foot or two could have significant negative consequences for islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific and for low-lying coastal areas along the continental U.S., such as the eastern shoreline of Cape Cod, the barrier islands protecting North Carolina, most of southern Florida and the city of Boston. Since most of the world's major cities also lie along ocean coastlines, sea level rise has major implications for those important population centers, where erosion, flooding and rising groundwater levels will threaten buildings, roads, subway systems and other essential services.'
http://www.neaq.org/conservation_and_research/climate_change/climate_change_and_the_oceans.php

[Bruin Fisher]

Greetings from the Somerset Levels! My home town is on the coast at the northern end of the Somerset Levels and south from here is a vast flat area at or just below sea level that we call Sedgemoor. There's a sea wall all along the coast from here southwards, which keeps the sea at bay and enables the marsh land to be drained to make farmland and enable the harvest of peat. But the water table is only just below ground level at the best of times, and with the nearly constant rain we've had for two months, the rivers can't handle the runoff, and the fields, drained triumphantly by the Victorians, have once again succumbed to the water. There's a motorway that runs across it, its foundation built up three metres above the surrounding land, and now driving over it feels like driving over a bridge over a lake since there's nothing but water with the occasional tree or hedge protruding, both sides of the motorway.

The older houses were built right on the moor and they are now flooded. More recent buildings are on the few ridges of slightly higher land that run across the moor. There are very few houses actually on the moor since for centuries it's been found very difficult to build in such a way as to stop them gradually sinking into the land.

My home is half way up a hill and so not in danger of flooding, in fact even the low lying houses in our town are okay. But we have a view southwards to another ridge of hill, beyond which is the moor - and it's flooded for miles. Tomorrow I'll be going down onto it to visit gay friends who live right on the moor. Their house is on a ridge of land about a metre higher than the surrounding land. One of the man-made drainage streams is right outside their kitchen window, and beyond that is acres and acres of flood plains - and it's all under water.

[The Pecman]

But the water table is only just below ground level at the best of times, and with the nearly constant rain we've had for two months...

Hey! Stop hogging all the rain! Send some of that out to California! We're dyin' out here from lack of water!

[Lugnutz]

Want some snow? We have a bunch.

[The Pecman]

Want some snow? We have a bunch.

Ship it FedEx to LA! They're going on water rationing early this year. I think we're going down to three toilet flushes a week and one lawn watering... and that's it.

[Merkin]

Ship it FedEx to LA! They're going on water rationing early this year. I think we're going down to three toilet flushes a week and one lawn watering... and that's it.

I have the feeling that lawns in LA are going to get watered by pissing off the porch late at night.

[Cole Parker]

That Somerset vid is a stark, sobering picture of how much of the world will look if our icecaps keep melting. As usual, no one will really respond till it's too late to be effective.

Am I right in thinking most of that water it he video is salt water, and the ground it's lying upon is therefore soaking up the salt and will lose it's fertility?

C

[Lugnutz]

I have the feeling that lawns in LA are going to get watered by pissing off the porch late at night.

And kill what's left. Less to mow.

[Cole Parker]

Hey, it would be much more serious than that, killing our greenery. Do you have any idea how many jobs there are involved with lawn care? A large industry has been created by mostly Mexican men traveling throughout the city in their pickup trucks and a number of employees, tending to the lawns of people who haven't the energy or inclination to cut them themselves. Do away with our lawns and the economy would be adversely affected. So, no pissing on the lawns, please.

Now I know from this comment that people will be aghast. 'How lazy can those Californians be, anyway?' I can hear it from here. But it's hot here in the summer! Often, usually in fact, in the nineties. No clouds to be seen in the high blue skies. Way too hot to be mowing a lawn. And in the winter, the grass continues to grow because it never really gets all that cold, so we need mowing then, too, and who wants to mow his lawn when it's cold out? So it's not really laziness, it's awareness of the cruel conditions we live in, and if we can opt out of lawn care and turn it over to professionals, helping the economy at the same time, well, who's to say nay? Not laziness. Practicality.

So, let's hope we Los Angelenos restrict our micturative adventures to the proper venue.

C

[Merkin]

Looks like the proper venue for your micrative experessions is only going to get flushed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Tough sh**t.

[Bruin Fisher]

As previously posted, I visited friends on the Somerset Levels yesterday. I don't have anything as impressive as Rick's superb posting of the aerial video, but:

This is the view from my friends' kitchen window. The water level in the river in the foreground is about two feet above the level of the kitchen floor - held back only by the river bank.

[Cole Parker]

Incredible. When living on an island, and then seeing the habitable land decreasing, well...

Climate change is occurring, no matter what the cause. The time to begin doing something to save coastal properties is now, not after they're already damaged.

C

[Nigel Gordon]

Incredible. When living on an island, and then seeing the habitable land decreasing, well...

Climate change is occurring, no matter what the cause. The time to begin doing something to save coastal properties is now, not after they're already damaged.

C

Unfortunately the best way to save the majority of the properties might be to let some be lost. The Somerset Levels are the natural sink for the whole of the Seven/Avon system. It is only in recent times that extensive flood protection and drainage systems have prevented large scale flooding of this area. The systems were designed to prevent everything but a once in a hundred year flood, the problem we have now is that the weather extremes we have due to climate change are making the hundred year event more like a ten year event. It is not economic to protect areas like the Levels from events like this, they will happen and we must learn to live with them. That will mean redesigning a lot of our communities and our homes.

I've lived in Holland where it is impossible to get insurance against flooding. At one point I lived in an area next to the Maas which was very prone to flooding. The house I lived in was designed so that in the case of a flood it was quick to clear up and get back into an inhabitable state. It's an approach called flood-proofing. I was flooded and forty-eight hours after the waters had receded, I was able to move back in. My landlord had come round with a high pressure jet cleaner and washed out the whole of the ground floor. Everything below the one meter fifty level was designed to be flood resistant, even to the kitchen cupboards being made of treated hardwood which would not absorb water and swell, so they only needed to be jet cleaned.

We need to stop trying to beat nature and start to think of how we can live with it. A small start would be for all those on the high land who have paved drives or yards to take up the paving and replace it with absorbent alternatives so the water can soak into the ground and not run off and increase the surface water washing down into the flood plain.

[Cole Parker]

That makes a lot of sense to me. However, I was more thinking of coastal cities, like NYC, LA, Seattle, Rio, Helsinki and the like. I've heard it suggested that we'll see our seas rise an estimated six feet. It would cost an awful lot of money to build seawalls up and down our coasts, but if we did, and made them, say, eight to ten feet high, I'd guess the saving of properties already extant and businesses not interrupted would far exceed the cost of the project. Plus, it would create thousands of jobs of the sort we need: blue collar, easily trained jobs.

What we'll probably do instead is nothing. Well, we might talk a lot; we're good at that. But then, when the subways are flooded an inoperable, streets awash, buildings flooded in the entry levels, then we might get serious. A little too late, but that's how we operate.

C

[Nigel Gordon]

That makes a lot of sense to me. However, I was more thinking of coastal cities, like NYC, LA, Seattle, Rio, Helsinki and the like. I've heard it suggested that we'll see our seas rise an estimated six feet. It would cost an awful lot of money to build seawalls up and down our coasts, but if we did, and made them, say, eight to ten feet high, I'd guess the saving of properties already extant and businesses not interrupted would far exceed the cost of the project. Plus, it would create thousands of jobs of the sort we need: blue collar, easily trained jobs.

What we'll probably do instead is nothing. Well, we might talk a lot; we're good at that. But then, when the subways are flooded an inoperable, streets awash, buildings flooded in the entry levels, then we might get serious. A little too late, but that's how we operate.

C

The problem is not so much the rise is sea level, that could be dealt with by increasing the sea defenses, the problem is with the extreme weather conditions. In the Somerset Levels the water has not come in from breached sea defenses but it is run off from the land, the drainage systems that are in place just can't remove the water fast enough to prevent flooding. The irony is that the very system of flood defenses that have been built, like the raised river banks, are now holding the flood water in the flooded areas.

The climate is a chaotic system. One of the basic rules of chaos theory is the greater the magnitude of input into a chaotic system the more extreme the behavior of the system will be, increased temperature is an input into the climate system so it is going to get more erratic. There is no way we can within any reasonable period, that is less than two centuries, reverse the current climate trends. In fact it is quite likely that within the next twenty years we will see a tipping point reached with failure of the Northern Tundra Carbon Sinks and a massive release of methane gas. What we need to do now is to recognize that weather patterns which once were considered extreme are likely to become the norm and we have to find ways live with them.

In England that means we are going to be facing stronger and more frequent Atlantic Storms with resultant flooding. Where the Atlantic Storms meet up with Arctic air masses we will see exceptionally heavy snow, fortunately that has not happened so far this winter. There is though still time.

[Merkin]

Very scary stuff. The coast guard and commercial tenders cannot function in seas like these. Shipping of all sorts must be threatened, not to mention commercial fishing and other coastal undertakings. I expect the coming decades will see great changes to our shorelines and to coast-based enterprise, tourism included. We had a taste of what shutting down a coastal economy, even for a brief period, can do to devastate a region during the Gulf oil spill along the Lousiana coast, or with Hurricane Sandy here in our mid-Atlantic. We cannot depend upon our disaster agencies to bear the burden of recovery from our general lack of preparedness for disasters, if climate-wrought disaster becomes the norm. Nations must act now to reformulate policies and preparedness

[Cole Parker]

Man, for the people living there, it must seem like the end days are here. Wonder if church attendance is up?

C

[Nigel Gordon]

Very scary stuff. The coast guard and commercial tenders cannot function in seas like these. Shipping of all sorts must be threatened, not to mention commercial fishing and other coastal undertakings.

The impact of day boats fishing out of the South West harbors has been very bad. One fisherman interviewed on BBC Radio 4 this morning had not been able to get out to fish since the first week of December, most have been unable to get out since Christmas.

These are not the big industrial trawlers (most of which come out of the East Coast and are not affected) but the small one and two man day boats.