Delingpole: Britain’s Floods Have Nothing to Do With Climate Change
By Paul Homewood
Boris Johnson’s Greenest Government Evah has come up with a brilliant new excuse to duck its responsibilities for all the floods now swamping parts of Britain: climate change ate our homework.
From Hereford to Shrewsbury and South Wales to North Yorkshire, swathes of Britain are underwater thanks to flooding in the aftermath of Storm Dennis, which so far has claimed five lives. There are currently more than 400 flood warnings around Britain, with more heavy rain forecast to come.
But the government has effectively absolved itself of responsibility by pinning the blame on ‘climate change.’
Environment Secretary George ‘Useless’ Eustice has said in an interview with LBC radio that the scale of the flooding is due to the ‘nature of climate change’.
Sir James Bevan, the chief executive of the Environment Agency, has gone a step further by blaming ‘the climate emergency.’
HEREFORD, ENGLAND – FEBRUARY 17: A rainbow appears over flooded fields in the Wye Valley, near the hamlet of Wellesley, following Storm Dennis on February 17, 2020 in Hereford, England. Storm Dennis is the second named storm to bring extreme weather in a week and follows in the aftermath of Storm Ciara. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
None of this is true. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that these floods are anything other than an entirely normal, cyclical event which has been repeated many times over many centuries — with or without the contribution of anthropogenic CO2.
However the only grown-ups in government making this point are the kind of old school Conservatives with absolutely no chance of promotion in Boris’s new, green-obsessed regime of eco virtue-signalling cant.
Full story here.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Its suits the narrative but as long as they don’t throw good money after bad on flood defences is the most important outcome
Well done Paul for being, together with the GWPF, one of Deller’s main sources of weather-related and climate-related evidence.
I’ll defy anyone to get that pot of gold in them thar fields
and whilst you’re digging, KEEP DIGGING – you may find the choked drain
A short search about dredging turned up D1Waste Exemption Licences which can be obtained by contractors to allow them to dredge rivers and canals. The licence allows them to dump the silt etc. on the sides of rivers, treating the silt as a resource, instead of having to treat it as waste which needs to go to landfill. The EA has full knowledge of these licences as the contractors need to register them with the EA prior to work. Can’t see how the EA can hide behind preventive EU regulation, and CC, to justify their decision not to dredge.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/d1-waste-exemption-depositing-waste-from-dredging-inland-waters
Why do I always post a link then find a more appropriate place to post it? Anyway re-posted:- Another sane voice linked from GWPF twitter.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/02/18/no-the-floods-are-not-caused-by-climate-change/
Also back in the 1946 flood thread I remembered and added that our host previously covered the floods a year later in 1947….. because on R5Live an old chap inconveniently pointed out that he and the reporter would be drowning in 1947, where they were stood dry now whilst surveying the current Severn carnage.
Catastrophic floods 2 years running – do you really need greater proof that in all probability events nowadays are 99% natural and will happen regardless?
I saw a local news clip yesterday showing an old chap in Gloucestershire identifying the water level mark of recent flood on his shed and then he pointed to the 1947 mark some 8 or 9 inches above. Probably same chap. Sorry can’t find clip now thought it was Points West.
You only have to look on the riverlevels.co.uk website to see that the 2000 flood was 0.4-0.5m higher along the Severn
Slightly off topic, but in the same vein, I read today that lake Windermere “average” temperature has risen by one degree since the eighties, according to UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology with ” fears” that it could harm fish. Now, I swim throughout the winter without a wetsuit, and experience a range of temperatures. When swimming in one of my quarries at slightly less than 4 Deg C, like a fish, the concept of average temperature is immaterial to me, only that it is f f f cold at the time.
It’s the usual problems with climate advocacy essays (they aren’t science as we know it):-
(1) Shine a light on something.
(2) Ignore history – assume status quo always was and must be preserved in aspic.
(3) Model/extrapolate to infinity and beyond.
(4) etc.
In the real world the weather may cool again, and/or the current fish may adapt, and/or the population of species may change – as as happened since the dawn of life.
Fish can adapt to become near extremophiles, very quickly.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/bizarre-desert-dwelling-fish-may-have-evolved-just-couple-hundred-years-ago
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/09/150911-blind-cavefish-animals-science-vision-evolution/
Point 3
“Och aye Captain Kirk, “Extrapolate to infinity and beyond” said Scotty.
So when the temperature rose 8+ degrees at the end of the last ice age into the Holocene Climatic Optimum (significantly warmer than today), how did all the species of glacial fish in Windermere survive?
Or indeed how did they survive the almost two degrees of warming between 1697 and 1739 (in about 40 years) and survive to the present day?
It is also possible the lake temperature change has been affected by urbanisation, increased living standards, greater visitor numbers or indeed the activities of United Utilities, agricultural run-off or the anti-Environment EU Agency.
“Long term” in this context is statistically insignificant compared to geological time scales.
Arctic Char(r) are on the extreme S. edge of their distribution anyway. They have been slowly retreating N long before CC was thing. Common sense says it would be expected that they would become naturally extinct from Windermere. This study seems more concerned about pollution.
Click to access 11020094.pdf
I’m sure Dellers is right (but by the way the Somerset flooding was resolved primarily by reactivating the sluices) but we can’t ignore the fact that whatever the causes something has to be done to help these poor residents who see their homes ruined with ever increasing frequency and, yes, the water must get to the sea. All the film footage shows the huge reduction in flow area caused by the historical stone arched in-town bridges. We may love our monuments but these must go (to be replaced by modern slimmer concrete or steel framed bridges). Won’t solve the problem – all the other mentioned measures are also needed – but will certainly help and the water must get away.
Interestingly, all the most badly flooded areas of Hereford are downstream of the old bridge with its medieval design. Most of them have only been built on in modern times, like this modern estate
https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/resources/images/11036644/
The National Library of Wales is a valuable resource for newspaper reports:
6th May 1903
“Oswestry is practically under water. In the Vale of Llangollen and Ruabon districts the storm was experienced with remarkable severity, the atmosphere being impregnated with electricity. Rain continued falling heavily at a late hour last night, converting mountain rivulets into gushing torrents. Such conditions are unparalleled.”
THE FLOODS. GREAT DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY-LOSS OF LIFE NEAR HEREFORD 19th November 1852
“At Hereford, the city was surrounded by water; the gas works were submerged, and the city, on Friday night, was in total darkness.
All the Vale of Gloucester, comprising a vast flat district extending on either side of the Severn, is one wide spreading sea, the water covering the fences, and leaving nothing but the tops of the trees visible.
The parishes of Sandhurst, Lorigney, Elmore, and other villages on the banks of the Severn, are completely deserted, the inhabitants having fled to the more elevated parts of the county.
SHREWSBURY.—This town and county, as also the adjoining county of Montgomery, are at the present time nearly deluged by the flooding of the Severn and other rivers. The loss of property will be frightfully large.”
4th February 1809
“The floods in several places in Wales have been greater than were ever remembered, but fortunately no very considerable private loss has been sustained, owing to the people having had time to remove their cattle, sheep, and other property, from the low grounds to more elevated situations.
Nothing within the memory of our oldest inhabitants (writes our Milford Correspondent) is equal to the severity of the present winter. The weather daily presents a scene of storm and tempest.”
January 20th 1607
“God’s warning to his people of England by the great overflowing of the waters or floods, lately happened in South Wales and many other places; wherein is described the great losses and wonderful damages that happened thereby by the drowning of many Towns and Villages to the utter undoing of many thousands of people.
There was in Chepstow a woman drowned in her bed, and also a girl by the like misfortune. Also all along the same coast up to Goldcliff, Matherne, Caldicot Moors, Redrift, Newport, Cardiff, Cowbridge, Swansea, Langharne, Llanstephan, and diverse other places of Glamorganshire, Monmouthshire, Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, many great harms were done and the waters raged so furiously and with such great vehemence, that it is supposed, that in those parts there cannot be so few persons drowned as five hundred, men, women, and children.”
A full description of the Floods at Monmouth 12th February 1831: https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3391044/3391047/27/River%20Wye%20major%20floods
This is a tiny fraction of the thousands of reports of serious flooding in just these areas over the last 2-300 years, all of course caused by SUV’s and cow farts. Nothing is unprecedented, when it comes to the weather, everything has happened before, only usually much worse. By blaming it all on nebulous “climate change” the necessary measures to protect people are not taken and they even talk about abandoning some communities because of “future climate change”
Shhh, that’ll be removed and memory holed.
Strangely enough I was just looking at Jacob Rees- Mogg’s site where he has the articles he has written in local newspapers https://www.jacobreesmogg.com/
He cites works done recently by Bath and North East Somerset Council
for The Somerset Guardian 19th Feb 2020 which have mitigated the effects of the heavy rain.
https://www.jacobreesmogg.com/recent-floods
In the past I have received a strong impression that his ERG group were not favourable to climate change policies. I suppose he has to take the position of the Cabinet on these policies now, unfortunately. I wonder about the other members of the group!
So are they going to stop this stupidity now
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/19/one-in-ten-new-homes-in-england-built-on-land-with-high-flood-risk
certainly not round my part of Surrey/WSussex where 100’s of house are going up on flood plains!
It must be the Queen’s fault, setting a bad example to her loyal subjects…
Extinction Rebellion tells Queen: ‘One should not drive an SUV’