Droughts Anyone?
July 14, 2022
By Paul Homewood
Talk of the drought in the River Wye region brings back memories of April 2012:
There are concerns over river levels in parts of Wales after spells of unusually low rainfall in recent months.
Environment Agency Wales says there is no current risk to the public water supply, unlike some areas of England.
But in south east Wales, the Wye, Usk and Ebbw are at or near record low levels.
People are being urged to be careful how they use water to help protect wildlife and the wider environment.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17713043
Of course, we all know what happened after that!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
You don’t get it, before climate change, all the seasons were perfectly defined, the weather was totally consistent/average/normal, farmers never had to worry, animals all lived forever, nothing ever went extinct…. etc.
If we destroy our means of cheap reliable energy production, industrialise our landscapes, destroy our food production, ruin our prosperity, our well being, our national security….. we might make the world 0.001C cooler.
Despite known challenges, Herefordshire Council Intelligence Unit published its “The future population of Herefordshire”
“On the assumption that 18,000 new homes will be built between 2016 and 20311, the population of Herefordshire is expected to increase by 17%, from 189,500 to 221,000 people over this 15-year period.”
So abstraction rates have and will continue to increase.
Click to access future-population-of-herefordshire.pdf
On the Wye thread, I posted a link to an HT story reminiscing about the level of the Wye during 1976. At that time the city’s population was circa 47,000. Today it’s a little over 60,000.
“In the last week of August 1976, during Britain’s driest summer in over 200 years, (Denis Howell) was made Minister for Drought (but nicknamed ‘Minister for Rain’).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Howell
I remember that well (I am v old) . Mr Howell was depicted in a cartoon as a balloon. As soon as he was appointed it started to rain so it worked!
Sir Patrick Vallance has warned that the world is about to face ’50 years of really big problems relating to climate’ in a briefing to MPs.
The chief scientific adviser suggested that the turmoil will be worse than what was faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, which lasted two-and-a-half years.
Monday’s briefing was intended to inform 70 MPs about the current state of the climate to aid policy making.
He said: ‘To give three observational facts… the world is warmer than it was, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are higher than they have ever been, and extreme weather events are more common than before all this happened.
‘That’s what we face, and the aim of this briefing… is to speak about the science.’
Three “facts” or three lies, surely?
Yep, three lies. With any luck he might decide to swan off in his dotage to the only continent his ‘eminent’ predecessor, Sir David King, reckons will be the only one habitable by humans by the end of the century……Antarctica. Good luck with that move. Hopefully, he’ll take the rest of the climate cult with him. A bit like a 21st Century equivalent of the Medieval Children’s Crusade. And that ended well, not.
The man is a medic who made his name by pushing a catastrophism agenda in his own field, which has already been heavily undermined by subsequent research.
We know his mindset, and we know he lacks expertise on climate. Why should anyone pay him attention?.
This graphic from an ‘eco’ site farm bordering the Wye claims there are more extremes in the last 20 years than the previous 70. It only takes 2 seconds examination to see how biased/manipulative/ludicrous that claim is.
That’s just dreadful statistics. There’s no reason extremes should be evenly spaced. Indeed random events show clustering – when you look for cheating you look for even spacing e.g. wrong answers on multiple choice papers.
The time periods are arbitrary, chosen to show clustering ironically.
And what happens if you marginally adjust the wet/dry limits?
And the real outliers are so random, being chaotic weather, no meaningful conclusion could be drawn without many hundreds/thousands of years of data. Etc. Etc.
He’s started with a conclusion and tried to present the data in a way that suggests it supports that end.
Whenever someone shouts “drought” in the UK
you know you are usually not far from floods
video Feb 2020 River Usk
.. https://twitter.com/farsondigital/status/1228964093975048192
Ah yes I remember the famous drought flooding of early summer 2012. Drought orders and hosepipe bans and extensive River flooding, this was Net zero climate extinction (or something) at its worse.
Severn Trent spent many millions putting in place an emergency supply to Draycote Reservoir such was the perceived never ending drought, work was interrupted by flooding several times, pipeline never used.
My regular cycling route is along the Warwickshire Avon Valley and the drought flooding made a change of route necessary so the climate crisis impacts were huge.
It’s 8 deg outside and my Met Office weather app is amber warning me of ” extreme heat ” .
Heat wave warnings in place across the board.
Looks like we might have one hot afternoon next week maybe.
The weatheronline forecast for London has 42C for Monday.
My late father, who was a chemistry professor at WVU, took a little strip of plywood, painted it and then put “C” on the left and “F” on the right side. It has from 0 F-100F and the equivalent C temperature opposite each one which is 2 degrees higher than the previous one. I have it hanging by my computer. Handy, that….. On his chart 37.8 C = 100 F. So we are to believe that London will be well over 100 F. I question.
One hundred!!! weather-forecast has hit 3 figures for us next Tuesday at 1pm. It has 93 at the 2 slots either side of 10am and 4pm and raining by 7pm. Oddly on Monday the peak will be 97 at 7pm rising from 95 at 4pm. There could actually be a ‘tropical’ night as they have 79f at 1am. Wunderground has a max on both days of 96.
Oop here in Lancashire, forecast for Tuesday is 93 max. Wednesday, 67 with heavy rain…
Bob Ward got his ‘heatwave disaster’ letter printed in the Telegraph today 🙄
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/07/15/letters-suspicion-hangs-tory-leadership-hopefuls-who-propped/
Thanks for the link to that. One of the comments reads:
‘David James
Heat wave, 30C, wipes out everyone in the UK. Only billions in Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East survive.’
River Wye classed as exceptionally low at the moment/
Click to access Rainfall_and_river_flow_summary_6_to_12_July_2022.pdf
Sorry to be OT but we are being blitzed with climate change propaganda on Sky Sports on the build up to the cricket. It’s not just the BBC now but effing Sky as well.
Sky News didn’t even report ClimateGate. The Daily Express did, but got a <D-notice slapped on it.
Well, many of us will remember 1976 and the deep and prolonged drought that occurred then. Folks like me living in South Wales had our water cut off for 17 hours a day. However, the facts (!) show that 1921 was a far worse drought. (1921 is 2nd driest year in the England & Wales record back to 1766.)
1976 showed us the way to solve these problems: appoint a Minister for Drought. As soon as that happened the heavens opened. All hail Denis Howell!
Below the water table, groundwater can discharge directly into a river, and this is called baseflow. The contribution of baseflow to river flow varies greatly with the geology and topography of the catchment and with the season.