Preparedness for when

daz278

that proffessor asserts .... that we have already passed the tipping point and could see future rises in global temperature of between 4 and 6 per cent......there could be wars over scarce resources and armed soldiers from the more temperate countries keeping out climate change refugees.....hopefully technological breakthroughs, changes in behavior etc may lessen the effects

mardatha

If this bloody weather goes on any longer then life as we know it is going to be extinct in some places up here. Anybody got an Ark they could lend me?

greenbee

if you need an ark Mar, the rest of us are in real trouble...

pineapple

Meanwhile one suggestion from a helpful government bod the morning was that people might have to reconcile themselves to selling their homes. Err what? Who is going to knowingly buy a house that has been up to its armpits in water? Even if they can sell, the problem just transfers to someone else.

pineapple

mardatha wrote: »

If this bloody weather goes on any longer then life as we know it is going to be extinct in some places up here. Anybody got an Ark they could lend me?

Please send it down here when you are finished. The heavens have opened. Again.
Yesterday, during a brief gimpse of sun, a couple of enterprising locals cut into logs the huge tree that was basking on the village green - having been swept downstream in the flood. I wanted to ask for some but didn't dare. Especially as the main recipient was someone who had been flooded and since he had suffered from the water, it only seemed fair that he should also reap any benefits.

Frugalsod

greenbee wrote: »

Chocolate has similar problems with shelf-stability once opened...

Nothing like the problems with Jaffa cakes. I have a hypothesis that Jaffa cakes go off within 30 minutes of opening the packet. Unfortunately I have not been able to prove this as once opening the packet I never have any Jaffa cakes left. :beer:

RAS

pineapple wrote: »

Meanwhile one suggestion from a helpful government bod the morning was that people might have to reconcile themselves to selling their homes. Err what? Who is going to knowingly buy a house that has been up to its armpits in water? Even if they can sell, the problem just transfers to someone else.

Sound like the usual bright thoughts from Gubbernent.

I am actually wondering if it might in some instances be cheaper for the PTB to buy up the most vulnerable properties rather than pay for ever more costly and uneffective flood defences in some areas?

moneyistooshorttomention

RAS wrote: »

Sound like the usual bright thoughts from Gubbernent.

I am actually wondering if it might in some instances be cheaper for the PTB to buy up the most vulnerable properties rather than pay for ever more costly and uneffective flood defences in some areas?

Except that government doesn't work that way in my experience.

Certainly there are areas in the country already where they have made the decision to "abandon the home-owners there to their fate". I don't recall what form of wording they used for this (it was something marginally more tactful - but had the same meaning).

That seems to be Government policy basically.

GreyQueen

RAS wrote: »

Sound like the usual bright thoughts from Gubbernent.

I am actually wondering if it might in some instances be cheaper for the PTB to buy up the most vulnerable properties rather than pay for ever more costly and uneffective flood defences in some areas?

There doesn't seem to be a mystery why there is such severe flooding in upland areas of the country. The cause is well-known and the remedy is well-known but politically unpalatable; get the blasted sheep (and deer) off the hills and allow the native forests to regenerate.

We are living with a degraded and denuded upland environment. There should be a lot of trees and bushes up on them thar hills in these latitudes. They hold the water and release it a lot more slowly, something of the order of 70% more slowly than bare rock or grassy slopes do. If you don't re-forest the hills, you will have floods, and fiddling around with flood defenses is like putting sticking plasters over bullet holes; solves nothing in the long run.

I feel very sorry for the poor beggars who are flooded out. Their homes will be uninsurable at a price they can afford and toxic assets if they try to sell.

moneyistooshorttomention

Quite possibly a valid point GreyQueen.

However - give the Government their due - and they have dealt with a major cause of this flooding. That being - the way so many people have paved over their front gardens these days:mad:. As I recall, there are at least regulations in place these days to ensure that (if people insist on doing so) then they have to use permeable type stuff to do so.

From what I remember - if I choose to replace (already existing) tarmac that previous owners put in my front garden - then I have to use that permeable type stuff (whether I want to or no).

I was not at all surprised that anyone who wants to pave over a garden now has to - but admit to being (pleasantly) surprised that this even applies to re-doing an existing job.

Irrelevant in my own case - as I'm mentally counting money until I have enough to rip it all up anyway and put it back into garden.

But that is something positive the Government has done about one major cause of the problem.