Missing the point

While the Guardian is in something of an ambulance-chasing frenzy, devoting its front page to a hysterical outburst from Lord Stern, in the Telegraph Fraser Nelson has a more thoughtful take on the floods.

No one can be blamed for the rainfall, but the extent of the floods has been linked to human error – and deeply flawed ideology. Some years ago, the Environment Agency took the disastrous decision to stop the routine dredging of the main Somerset rivers, as part of an overall idea that a little more flooding might be a good thing. Now, voters may have some opinions about the agency’s decision to put wildlife before people and property – but no one can be fired. It is a massive quango, outside the direct control of the elected government.

He's right about the problem of quangos, but I think that Fraser's preferred solution - bringing the EA back within the Whitehall machine - is inadequate. Decision making by environmentalists in a Whitehall department is going to be as little responsive to the needs of the people of Somerset as decision making by environmentalists in a Whitehall quango. And at the end of the day, neither will be able to make much impact because decision making in London is actually "decision making" in London. The policies are set - or effectively set - in Brussels.

Comments

[HaroldW]

thinkingscientist (2:46 PM) asked about the basis for Stern's claim that "Four of the five wettest years recorded in the UK have occurred from the year 2000 onwards."

I went to this webpage, selected UK, rainfall, annual, and up popped a graph of rainfall since 1910. The claim appears to be correct, with 1954 taking 3rd place.

Looking only at winter rainfall, only 1 of the top 5 years is from the 21st century.

[thinkingscientist]

Its ok, found the data on the MO web site.

[Gareth]

If the comment yesterday suggesting the MoD's water pumping operations were responsible for maintaining the Somerset levels is correct then the failure of the EA to continue those operations once the Royal Ordnance Factory at Woolavington was closed is surely bordering on criminal? To corroborate the claim you just need to look at google earth and see that there is a wide channel that has been filled in/landscaped leading North away from the ROF site. Find the same site on streetmap.co.uk and it is still shown as a water filled channel.

In terms of what the EA were or were not doing it is instructive to look at their website. Some time before May 2011 they undertook a number of pilot dredging projects. Page 4 of that report explains clearly that the Water Framework Directive is an important factor in their decisions and that in some cases ceasing work has been the outcome. These were not costly projects and one of them was even sited in the Somerset Levels. Page 10 admits in plain language that dredging ceased in Somerset 15 years prior to that report. Nevertheless they dredged 70,000 tonnes of material from 20km of Somerset drains and the project cost less than £70,000.

Further technical details are available here.

It is perhaps interesting to note what the EA did after that. They began a River Maintenance Pilot programme, the gist of which is they picked a number of arbitrary sites and told landowners that they could do their own maintenance work without needing flood defence consent.

It is as if the EA are determined to learn about the benefits of dredging and local maintenance all over again. It puzzles me why they would have forgotten or dismissed that in the first place.

[mikeh]

JamesG: your "dumb as a post" comment brings to mind the definition of a panel...
< A number of short, thick planks held in a frame >
Fits rather well with the IPCC being set up under the UNFCC

[JerryM]

I like and respect Richard North, but sometimes he can behave like a big sulking girlie.

His latest post on EU Referendum is one such whinge - completely unjustified but sadly typical.

Sir Richard, you take great pride in the quality of your research but this time you blew it big time.

Slacker!

[Jabba the Cat]

Interesting interview with Dr Richard North on the link between UK floods and EU directives...
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=84708

[clivere]

Jabba the Cat - please be reassured that I can see your post and link so it is not deleted at least according to my definition of deleted..

There are links to EU Referendum articles both in unthreaded on 5th Feb as well as other posts on the subject of the flooding that are also not deleted. In addition Andrew has had links in his relatively new "Seen Elsewhere" section both to the initial post by Richard North followed by the more recent EU post that is still there today. My recollection is that there has been a continuous link since about 5th Feb in the seen elsewhere section.

I think that Richard may have been too preoccupied by his Brexit submission and the prior comment by JerryM is quite a good summation of my own view on what is going on.

[JerryM]

Jabba the Cat - please be reassured that I can see your post and link so it is not deleted at least according to my definition of deleted.

Ditto.

It occurs to me that you might now wish to promptly correct your recent FUD entry in EU Ref's new comments section.

[Kevin Marshall]

Lord Stern thinks that flooding is getting worse, a sign of the climate catastrophes to come.
A more sensible view was expressed a couple of days ago by Anthony Reuben, Statistics analyst, BBC News

This year's extreme weather has caused severe flooding in parts of the UK but how does it compare with the floods of 2007 and 2000?
....
Clearly, the bad weather is not yet over, but so far the Environment Agency says that since the beginning of December, 5,800 homes and businesses have flooded.

As devastating as flooding is for residents, from a statistical point of view the national scale of the damage is, so far, relatively limited.

In the summer floods in 2007, 48,461 homes were flooded and 6,896 businesses, according to the Environment Agency.

The year 2000 saw the wettest autumn on record across the UK, according to the Met Office, which says that 10,000 homes and businesses were flooded across 700 locations.

Not much evidence of things getting worse.

[Tomcat]

So bring the EA back under Whitehall, with instructions to flatly ignore any directives from Brussels.
Better still, officially opt out of all EU environmental treaties.

[Rick Bradford]

Feb 14, 2014 at 10:10 AM | @bill

Perhaps you remember this wonderful retort from Peter Lilley last April, eviscerating a Select Committee report called Low Carbon Cooperation with China.

The first delusion affirmed by the report is the delusion of power. It is a strange hangover from liberal imperialism that the British intellectual classes believe that they can still dominate the world—that the world is anxious to hear from them, and will jump to attention at their every word and follow their every command.

Take the opening words of the report:“China is central to global efforts to tackle climate change”— true, but it continues, and I ask Members to savour these words— “and should be at the heart of HMG’s climate change mitigation strategy.” Savour those words again Mr Chairman "China ... Should be at the heart of Her Majesty's Government's climate change mitigation strategy".

What imperialist arrogance! What delusions of grandeur! to imagine that the United Kingdom, a nation of 65 million people off the coast of Europe, could somehow direct, guide or in any substantive way influence the policies of the largest nation in the world, with 1.3 billion people, on the other side of the globe.