British flooding shows global warming is here?

this picture,
as the author of this article states, is only a product of "cinematic trickery". but, in order to BEAT THE MESSAGE INTO OUR STUPID SKULLS, it's got to be used in order to show WHAT COULD HAPPEN if we don't start listening to the global warming crowd and start doing what they tell us we need to do. (btw...is that photo from "An Inconvenient Truth"? i never saw it.)

(environmental editor for the Telegraph.co.uk) Charles Clover's article is interesting...in my opinion for how he manages to undercut his argument. for example, while he warns that this flooding is caused by global warming, he writes:

"Of course, nowhere in the country are flood defences built to a higher standard than in London, because of the value, strategic and otherwise, of what lies behind them, so Trafalgar Square is unlikely ever to be as vulnerable as Tewkesbury, even though most of the capital is on a flood plain.'

i've never been to England before, so i don't know this for sure, but i would guess that these "defences" have been around for awhile. i would also guess that, given London's age, that it has been known forever that it was built in a "flood plain"....which, suggests that these floods are not really all that weird, huh? Clover continues:

"We now know that the storm of last Friday was the worst summer flood since the early 19th century. For the counties affected it was as bad as the spring floods of 1947."

does he mean the early 19th century when we didn't burn fossil fuels or run air conditioning and whatnot?

the global warming crowd claims that it uses predictive models which tell us of the upcoming danger our planet faces. but, even according to his own article, the weather service in Great Britain had a tough time even giving Brits a heads-up about the upcoming storm:

It was on Monday last week, July 16, that Met Office forecasters studying computer models of what the weather over the Atlantic might have in store for us began to believe that this summer's second burst of exceptional rain might be about to strike somewhere in England and Wales, bringing with it severe flooding.
Even though the Met Office did not have satellite images of the clouds forming until Thursday, by Wednesday night its computers had predicted accurately that severe weather would hit the south-west Midlands last Friday. By Thursday they knew we would be getting at least 4in (100mm) of rain.

then, on cue, the GOVERNMENT stepped up to the plate:

The Environment Agency flood-warning centre, which works with the Met Office, went into action and from late Thursday duly began delivering its automated alerts to people in high-risk areas who had signed up for them. Only 40 per cent of those living in high-risk flood areas had, but 123,000 people were successfully warned.

good job, GOVERNMENT. maybe you could try a bullhorn next time, or use TV or radio...

the story continues:

But it was only at 2pm on Friday that the order was given to take the large temporary flood barriers that protect properties on the banks of the River Severn out of their store in Kidderminster and to take them north to Upton upon Severn.

They never made it. Even though the agency vehicles carrying them had police outriders as they raced up the M5, they were caught in a tailback. A flash flood had preceded them and the carriageway was blocked.

i'm guessing that the term "outriders" is akin to what we call "escorts" here in America...but, that's neither here nor there. the end result is that lives were lost and billions of dollars damage occurred which the police couldn't prevent. an apt metaphor...

why didn't the british gov't act on these weather forecasts sooner? was it a bureaucratic snafu, or is the credibility of weather forecasting agencies on the line?

remember, this was forecasting for a few days out. and, apparently, scientists were fully aware that there was an uncommon atmospheric condition:

But it was more exceptional than that because it happened in the summer. Meteorologists say that in the short term the rain was caused by the jet stream, the ribbon of very strong winds in the upper atmosphere that largely determines where weather systems will bring rain across western Europe.

For much of the summer the jet stream has been further south and stronger than in a typical summer.

Clover did not blame the position of the jet stream on global warming. he instead uses journalistic sleight-of-hand to get us to "the big question":

The big question is not just why it rained but why the rainfall has been so intense. Is it within the range of past events, or are we in new territory thanks to man's influence on the climate? And if so, what are the implications for future flooding and, more widely, for the way we live?

one could argue that, well, "duh!"...these things have happened before! and they'll probably happen again!!

this after-the-fact "blame it on global warming" game is getting old. who can forget that on the day that Hurricane Katrina smashed into Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, causing widespread catastrophic damage,
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was gleefully posting over at HuffPost that Mississippi gov. Haley Barbour should accept some of the blame:

As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.

not to mention that when that treaty was sent to the US Senate in 1997 it went unratified, to put it lightly. to put it more blunt, it got skunked 95-0. about a year and a half later, then VP Algore symbolically signed the protocol...

if global warming is such a slam dunk, why are the believers using kids (as i've written on before here on NGNG), hollywood types, and rock stars to warn us? how about some debates featuring real scientists who may have differing views? no, i guess that would be impossible. instead, we get this cabal of marxists, washed-up pols, and UN-sanctioned scientists that are going to tell us how we're bad people.

this speech by author Michael Crichton on the subject of global warming skepticism is interesting. and his book, "State of Fear", should at least be on as many schools' required reading lists as Algore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is required viewing...but, oh, i forgot: Crichton is "Big Oil's" favorite journalist...