It's a bit warm/ wet/ cold outside

[IndigoPrime]

I used to live in Adamsdown. The entire area was… damp. Even so, that’s quite a sobering map. As for flooding, I do get the impression a lot of people are looking at sea-oriented flood maps and thinking PHEW. These things aren’t smart enough to understand increased rainfall, rising rivers, etc.

Here in sunny Fleet, we have a water sink in the shape of Fleet Pond. Even so, our garden for the first time ever was basically 50 per cent standing water yesterday, with a few bits of grass poking out. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I suspect I will again though. (And I’m not remotely trying to compare this to, you know, actual flooding. But from small bits of temporary flooding to genuine human disaster, these are all needles moving in the wrong direction.)

[Gary James]

Even so, our garden for the first time ever was basically 50 per cent standing water yesterday, with a few bits of grass poking out. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I suspect I will again though.

There's a solution out there, but I don't think the mechanism has ever been fully disclosed - Paul Daniels had some sort of "lift" constructed under his home so that it could... rise? I keep imagining it being like Benny from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, or Inspector Gadget, though the reality is probably terribly dry (pun slightly intended).

[shaolin_monkey]

This is an interesting article re how climate change is covered in US schools, and how ideology can stand in the way of the science:

https://smile.oregonstate.edu/sites/smile.oregonstate.edu/files/climateconfusion_article.pdf


I wonder how UK schools fare? Does anyone have any stats/figures or even teaching experiences?

[shaolin_monkey]

Even so, our garden for the first time ever was basically 50 per cent standing water yesterday, with a few bits of grass poking out. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I suspect I will again though. (And I’m not remotely trying to compare this to, you know, actual flooding. But from small bits of temporary flooding to genuine human disaster, these are all needles moving in the wrong direction.)

That is actually a good indication of groundwater saturation, and the ability of the area to quickly drain. This is affected by the frequency of precipitation, and the volume. Both of which are going up as the world warms.

This article from the U.K. Centre for Ecology and Hydrology last November refers to the standing water you describe as an indication of increased flooding risk.

https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/briefing-note-severity-november-2019-floods-preliminary-analysis


It finishes with this, a clear attribution to climate change:

It will no doubt take time for an attribution to be published for this flood event. But what we can say with some certainty is that there has been an increasing trend in flooding over the last four or five decades in parts of northern Britain and this is at least consistent with what we may expect in a warming world.

There are also a host of other potential factors that may contribute towards flooding in any catchment, based on catchment/land management practices, but their role in these as in other major flood events is not clear at present, and will no doubt be investigated further. However, while such factors can play a significant role in influencing the magnitude of peak levels or flows, their importance is secondary to the role of exceptional rainfall in the case of major flood events such as these.

[I, Cosh]

I'm going to be so disappointed if I'm finally done in by a falling branch, rather than my anticipated demise at ninety years old (in a threesome with twins).

Poor Jedward.

[Gary James]

Poor Jedward.

Their hairstyles are a bit There's Something About Mary...

[shaolin_monkey]

Food insecurity is creeping ever-closer to our supermarket shelves:

https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/markets-and-trends/crop-prices/wheat-and-osr-cropping-area-revised-sharply-down


For a reminder of how food insecurity has increased across the globe in the last year I recommend this thread on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/jimbair62221006/status/1216112893906735104?s=21

[Funt Solo]

This is an interesting article re how climate change is covered in US schools, and how ideology can stand in the way of the science:

https://smile.oregonstate.edu/sites/smile.oregonstate.edu/files/climateconfusion_article.pdf


I wonder how UK schools fare? Does anyone have any stats/figures or even teaching experiences?

I'm a teacher in US schools, but I don't teach about climate change. I do notice, however, that we're in an odd place as a society because people are generally polarized into two camps here: Democrats and Republicans. And it's so clearly polarized that people will support terrible things (say, locking children up in cages, or removing them from their parents and shipping them miles away through interstate adoption) if their tribe's label is attached.

It's the same with climate change. If the president says it's a matter of opinion - and that actually it's just the natural world, it doesn't matter that it's utterly refuted by all scientific evidence. Any good Republican can now rest easy that climate change isn't caused by humans.

And, as the article points out, a teacher might find themselves not wanting to rock the boat: and so behaving as if climate change is a political issue more than it is a scientific issue. If it's political, because we have a binary system that is highly polarized, it's as if each side has about a 50/50 chance of being right.

I have relatives who defend the most backwards logic (around climate) on the basis that "well, we just have different political beliefs".

It's fucking insane! Earth is Easter Island.

[Tjm86]

For all the moaning about 'lefty teachers' there are incredibly few out there.  Those that do exist tend to be more constrained anyway.  Even so any politicising in the classroom can get you into a world of trouble, especially now that we're teaching "generation outrage" ....

IIRC climate science is covered in both science and in geography and in a fairly nuanced way.  The emphasis is very much of scientific validity and reliability.  Environmentalism is pushed through PSE / PSHE.  It's generally possible to have quite a reasonable discussion about any controversy and even explore the reasons why those ideas might have come into being. 

As for use and abuse of data, one of the pushes in Maths is to cover the ways in which graphs and statistics can be misleading alongside interpretation.  There is quite a bit now in the GCSE around what graphs can and can't tell you for instance but a lot of that work has already started much earlier.  The same goes with probability.

[JayzusB.Christ]

It's fucking insane! Earth is Easter Island.

It's definitely the perfect example: Humans simply can't be trusted to stop fucking things up; even as their world crumbles around them.

[Pyroxian]

As for use and abuse of data, one of the pushes in Maths is to cover the ways in which graphs and statistics can be misleading alongside interpretation.  There is quite a bit now in the GCSE around what graphs can and can't tell you for instance but a lot of that work has already started much earlier.  The same goes with probability.

The RI Christmas Lectures covered a lot of that this year: https://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures/watch/2019/secrets-and-lies

[shaolin_monkey]

It's fucking insane! Earth is Easter Island.

It's definitely the perfect example: Humans simply can't be trusted to stop fucking things up; even as their world crumbles around them.

It isn't quite the perfect example - the Easter Islanders were able to move on to other lands.  We don't have that option.

[Gary James]

It isn't quite the perfect example - the Easter Islanders were able to move on to other lands.  We don't have that option.

Uh... Pitcairn Island, over twelve hundred miles away? And not forgetting that by the point where they might have considered this option there likely weren't enough trees left to make boats anyway - once the people who landed there originally were settled in (on fertile land, with an abundance of fish in the water) there wasn't much chance of them moving on.
For all of the unbridled optimism I (pitifully) try to keep under wraps, even I can see that the chance of establishing a well-populated moon base is slim, and any kind of outpost on Mars is even more problematic. Humanity, for the moment, is pretty much in the same situation as the Easter Islanders - we know that there is more land out there, but getting people to that real estate is difficult at best.
And honestly, hands up - who among you would volunteer to get shot off to Mars or somewhere? That's a big ask, knowing you would never see friends or family again.

[TordelBack]

It isn't quite the perfect example - the Easter Islanders were able to move on to other lands.  We don't have that option.

Uh... Pitcairn Island, over twelve hundred miles away? And not forgetting that by the point where they might have considered this option there likely weren't enough trees left to make boats anyway - once the people who landed there originally were settled in (on fertile land, with an abundance of fish in the water) there wasn't much chance of them moving on.

Current thinking on Easter Island is that this is largely tosh. Things only started going to shit for the Rapa Nui people and their monumental culture when (surprise) Dutch colonists showed up in the 1720s: the infamous tree clearance was either what all agricultural societies have to do (and appears to have been sustainable as any other) or was exacerbated by rats.

[Gary James]

Things only started going to shit for the Rapa Nui people and their monumental culture when (surprise) Dutch colonists showed up in the 1720s

The point wasn't how things went to hell, the point was this - at the moment someone might have decided "it's time to get going," things had already exacerbated to the point where a viable exit was not an option. Remember, in the moving of a colony, that the very young, the sick (which would have been more than a few), and the elderly or infirm also have to be moved, or else abandoned. It takes a lot to make an journey as would have to have been undertaken, and they didn't have an infrastructure which would have easily accomodated a move such as to a nearby island.

the infamous tree clearance was either what all agricultural societies have to do (and appears to have been sustainable as any other) or was exacerbated by rats.

Although it is a nice line of thought that there was a "clearance," the fact is that decent trees were scarce at the best of times during the period where some inhabitants would have wanted most desperately to escape. Added to that, the selection of trees available were not weren't all of a useful kind - you can't use some types of wood for much more than nice carvings or for shelter. The types of trees which had wood suitable for boats were fewer than needed, and at least a few would have ended up burned.

 You add it all together and it is clear that the constant exploitation of the island and its people - not to mention the complexity of moving an entire culture - made getting out en masse an unviable proposition. That isn't to say that people didn't book for the nearest exit, but the culture was rooted - in both senses of the word.
And the tree thing specifically? The rats, and likely fires from raiders, put paid to any chance of people using the wood for anything useful - simply wasn't enough to build boats large enough. This wasn't deep into the 1800s either, but likely around the mid-1700s . At a guess, things probably went to shit in the 1740s or 50s, as diseases, rats, attacks, and a changing weather system took its toll.