The Price of Carbon

[andygates]

Rowson just had this cartoon in the Guardian. Harsh, bad taste, but on the money (enhanced European windstorms are on the climate-change track - the insurance industry were discussing this at Copenhagen last year - and these intense rain events are what they do).

Then someone pointed out that Rowson's cartoon is a riff on this classic Philip Zec cartoon of WW2. When you know that, it gets a whole lot more angry and a whole lot more bitter. And the faceless copper stops being a news story and becomes Everyman.

Comments

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Boscastle was a 1 in 200 year flood event. Whether this is really a 1 in 1000 I don't know. I don't imagine we have the historical data to model it accurately. If records go back no further than ten years then obviously the model will be a bit dodgy, to say the least.

But the whole idea of 1 in n year flood events is not just media hype. It's a standard measure of capacity in the sewerage network. The scary thing is that we have tended to be content with 1 in ten year flood events for design purposes, except we seem to be getting quite a lot of those.

Do a search on flood frequency analysis if you want to know more. I can't be arsed fetching my Hydrology textbooks out of the cupboards.