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]

Or take a look here. There are a number of books on hydrology and engineering on google books.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Cheers. Presumably where the damage of a, say, hundred-year event is worse than average (say, through a city centre) the risk analysis makes it sensible to provide for less common events.

Is increased building taking the sudden rainfall capacity away?

John Freeman punches flod water back into the sky!

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

If it was Sumatra, we'd say it was the removal of all the trees from the higher slopes. I haven't heard anyone saying that for the Lakes, and the rain may well be much too generous for it to matter, but it is conventional 'ecosystem services' wisdom that hill forests reduce flooding by slowing, dispersing and transpiring the water.