Paris flooded

Indeed Trisher. UKIP would have us believe that the fact that we are having the warmest temperatures on record, and consequently floods in UK recently and floods in Germany/France has nothingtodowithcarbonemissions and would relish the idea of us ditching any legislation, agreements, energy efficiency grants, renewables etc because they are a waste of time, effort and money.

I am not sure that those in favour of Brexit (many more people than just the Kippers) could be accused of not wanting environmental protection legislation.

So glad you said this Trisher- as I feel the same and thought it would be just me. Germany has also suffered terribly from floods recently.

No disrespect to Paris or the Louvre, but I felt more moved by reports of the floods and loss of life in S Germany, or in Cumbria where people and businesses faced losing their livelihood for a SECOND time because of cr*p government action re flood defences or in Somerset where poor so-called "green" decisions to protect some fluffy Iickle newts or fishes meant that inadequate dredging meant farms, shops, pubs, houses and LIVES were wrecked. So no hearts or flowers for the Louvre which has more than nough resources and manpower to avoid a crisis.

Wonderful surprises:

youtu.be/tyaEQEmt5ls

The plight of the people of Cumbria (and other parts of the UK)coping yet again with devastating floods had me in tears but I didn't give a thought to the EU.

Not relevant. IMO

And you say you have an environmental Degree?!? Dredging is not the issue at all. Look at building on flood plains, over grazing, soil compaction, modern agricultural practices, and so so much more.

Thanks for the news update Trisher I had not heard about the floods.
Paris is on a river
And rivers have always been prone to flooding
Quite useful sometimes as they can leave behind fertile plains when they recede
I'm sure that we will cope when (as often does in this island) one of our rivers flood
Whether we are in the EU or out!

Merlot- one doesn't prevetn the other. Can't we have empathy for all those who suffer from floods, here, there or anywhere?

Really weird seeing places I've walked along flooded. The deaths in the thunderstorm were really tragic.

Did I say I felt no sympathy for the people of Paris?

There was a young Parisienne interviewed on the news at lunchtime who actually thought the floods were funny!

Sorry Merlot is I mis-interpreted this:

'...but I didn't give a thought to the EU.'

I read it to say, the people affected in the EU.

For some reason, Cameron has always refused EU aid to help the victims of flooding.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-32032893

BTW who is supposed to have an Environmental degree?

Granjura, you are quite right about dredging. Dredging and straightening of waterways in the upper and middle reaches of our rivers causes any rain to run off faster than the lower level of rivers can cope, result, cites like York flood. We need to maintain the flood plains to allow the excess water to be temporarily stored and run off at a slower rate that he rivers can cope with.
The Somerset levels were a disaster waiting to happen. They are below the level of the highest tides and rely on pumps to drain them. My family lived on the levels, many new developments were built on those flood plains (including my parents bungalow), and the we are surprised that they get flooded.

The thing I saw about the water level of the Seine (BBC) said it was higher in 1910.

It is indeed Anya who has an environmental Degree (as I have btw) - not you Alea. Very similar names- and with names changing so often, hard to keep up. Apologies.

I won't post links about dredging not being the solutions, and probably making things worse- the issues are complex, and with climate change, it is very likely that the only solution will be to accept that parts of the lands reclaimes from the sea in the past, will just have to be given back to it.

Current BBC online report says it's the highest for more than thirty years. So thirty+ years ago, and in 1910, and probably a time or two between, this happened. This makes me think it is a consequence of infrequent excessively heavy rainfall. Which happens. Always has. Always will.

And has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the UK is a member of the EU.

Just seen that stupid young French woman Merlot- saying that 'it's funny' - incredibly insensitive and moronic!

Re the Somerset levels A lot of the comments made by politicians at the time were a desperate attempts by them to show they were trying to do something.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken

I cannot quite see how there is any way to get a sensible comparison between the floods on the Somerset levels in 2013/14 and the recent situation there. There just has not been such abnormally severe rains since then. In 2013/4 there were also greater storm surges up the Bristol channel which pushes a lot more water up the channel and makes it harder for the water in the rivers to drain away.

A lot of those Somerset rivers have to have sluice gates to stop the sea flowing back up the rivers at high tides.

G&T is right. The floods on the Somerset levels were not just due to a lot of rain in the headwaters of the Somerset rivers it was also falling directly on the already low lying land and has always had to be pumped up into the rivers to get it to flow out at all.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/30/dredging-rivers-floods-somerset-levels-david-cameron-farmers
We are relatively lucky with our rivers compared with Europe. We are a small country and most of our rivers do not have so far to go to empty into the sea as do those in France Germany etc. Think of the Danube.

It must have been horrid in the Somerset levels - but they did get an awful lot of coverage for some reason. Parts of the north such as York seemed to get less sympathy for their floods. The fact of the matter is that we have had an extremely hot year or so with record temperatures being reached, month on month. There is more heat energy in the oceans than at any other times in history and this energy gets translated into excessive rain and winds. That is why N Wales got 2 solid days of rain last Christmas and a temperature recorded on our car of 16deg, after dark, one evening that week. Of course there is a political aspect to this because we keep on burring fossil fuels , keep on being reluctant to even moderate our consumption and struggling to reach international agreements on how this can be dealt with. The warming effect that we have today would not go away, even if humanity suddenly became extinct this week. It would take millions of years for the CO2 to pass back into underground storage - and maybe never, because scientists are beginning to understand more about the special conditions that prevailed when coal was formed for instance. Against this background there will be much more flooding to come and many areas of the world, some of them much more highly populated than the Levels, that will disappear beneath the sea.
One has to feel sorry for people who are flooded and it is tragic when life is lost. Probably we should feel most sorry for the people who have so little in the first place
www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/20/cyclone-roanu-bangladesh-moves-2-million-people-from-coast
And getting back to politics, if we care about climate change and its affects on people and the planet, we should work with our EU allies and not seek to cut ourselves off and pretend we are not all in this together.

As an aside, did any other country come to our aid when there was flooding?

I'll stand corrected if they did.

No, because we refused it.