Climate Change

I expect it was the people who can see how deep the reservoirs are, and the River Thames.

The Thames is positively wooshing now! Never seen the barriers on the weir up so high!

You can almost hear them saying "for God's sake, let it go on to the next lot!"

To go back to your question about what point I was making, if you go to the link I gave a few back, the Met Office page gives a summary prediction of rainfall (well, precipitation) for April-June. It's highlighted in yellow. They predicted that it would most likely be dry, and a good deal drier than 'normal' (whatever that is in good ole Blighty). The prediction was wrong. That's all. So, one concludes, the computer models they are using are rubbish at the job. Geddit?

And, given that global warming predictions are based on even more flawed computer models, you can perhaps see whence stems my scepticism.

love the geddit. touche.

I will read the link - later.

Hear, hear!

It is dark, dismal, windy and wet here ...the heating and lights are on!!

As I cannot do the work I’d planned in the garden ...and cannot settle to anything else ...boredom drove me to look at Bags question of who decides we are in drought conditions. [Having learnt at school that areas of drought receive less than 10” of rain per annum.]

Found this site...

publications.environment-agency.gov.uk/PDF/GEHO0612BWNM-E-E.pdf

Quotes from last monthly review ...
1.“Seven of the 24 water supply companies in England and Wales imposed temporary use bans (hosepipe bans) on 5 April. These seven are Anglian Water, South East Water, parts of Southern Water, Sutton and East Surrey Water, Thames Water, Veolia Central and Veolia South East.
It is for the water companies to decide, in line with their statutory Drought Plans, what restrictions they need to place on the use of public water supplies. We are aware that most companies have ruled out the need for further restrictions. It is for companies to balance the need to conserve their water supplies with the impacts on their customers. We expect water companies to continue to engage with their customers to maintain the
careful use of water seen so far, follow their Drought Plans and be confident that there is little risk of them needing to apply for Drought Permits or Drought Orders in this calendar year, before lifting temporary use bans. “

2. “The south and east areas are at risk of environmental stress due to the below average rainfall over the past 20 months.”

3.“The drought permit granted to Southern Water to help fill Bewl Water expired at the end of April and Sutton and East Surrey Water’s drought permit to enable them to fill Bough Beech reservoir expired on 31 May. There are no other drought orders or drought permits in place. “

4. “Most companies tell us that they have no plans to make drought permit or drought order applications this year but a couple have not ruled them out if the weather turns hot and very dry. “

5. “Seven water companies: Anglian Water, South East Water, Southern Water (part of supply area), Sutton and East Surrey Water, Thames Water, Veolia South East and Veolia Central, imposed temporary use restrictions (hosepipe bans) on 5 April affecting 20 million customers “

6.“Water companies must be confident they can meet supplies over the coming summer and autumn before lifting their temporary use bans as most reservoir refill, aquifer and ground water recharge occurs over the winter. “

So ...what I don’t understand is why all the data they quote is LTA (long term averages) which is based on/compared with data for 1961 -1990 ??? I wonder what the percentage increase is for population and industry in these areas for the last 50 years??? and their water requirements compared to the 1960s???

So ...I’ve also discovered the current definition for the term drought is ...
“drought is defined by the delicate balance between water supply and demand. Whenever human demands for water exceed the natural availability of water, the result is drought.”

On that basis, it has nothing to do with rainfall ...we're just greedy and demand too much water

What a strange definition of 'drought'!

I don't know why the LTA stops at 1990 in those stats. Maybe something to do with the collection of data pre- and post privatisation ?
Interesting paper but resisting the urge to read it all.
Gist seems to be that we have not had enough rain to top up the SE yet. Takes a long time, particularly aquifers.

I understood that the reason there was a drought was because the underground aquifers were low. People just do not realise that a lot of our water comes from underground and this depends on rainfall from months previously - not yesterday. If we take out too much we are asking for trouble, real trouble, in the future because it takes hundreds of years for the water to accumulate.

Also: if you want to blame someone then it should be the water companies who are not dealing with leaks. That is scandalous. One might ask, why should we suffer because they are saving (their) money by not fixing leaks. Well, actually I would not be suffering if we had a hosepipe ban. Suffering is when you have to walk five miles there and back to collect water.

PS the water companies think it saves them money not mending leaks because they weigh the cost of mending the leaks with the cost of producing the equivalent water. This is totally false economy - but that is capitalism for you. The government should ORDER them to mend leaks.

Tip: don't keep watering your plants, it stops the roots going down very far - then they will suffer more when there is a drought.

Sadly Carbon I'm not sure that the Government can order water companies to do anything (I may be wrong) .
Bristol Water is owned by Grupo Agbar (a Spanish company), Cambridge by Cheung Kong (based in Hong Kong ) and Central, East and Southeast are owned by Veolia ( A French company and reportedly the largest private operator of water services in the world.)
Call me old-fashioned, but I really don't like this turn of events!

It's a pity JessM isn't around at the moment - she'd put you straight about Water Companies and leaks, carbon! I can't remember exactly what she said, and the thread has gone now, but she's very knowledgeable on the subject and put me right on that one!

www.bigcampaign.org/veolia/

Veolia collects our refuse too. I have been part of a campaign to raise awareness about this aspect of Veolia's work. Not to do with climate change.

You would wonder why any governments would let private companies run our most precious commodity.

Increasingly larger populations would have to mean a lowering of the water table!

Faye - that was Thatcher 'selling off the family silver', in the words of the late Harold McMillan.

Oh and good to see your comments again carbon. Baggy had asked where you were on a couple of threads, no one was debating with her about the environment.

Annobel Privatising water reminds me of the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia whose water was privatised. People had their water cut off because they couldn't afford to pay. The people rioted and Bechtel, the US owned water company was forced out.

Would agree about the leaks carbon ...they've dug the same hole four times in the town ...water board ...they seem to be digging holes everywhere ...then going off and leaving the disruption to traffic

Oh hi. Were you missing me. I hate to admit it , but water privatisation worked well in the Uk - my evidence being Northern Ireland which never was privatised . They have far more leaks over there. In the big freeze Dec 2010 they were in a terrible mess, while relatively few people on mainland were without water due to burst mains etc.
True that the government have no direct control but there is a regulator and leakage control is one of the things they regulate:
http://www.ofwat.gov.uk/regulating/prs_web201110perf_summ
It appears that the regulator is satisfied with most of the companies efforts to control leakage. If you crank up leakage control above a certain level it is a law of diminishing returns and bills will go up to pay for it.
Sometimes leaks are really hard to find. Or they are not actually mains water. There is a leak in a garden round here that runs onto the pavement and road. I am pretty sure it is not mains water as it gets worse after lots of rain! But sometimes the water company keeps on trying to locate it.

Yes, Jess, your input was needed. Just to digress from the actual subject of this thread, when I tried to find the Hosepipe Ban thread via Search, it came up OK but truncated. I've found this when looking up other old threads - some seem to have been cut off at a certain point, while others are kept in their entirety. It's always the ones where there has been an altercation of some kind. Interesting.

Not on a spring-line are they Jess? Same used to happen 'up our road' not a million miles from a pond that is fed by a spring. The builders put in drainage pipes along the back of our gardens where, aparently in wet weather, there was some sort of 'run-off' down the hill. Older residents also remember another pond in the ares where they fished for tadpoles.
A tale of developers/builders building where water is an issue!

Danny Bloom is a journalist. Giora Shaviv is Professor Emeritus, the Swartzmann-Medvedi chair in Space Sciences at The Technion in Haifa. Here is an article written by Bloom about their respective positions on global warming. Bloom believes the CO2 model. Shaviv says the sun is responsible for climate change and we cannot control the sun.

Here (France) all households are on a meter for the water they use. If there's a leak, then from the meter to your taps you pay, from the meter to outside your boundary, the water company pays. This makes you check every litre used, to make sure there are no hidden leaks. It also concentrates the mind wonderfully about how much water is used, and for what. Hence our large and ugly water butts.
I'm out of touch with the UK policies - is water metered in some areas and others not??

I'm with Dr. Shaviv on this one, and also agree with Danny Bloom about being aware of the language used during these on-going debates on climate change.
Thanks for the link B

I think all new houses must have meters. Otherwise, you can have one on request. In my old - larger - house, I had one and was quids in except when sons arrived with GFs to stay till they got jobs! Because water rates are still based on the rateable value of the property and I have a small house, the water company advised me that it wouldn't be worth my while to have a meter.