Extreme Floods are Here to Stay
Increased flooding risks are now inevitable as the scale of the human enterprise grows
Beware the dangerous chemical Dihydrogen Monoxide. Water, in other words. In all seriousness, we can’t live with (too much of) it or without it. On the back of some severe flooding in the UK last month, I picked up Robert Doe’s Extreme Floods: A History in a Changing Climate. Storms Babet and Ciaran hit UK shores in October and once again the ever present threat of floods came to the fore. Water cycles after all, literally dictate the rhythms of our lives.
Doe informs us that floods are the most deadly natural occurrence and lists the events that have taken place throughout the centuries, drawing on historic testimonies. Ironically this method can become a little (ahem) dry to read.
There are many methods for bringing the flood; storms, tornados, hurricanes, typhoons. All of which have become more common and intense in our rapidly warming world. Doe points out that although the increased heat generally results in periods of drought it also means that when rainfall does come it happens more intensely, sometimes an average month’s worth in the span of a few hours. A recipe for extreme floods.
This was just a passing mention though from the author, he did little to explore our environmental state of play. In many ways it is left to the two page foreword to make the most concise and relevant analysis. Derek Elsom of Oxford Brookes University states that:
Flooding has brought large loss of life and enormous economic and social costs to many parts of the world. It will continue to do so, because the world’s increasing population adds to the pressures of living and working on river floodplains and in coastal areas.
Indeed, as with all human impacts, they are largely a function of our increasing level of enterprise. Namely, more people and more destructive activities. The symptomatic “housing crisis” sees us build in ever less suitable regions such as flood plains and along the vulnerable coasts. The concrete will exacerbate the issue and the properties will become impossible to insure.
The Risk management solutions 2003 report highlights these concerns:
A repeat of the 1703 windstorm would be catastrophic in its impacts to buildings, casualties, electricity supply and transport, as well as to the consequent economic and insurance impacts. Individual building values have increased by around x 5000 since 1700, while the population of the southern part of England has grown by a factor of more than 10.
Our sewer systems are unable to cope with the rapidly growing population and much has been made of the water companies ability to process raw effluent safely. Factor in anthropogenic climate change and we are likely to see increased glacier melt (and thereby rising sea levels) and rises in the intensity and frequency of extreme rainfall. Other pressures include deforestation where the trees are no longer holding the land together and stopping soil running off into rivers.
Each flooding event Doe lists inevitably recalls many thousands of farmed animals drowning. An insurance write off and afterthought to our society but they are sentient beings who also constitute a growing population, meeting as they do our spiraling demand for animal products. In their state of neglect and exploitation they are rendered ill equipped to find safety when the water levels rise in the enclosures that they are captive within.
Coming out in 2006, Doe concludes by referencing the aftermath of the Boxing Day Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. The subtitle that speaks of a changing climate was very manipulative as the author hardly touched the topic. That constitutes a misleading cash grab. What we do have here is a solid historical record of past flood events. The ongoing, looming threat is for those who are paying attention to the wider patterns regarding our ecological predicaments.
