h/t to Marc Morano
Most things in the UK last a long time. The temperate climate and stable geology preserve the works of man for hundreds of generations. The British Museum has the finest collection of stolen recovered artifacts in the world. Even the Luftwaffe had limited success at destroying their heritage.
But now the UK is faced with a new foe, more powerful than anything they have seen before. A hundred extra ppm of CO2 has brought the rail lines to the brink.
Lead author Fleur Loveridge, a PhD student at the University of
Southampton, said: “This is a really serious issue which needs to be
addressed.”
UK rail network ‘at risk’ from climate change
Ms Loveridge told BBC News: “Climate change in the near future is
‘locked in’ – it’s too late to change that.
“We need to raise awareness and increase maintenance budgets, as well
as supporting research to develop innovative engineering solutions to
tackle the problems before they happen.
“Proactive planning for climate change adaption offers much better
value for the taxpayer than bearing the huge costs when things go
wrong.”
Suppose the weather in England did become like Portugal – as predicted by the UK’s top climate comedians experts? Do trains in Portugal normally fall off the tracks?
UK residents know what the story will be already…”It’s the wrong kind of CO2!”…
Just so!
But never mind – UK trains are continuously on the brink (leaves, rain, snow, bushes, heat, cold, never mind the odd stray sheep …), so they’ll surely know how to deal with the wrong kind of CO2.
We have to accept the fact there are many people who are unable to walk and chew gum
at the same time. Fleur Loveridge obviously is one of those people.
There is a place where academic ponderance of risk or new discovery exceeds its usefulness.
We passed this place a long time ago with these idiots.
The U.K. is just about to throw 500,000 people out of work in the next three years.
80+ billion pounds is about to come out of the budget.
When will we see the great cost overuns on silly green energy projects curtailed?
When will we see funds allocated to academics for studies such as above be pulled?
OT Warning:
If you look at the actual numbers, the UK government’s spending is still scheduled to increase over the next few years, by 6%; just not the 9% previously described. And this is a budget cut????
Her joke name should be a clue.
Yes, Al Gore is fat and this engineer has an unusual name.
Very convincing evidence that there’s nothing to this.
It’s all about the money
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/spending-review/8062504/Spending-Review-what-it-means-for-the-Environment-and-Climate-Change.html
“Spending Review: what it means for the Environment and Climate Change”
Steve, of course, doesn’t bother with the explanation by Loveridge, who is a civil engineer, of why trains might “fall off the tracks” in England (but not Portugal).
I assume that is because it makes too much sense and would ruin the post.
And how many of you bothered to invest the thirty seconds it took to find out?
Yes, I have read it and it is the usual ridiculous mixture of what might happen if there are extreme weather events due to climate change.
Idiots like her should get proper jobs.
Are you saying that the climate change-related events she describes are not going to happen, or that they won’t affect the rail lines if they do happen?
If it’s the former, that’s not her job. She’s not a climate scientist. She has to work with the information she gets from climate scientists. If you think they’re wrong, then your complaint isn’t with her, it’s with them.
If it’s the latter, I take it that you are a civil engineer and can explain why she’s an idiot.
Well I happened to ‘invest’ those thirty seconds. See what I found:
“In a separate study by Network Rail, engineers concluded that half of the UK’s 10,000km (6,000 miles) of railway cuttings and embankments were in “poor” or “marginal” condition,”
That our railtracks are in poor or marginal conditions is due to poor maintenance and underfunding. ‘Incidents’ because of that have got nothing at all to do with climate change.
Yes, and, as noted, that is a separate study. Not the topic of this post, and not relevant to whether or not this civil engineer is an idiot.
Weird.
I would think that someone making strong assertions like that would actually want to have some evidence.
Evidence of what?
Of climate change? Not her job.
Of damage to British rail lines under exceptionally rainy conditions? She has it.
Chris,
Follow the money :-
1) The study was carried out on behalf of an organisation called CLIFFS who are funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council who in turn are public funded and recently have lobbied for increased funding from the govt.
2) Fleur works with an Engineering + Development Consultancy called Mott Macdonald who would no doubt like to get their hands on a share of this extra funding.
3) And what does our Fleur tell the BBC – ” …. and support research to develop innovative engineering solutions”.
If railway cuttings etc are so vulnerable to heavy rain which we have always had and always will have, Network Rail have the responsibility to make them safe regardless of what scenarios Climate Change scientists come up with.
I repeat, as a PHD she should be putting her skills to a better use in industry, rather than on the Public Sector gravy train.
None of this actually discredits anything in the study, does it?
We don’t need research grants to tell us us that IF we get more rain we will get MORE floods. Any idiot knows this.
However if the EPSRC, CLIFFS, Mott Macdonald+ all the other bodies who are participating in this research( and if you check links there are an awful lot) want some extra grant money, what will they do?
Hype the alarmism- tell the govt and media what disasters will befall the Railways because of climate change ( which you will notice our Fleur says is already locked in , i.e. is too late to avoid). And wait for the subsidies to pour in to research ways to mitigate them.
By the way you will have noticed that there was a separate study by Network Rail saying that their cuttings + embankments were in a poor condition and ” vulnerable” to climate change. If this is not a request for money, I don’t know what is.
Anyway I’m off for a glass of whiskey and a cigar. See you tomorrow.
Paul
We don’t need research grants to tell us us that IF we get more rain we will get MORE floods. Any idiot knows this.
That’s not actually what the study found, now was it?
“I would think that someone making strong assertions like that would actually want to have some evidence.”
You’ve seen it many times before when unfounded assertions later become the justification for some expensive new program. Since it is going to be warmer there will be adaptive strategies that need to be dreamed up. There will come a grant application to train termites in the crossties to hold hands so the rails don’t spread in the warming world.
I’d like to see Al Gore given the job of putting his finger in the dike to hold back the sea.
Al Gore could plug a pretty big hole.
Yes, Al Gore is fat. This is very important.
PhD student Chicken Little:
“This is a serious issue which needs to be addressed. That the sky will fall in the near future is locked in. It goes without saying that trains will be knocked off their tracks once the sky falls.”
Does increasing CO2 lead to more rainfall?
Or does more rainfall lead to increasing CO2?
http://www.biogeosciences.net/7/1607/2010/bg-7-1607-2010.pdf
Are these mutually exclusive? It can’t be both? Why not?
If increasing CO2 leads to more rainfall, which increases CO2 still more, which leads to even more CO2, which leads to more rainfall, which increases CO2….
OMG!!!
We’ve reached a TIPPING POINT!!!!!! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!
(picture fades out, to the sound of hysterical weeping and gnashing of teeth….)
Doesn’t really respond to the question, I’m afraid.
Is there some reason why both can’t be true?
That’s what the tipping point scenario illustrates, einstein.
Yeah, I got that, Einstein. I just couldn’t believe that was your real response.
You’re saying that they can’t both be possible because if they were it would never stop?
Seriously?
ChrisD (aka einstein),
Please enlighten this poor benighted soul with the details of how you perceive the relationship of CO2 to rainfall, and visa versa, with an eye toward permanent climate change which would result in degraded railroads.
If you deem it on-topic, please add details of how positive feedback amplifies CO2-driven temperature increase.
Please enlighten this poor benighted soul with the details of how you perceive the relationship of CO2 to rainfall, and visa versa
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Increasing the concentration of a a greenhouse gas will tend to raise the temperature. If the temperature increases, evaporation will increase. If evaporation increases, precipitation will increase. All of this is basic physics.
As to the increase in CO2 caused by increased rainfall, that’s new to me. I assume that you read the paper, so you know as much about that as I do.
And, by the way, Einstein, it’s “vice versa,” not “visa versa.”
If you deem it on-topic, please add details of how positive feedback amplifies CO2-driven temperature increase.
As temperature increases, various mechanisms such as melting permafrost and faster decomposition cause increased emissions of CO2 (along with other GHGs such as methane) from the biosphere.
What any of this has to do with this post, I have no idea.
Thanks for correcting my anglish.
So to generate the additional precipitation which additionally degrades the railroads we need significant additional heat. The natural warming associated with a doubling of CO2 by itself is relatively minor, so the IPCC projections of catastrophic warming include a positive feedback multiplier of 3.0 to 4.5 to come up with those projections. It is this positive feedback, or climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases like CO2, that is responsible for the lion’s share of the warming.
Some critics of this theory postulate that negative feedback moderates this temperature increase multiplier to 1.0 or less.
Which is it and why?
I lean toward the latter due to the inherent moderate properties of H2O.
Which is it and why?
Sorry, I’m not going any further off topic.
You have so far avoided answering my on-topic question.
You noted that this person is an idiot. My question was, which of these makes her an idiot:
1. AGW is bogus. If this is the case, that is not her job. She is a civil engineer. She has to work with the prevailing scientific opinion on climate. Her task was to assess the effects on British rail of what science predicts.
2. Her assessment of the effects of the expected changes on British rail lines is wrong. If this is the case, please provide your cogent explanation of where she went–if I may–off the rails.
Can you answer this time? (Don’t feel bad; I asked Steve basically the same question and he didn’t answer either).
I never called anyone an idiot. Not my style.
‘So to generate the additional precipitation which additionally degrades the railroads we need significant additional heat’.
This is why the IPCC’s inclusion of positive feedback multipier in its climate models is central to the whole AGW debate: take out the multiplier and you have nothing — little additional warming, precipitation, melting, etc, etc, etc…….
The answer to this question trumps all others in the AGW debate.
Which is why, ChrisD, you avoid it like a vampire avoids the sun.
Sorry, it wasn’t you who called her an idiot, it was Paul H. Looks like I mixed up two threads. My apologies.
As for the rest, I’m not avoiding anything, I’m just not going any further off topic. Make of it what you wish.
This is two threads so far where you have scurried away from the central question regarding the AGW debate, which would definitively answer not only the central issues but any other tangential issues you may be obsessing about.
Return to where the sun don’t shine then.
Like I said, it’s off topic. Steve doesn’t like off topic comments except, apparently, if he agrees with them. Then they’re OK, I guess.
And I can’t help noticing that still nobody has answered my on-topic question. I wonder why that is.
Your civil engineer’s statements are based on the IPCC model projections.
All your statements on every thread here are based on the IPCC model projections.
I’m talking about the integrity of the IPCC model projections, and the integrity of all statements based on such.
Nothing could be more ON topic.
ChrisD, you’re nothing but a chicken.
No.
It’s not her job as a civil engineer to dispute what climate scientists are telling her. That is not her competence. That would be an intensely stupid thing to do.
That is on topic. Whether or not what the climate scientists are telling her right is not.
I’ve been asking you if you think “whether or not what the climate scientists are telling her is right or not”.
I’m not asking her. I’m asking you.
The answer directly bears on the scientific integrity of the entire AGW theory.
How on earth could that be “off-topic”?
It is THE topic, the central controversy, which informs all other sub-topics. It is the burning controversy that is the existential reason for this blog and all other climate blogs.
However, I understand that having your head in the sand is much more comfortable than where it would necessarily have to be in order to confront this question.
How on earth could that be “off-topic”?
Read the topic of this post again.
The topic of this post is “This engineer thinks that British railways are vulnerable to the kind of weather that climate scientists say will result from AGW, therefore she is an idiot.”
The topic of this post is not the IPCC’s inclusion of positive feedback multipier in its climate models.
Do try to let this sink in a bit.
Steve, I’d like to suggest a topic for a new thread with our coy boy in mind:
How Sturdy Are Positive Feedback Estimates in Models That Dictate IPCC Catastropic Warming Projections? (or some such)
(the multipliers above have been replaced by more recent IPCC revisions — see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/23/a-strange-problem-with-the-ipcc-numbers/#more-26886.)
ChrisD writes,
“You’re saying that they can’t both be possible because if they were it would never stop?”
Echoes are a good example of positive feedback, in a narrow canyon each echo causes another echo in turn. So the sound gets louder and louder until the canyon explodes.
I’m from Portugal, and they normally don’t! LOL
But it has happened twice in the last couple of years, in a railway where a dam is being built… There was a big investigation, but then a group of kids adventured into the remote railway and found that most of the rail didn’t even have bolts…
So, there might be a strange relationship between CO2 ppm and bolt disappearance!
Ecotretas
LOL
The UK needs to face the facts and study all the good things that will come with more CO2. Plants will grow larger and faster and thereby solve the food shortage.
Historic atmospheric CO2 concentrations show that in the late 1800’s the atmospheric CO2 content varied between 400-520ppmv. There were lots of rail tracks then and the trains all ran on time! Unlike today.
Rubbish. There are some isolated measurements taken under uncontrolled conditions. There’s absolutely no reason to think that the global average level was anything like that, and every reason to think that it was not.
Why warmer weather will affect UK trains;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3120805.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/4124876.stm
What you didn’t quote;
‘Railways are a unique problem in the UK because they were built before we understood soil mechanics. They’re very susceptible to changing climate’
‘Because they’re structures made of soil and rock, they will always be affected by climate – particularly rainfall patterns’ says Loveridge. ‘Wet winters cause failures that can result in landslides, as we saw in 2000 – 2001, and hot dry summers can cause subsidence which can also be significant, affecting domestic properties as well’.
All of which means travel chaos like that caused by the storms which battered Britain in the winter of 2000 – 2001 could become increasingly common. The storms caused widespread travel disruption, including a landslide that blocked the Edinburgh to Glasgow rail route, many station closures and delays as trees fell onto railway tracks. And extremely hot weather in the summer of 2003 caused numerous speed restrictions as shrinking and swelling of rail embankments caused vertical movements of the track.
‘One of the most at risk areas, because of the geology, is the South East of England, particularly the London clay on which much of London’s rail network is built’
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/site/GSL/lang/en/page8637.html‘
What you didn’t quote….
Oh, I already explained why none of that was included: Quoting this stuff would ruin the post. It’s far too sensible and understandable.
Much more fun to simply ignore it and write that CO2 is going to “knock UK trains off the track.” He knows that almost no one will go to the trouble to find the original article (especially since he hasn’t included a link, so it would require a few seconds’ of searching).