On 04/02/2022 12:51, Bob Latham wrote:

Lies reported to n e w s @ i n d i v i d u a l . n e t

> No, there is no problem, it warmed a bit which is a very good thing
> in terms of saving human lives. There has been no overall warming for
> 7 years.

TROLL! PROVEN LIE REFUTED MULTIPLE TIMES REPEATED YET AGAIN!

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature

> There is no proof at all that CO2 is the cause because it isn't.
> Indeed, burning fossil fuels only returns CO2 to where it came from
> originally. We are repairing the damage caused by life so that plants
> have the food they should have.
>
> 0.01% increase in CO2 in the atmos and only 6% of that burning FF has
> not changed the climate. In the history of life on earth, CO2 levels
> are near the lowest they've ever been.

TROLL! PROVEN LIE DEBUNKED MULTIPLE TIMES REPEATED YET AGAIN!

We know what's happening with CO2 - where it comes from and where it's
going - because different sources of CO2 have different isotopic
mixtures, so by examining how air trapped in ice cores has changed since
well before the Industrial Revolution, we can determined how long the
extra CO2 that we have been producing since the Industrial Revolution is
remaining in the atmosphere, and from that deduce how long-lived any CO2
is in the atmosphere. Further, we know how the proportion of CO2 in the
atmosphere has been changing since the Industrial Revolution and can
correlate that to the increases in temperature that it has caused.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/outreach/isotopes/index.html

And we can show its very good correlation with CO2. Berkeley Earth was
set up after so-called 'Climategate' with denialist oil money from the
Koch brothers to investigate the CRU 'Climategate' findings, yet they
came to *exactly* the same conclusions as CRU, and that as a result even
former denialists who were on the Berkeley Earth team, such as
statistical expert Steve Mosher, now accept that global warming is
happening: "What’s that mean? It means the CRU are not frauds. It means
it’s not a hoax. So let’s end the debate over temperature so that we
can focus on the part of the debate that really matters, CO2 will warm
the planet. How much? What can we do about it? What should we do about
it?”". Here's the link yet again, note the excellent correlation
between CO2 and temperature:
http://berkeleyearth.org/summary-of-findings

> [Emotive and irrational non-arguments snipped]
>
>> Many people desperately want to believe there isn't a problem
>
> Propaganda and nonsense. A fantasy and religion of the spoilt,
> privileged, middle classes who want to ease their guilt.

Where is your *EVIDENCE* for this absurd claim?

>> because facing up to it means action and effort and change.
>
> There is nothing you can do about it whatever the cause.

If that is really true, which it isn't, then why do you waste so much of
this ng's time in denial of the accepted cause? Your actions in doing
so contradict what you write above, so one way or another, you're lying
again.

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

On 04/02/2022 12:52, Indy Jess John wrote:
>
> On 03/02/2022 10:57, Jim Lesurf wrote:
>>
>> Basically fission is an idea that turned out sour, but now has vested
>> interests pushing it. Now jumping on climate change as a new 'reason' for
>> it.
>
> It hasn't turned completely sour, it just needs to be re-thought. As
> newly mined stocks run low, reprocessing will become more financially
> viable[1]:
>
> https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/fuel-recycling/processing-of-used-nuclear-fuel.aspx

What depressingly short memories so many people in this ng have!

I calculated as far back as 2013, and have reposted the calculation
countless times since, that if all the new nuclear generating stations
then planned by HMG were built, and all the nuclear waste then
stockpiled and anticipated to be created until the final decommissioning
of the last of the current stations in this country - including
ex-weapon, ex-generating, and enrichment tailings - were re-processed
into fuel, at great expense, we'd have at most enough for about a third
of the life of the proposed stations. I append that calculation again
at the end of this. Additionally the recycling would potentially make
the resultant electricity even more expensive than the already high
figures touted for Hinckley C, which is already a white elephant -
years behind schedule, screwing financial guarantees from the public
purse in the form feed-in tariffs double its nearest competitor, and
still not completed with its completion date constantly being postponed.

RECYCLING EXISTING NUCLEAR STOCKPILES
=====================================

The problem with nuclear waste is this: storing it costs something
significant, reusing it costs something even more significant but
would save the value of the fuel that would otherwise have to be
purchased, and would reduce the amount of waste, and for how long,
that would have to be interred. Either way, nuclear waste is very
expensive - whether we continue to let it hang around with an
uncertain future, recycle and re-burn any or as much as possible, or
finally denote it as waste and inter it in a Geological Disposal
Facility (GDF), we are already today expending resources on, that is
subsidising, the energy supply (and the arms race) of yesterday, and
are already committing our descendents to subsidise our current
consumption at least for centuries, possibly, depending on what we
choose to do with the most dangerous parts of the waste, millennia.

Meanwhile, there are nothing like enough stocks to cover the projected
shortfall in LWR fuel from around the early to mid 2020s.

Before discussing the actual stockpiles themselves, a brief excursion
into costs ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
"Economics
The relative economics of reprocessing-waste disposal and interim
storage-direct disposal has been the focus of much debate over the
past ten years. Studies have modeled the total fuel cycle costs of a
reprocessing-recycling system based on one-time recycling of plutonium
in existing thermal reactors (as opposed to the proposed breeder
reactor cycle) and compare this to the total costs of an open fuel
cycle with direct disposal. The range of results produced by these
studies is very wide, but all are agreed that under current (2005)
economic conditions the reprocessing-recycle option is the more
costly. [para] If reprocessing is undertaken only to reduce the
radioactivity level of spent fuel it should be taken into account that
spent nuclear fuel becomes less radioactive over time. After 40 years
its radioactivity drops by 99.9%, though it still takes over a
thousand years for the level of radioactivity to approach that of NU.
However the level of transuranic elements, including plutonium-239,
remains high for over 100,000 years, so if not reused as nuclear fuel,
then those elements need secure disposal because of nuclear
proliferation reasons as well as radiation hazard. [para] On 25
October 2011 a commission of the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission
revealed during a meeting calculations about the costs of recycling
nuclear fuel for power generation. These costs could be twice the
costs of direct geological disposal of spent fuel: the cost of
extracting plutonium and handling spent fuel was estimated at 1.98 to
2.14 yen per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated. Discarding the
spent fuel as waste would cost only 1 to 1.35 yen per kilowatt-hour."
[last time I checked 1 yen was about 0.7p]

Note particularly this last point that reprocessing spent fuel
approximately doubles part of the fuel element of the unit cost of
electricity generated, although it should be pointed out that, as
currently calculated, the cost of fuel is a small percentage of the
unit cost of nuclear power (about 3%, 0.5p out of the 16.6p per unit
previously linked, remembering that this figure itself may not include
decommissioning and handling of waste). There is also the unanswered
question of how much carbon-based or other forms of energy, including
electrical energy, reprocessing would consume.

The UK has about 100t of Pu from reprocessing, which could be mixed
with 1,400t other uranium, the obvious candidate being depleted
uranium (DU), at a rate of about 7% to produce 1,500t Mixed Oxide
(MOX), which in principle can be used instead of Lightly Enriched
Uranium (LEU) in the proposed PWRs. LEU converts at a rate of about
22t/GWyr, so this 1,500t represents 68GWyr. However, we would have to
build a plant to reprocess the Pu into MOX, the building, running, and
decommissioning of which would cost a considerable amount of money and
itself consume energy from various sources. (We would also have to
ensure that sufficient of the proposed new generating plant that is to
be built would be capable of and licensed to burn up all the MOX fuel,
but this is a relatively minor hurdle as long as we make that decision
early enough.)

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Uranium-Resources/Uranium-and-Depleted-Uranium/

The UK also has about 6kt, expected to rise to 10kt, of AGR/PWR spent
fuel, which could be reprocessed as described in the above link.
However, this would require, additionally to the above MOX facilities,
refurbishment of the existing THORP plant, and would therefore cost
significantly more money and itself consume even more energy from
various sources. Spent fuel consists of 1% Pu of which 2/3 is useful
isotope, that is about 67t Pu useful for fission which could be
combined with nearly 900t DU as above to yield 960t of MOX which would
generate 44GWyr, and 96% uranium of which less than 1% is the fissile
U-235, which could be re-enriched roughly as NU to yield approximately
960t LWR fuel which would also generate 44GWyr.

It is estimated that the UK by 2020 will also have about 106kt of DU
tails from enrichment, also described in the above link, which will
have a content of the isotope U235 used for uranium fission of about
0.3%, a little under half its original content as NU. 2300t could be
mixed with reprocessed plutonium to manufacture MOX fuel as mentioned
above, the remaining 103.7kt could in principle be re-enriched to
produce LEU for use in existing or new nuclear reactors. However,
there is a law of diminishing returns here, either the amount of
material that would have to be handled to obtain the same amount of
fuel would have to be doubled, and/or the proportion of U235 that is
extracted would have to be significantly increased. On first
enrichment, the ratio of U in to LEU out is approximately 10:1, so on
re-enrichment we'd expect the ratio to be about 20:1. On this basis
this DU could yield about 5.2kt LEU, which equates to about 236GWyr.

So, using uranium fission, we would appear to have stockpiles
equivalent to an approximate maximum of ...
68 + 44 + 44 + 236 = 392GWyr

http://hmccc.s3.amazonaws.com/Renewables%20Review/The%20renewable%20energy%20review_Printout.pdf
(p13) "Illustrative 2030 scenario" - The House Of Commons Committee
On Climate Change foresees the nuclear proportion of electricity
generation in 2030 as being 40%, 185TWh, or 21GWyr. Under this
scenario the maximum stockpiles that we have are for 19 years. The
lifetime of the proposed new LWRs is 60 years, so current and
anticipated stockpiles represent less than a third of what would be
required, and additionally their use could potentially make the
resultant electricity even more expensive.

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

Java Jive <java@evij.com.invalid> wrote:
> But also note the resident who said: "There’s absolutely no need for
> nuclear power, with just one mistake, terrible things happen." And
> those terrible things don't have to be directly caused by radiation,
> tragedies indirectly caused by radiation or the fear of it are no less
> tragic, and are a legitimate part of the death toll of the event.
>
One the other hand you can't really blame the results of people
running around like headless chickens afterwards on the event itself.
Especially if the fear has been induced by exaggerated reporting of
the dangers of the event/technology.

There were accidents caused by people's fear of steam trains and motor
cars in their early days but we don't tend therefore to blame the
technology.

--
Chris Green
·

Somerset: After the Floods
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gd7j7

Mostly the programme is about the villagers of Moorland, the flooding of
their homes, their struggles to rebuild, in various cases with or
without insurance paying up, and their anger and their accusations
against the Environment Agency for, allegedly:

a) Failing to dredge.

The villagers formed an action group and pressured the EA into resuming
dredging to clear one particular stretch, but see below.

b) 'Moving water about' to sacrifice their village to save towns.

This is such an absurd and unrealistic accusation that no more need be
said about it. The simple truth was that the pumps that the EA had
available weren't sufficient to keep the flooding at bay, let alone move
water about to cause it in the first place!

Basically, in their anger at what was essentially very bad luck they
were looking for someone to blame.

In fact, in normal years, surplus water floods out of the rivers and
ditches over the surrounding fields and countryside, for which the local
term seems to be moorland, presumably giving the village its name. In
the programme, the EA don't agree with the villagers' assessment that
the flooding was caused by lack of dredging, but say that the same
volume of water fell over a similar period as in previous winters, the
difference that year was simply that the moorland was already sodden
after weeks of rain beforehand, so the sudden excess water had nowhere
to go. There's also the question of dredging increasing the water
flowing downstream into Bridgewater, where many tens of times more
people live than in Moorland, thereby increasing the likelihood of
flooding there.

On 04/02/2022 13:02, Indy Jess John wrote:
>
> On 03/02/2022 11:07, Jim Lesurf wrote:
>>
>> Hence the change of tack prompted by the science, but which clashes with
>> the political drive to wave 'dredging' as a magic bullet as being a
>> process where the powers-that-be can be seen to be "doing something".

That's the sort of impression I gained in the above programme.

> Dredging isn't a political drive.  The agreement to dredge the most
> silted up waterways on the Somerset levels was begrudgingly accepted as
> a last resort because of the media publicity and the threat by the
> residents to vote for "anybody except the sitting MP" unless something
> was done.  Even so, they didn't dredge for depth, they widened the
> watercourse, which was better than nothing but not the best solution.
>
> The best solution would be a barrier like that on the Thames, to block
> the inflow of the highest tides.  Much of the Somerset Levels is below
> the height of a Spring Tide with an onshore wind, and keeping that water
> out not only reduces the land that will flood, it will prevent that land
> from being poisoned by salt.  That type of barrier doesn't come cheap
> though.

See above.

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

On 04/02/2022 15:21, Chris Green wrote:
>
> Java Jive <java@evij.com.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> But also note the resident who said: "There’s absolutely no need for
>> nuclear power, with just one mistake, terrible things happen." And
>> those terrible things don't have to be directly caused by radiation,
>> tragedies indirectly caused by radiation or the fear of it are no less
>> tragic, and are a legitimate part of the death toll of the event.
>
> One the other hand you can't really blame the results of people
> running around like headless chickens afterwards on the event itself.
> Especially if the fear has been induced by exaggerated reporting of
> the dangers of the event/technology.

Many people are refusing to get vaccinated because of irrational fears
and fake news about the vaccines, but if they die from covid-19 we still
count the death as being caused by covid-19, even if it was entirely
avoidable by their having a vaccine.

Similarly, the most recent previous major nuclear accident was
Chernobyl, you can't really blame people at Fukushima for acting is if
it too might be another Chernobyl. They had to apply the precautionary
principle, and were right to do so. The necessary evacuations were
caused by the accident, and therefore part of the accident's death toll.

> There were accidents caused by people's fear of steam trains and motor
> cars in their early days but we don't tend therefore to blame the
> technology.

There are still accidents caused by trains and cars, and sometimes,
depending on the cause, we do still blame the technology.

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

On 04/02/2022 16:55, Java Jive wrote:
>
> Similarly, the most recent previous major nuclear accident was
> Chernobyl, you can't really blame people at Fukushima for acting is if
> it too might be another Chernobyl.  They had to apply the precautionary
> principle, and were right to do so.  The necessary evacuations were
> caused by the accident, and therefore part of the accident's death toll.

There was an extensive item on nuclear waste beginning this week's BBC
Inside Science, finishing with talk about the remaining problems at
Fukushima. The three reactors that melted down still contain the fuel
and reactor structural material melted together into an alloy/amalgam,
which is still very hot, and is having to be constantly cooled with
water, and the water that emerges is highly contaminated with
radio-active material. There are such large quantities of it that there
is talk of having to put it into the sea.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013zm3

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

On 04/02/2022 16:45, Java Jive wrote:
> Somerset: After the Floods
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gd7j7
>
> Mostly the programme is about the villagers of Moorland, the flooding of
> their homes, their struggles to rebuild, in various cases with or
> without insurance paying up, and their anger and their accusations
> against the Environment Agency for, allegedly:
>
> a) Failing to dredge.
>
> The villagers formed an action group and pressured the EA into resuming
> dredging to clear one particular stretch, but see below.
>
> b) 'Moving water about' to sacrifice their village to save towns.
>
> This is such an absurd and unrealistic accusation that no more need be
> said about it. The simple truth was that the pumps that the EA had
> available weren't sufficient to keep the flooding at bay, let alone move
> water about to cause it in the first place!
>
> Basically, in their anger at what was essentially very bad luck they
> were looking for someone to blame.
>
> In fact, in normal years, surplus water floods out of the rivers and
> ditches over the surrounding fields and countryside, for which the local
> term seems to be moorland, presumably giving the village its name. In
> the programme, the EA don't agree with the villagers' assessment that
> the flooding was caused by lack of dredging, but say that the same
> volume of water fell over a similar period as in previous winters, the
> difference that year was simply that the moorland was already sodden
> after weeks of rain beforehand, so the sudden excess water had nowhere
> to go. There's also the question of dredging increasing the water
> flowing downstream into Bridgewater, where many tens of times more
> people live than in Moorland, thereby increasing the likelihood of
> flooding there.

This is a documentary after the floods (no longer available on iplayer;
your clip only lasts a minute). I live in Somerset and know that during
the floods there was a lot of local news, including interviews from
those who were employed to keep the area drained before they were put
out of the job by the problem being transferred to DEFRA by the Government.

Basically the area is a flood plain rescued sufficiently to be
productive farmland, but as I said in my earlier post it would flood
from high spring tides with an onshore wind because the land level is
lower than that. The problem with that particular flood was not that
the water arrived, but that it took so long for the water to drain away
when it did. This was a flood that took so many weeks to drain that the
crops were destroyed by drowning. The people who used to look after the
drainage took video footage of drainage ditches blocked by fly tipping
and outflow rivers that were a third of the depth that they used to be.
Bridgewater is a reasonable height above high tide level and the river
there is tidal so if it was going to flood it would do so regularly.
Thus dredging the river to improve the flow off the Levels would not
create a problem for Bridgewater, it would just restore the arrangement
that had been in place until DEFRA took over.

I have a suspicion that the pumps the EA first brought in were more of a
PR arrangement in the face of mounting hostility, initially undersized
because the river they were pumping into couldn't carry away much more
that they were adding (hence the "moving water about" accusation).
However, they did manage to shift most of the new water that the weather
was bringing in so they did stop the flooding getting worse. It was only
after the water level in that river went down a bit that they brought in
larger pumps that could remove more water than was being added and thus
reduce the flood, but that was an unacceptably long time after the
initial flooding.

The EA have a policy of refusing to believe that lack of dredging is a
problem; they did exactly the same thing when the Avon flooded badly
and drowned some of the basements of Georgian listed buildings in Bath
because the Avon through Keynsham was so silted up that there was
insufficient flow downstream to clear the volume of water arriving from
upstream. Again this was a problem arising because the Bristol Avon
Flood Defence Committee was disbanded when DEFRA took over, and the EA
take the official position that they regard DEFRA as the experts and the
EA merely implements their policies, when in reality DEFRA just have an
inadequate budget and refuse to spend money on things they think they
can get away with ignoring.

This background was given to me (and others in the same session) by Alan
J Aldous BSc CEng MIET (ex - Bristol Avon Flood Defence Committee). I
believe his main speciality is fluid dynamics. He is a Chartered
Engineer qualified in 2 disciplines of engineering and with many years
of experience of this river, and certainly had the facts and figures
about the necessary design depths (3 metres minimum), flow rates (365
cubic metres per second) etc needed to protect the lower lying areas of
Bath readily to hand alongside the data of the recent flood which
resulted from just 285 cubic metres per second water flow which proved
that reduced depth resulting from deposited silt and no dredging,
greatly increased the risk of flooding.

No BBC documentary is going to go into that level of detail.

Jim

On 04/02/2022 21:31, Indy Jess John wrote:
>
> On 04/02/2022 16:45, Java Jive wrote:
>>
>> Somerset: After the Floods
>> https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gd7j7
>>
>> Mostly the programme is about the villagers of Moorland, the flooding of
>> their homes, their struggles to rebuild, in various cases with or
>> without insurance paying up, and their anger and their accusations
>> against the Environment Agency for, allegedly:
>>
>>     a)  Failing to dredge.
>>
>> The villagers formed an action group and pressured the EA into resuming
>> dredging to clear one particular stretch, but see below.
>>
>>     b)  'Moving water about' to sacrifice their village to save towns.
>>
>> This is such an absurd and unrealistic accusation that no more need be
>> said about it.  The simple truth was that the pumps that the EA had
>> available weren't sufficient to keep the flooding at bay, let alone move
>> water about to cause it in the first place!
>>
>> Basically, in their anger at what was essentially very bad luck they
>> were looking for someone to blame.
>>
>> In fact, in normal years, surplus water floods out of the rivers and
>> ditches over the surrounding fields and countryside, for which the local
>> term seems to be moorland, presumably giving the village its name.  In
>> the programme, the EA don't agree with the villagers' assessment that
>> the flooding was caused by lack of dredging, but say that the same
>> volume of water fell over a similar period as in previous winters, the
>> difference that year was simply that the moorland was already sodden
>> after weeks of rain beforehand, so the sudden excess water had nowhere
>> to go.  There's also the question of dredging increasing the water
>> flowing downstream into Bridgewater, where many tens of times more
>> people live than in Moorland, thereby increasing the likelihood of
>> flooding there.
>
> This is a documentary after the floods (no longer available on iplayer;
> your clip only lasts a minute).

No, I still have a recording of the programme, and watched it again in
its entirety this afternoon.

> I live in Somerset and know that during
> the floods there was a lot of local news, including interviews from
> those who were employed to keep the area drained before they were put
> out of the job by the problem being transferred to DEFRA by the Government.
>
> Basically the area is a flood plain rescued sufficiently to be
> productive farmland,

Yes, the drainage was begun by medieval monks, and continued up to the
the TV era, the programme included B&W footage of drag-shovels from
around the 60s.

> but as I said in my earlier post it would flood
> from high spring tides with an onshore wind because the land level is
> lower than that.

That was not so much the problem with this particular flood, which was
caused by extreme rainfall.

> The problem with that particular flood was not that
> the water arrived, but that it took so long for the water to drain away
> when it did.  This was a flood that took so many weeks to drain that the
> crops were destroyed by drowning.

As the programme explained above, that was because an intense period of
heavy rainfall followed many months of rain that had already filled the
entire floodplains capacity to absorb water.

> The people who used to look after the
> drainage took video footage of drainage ditches blocked by fly tipping
> and outflow rivers that were a third of the depth that they used to be.
>  Bridgewater is a reasonable height above high tide level and the river
> there is tidal so if it was going to flood it would do so regularly.
> Thus dredging the river to improve the flow off the Levels would not
> create a problem for Bridgewater, it would just restore the arrangement
> that had been in place until DEFRA took over.

Not necessarily. One of the now accepted truths about historical
land-management is that man has often been his own worst enemy,
particularly that increasing flows upstream often leads to flooding
downstream, and consequently there have been moves in recent times to
replant forests and reflood peat bogs in river catchments and
watersheds, so that they have a greater capacity to hold back extreme
rainfall and discharge it more evenly in the following weeks.

> I have a suspicion that the pumps the EA first brought in were more of a
> PR arrangement in the face of mounting hostility, initially undersized
> because the river they were pumping into couldn't carry away much more
> that they were adding (hence the "moving water about" accusation).

No, the absurd accusation was that the EA was deliberately moving water
onto the levels to save other areas, but, as you yourself have
suggested, the pumps available could not possibly have managed to do any
such thing. The accusation was made by an obviously very ignorant man
who was just determined to find someone to blame.

> However, they did manage to shift most of the new water that the weather
> was bringing in so they did stop the flooding getting worse. It was only
> after the water level in that river went down a bit that they brought in
> larger pumps that could remove more water than was being added and thus
> reduce the flood, but that was an unacceptably long time after the
> initial flooding.

You yourself have suggested that the water courses were full anyway, so
I fail to see what else could have been done that would have been
'acceptable'. The simple truth is that the water was coming in too fast
for the water courses to remove, and you only have to compare the huge
volumes of water over such a wide area flooded with the volumes of soil
that would have been excavated by dredging to realise that the lack of
dredging probably made little difference to the end result. It would
have made some little difference, certainly, but I doubt whether it
could possibly have saved Moorland. See below ...

> The EA have a policy of refusing to believe that lack of dredging is a
> problem;  they did exactly the same thing when the Avon flooded badly
> and drowned some of the basements of Georgian listed buildings in Bath
> because the Avon through Keynsham was so silted up that there was
> insufficient flow downstream to clear the volume of water arriving from
> upstream.  Again this was a problem arising because the Bristol Avon
> Flood Defence Committee was disbanded when DEFRA took over, and the EA
> take the official position that they regard DEFRA as the experts and the
> EA merely implements their policies, when in reality DEFRA just have an
> inadequate budget and refuse to spend money on things they think they
> can get away with ignoring.
>
> This background was given to me (and others in the same session) by Alan
> J Aldous BSc CEng MIET (ex - Bristol Avon Flood Defence Committee). I
> believe his main speciality is fluid dynamics. He is a Chartered
> Engineer qualified in 2 disciplines of engineering and with many years
> of experience of this river, and certainly had the facts and figures
> about the necessary design depths (3 metres minimum), flow rates (365
> cubic metres per second) etc needed to protect the lower lying areas of
> Bath readily to hand alongside the data of the recent flood which
> resulted from just 285 cubic metres per second water flow which proved
> that reduced depth resulting from deposited silt and no dredging,
> greatly increased the risk of flooding.
>
> No BBC documentary is going to go into that level of detail.

And indeed it didn't, however it did state causes that agree with other
findings, viz that a period of intense heavy rainfall followed a long
period of less intense but sustained rainfall that had already filled
the moorland's capacity to absorb any more water. Others also mention
high tides, but they only last a few hours, so they can't really explain
the longevity of the flooding:

https://www.internetgeography.net/topics/the-somerset-levels-flood-case-study/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Levels#Flooding

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

On 04/02/2022 23:41, Java Jive wrote:
> And indeed it didn't, however it did state causes that agree with other
> findings, viz that a period of intense heavy rainfall followed a long
> period of less intense but sustained rainfall that had already filled
> the moorland's capacity to absorb any more water.  Others also mention
> high tides, but they only last a few hours, so they can't really explain
> the longevity of the flooding:
>
> https://www.internetgeography.net/topics/the-somerset-levels-flood-case-study/
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Levels#Flooding

These are also worth a read:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-26157538
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lec/news-and-events/news/2014/february/flooding-in-somerset--an-indicator-of-changes-to-come/

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

In article <j64964FrhtiU1@mid.individual.net>, Andy Burns
<usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

> <https://12ft.io/https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22ba-11e8-add1-0e8958b189ea>

> "it is becoming increasingly clear, say experts, that the evacuation,
> not the nuclear accident itself, was the most devastating part of the
> disaster"

So all we need to do is guarantee NO Fission Reactor site - or its long
term waste EVER meets with an 'accident'. Simples. erm... not.

Reality shows that dog won't hunt.

The problems with fission are in essence:

1) All new builds take longer than planned, show up flaws, cost more, and
have remaining flaws when/if built and operated.

2) End up being designs whicj during their operational life show up more
flaws and problems.

3) As yet we haven't managed to really dispose of all the waste, so we just
make that our children's problem... and their children, etc.

i.e. as far as possible, shove the real costs/drawbacks into the future and
hope no-one notices until after the builders have walked away with the
money.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
biog http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/history/ups_and_downs.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

On 05/02/2022 10:59, Martin wrote:
> AFAIR the pumps were borrowed from the Dutch. In the 1960s, the Civil Defence
> had lots of large diesel powered pumps for emergencies, I had a summer holiday
> job at a water works part of the job was starting all these pumps.

They might have got some extra ones but the England and Wales fire
authorities have 51 High Volume pumps stationed around the country and
Scotland has four. These can be sent to anywhere needing them. They
are complete with all the extra bits needed to use them.

https://www.ukfrs.com/promos/16963

On 04/02/2022 23:41, Java Jive wrote:
> On 04/02/2022 21:31, Indy Jess John wrote:
>>
>> On 04/02/2022 16:45, Java Jive wrote:
>>>
>>> Somerset: After the Floods
>>> https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gd7j7
>>>
>>> Mostly the programme is about the villagers of Moorland, the flooding of
>>> their homes, their struggles to rebuild, in various cases with or
>>> without insurance paying up, and their anger and their accusations
>>> against the Environment Agency for, allegedly:
>>>
>>> a) Failing to dredge.
>>>
>>> The villagers formed an action group and pressured the EA into resuming
>>> dredging to clear one particular stretch, but see below.
>>>
>>> b) 'Moving water about' to sacrifice their village to save towns.
>>>
>>> This is such an absurd and unrealistic accusation that no more need be
>>> said about it. The simple truth was that the pumps that the EA had
>>> available weren't sufficient to keep the flooding at bay, let alone move
>>> water about to cause it in the first place!
>>>
>>> Basically, in their anger at what was essentially very bad luck they
>>> were looking for someone to blame.
>>>
>>> In fact, in normal years, surplus water floods out of the rivers and
>>> ditches over the surrounding fields and countryside, for which the local
>>> term seems to be moorland, presumably giving the village its name. In
>>> the programme, the EA don't agree with the villagers' assessment that
>>> the flooding was caused by lack of dredging, but say that the same
>>> volume of water fell over a similar period as in previous winters, the
>>> difference that year was simply that the moorland was already sodden
>>> after weeks of rain beforehand, so the sudden excess water had nowhere
>>> to go. There's also the question of dredging increasing the water
>>> flowing downstream into Bridgewater, where many tens of times more
>>> people live than in Moorland, thereby increasing the likelihood of
>>> flooding there.
>>
>> This is a documentary after the floods (no longer available on iplayer;
>> your clip only lasts a minute).
>
> No, I still have a recording of the programme, and watched it again in
> its entirety this afternoon.

The link you put in your message ran for 1 minute with a pop-up on the
side of the screen saying that the full clip is no longer available.
Whatever you watched wasn't available to me.
>
>> I live in Somerset and know that during
>> the floods there was a lot of local news, including interviews from
>> those who were employed to keep the area drained before they were put
>> out of the job by the problem being transferred to DEFRA by the Government.
>>
>> Basically the area is a flood plain rescued sufficiently to be
>> productive farmland,
>
> Yes, the drainage was begun by medieval monks, and continued up to the
> the TV era, the programme included B&W footage of drag-shovels from
> around the 60s.
>
>> but as I said in my earlier post it would flood
>> from high spring tides with an onshore wind because the land level is
>> lower than that.
>
> That was not so much the problem with this particular flood, which was
> caused by extreme rainfall.
>
>> The problem with that particular flood was not that
>> the water arrived, but that it took so long for the water to drain away
>> when it did. This was a flood that took so many weeks to drain that the
>> crops were destroyed by drowning.
>
> As the programme explained above, that was because an intense period of
> heavy rainfall followed many months of rain that had already filled the
> entire floodplains capacity to absorb water.

Rainfall is not especially rare on the levels, and nor is flooding. The
problem was that the watercourses intended to drain the floods were not
maintained and flow rates were inadequate because of it.

You are making the same mistake the EA did, in assuming that storage is
as good as drainage. It isn't.
>
>> The people who used to look after the
>> drainage took video footage of drainage ditches blocked by fly tipping
>> and outflow rivers that were a third of the depth that they used to be.
>> Bridgewater is a reasonable height above high tide level and the river
>> there is tidal so if it was going to flood it would do so regularly.
>> Thus dredging the river to improve the flow off the Levels would not
>> create a problem for Bridgewater, it would just restore the arrangement
>> that had been in place until DEFRA took over.
>
> Not necessarily. One of the now accepted truths about historical
> land-management is that man has often been his own worst enemy,
> particularly that increasing flows upstream often leads to flooding
> downstream, and consequently there have been moves in recent times to
> replant forests and reflood peat bogs in river catchments and
> watersheds, so that they have a greater capacity to hold back extreme
> rainfall and discharge it more evenly in the following weeks.

That is not the problem on the levels.
>
>> I have a suspicion that the pumps the EA first brought in were more of a
>> PR arrangement in the face of mounting hostility, initially undersized
>> because the river they were pumping into couldn't carry away much more
>> that they were adding (hence the "moving water about" accusation).
>
> No, the absurd accusation was that the EA was deliberately moving water
> onto the levels to save other areas, but, as you yourself have
> suggested, the pumps available could not possibly have managed to do any
> such thing. The accusation was made by an obviously very ignorant man
> who was just determined to find someone to blame.
>
>> However, they did manage to shift most of the new water that the weather
>> was bringing in so they did stop the flooding getting worse. It was only
>> after the water level in that river went down a bit that they brought in
>> larger pumps that could remove more water than was being added and thus
>> reduce the flood, but that was an unacceptably long time after the
>> initial flooding.
>
> You yourself have suggested that the water courses were full anyway, so
> I fail to see what else could have been done that would have been
> 'acceptable'. The simple truth is that the water was coming in too fast
> for the water courses to remove, and you only have to compare the huge
> volumes of water over such a wide area flooded with the volumes of soil
> that would have been excavated by dredging to realise that the lack of
> dredging probably made little difference to the end result. It would
> have made some little difference, certainly, but I doubt whether it
> could possibly have saved Moorland. See below ...

Not so. The water courses were full from simple neglect. The river
they were pumping into was too silted to take the necessary flow rate
needed to drain the levels, as was the other river that would be
expected to drain the occasional flood.
>
>> The EA have a policy of refusing to believe that lack of dredging is a
>> problem; they did exactly the same thing when the Avon flooded badly
>> and drowned some of the basements of Georgian listed buildings in Bath
>> because the Avon through Keynsham was so silted up that there was
>> insufficient flow downstream to clear the volume of water arriving from
>> upstream. Again this was a problem arising because the Bristol Avon
>> Flood Defence Committee was disbanded when DEFRA took over, and the EA
>> take the official position that they regard DEFRA as the experts and the
>> EA merely implements their policies, when in reality DEFRA just have an
>> inadequate budget and refuse to spend money on things they think they
>> can get away with ignoring.
>>
>> This background was given to me (and others in the same session) by Alan
>> J Aldous BSc CEng MIET (ex - Bristol Avon Flood Defence Committee). I
>> believe his main speciality is fluid dynamics. He is a Chartered
>> Engineer qualified in 2 disciplines of engineering and with many years
>> of experience of this river, and certainly had the facts and figures
>> about the necessary design depths (3 metres minimum), flow rates (365
>> cubic metres per second) etc needed to protect the lower lying areas of
>> Bath readily to hand alongside the data of the recent flood which
>> resulted from just 285 cubic metres per second water flow which proved
>> that reduced depth resulting from deposited silt and no dredging,
>> greatly increased the risk of flooding.
>>
>> No BBC documentary is going to go into that level of detail.
>
> And indeed it didn't, however it did state causes that agree with other
> findings, viz that a period of intense heavy rainfall followed a long
> period of less intense but sustained rainfall that had already filled
> the moorland's capacity to absorb any more water. Others also mention
> high tides, but they only last a few hours, so they can't really explain
> the longevity of the flooding:
>
> https://www.internetgeography.net/topics/the-somerset-levels-flood-case-study/
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Levels#Flooding
>
The first link just backs up what I said before:
"There had been less dredging of the river channels on the Somerset
Levels leading up to 2014. However, as a result of this, the channels
had raised due to sediment accumulation. This reduced the capacity of
rivers to transport water, leading to flooding."
and
"The Somerset Levels and Moors Action Plan was developed and included
measures such as reintroducing dredging, the construction of a tidal
barrage and additional permanent pumping stations."

On Wed, 02 Feb 2022 17:19:02 +0000 (GMT), charles <charles@candehope.me.uk>
wrote:

>> I gave away all my old bottles of malts when I had to give up drinking for
>> health reasons. Alas.
>
> My younger daughter looked at my collection and suggested she took some
> away because I'd kill myself if I drank them all. I said "No"

She'll get 'em eventually, regardless. Why can't she enjoy them now?

On Thu, 3 Feb 2022 05:31:21 +0000, williamwright <wrightsaerials@f2s.com>
wrote:

> Presumably I won't be expected to drive when it's my turn to go to the
> crem. It'll make a pleasant change.

You'll be able to have a drink then.

In article <slrnsvt5dn.4sc.abuse@news.pr.network>, Paul Ratcliffe
<abuse@orac12.clara34.co56.uk78> wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Feb 2022 17:19:02 +0000 (GMT), charles
> <charles@candehope.me.uk> wrote:

> >> I gave away all my old bottles of malts when I had to give up drinking
> >> for health reasons. Alas.
> >
> > My younger daughter looked at my collection and suggested she took some
> > away because I'd kill myself if I drank them all. I said "No"

> She'll get 'em eventually, regardless. Why can't she enjoy them now?

she doesn't like whisky!

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

On 05/02/2022 00:02, Java Jive wrote:
> On 04/02/2022 23:41, Java Jive wrote:
>> And indeed it didn't, however it did state causes that agree with other
>> findings, viz that a period of intense heavy rainfall followed a long
>> period of less intense but sustained rainfall that had already filled
>> the moorland's capacity to absorb any more water. Others also mention
>> high tides, but they only last a few hours, so they can't really explain
>> the longevity of the flooding:
>>
>> https://www.internetgeography.net/topics/the-somerset-levels-flood-case-study/
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Levels#Flooding
>
> These are also worth a read:
>
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-26157538
> https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lec/news-and-events/news/2014/february/flooding-in-somerset--an-indicator-of-changes-to-come/
>
Yes, but neither of them make the connection that when the flood
management activities were controlled locally, those responsible
understood the rivers they were dealing with, and cost effectively dealt
with it. Indeed the Bristol Avon Flood Defence Committee had balance of
£2.4m ready for their proposed river improvements, which disappeared
from local view when DEFRA replaced the committee, as did the money
obtained from selling their dredger.

I have no financial information for the Internal Drainage board for the
Levels, but they were effective in keeping the waterways flowing until
they stopped being autonomous when they were placed under Government
Control. Eric Pickles confessed this was a mistake, but was told to be
quiet!

Jim

On 05/02/2022 16:25, Indy Jess John wrote:
>
> On 05/02/2022 00:02, Java Jive wrote:
>>
>> On 04/02/2022 23:41, Java Jive wrote:
>>>
>>> And indeed it didn't, however it did state causes that agree with other
>>> findings, viz that a period of intense heavy rainfall followed a long
>>> period of less intense but sustained rainfall that had already filled
>>> the moorland's capacity to absorb any more water.  Others also mention
>>> high tides, but they only last a few hours, so they can't really explain
>>> the longevity of the flooding:
>>>
>>> https://www.internetgeography.net/topics/the-somerset-levels-flood-case-study/
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Levels#Flooding
>>
>> These are also worth a read:
>>
>> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-26157538
>> https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lec/news-and-events/news/2014/february/flooding-in-somerset--an-indicator-of-changes-to-come/
>
> Yes, but neither of them make the connection that when the flood
> management activities were controlled locally, those responsible
> understood the rivers they were dealing with, and cost effectively dealt
> with it. Indeed the Bristol Avon Flood Defence Committee had balance of
> £2.4m ready for their proposed river improvements, which disappeared
> from local view when DEFRA replaced the committee, as did the money
> obtained from selling their dredger.
>
> I have no financial information for the Internal Drainage board for the
> Levels, but they were effective in keeping the waterways flowing until
> they stopped being autonomous when they were placed under Government
> Control.  Eric Pickles confessed this was a mistake, but was told to be
> quiet!

Yes, but is that cause and effect, or just merely coincidence? If a
once in a century event had occurred just before the handover, you'd now
be cursing the local management and arguing for it to be managed
nationally, but as the once in a century event happened after the
changeover, everyone's now blaming the national authority for the mess.
My suspicion from everything that I've read about it is that it would
have happened anyway, simply because of the unusual combination of
causal factors involved in it.

I invite you to calculate the volume of soil that could be excavated
from the rivers by dredging and compare that figure with the volume of
water spread over the flooded area. I haven't done such a calculation,
because I'm happy to rely on the professional and/or scientific
assessments and contemporary reports that I've already linked, but my
strong suspicion is that you'll find the volume of earth that could be
removed would only be a small fraction of the volume of water doing the
flooding. Of course, that is only one relevant calculation, because
really the purpose of the rivers and drains is to remove water, not to
hold it, so it would be even more interesting and relevant also to
calculate the increased flow possible and compare it with the rate of
accumulation in the entire upstream catchment due to the exceptional
sustained heavy rainfall - you'd be better placed than me to do such a
calculation, because of your better local knowledge - and I think such
a calculation would be needed if you're going to convince the sort of
people who write the sort of reports that I've linked.

Note also:

* That flow is determined by the most restricted section of a
watercourse, so if any dredging is to be done on it, it's no good just
doing one section, you'd have to do the entire course of it to ensure
that it all has a minimum cross-section for adequate flow.

* That faster water flow can erode banks and flood defences more
quickly, so may be undesirable for those reasons, and that dredging
removes bankside vegetation that tends to hold the banks together.

For both the above reasons, you may be committing yourself to a vicious
circle where the more you dredge, the more you have to keep on dredging.

* That much of the wildlife living along the banks of the
watercourses will be protected species, and thus may require capture and
relocation before dredging can be allowed to proceed, which will add
considerably to the cost.

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

In article <stjlqr$ch0$1@dont-email.me>, Java Jive <java@evij.com.invalid>
wrote:

> There are still accidents caused by trains and cars, and sometimes,
> depending on the cause, we do still blame the technology.

With road accidents it is commonly said that the highest cause of them is
the "nut behind the wheel". You can probably say something similar about
fission as poor design, planning, or construction seem to be the common
root causes. Ranging from glossing over the costs/rists of buildng, to
decommissioning and waste containment, etc.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
biog http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/history/ups_and_downs.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

On 05/02/2022 15:57, Indy Jess John wrote:
>
> On 04/02/2022 23:41, Java Jive wrote:
>>
>> On 04/02/2022 21:31, Indy Jess John wrote:
>>>
>>> On 04/02/2022 16:45, Java Jive wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Somerset: After the Floods
>>>> https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gd7j7
>>>>
>>>> Mostly the programme is about the villagers of Moorland, the
>>>> flooding of
>>>> their homes, their struggles to rebuild, in various cases with or
>>>> without insurance paying up, and their anger and their accusations
>>>> against the Environment Agency for, allegedly:
>>>>
>>>>      a)  Failing to dredge.
>>>>
>>>> The villagers formed an action group and pressured the EA into resuming
>>>> dredging to clear one particular stretch, but see below.
>>>>
>>>>      b)  'Moving water about' to sacrifice their village to save towns.
>>>>
>>>> This is such an absurd and unrealistic accusation that no more need be
>>>> said about it.  The simple truth was that the pumps that the EA had
>>>> available weren't sufficient to keep the flooding at bay, let alone
>>>> move
>>>> water about to cause it in the first place!
>>>>
>>>> Basically, in their anger at what was essentially very bad luck they
>>>> were looking for someone to blame.
>>>>
>>>> In fact, in normal years, surplus water floods out of the rivers and
>>>> ditches over the surrounding fields and countryside, for which the
>>>> local
>>>> term seems to be moorland, presumably giving the village its name.  In
>>>> the programme, the EA don't agree with the villagers' assessment that
>>>> the flooding was caused by lack of dredging, but say that the same
>>>> volume of water fell over a similar period as in previous winters, the
>>>> difference that year was simply that the moorland was already sodden
>>>> after weeks of rain beforehand, so the sudden excess water had nowhere
>>>> to go.  There's also the question of dredging increasing the water
>>>> flowing downstream into Bridgewater, where many tens of times more
>>>> people live than in Moorland, thereby increasing the likelihood of
>>>> flooding there.
>>>
>>> This is a documentary after the floods (no longer available on iplayer;
>>> your clip only lasts a minute).
>>
>> No, I still have a recording of the programme, and watched it again in
>> its entirety this afternoon.
>
> The link you put in your message ran for 1 minute with a pop-up on the
> side of the screen saying that the full clip is no longer available.
> Whatever you watched wasn't available to me.

Which is exactly why I summarised the programme as still quoted above.

>>> I live in Somerset and know that during
>>> the floods there was a lot of local news, including interviews from
>>> those who were employed to keep the area drained before they were put
>>> out of the job by the problem being transferred to DEFRA by the
>>> Government.
>>>
>>> Basically the area is a flood plain rescued sufficiently to be
>>> productive farmland,
>>
>> Yes, the drainage was begun by medieval monks, and continued up to the
>> the TV era, the programme included B&W footage of drag-shovels from
>> around the 60s.
>>
>>> but as I said in my earlier post it would flood
>>> from high spring tides with an onshore wind because the land level is
>>> lower than that.
>>
>> That was not so much the problem with this particular flood, which was
>> caused by extreme rainfall.
>>
>>> The problem with that particular flood was not that
>>> the water arrived, but that it took so long for the water to drain away
>>> when it did.  This was a flood that took so many weeks to drain that the
>>> crops were destroyed by drowning.
>>
>> As the programme explained above, that was because an intense period of
>> heavy rainfall followed many months of rain that had already filled the
>> entire floodplains capacity to absorb water.
>
> Rainfall is not especially rare on the levels, and nor is flooding.  The
> problem was that the watercourses intended to drain the floods were not
> maintained and flow rates were inadequate because of it.
>
> You are making the same mistake the EA did, in assuming that storage is
> as good as drainage.  It isn't.

No, I am not, see my other reply.

>>> The people who used to look after the
>>> drainage took video footage of drainage ditches blocked by fly tipping
>>> and outflow rivers that were a third of the depth that they used to be.
>>>    Bridgewater is a reasonable height above high tide level and the
>>> river
>>> there is tidal so if it was going to flood it would do so regularly.
>>> Thus dredging the river to improve the flow off the Levels would not
>>> create a problem for Bridgewater, it would just restore the arrangement
>>> that had been in place until DEFRA took over.
>>
>> Not necessarily.  One of the now accepted truths about historical
>> land-management is that man has often been his own worst enemy,
>> particularly that increasing flows upstream often leads to flooding
>> downstream, and consequently there have been moves in recent times to
>> replant forests and reflood peat bogs in river catchments and
>> watersheds, so that they have a greater capacity to hold back extreme
>> rainfall and discharge it more evenly in the following weeks.
>
> That is not the problem on the levels.

But it may be a problem higher up in the catchment.

>>> I have a suspicion that the pumps the EA first brought in were more of a
>>> PR arrangement in the face of mounting hostility, initially undersized
>>> because the river they were pumping into couldn't carry away much more
>>> that they were adding (hence the "moving water about" accusation).
>>
>> No, the absurd accusation was that the EA was deliberately moving water
>> onto the levels to save other areas, but, as you yourself have
>> suggested, the pumps available could not possibly have managed to do any
>> such thing.  The accusation was made by an obviously very ignorant man
>> who was just determined to find someone to blame.
>>
>>> However, they did manage to shift most of the new water that the weather
>>> was bringing in so they did stop the flooding getting worse. It was only
>>> after the water level in that river went down a bit that they brought in
>>> larger pumps that could remove more water than was being added and thus
>>> reduce the flood, but that was an unacceptably long time after the
>>> initial flooding.
>>
>> You yourself have suggested that the water courses were full anyway, so
>> I fail to see what else could have been done that would have been
>> 'acceptable'.  The simple truth is that the water was coming in too fast
>> for the water courses to remove, and you only have to compare the huge
>> volumes of water over such a wide area flooded with the volumes of soil
>> that would have been excavated by dredging to realise that the lack of
>> dredging probably made little difference to the end result.  It would
>> have made some little difference, certainly, but I doubt whether it
>> could possibly have saved Moorland.  See below ...
>
> Not so.  The water courses were full from simple neglect.  The river
> they were pumping into was too silted to take the necessary flow rate
> needed to drain the levels, as was the other river that would be
> expected to drain the occasional flood.

No, they were full because of the sustained heavy rainfall, see my other
reply.

>>> The EA have a policy of refusing to believe that lack of dredging is a
>>> problem;  they did exactly the same thing when the Avon flooded badly
>>> and drowned some of the basements of Georgian listed buildings in Bath
>>> because the Avon through Keynsham was so silted up that there was
>>> insufficient flow downstream to clear the volume of water arriving from
>>> upstream.  Again this was a problem arising because the Bristol Avon
>>> Flood Defence Committee was disbanded when DEFRA took over, and the EA
>>> take the official position that they regard DEFRA as the experts and the
>>> EA merely implements their policies, when in reality DEFRA just have an
>>> inadequate budget and refuse to spend money on things they think they
>>> can get away with ignoring.
>>>
>>> This background was given to me (and others in the same session) by Alan
>>> J Aldous BSc CEng MIET (ex - Bristol Avon Flood Defence Committee). I
>>> believe his main speciality is fluid dynamics. He is a Chartered
>>> Engineer qualified in 2 disciplines of engineering and with many years
>>> of experience of this river, and certainly had the facts and figures
>>> about the necessary design depths (3 metres minimum), flow rates (365
>>> cubic metres per second) etc needed to protect the lower lying areas of
>>> Bath readily to hand alongside the data of the recent flood which
>>> resulted from just 285 cubic metres per second water flow which proved
>>> that reduced depth resulting from deposited silt and no dredging,
>>> greatly increased the risk of flooding.
>>>
>>> No BBC documentary is going to go into that level of detail.
>>
>> And indeed it didn't, however it did state causes that agree with other
>> findings, viz that a period of intense heavy rainfall followed a long
>> period of less intense but sustained rainfall that had already filled
>> the moorland's capacity to absorb any more water.  Others also mention
>> high tides, but they only last a few hours, so they can't really explain
>> the longevity of the flooding:
>>
>> https://www.internetgeography.net/topics/the-somerset-levels-flood-case-study/
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Levels#Flooding
>
> The first link just backs up what I said before:
> "There had been less dredging of the river channels on the Somerset
> Levels leading up to 2014. However, as a result of this, the channels
> had raised due to sediment accumulation. This reduced the capacity of
> rivers to transport water, leading to flooding."
> and
> "The Somerset Levels and Moors Action Plan was developed and included
> measures such as reintroducing dredging, the construction of a tidal
> barrage and additional permanent pumping stations."

On 05/02/2022 17:26, Java Jive wrote:
> On 05/02/2022 16:25, Indy Jess John wrote:
>>
>> On 05/02/2022 00:02, Java Jive wrote:
>>>
>>> On 04/02/2022 23:41, Java Jive wrote:
>>>>
>>>> And indeed it didn't, however it did state causes that agree with other
>>>> findings, viz that a period of intense heavy rainfall followed a long
>>>> period of less intense but sustained rainfall that had already filled
>>>> the moorland's capacity to absorb any more water. Others also mention
>>>> high tides, but they only last a few hours, so they can't really explain
>>>> the longevity of the flooding:
>>>>
>>>> https://www.internetgeography.net/topics/the-somerset-levels-flood-case-study/
>>>>
>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Levels#Flooding
>>>
>>> These are also worth a read:
>>>
>>> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-26157538
>>> https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lec/news-and-events/news/2014/february/flooding-in-somerset--an-indicator-of-changes-to-come/
>>
>> Yes, but neither of them make the connection that when the flood
>> management activities were controlled locally, those responsible
>> understood the rivers they were dealing with, and cost effectively dealt
>> with it. Indeed the Bristol Avon Flood Defence Committee had balance of
>> £2.4m ready for their proposed river improvements, which disappeared
>> from local view when DEFRA replaced the committee, as did the money
>> obtained from selling their dredger.
>>
>> I have no financial information for the Internal Drainage board for the
>> Levels, but they were effective in keeping the waterways flowing until
>> they stopped being autonomous when they were placed under Government
>> Control. Eric Pickles confessed this was a mistake, but was told to be
>> quiet!
>
> Yes, but is that cause and effect, or just merely coincidence? If a
> once in a century event had occurred just before the handover, you'd now
> be cursing the local management and arguing for it to be managed
> nationally, but as the once in a century event happened after the
> changeover, everyone's now blaming the national authority for the mess.
> My suspicion from everything that I've read about it is that it would
> have happened anyway, simply because of the unusual combination of
> causal factors involved in it.
>
> I invite you to calculate the volume of soil that could be excavated
> from the rivers by dredging and compare that figure with the volume of
> water spread over the flooded area. I haven't done such a calculation,
> because I'm happy to rely on the professional and/or scientific
> assessments and contemporary reports that I've already linked, but my
> strong suspicion is that you'll find the volume of earth that could be
> removed would only be a small fraction of the volume of water doing the
> flooding. Of course, that is only one relevant calculation, because
> really the purpose of the rivers and drains is to remove water, not to
> hold it, so it would be even more interesting and relevant also to
> calculate the increased flow possible and compare it with the rate of
> accumulation in the entire upstream catchment due to the exceptional
> sustained heavy rainfall - you'd be better placed than me to do such a
> calculation, because of your better local knowledge - and I think such
> a calculation would be needed if you're going to convince the sort of
> people who write the sort of reports that I've linked.
>
> Note also:
>
> * That flow is determined by the most restricted section of a
> watercourse, so if any dredging is to be done on it, it's no good just
> doing one section, you'd have to do the entire course of it to ensure
> that it all has a minimum cross-section for adequate flow.
>
> * That faster water flow can erode banks and flood defences more
> quickly, so may be undesirable for those reasons, and that dredging
> removes bankside vegetation that tends to hold the banks together.
>
> For both the above reasons, you may be committing yourself to a vicious
> circle where the more you dredge, the more you have to keep on dredging.
>
> * That much of the wildlife living along the banks of the
> watercourses will be protected species, and thus may require capture and
> relocation before dredging can be allowed to proceed, which will add
> considerably to the cost.
>
You are confusing the EA's attempt at dredging (widening the river by
cutting back the banks) with the dredging that the previous authorities
were doing which is increasing the flow volume by maintaining a minimum
depth of the normal flow channel.

Yes, it would be interesting to compare the actual numbers for the
Somerset levels, but there are 4 draining rivers and no published
information on maximum flow rates there so it is well beyond my
capabilities. The numbers for the Avon are a bit easier, thanks to the
information provided by the former Bristol Avon Flood Defence Committee
member. The cessation of dredging for depth on a single river reduced
the maximum flow rate before over-topping takes place by 22%.

I am not interested in convincing the people who write the type of
report you linked to. If they had done their homework and asked the
people who actually understand how those particular watercourses operate
they wouldn't have reached their superficial conclusions. If they can't
see the value of talking to the experts, they are certainly not going to
take notice of me who hasn't got the relevant qualifications after my
name. They can write what they like; it doesn't necessarily make it true.

Jim

On 05/02/2022 20:18, Indy Jess John wrote:
>
> On 05/02/2022 17:26, Java Jive wrote:
>>
>> On 05/02/2022 16:25, Indy Jess John wrote:
>>>
>>> On 05/02/2022 00:02, Java Jive wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 04/02/2022 23:41, Java Jive wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.internetgeography.net/topics/the-somerset-levels-flood-case-study/
>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Levels#Flooding
>>>>
>>>> These are also worth a read:
>>>>
>>>> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-26157538
>>>> https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lec/news-and-events/news/2014/february/flooding-in-somerset--an-indicator-of-changes-to-come/
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, but neither of them make the connection that when the flood
>>> management activities were controlled locally, those responsible
>>> understood the rivers they were dealing with, and cost effectively dealt
>>> with it. Indeed the Bristol Avon Flood Defence Committee had balance of
>>> £2.4m ready for their proposed river improvements, which disappeared
>>> from local view when DEFRA replaced the committee, as did the money
>>> obtained from selling their dredger.
>>>
>>> I have no financial information for the Internal Drainage board for the
>>> Levels, but they were effective in keeping the waterways flowing until
>>> they stopped being autonomous when they were placed under Government
>>> Control.  Eric Pickles confessed this was a mistake, but was told to be
>>> quiet!
>>
>> Yes, but is that cause and effect, or just merely coincidence?  If a
>> once in a century event had occurred just before the handover, you'd now
>> be cursing the local management and arguing for it to be managed
>> nationally, but as the once in a century event happened after the
>> changeover, everyone's now blaming the national authority for the mess.
>> My suspicion from everything that I've read about it is that it would
>> have happened anyway, simply because of the unusual combination of
>> causal factors involved in it.
>>
>> I invite you to calculate the volume of soil that could be excavated
>> from the rivers by dredging and compare that figure with the volume of
>> water spread over the flooded area.  I haven't done such a calculation,
>> because I'm happy to rely on the professional and/or scientific
>> assessments and contemporary reports that I've already linked, but my
>> strong suspicion is that you'll find the volume of earth that could be
>> removed would only be a small fraction of the volume of water doing the
>> flooding.  Of course, that is only one relevant calculation, because
>> really the purpose of the rivers and drains is to remove water, not to
>> hold it, so it would be even more interesting and relevant also to
>> calculate the increased flow possible and compare it with the rate of
>> accumulation in the entire upstream catchment due to the exceptional
>> sustained heavy rainfall  -  you'd be better placed than me to do such a
>> calculation, because of your better local knowledge  -  and I think such
>> a calculation would be needed if you're going to convince the sort of
>> people who write the sort of reports that I've linked.
>>
>> Note also:
>>
>>     *  That flow is determined by the most restricted section of a
>> watercourse, so if any dredging is to be done on it, it's no good just
>> doing one section, you'd have to do the entire course of it to ensure
>> that it all has a minimum cross-section for adequate flow.
>>
>>     *  That faster water flow can erode banks and flood defences more
>> quickly, so may be undesirable for those reasons, and that dredging
>> removes bankside vegetation that tends to hold the banks together.
>>
>> For both the above reasons, you may be committing yourself to a vicious
>> circle where the more you dredge, the more you have to keep on dredging.
>>
>>     *  That much of the wildlife living along the banks of the
>> watercourses will be protected species, and thus may require capture and
>> relocation before dredging can be allowed to proceed, which will add
>> considerably to the cost.
>
> You are confusing the EA's attempt at dredging (widening the river by
> cutting back the banks) with the dredging that the previous authorities
> were doing which is increasing the flow volume by maintaining a minimum
> depth of the normal flow channel.

Why do you think that one is going to do more than the other? Given a
roughly V or U-shaped channel, widening will increase the
cross-sectional area as much, possibly more, than deepening. Hint,
think of a V-shaped channel and areas of triangles.

> Yes, it would be interesting to compare the actual numbers for the
> Somerset levels, but there are 4 draining rivers and no published
> information on maximum flow rates there so it is well beyond my
> capabilities. The numbers for the Avon are a bit easier, thanks to the
> information provided by the former Bristol Avon Flood Defence Committee
> member. The cessation of dredging for depth on a single river reduced
> the maximum flow rate before over-topping takes place by 22%.
>
> I am not interested in convincing the people who write the type of
> report you linked to. If they had done their homework and asked the
> people who actually understand how those particular watercourses operate
> they wouldn't have reached their superficial conclusions. If they can't
> see the value of talking to the experts, they are certainly not going to
> take notice of me who hasn't got the relevant qualifications after my
> name. They can write what they like; it doesn't necessarily make it true.

I was hoping that by playing around with the numbers you might actually
convince yourself. Read again the entirety of the Wiki page still
linked above:

"Hydrology

There were public calls for the rivers Parrett and Tone, in particular,
to be dredged. The Environment Agency was blamed for having failed to
dredge the major river channels of the Levels. It was said that as a
consequence, rivers silt up and have reduced capacity to carry flooding
waters when rainfall is heavier than average. The Environment Agency and
others pointed out that it would be more effective to spend money on
delaying floodwaters upstream, and that increasing the capacity of
rivers by dredging would be of no significant use.[62][63] Senior
hydrologists made clear that dredging does not offer a useful solution
to flooding on the Somerset Levels.[64]"

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

On 05/02/2022 20:46, Java Jive wrote:
> Why do you think that one is going to do more than the other? Given a
> roughly V or U-shaped channel, widening will increase the
> cross-sectional area as much, possibly more, than deepening. Hint,
> think of a V-shaped channel and areas of triangles.

The water has friction with the surfaces it is in contact with. The
effect of friction is to slow down the flow. Widening a channel gives a
larger friction surface than deepening it does, so it doesn't have the
same throughput even if it has the same volume of water.

Jim

On 05/02/2022 20:50, Indy Jess John wrote:
>
> On 05/02/2022 20:46, Java Jive wrote:
>>
>> Why do you think that one is going to do more than the other?  Given a
>> roughly V or U-shaped channel, widening will increase the
>> cross-sectional area as much, possibly more, than deepening.  Hint,
>> think of a V-shaped channel and areas of triangles.
>
> The water has friction with the surfaces it is in contact with. The
> effect of friction is to slow down the flow. Widening a channel gives a
> larger friction surface than deepening it does, so it doesn't have the
> same throughput even if it has the same volume of water.

Bah! Pseudo-science! As there is no smiley I can only suppose that you
mean this tosh actually to be taken seriously, but it's not going to be,
because it's laughable!

The programme showed the dredging being done, and the angle of the sides
was approximately 45 degrees to the vertical, which means that - even
supposing friction to be significant in the first place, which of course
it isn't - it doesn't matter whether you increase the width by taking
each bank back by 1m or just the depth by 1m, the increase in the
hypotenuse length of each bank, and therefore the increase in any
friction against it, will be same.

However the area of a triangle, including an upturned one of the
cross-section of a ditch, is ...
1/2 * base * height
.... which means that if you increase the depth by one metre, you will
not increase the cross-sectional area as much as you would by taking
each bank back by one metre, because in the former case you are
increasing the height by one metre, but in the latter the base by two.

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

On 05/02/2022 21:45, Java Jive wrote:
> On 05/02/2022 20:50, Indy Jess John wrote:
>>
>> On 05/02/2022 20:46, Java Jive wrote:
>>>
>>> Why do you think that one is going to do more than the other? Given a
>>> roughly V or U-shaped channel, widening will increase the
>>> cross-sectional area as much, possibly more, than deepening. Hint,
>>> think of a V-shaped channel and areas of triangles.
>>
>> The water has friction with the surfaces it is in contact with. The
>> effect of friction is to slow down the flow. Widening a channel gives a
>> larger friction surface than deepening it does, so it doesn't have the
>> same throughput even if it has the same volume of water.
>
> Bah! Pseudo-science! As there is no smiley I can only suppose that you
> mean this tosh actually to be taken seriously, but it's not going to be,
> because it's laughable!
>
> The programme showed the dredging being done, and the angle of the sides
> was approximately 45 degrees to the vertical, which means that - even
> supposing friction to be significant in the first place, which of course
> it isn't - it doesn't matter whether you increase the width by taking
> each bank back by 1m or just the depth by 1m, the increase in the
> hypotenuse length of each bank, and therefore the increase in any
> friction against it, will be same.
>
> However the area of a triangle, including an upturned one of the
> cross-section of a ditch, is ...
> 1/2 * base * height
> ... which means that if you increase the depth by one metre, you will
> not increase the cross-sectional area as much as you would by taking
> each bank back by one metre, because in the former case you are
> increasing the height by one metre, but in the latter the base by two.
>

On 05/02/2022 21:45, Java Jive wrote:
> On 05/02/2022 20:50, Indy Jess John wrote:
>>
>> On 05/02/2022 20:46, Java Jive wrote:
>>>
>>> Why do you think that one is going to do more than the other? Given a
>>> roughly V or U-shaped channel, widening will increase the
>>> cross-sectional area as much, possibly more, than deepening. Hint,
>>> think of a V-shaped channel and areas of triangles.
>>
>> The water has friction with the surfaces it is in contact with. The
>> effect of friction is to slow down the flow. Widening a channel gives a
>> larger friction surface than deepening it does, so it doesn't have the
>> same throughput even if it has the same volume of water.
>
> Bah! Pseudo-science! As there is no smiley I can only suppose that you
> mean this tosh actually to be taken seriously, but it's not going to be,
> because it's laughable!
>
> The programme showed the dredging being done, and the angle of the sides
> was approximately 45 degrees to the vertical, which means that - even
> supposing friction to be significant in the first place, which of course
> it isn't - it doesn't matter whether you increase the width by taking
> each bank back by 1m or just the depth by 1m, the increase in the
> hypotenuse length of each bank, and therefore the increase in any
> friction against it, will be same.
>
> However the area of a triangle, including an upturned one of the
> cross-section of a ditch, is ...
> 1/2 * base * height
> ... which means that if you increase the depth by one metre, you will
> not increase the cross-sectional area as much as you would by taking
> each bank back by one metre, because in the former case you are
> increasing the height by one metre, but in the latter the base by two.
>
You are showing your ignorance, because a naturally moulded water course
is never triangular. The faster flowing water (on the outside of bends,
for instance) cuts a more vertical river bank, and that reduces the
friction and improves the flow volume. Making that more vertical
surface less vertical by cutting back the bank increases the friction
and slows the flow more than it did before.

Likewise, ditches are man-made and have almost vertical sides to carry
the most water away quickly. Unmanaged ones do develop angled banks,
but this is a feature of neglect not water erosion, and on the whole the
bottom remains flat or at worst U shaped even then, not pointed.

There is nothing pseudo about that science. You are free to take a
different view if you wish, but real life won't agree with you.

Jim