How attitudes have changed ...

[gareth evans]

80 years ago we rejoiced at the catastrophe being wrought upon Germany by the floods caused by the Dambusters' raids, but today we are sympathetic to those caused by climate change.

[alan_m]

Or concreting over the flood catchment area and by building houses on the flood plains in the past 50 years.

[NY]

Yes, builders have been allowed to build in flood plains which have existed for centuries as "holding tanks" for excess water when rivers burst their banks, and people are then surprised when those houses flood.

I'm sure climate change *has* led to more "peaky" rainfall, causing flash-flooding, but building in and concreting over flood plains has made things considerably worse than otherwise.

[Owain Lastname]

That was for the greater good.

Personally I'm wondering how they managed such a British-like failure of flood prevention. I thought Germans were more organised.

Owain

[Tim Streater]

By the look of some of the footage, mucch of the area in question seems to be on an ancient river delta, that of the Rhine or one of its tributaries. The land is say 50 feet above normal water level, but it's all soil, so with lots of runoff from the sides the river banks - and villages - are collapsing into the river.

A lot of the Norfolk coast is the same stuff, from the same ancient delta, which is why it erodes so much.

[williamwright]

It isn't attitudes that have changed, it's circumstances.

Bill

[The Natural Philosopher]

Those floods were not caused by climate change.

No, they are just better bullshitters

Anyway, its a totally different problem to UK floods

[The Natural Philosopher]

Totally wrong.

This is high country with young to middle aged river valleys - V shaped. Not a delta in site.

a lot of rain pours into those rivers very quickly off the high ground and floods are a regular event - and in fact floods are how those river valleys were carved in the first place.

shows that the highest ever flood recorded was in 1342, when several thousand people died and te rivers carved thenmselves a new set of valleys

Flooding is an annual event, and occasionally it gets to be extremely severe.

There is nothing to be done. the valleys cannot carry the water volume at peak flow with substantial rain - my sister lives nearby, near Koblenz ,and we talked - it rained heavily and solidly for at least 24 hours.

The only palliative is to leave as many trees as possible on the high ground, but some of it is highly fertile land - much of it volcanic - and so its stripped for farming

No, it isnt.

is pretty much what that region is all about. Nothing further from Norfolk alluvial sand could be imagined. Norfolk has been scraped flat by ice and then had a load of sand and silt deposited over it as the ice receded.

That region of SE Belgium Luxembourg and Western central Germany - the Eifel forest and the mountains nearby - is far closer to wales in its geology, than Norfolk

[The Natural Philosopher]

Again, no - you have the wrong end of the stick. This is not downstream flooding on a mature river system with floodplains, this is catastrophic overload of upper (young) river systems in Vee shaped valleys with no flood plains at all.

Flooding is a recurrent natural event there and severe flooding is a rare but absolutely guaranteed event that has happened ever since the last ice age and will continue for another ten thousand years

To seek to make commercial and political capital out of it by citing 'ClimateChange?' is however beyond reprehensible.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The data shows otherwise

causing

But is simply nothing whatever to do with that region of Germany, where the flood plain is about 5 meters wide, if that...

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

I don't get your point? In the first instance it was destruction of factories that was intended, but in this case its weather and it seems a lot of the world has been building on flood plains etc, and then wonders why the extreme event causes problems. Brian

[Tim Streater]

That's why I said "ancient delta" from the time when the Rhine's outfall was further north, and deposited silt over the whole area including th Norfolk coast. Take a look at the cliffs at Happisburgh and environs - mud.

Take a look also at the footage on the Beeb website, such as this:

[The Natural Philosopher]

That is not a river delta.