RAIN DANCE - Biased BBC

RAIN DANCE: "One of the great greenie apocalyptic lies is that flooding is on the increase because of 'climate change'. Every time a river breaks its banks, Richard Black and his cronies mutter with smug satisfaction that it proves yet again that the science is 'settled'. Their main partner in crime in this alarmism is the so-called Environment Agency, who have been proudly trumpeting - with full BBC assistance - a new report purporting to show that unless we cough up an extra £1bn a year in flood defences, we are all going to drown. As usual, in such BBC reporting, there's not a flicker of a mention of factors such as building on flood plains or - shock horror - that it has always rained in the UK, sometimes quite a lot.

A few minutes browsing on this rather neat little archive shows that not only has Britain frequently experienced floods, but also that they were happening long before BBC greenie panic merchants fingered CO2 as the cause. I was particularly chilled by this, from 1770:

The accounts that have been received during the course of the present month...of the floods in several parts of the Kingdom, exceed any thing of the kind that has happened in the memory of man. The cities and towns situated on the banks of the Severn have suffered very great distress; those on the Trent have suffered still more; the great Bedford Level is now under water; horfes, mills, bridges, in almost every brook, have been borne down; but the most affecting scene of all happened at Coventry, where the waters in the middle of the night came rolling into the lowermost street of the town, and almost instantaneously rose to an alarming height. The poor there, fill the houses from top to bottom; those who occupied the lower apartments perished immediately...

And this, from a couple of years earlier:

The heaviest rain fell at London and the country round it that has been known in the memory of man. It began in the evening, and in a few hours the waters poured down Highgate Hill with incredible violence; the common shores in several parts of the town not being able to carry off the torrent, the adjacent houses were filled almost to the first floors; immense damage was done, and as it happened in the night, many were awakened from sleep in the greatest consternation. The Serpentine river in Hyde-park rose so high, that it forced down a part of the wall and poured with such violence upon Knightsbridge, that the inhabitants expected the whole town to be overflowed...

I noted especially the rather sonorous apocalyptic tenor of the newspaper reports; would that BBC journalists could command such lyricism to leaven their contemporary leaden reports of doom.

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