Wednesday 1 February 2012

Tsunami risk? Paul Flynn talks nonsense.

Well upon browsing EDM's(Early Day Motions) put forward by MP's I found this gem by my local MP, the proven liar and libelist Paul Flynn MP. Maybe he had been getting a tad paranoid after one to many joints that day?
BRITISH TSUNAMI - link: Moonbat thinks we are going to drown
27.02.2007
Flynn, Paul
That this House notes the consensus expert view that a tsunami caused the flood of the Gwent and Somerset levels in January 1607; believes a similar event now would result in massive destruction and loss of life; and calls for an early warning tsunami watch on British coasts.
Ok now lets take a calm step back here, we are hardly in any real clear danger here, after all a flood that may or may not have been down to a tsunami in 1607, my MP wants to spend public money on a defence system to warn people of something that has not happened (and may not have happened then) in the 400 years following the 1607 flood.

So despite being safe for four centuries we now need a defense system putting in place. So I took a look on the Wikipedia page about said flood:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Channel_floods,_1607

The Bristol Channel floods resulted in the drowning of an estimated 2,000 or more people, with houses and villages swept away, farmland inundated and livestock destroyed, wrecking the local economy along the coasts of the Bristol Channel, UK. The devastation was particularly bad on the Welsh side from Laugharne in Carmarthenshire to above Chepstow on the English border. Cardiff was the most badly affected town. The coasts of Devon and the Somerset Levels as far inland as Glastonbury Tor, 14 miles from the coast, were also affected.
There remain plaques up to 8 feet(anyone from euro land reading this may need to look that measurement up) above sea level to show how high the waters rose on the sides of the surviving churches. It was commemorated in a contemporary pamphlet God's warning to the people of England by the great overflowing of the waters or floods.
Now all of this is based on a research paper and fair enough it may be right, that flood may well have been a tsunami. However we have been safe from them in four hundred years since, floods yes but not a single tsunami since then. Here is the link: somerset-tsunami-of-1607.pdf

This was published by Prof. Simon Haslett, from Bath Spa University, and Australian geologist Ted Bryant, from the University of Wollongong.

However, there are also similarities to descriptions of the 1953 floods in East Anglia, which was caused by a storm surge. Also, the original sources frequently refer to the high spring tide and strong winds from the south west - classic conditions for a storm surge. The flooding described in Norfolk on the night of the same date is hard to explain as a tsunami.

Methinks it was a quiet day in the House, maybe Mr Flynn had been watching the Timewatch program The Killer Wave of 1607!
A link from Dizzy: http://dizzythinks.net/2007/02/british-tsunami-run-away-run-away.html

Some links from Wikipedia:

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