http://xkcd.com/417/

From Critical Faculty Dojo:

“It is stupid, even bordering on criminally irresponsible, to just throw their [Natural England's] hands in the air and just abandon large swathes of the country to the sea until we are absolutely forced to - and there is no guarantee that this will in fact happen.”

Amen!

I’ve discovered, there are increasing questions being asked about the new quango Natural England that took over from Countryside Agency and English Nature.

No matter how well meaning and reasoned arguments may be for how best to cope with unsustainable defences, they’re all based on the premise that the defences can’t be maintained. My position is that they must be maintained until it’s impossible - we may not be able to stop nature, but we can at least give it a bloody good fight.

As for these suspicious motives wishing to abandon swathes of coastal communities - I wonder how much Horlicks it takes them to get to sleep at night?

I’ve used Amazon S3 for some time now on and off - it’s a great, fast, cheap service, but it does have its own quirks.

Developing a site that hosts a Flash movie displaying a series of flv encoded videos, we decided to host the flv content on S3 to save on bandwidth costs in case we got mass amounts of traffic.

First problem we encountered was performance - with a bucket created using the default location the videos were loading slower than they were playing, but switching to use a bucket created to be located in Europe, the speed has no longer been a problem.

The last issue which really took some head scratching was reported by some testers that the videos weren’t loading - they tended to be testing from behind corporate firewalls.

It would seem that when we used the S3Fox Firefox extension to upload the files, it didn’t know what flv’s were so didn’t set a Content-type. S3 default response is not to sent a Content-Type, which it would appear these obtuse firewalls didn’t like so blocked it.

The solution was to knock up a php based upload script using the Amazon S3 PHP class written by Donovan Schonknecht specifying ‘video/x-flv’ as a Content-Type - works a treat.

It must be coming on six years ago that I took a deep breath and fired up my first Windows XP machine You see, I’m from Norfolk and we fear change.

I’ve probably used every flavour of Windows way back to Windows 3.0 which went onto good old 286 machines with a couple of floppy disks. I still have a couple of machines that run 98 and Me - they’re doing what they need to and wouldn’t support anything higher, so why bother upgrading?

I’ve always thought Windows a bit frivolous, but as the power of modern machines increases exponentially, I think even these spangly 3d transparent gui interfaces have a hard job using up all available resource, and being one who uses a machine for far too much of the working day, I wouldn’t be without it now. I’m not a good enough typist to survive with a command line interface alone, but I like to think I still could if I needed to (I’m proud to say I use vi regularly!)

I won’t get into the Windows vs. Mac debate, or even Windows vs. Linux - suffice it to say I’ve spent time on most modern desktop environments, and given the choice I still revert to Windows. Servers, well that’s a different matter…

Back to the main story - It was about time to get myself a new working environment, so once again I took a deep breath, and this time volunteered to move into modern times and chose a machine with Windows Vista Business installed.

For reference I’ve been a big fan of XP since that day six years ago - although I will point out that the first thing I do is switch the theme to ‘classic’. I’ve had my share of blue screens, but on the whole I’ve found it as bearable as you could hope for, and I’ve never really hankered for anything else.

So I’ve been using Vista for a few days now… and I’m pleased to report that I’ve had no major issues. I’ve not had to hit F1 yet or otherwise ask for help - everything seems fairly familiar and intuitive. I think I’m a fan of the new interface to Windows Explorer, which from recollection of how OS-X does it seems more like Finder than the old XP Explorer - a crumbtrail instead of an address bar allows you to jump back several levels at a single click.

I’m currently finding it a bit hard to navigate around networks though - ‘My Network Places’ seems to have subtly chaged and it’s catching me out. Similarly, ‘My Documents’ has morphed into just ‘Documents’ - these are just little navigation niggles I’m sure I’ll adjust to as time progresses.

So far I’ve stuck with the default Aero theme, and I’m faintly amused by the ‘glass’ effect, but might try switching back to classic just to be stubborn. And I’m not overly bitten by the widget bug yet, although I do like the big analogue clock on the Desktop.

Here’s hoping I end up as happy with Vista as I have been with XP - I suppose I can always downgrade if I have to.

Last weekend there was a splurge of national publicity over a leaked document that considered options including allowing the sea to breach defences between Horsey and Winterton, flooding low-lying areas as far inland as Potter Heigham and Stalham, where new sea walls would be built. The villages of Eccles, Sea Palling, Waxham, Horsey, Hickling and Potter Heigham, as well as parts of Somerton, would be lost to the sea.

It is one of the options that were discussed behind closed doors at a conference in Norwich on climate change in the Broads, organised by Natural England and attended by representatives of the Environment Agency, Broads Authority and Norfolk County Council, plus other organisations.

Listed as option four in the document outlining the proposals for the Upper Thurne basin in the face of rising sea levels: “Two retreated defences would be built at Potter Heigham and Stalham and land seaward of these would be breached, creating an embayment on the coast between Eccles-on-Sea and Winterton Ness,” it reads. “The total flooded areas would thus be approximately 6,500ha. The broads (Martham, Horsey, Heigham Sound and Hickling) would become inundated by the sea, fen vegetation would be lost. It is likely over time that a spit would develop behind which coastal and inter-tidal habitats would develop.”

The document says that maintaining coastal defences in their current position will become “increasingly difficult and expensive”, adding: “The increasingly unsustainable nature of the Horsey to Winterton frontage beyond the next 20-50 years thus opens up the possibility of re-aligning the coast as described above within this timeframe.” It continues: “There is an argument for progressing straight to option four, for it can also be argued that by selecting a radical option now, the right messages about the scale and severity of the impacts of climate change is delivered to the public. However, a decision to progress immediately to option four is likely to be met with strong political resistance and the up-front costs would be large.”

The first option listed is to do nothing to adapt to climate change: to fail to maintain coastal defences and inland flood embankments, allowing them to fall into disrepair and be breached by the River Thurne and the sea.

The second is to hold the line, the current policy of the Environment Agency. This involves maintaining the sea defences and flood embankments in their current positions. Under this option, saline intrusion - something all farmers fear - would get worse as sea water passes under the coastal dunes.

The third option is to adapt the line: allow the sea to flood some places while building barriers and embankments to protect other parts.

Now this isn’t actually a new plan - it was was initially drawn up by English Nature and the Environment Agency in 2003 under what was called the Coastal Habitat Management Plan (CHaMPS) for the Winterton Dunes. It has been discussed widely by those involved in coastal issues and is not some new secret conspiracy, it just hasn’t grabbed mass public attention before.

Neither is it a certainty - the people who drafted it and considered it’s merits are mainly doing so from a viewpoint of wildlife, environment and habitat. Little or no thought has gone into the practical effects on economy, infrastructure or practicalities, let alone trifling subjects such as human rights.

I’m not about to add my voice to those who are slamming the Eastern Daily Press for initially publishing the story - I believe they are doing their usual top class job of responsible journalism - the public in Norfolk have a right to know what is being discussed that could impact their lives, irrespective of whether or not it could / will happen, it’s being talked about.

At Happisburgh, we can clearly demonstrate the result of taking the view ‘it will never happen here’ - because it can and probably, eventually, will. What we’re fighting here is a growing reluctance to expend effort and resource defending our vulnerable coastline against an encroaching sea.

I appreciate the view that we can’t fight the sea forever; that there must be some land lost, but I have seen absolutely no evidence that anyone has considered how we can actually allow that to happen in a controlled fashion with due regard for fairness and social justice to those that are affected by that move.

Despite all their rhetoric and considered sound-bites, at Happisburgh we have found out what it means in reality - that those on the ground are just abandoned to ‘take on the chin’ the loss of property, livelihoods and communities, and without even any sign of appreciation for the sacrifice were being expected to make, if indeed they even realise we are making a sacrifice.

Many in Happisburgh had their head in the sand about losses on the cliff: “It will stop before it gets to the village” they said until we lost the lifeboat ramp to the beach - then the village got behind the fight. Neighbouring villages said “poor Happisburgh, but it will never happen here” until the publication of the second generation Shoreline Management Plan announced the intention to abandon defences of all but Sheringham, Cromer, Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth. Now there is vocal campaigning from Overstrand and Scratby and others now those communities realise what’s in store for them if we don’t stand up and be counted.

I hope this news finally gets the rest of Norfolk to wake up and see what’s in store for our beloved county if we don’t stop these faceless bureaucrats.

Somewhere between defending all of our coastline forever, and retreating sea walls to a more defendable position (Norwich?) there lies the path that will be followed. And I bet if it’s not a formal ‘do nothing’ strategy then that will still be effectively what happens - it costs them less! But next time a storm surge comes down our coast we may not be as lucky as we were last November - this time the sea might get in somewhere and we could have a major disaster.

If this were a fight against a new airport runway, victory is preventing them doing it - here we have to stop them not doing something - in the mean time they’re winning.

We cannot allow this to happen - we have to fight, now!