British Geological Survey Has Started Promoting Climate Alarmism
Millions of homes are at risk from ‘climate-related subsidence’, according to an analysis by the British Geological Survey
Not surprisingly, it was The Guardian that reported:
As hotter, drier summers driven by global heating become more frequent, the ground under houses can shrink and drag down a property’s foundations. The most vulnerable areas include London, Essex, Kent and a tranche of land from Oxford up to the Wash on England’s east coast, according to scientists, who say mitigation measures will be needed.
Anna Harrison, a scientist at the BGS, said: “By combining geotechnical information about volume change potential with data about projected rainfall and temperature scenarios for the coming century, we have been able to identify the areas of Great Britain most likely to become susceptible to shrink-swell subsidence.
In 2025, the UK experienced the warmest spring on record and the driest in more than 50 years. There were £153m of subsidence-related insurance claims in the first six months of the same year. With climate crisis projections indicating that hotter, drier conditions are likely to become increasingly frequent over the coming century, the number of properties susceptible to subsidence-related shrink-swell is on the rise.
Harrison said: “Dry weather and high temperatures are a major factor in the emergence of shrink-swell subsidence. Looking ahead, these increases in hotter, drier summers are projected to continue.”
I am not quite sure why they are mentioning one dry spring last year. Extremely dry springs used to be much more common:
Read the Guardian excerpt again. It is all about what might happen in future. There is no attempt to analyse existing trends and no evidence provided to suggest subsidence is getting worse.
Subsidence, of course, is a problem that has long existed in areas such as the Tertiary London Clay formation. It is made worse by the weight of buildings above and water extraction, which you might have imagined would be the focus of the BGS study.
It will come as no surprise that the BGS calculations have all been based around the Met Office’s UKCP18 climate projections, which have now been well and truly discredited.
UKCP18 was built around the most extreme of emissions scenarios, RCP8.5, which has now been formally abandoned by the IPCC as “implausible”.
Still, however, the Met Office refuse to withdraw their projections, which are a central plank of their effort to push their ‘net zero’ agenda.
According to the BGS, over 4.2 million homes could be affected by clay shrink/swell by 2070. But, as they admit, this figure is based on RCP8.5. They also predict 1.8 million homes at risk under the medium emissions scenario, RCP 4.5, which is barely more credible.
Back in the real world, summers are not getting drier in London and the South East. Indeed, the last really dry summer was in 1995:
If a PhD student presented this study, he would be told to go back to the drawing board!
We are used to seeing the Met Office prostitute themselves on the altar of ‘net zero’. It is, however, sad to see the highly regarded British Geological Survey now apparently following suit.
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