ConstructionLCA

“Our new report ‘Forecast Changeable’ shows how climate change is a growing conservation challenge to our land, collections, houses and gardens.
The report illustrates how we have had to explore new ways to manage our properties in the face of a changing climate. Some have become damaged by rainwater and flooding and our gardens are increasingly affected by drought and disease.

The effects of these changes are not confined to one region; they are in evidence across the country. For example, at Nymans in West Sussex, drought issues meant water storage capacity had to be doubled to 80,000 litres. Increased demand necessitated that this be raised to 150,000 litres. Because the system ran dry this summer we must again increase capacity so if it stops raining in April, the garden has enough water to last through the summer.

The Plant Conservation Centre, which is responsible for grafting and propagating important collections for our gardens, has become a victim of warmer winters. The period of time available for grafting has been cut in half, making the procedure only possible in the cooler periods from January to March. A second facility was opened to accommodate the climatic change.

And at the Vyne in Hampshire, because of wetter weather and intense rainfall, water leaked through the windows into some of the most historically important rooms in the mansion. This damaged six Soho tapestries, dating to 1710, which cost £60,000 to repair. Major renovation work is now needed to protect this Grade I listed mansion and its contents from further damage.

There are other financial costs of increasingly extreme weather events. The number of insurance claims we have made increased from three in 2005, to seven in 2015. Over the past decade, our monthly claim values have risen more than fourfold.

These examples show how we must drive innovation in order to adapt to unpredicted changes in our climate. We have also set ourselves challenging energy targets and are committed to reducing our carbon emissions whilst sharing lessons learned with others. It is now time for political leaders to deliver a joined up approach to emissions reduction to address the impacts of climate change.”

His comments come in a television interview with Sky News to be shown on Monday evening but recorded before the Paris attacks. From BBC News.

Prince Charles told Sky News: “We’re seeing a classic case of not dealing with the problem because, it sounds awful to say, but some of us were saying 20 something years ago that if we didn’t tackle these issues you would see ever greater conflict over scarce resources and ever greater difficulties over drought, and the accumulating effect of climate change, which means that people have to move.

Asked if there was a direct link between climate change, conflict and terrorism, he added: “It’s only in the last few years that the Pentagon have actually started to pay attention to this. It has a huge impact on what is happening.

“The difficulty is sometimes to get this point across – that if we just leave it and say, well there are obviously lots of, there are endless problems arising all over the place therefore we deal with them in a short-term way, we never deal with the underlying root cause which regrettably is what we’re doing to our natural environment.”

Asked in the interview whether the world could afford to deal with climate change at a time of austerity, the prince said: “The trouble is if we don’t, this is the awful thing, if we don’t it’s going to get so much worse, then life will become very, very complicated indeed, and what we’re experiencing now will be as nothing to the problems.  I mean the difficulties in 2008 with the financial crash – that was a banking crisis.  But we’re now facing a real possibility of nature’s bank going bust. If you see it like that, we’ve been putting so much pressure on the natural systems and all those aspects of nature that we take for granted.”

BREEAM provide information on their proposed consultation on BREEAM Infrastructure to inform the development of CEEQUAL v6 (or BREEAM Infrastructure – I wonder which brand will win out there?)

Climate Central have produced some terrifying images showing cities around the world after 4° of warming and 2° of warming.  I’ve included the photo of London, and you can also use their interactive mapping tool to see exactly what it will mean for your location. Below I’ve included the map for Brigg, my local town in North Lincolnshire, after 2° of warming – it will pretty much wipe out the town, and much of the agricultural land around it.  Remember, 2° is what we are aiming for at Paris, with current commitments, we are going to go beyond this.  This is why Paris is so important – we are quickly reaching the point at which increasing temperature cannot be reversed.