Another Thames Water mishap causing delays to rail services

[John]

(Before someone mentions, there is currently no mechanism for transferring water from the North to the South.

Curiously enough, 1 water company is actually going to sell water to another water company much further away.
"Pumping from boreholes, Severn Trent plans to flow water from sources beneath Birmingham into the River Tame, which joins the Trent. The water will then flow to Gainsborough, Lincs, where Anglian Water will take it up."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/drough ... egion.html


Makes you wonder whether a national network would actually be possible for very little cost, just using our existing water ways (granted it would be mostly one-way, but still).

Also, ironically, heavy rain doesn't actually help. It mostly flows straight into rivers and then the sea before much of it can be collected into reservoirs and certainly before any of it gets to groundwater levels.

But that's what you get for building on all the flood plains....*


*Disclaimer: I have not studied colouring by numbers** geography since GCSE, so may not be entirely factually correct. A member on this forum is apparently "studying" geography at a posh-gits prestigious university, and may correct me (although some still think wise to argue with him....).

**My girlfriend is a geography teacher, I am therefore permitted to make such jokes

[Ameecher]

A member on this forum is apparently "studying" geography at a posh-gits prestigious university, and may correct me (although some still think wise to argue with him....)

First person other than an Abertay student to describe Dundee as a posh-gits university.

Oh wait.

[JamieLei]

Count me out - I'm human geography. Ameecher's the physical git!

[Ameecher]

Count me out - I'm human geography. Ameecher's the physical git!

Domestic water supply is probably more human geography. Well, it's one of those annoying cross discipline things, like all of geography really.

[Chris]

I never understood why they split geography into human and physical because it all crosses over.

[JamieLei]

Because some things clearly fall into one, and some clearly the other. And the discipline has redefined.

Poverty in inner cities? - pure human geography (unless you're going to start being environmentally deterministic)
Rock formations in the Peak District? pure physical geography.

Before geography became effectively a discipline concerned with anything 'space', there was a huge desire to hold the two together to retain its institutionalised form (ie, there were Geography departments at Harvard (although no longer), Oxford etc) and avoid losing its academics into other disciplines. Oddly enough, while physical geography had no boundaries to what it was (so the rock formations example was always part of geography), human geography was pretty much always conducted in relation to the natural world (effectively, very environmentally deterministic) with research primarily conducted around regions (one would become an expert in everything to do with Norfolk, including its geomorphology, cultures, transport and economy for example) rather than systematic themes (one becomes an expert in transport in general, with application to regions when needed) [see Ackerman (1945) for an excellent commentary and criticism of geography at this point, and compare it to Hartshorne (1939) just 6 years earlier to see how far the discipline moved in that time].

Since we've become more systematic, geography has lost the need to tie the two halves together. Of course, there are lots of sub-disciplines that transcend the two, for example development geography, or our initial example of water management which has almost more to do with power relations (both political and economic) than it does with exploring the nature of water catchments in detail and how water moves through them. But yes, the field that I'm specialising in - the interface between free market urban development and public transport - is certainly entirely almost human geography.

[Chris]

Obviously I realize that in many cases, it is clear cut as to what is human or physical, but in many cases such as development, which you mentioned have enormous crossovers and the categorization into human or physical somewhat hinders its study. I know that in our GCSE and A-level course at my school, development is focused very heavily upon, but is always in the human section and thus limits people's understanding, as the exam boards do not reward the discussion of physical causes (much less so at A-level).

[JamieLei]

Well partly because physical causes are rather viewed as environmentally deterministic. Unfortunately I'm not a development geographer (I last took a development course 2 years ago), but it does seem that especially with Marxist Geography, human courses are much more interesting and have more explanatory power.

Eg, when we're talking about famine, there's plenty of food in the world to feed everybody comfortably on a diet of both vegetables AND meat. The problem is distribution, but if food is being dumped upon Africa, it hinders the incubation of an effective agricultural sector past the subsistence level. Human causes are especially strong when we're looking at regions of the world that should be incredibly productive like Zimbabwe (once known as Africa's Bread Basket) but under a series of disastrous political reforms much of the land lies barren and infertile.

Especially when we're talking about modern strands of urban ecology, much of it tends to be recursive. "We socially construct what we think nature is, we have a relationship with nature, therefore we have a relationship with ourselves", which can be interpreted one was as, "London has a relationship with its water catchment area and nature. We capitalise water into a commodity that can be used to make money. Why is it then that the royal parks can use sprinklers whereas the man down the council estate can't use a hosepipe to wash his own car? Because the royal park makes money out of tourists and it sets a better international impression." Therefore the same bit of nature (water) is subject to a power relationship that has little to do with physical geography (water's sourced from neither the park nor the council estate) but entirely to do with human.

[teccuk]

Uhm... are using contradictions to explain dialectical materialism on the TT Forums?

Wow.

If you like marxist geography, I'd recommend David Harvey, but I would think you know him already.

Anyway... shall we all go back to posting pictures of choo choos?