Guardian: Floodplain Homes Next to River in Rainy Welsh Valley Abandoned “Due to Climate Change”

Sixteen small terraced houses sitting on a floodplain next to fast-flowing water in one of the rainiest parts of Britain are to be bought and demolished because the cost of protecting them from regular flooding far outweighs the value of the properties. A few years ago, this item would not warrant national attention. But in an era where mass climate panic is stoked by mainstream media, the story is too good to pass. According to the desperate Guardian, residents can no longer be protected from flooding “caused by the climate crisis”. The local council chips in with the claim that it is believed to be the first time a local authority has bought a large number of houses due to flooding caused by the “climate emergency”.

The row of houses is in the Welsh Clydach Valley in the former mining village of Ynysybwl (pronounced ‘an-is-abull’). The houses are to be bought for  around £2.5 million in total since this a much cheaper option than the £9 million needed to raise a defensive wall in the area known as Nant Clydach. The Guardian reports “relief and delight” among the residents at the buyout scheme – hardly surprising since they are sitting on a well-documented floodplain subject to considerable natural inundation.

Two recent storms have caused bad flooding, but records from Natural Resources Wales indicate periodic inundation in the “very constrained section of the valley” stretching back to 1955.

Rainfall appears to have increased across Wales in recent years, but the amounts involved are unlikely to be noticed by the already sodden Welsh.

As the graph above shows, rainfall is cyclical in the country but any gently rising trend started before the Guardian went into full bedwetting mode about the climate and the need for the Net Zero fantasy. Individual years of extra heavy rainfall can be seen throughout the record. Periods of substantial rainfall downturn, such as that seen during Victorian times, can be attributed to natural variation, but these days that explanation is ignored when rainfall is making small gains and political needs are paramount. It need hardly be pointed out that there is not a scintilla of solid proof that humans using hydrocarbons are primarily responsible for small cyclical changes in rainfall in one small, rain-prone, coastal country in the northern hemisphere.

It’s winter in the UK so the climate botherers are giving ‘heat’ a rest and turning their attention to pluvial pickings. In its story on the Ynysybwl homes, the Guardian also noted that western Britain has recently been battered by repeated pulses of heavy rain and strong winds. It is claimed that this has led some politicians and “experts” to warn that more homes “will have to be abandoned because of the climate breakdown”.

Left-wing author and former editor of the Observer Will Hutton had this take on a rainy start to 2026.

It doesn’t get dumber than this. A rainy month turned into a Right-wing media conspiracy and the obvious suggestion that we should ban hydrocarbons. To stop Will getting wet, society needs to divest itself of hydrocarbon use with all the devastating consequences from inevitable societal and economic collapse. Crop yields will halve without hydrocarbon-produced fertilisers and hunger will stalk the land – and all because Will can’t adapt to the seasonal British weather and provide himself with decent walking shoes and a good umbrella.

Around four decades of relentless invented climate catastrophising and the demonising of trace atmospheric gases have pushed many countries to the brink of a Net Zero calamity. Many of the scares have been effectively debunked – coral growth at recent record levels on the Great Barrier Reef, Arctic sea ice extent paused for 20 years and, recently, growing numbers of polar bears getting fatter on Svalbard – but the search for misinformation and lies about the complexities of climate and the atmosphere continues. Almost all of this is orchestrated by political forces seeking to capture the commanding heights of the economy by controlling the vital resource of hydrocarbons. Needless to say, Left-wing media such as the Guardian and the BBC are at the forefront of producing agitprop that is promoted as science and climate reporting.

Demonising bad weather without any reference to past data trends is incoherent stupidity on stilts. Flood risk is right up there in the Jim Dale word-salad playbook. Given how much rain also falls in neighbouring England, the common practice of building on floodplains and the declining state of protection measures (often driven by environmental lobbying), it is surprising how few properties are flooded each year.

There are over 26 million dwellings in the country, but according to the Environment Agency, only 5,000 properties have been flooded on average every year since the turn of the century. Over this period, no trend out of the ordinary can be discerned.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.