LA Weekly

July 18, 2007 — Britain is an island thanks to a megaflood that dug out the English Channel, according to a study released on Wednesday by the journal Nature.

The catastrophic flood, one of the mightiest in recorded history, occurred between 450,000 and 200,000 years ago and created a barrier to human migration to Britain that probably lasted for tens of thousands of years.

That's Discovery magazine for you, via Metafilter -- where there's an interesting and sometimes even funny discussion of England's flooding and its political implications going on.

To wit:

I don't think avoiding a twice-per-century natural disaster does matter to most people. The cost of the occasional catastrophic flooding is more than paid for by the benefit of living next to a beautiful river for most of your life. posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 5:37 AM on July 23

Hoverboards: Writing from New Orleans, may I respectfully suggest that anyone who feels this way is an idiot.
posted by localroger at 5:53 AM on July 23

Last night, I decided to give up the terms "global warming" and "climate change" because neither describes accurately what's going on. I now prefer "climate chaos." (Got that from Simone.)

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