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Scotland is rising...

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and England is sinking.

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And I'm not speaking metaphorically,

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I am speaking literally

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Which is why I'm here at the Thames Barrier

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This gorgeous thing behind me is one

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of the largest moblie flood barriers in the world

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And it's what stops the Docklands over there behind me

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From being completely inundated when there's a storm surge or a spring tide

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And here's the thing,

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when I say Scotland is rising, I don't mean it metaphorically,

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I'm not talking about the referendum, I'm talking literally

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Scotland is rising up by about 10cm every century

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And down here, in the south of England

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the area that the Thames Barrier is protecting

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well that's dropping by about 5cm every century

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It's not much

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particuarly compared to the sea level rises

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that the Thames Barrier is going to protect us against in the next few decades

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But it's still there

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It's a process called 'glacial isostatic adjustment'

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The idea that 20,000 years ago

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Scotland was covered in glaciers

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and England wasn't

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I mean, it wasn't that precise

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It's not like they stopped at
what would be Hadrian's Wall

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but that was roughly the area

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That pressure from the ice squeezed the mantle out of the way

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and even now, 20 millennia later

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it's still flowing slowly backwards

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moving Scotland upwards and us,
slowly, down into the sea

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Scotland is slowly gaining height, England is steadily losing it

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and to be honest, the United Kingdom might be about to lose a heck of a lot more

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depending on how the referendum turns out in a couple of days time

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One more thing before I go

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regular subscribers may know i sometimes try out different formats here

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and well, I've got a new one for you

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starting this Wednesday, 4 episodes of Crush Test

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a gadget reveiw show where if you like it you get to keep it

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and if you don't you get to violently destroy it

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as well as that, the Technical Difficulties team are getting together

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for new episodes of citation needed

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we're recording this weekend and we should have those for you pretty soon

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and if neither of those are your thing, don't worry

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there are plenty of things you might not know still to come

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