Preparing London for extreme weather

Absolutely!  Every word you said is right. Nobody will accept there needs to be a world, a national and a local limit on overpopulation. 

Therefore all UK parties agree to stack in cities, which MPs and anyone else who is equally rich can mainly avoid, other than as an occasional glance from a chauffered car, on the way to one of their alternative multiple residences. (Where they meet the NHS GP at the golf course, so get the best of both private and public services. Did you know they have their own 'private'  NHS A&E over the river from Westminster?) 

Underground heat recovery has been retrofitted in Ireland for decades, yet is never mentioned in UK, (well funded lobbyists absent?)

Burning rubbish for power, instead of sending to landfill,  is the best way to deal with waste (other than by having far less of it)

BAN BURNING.  NO BONFIRES. NO WOODBURNING. 

But stop all building. It is all done to non-climate resistant standards (non-disabled friendly, too) Nobody Can Build Faster Than Millions Can Arrive. Building won't touch homelessness. 

Yes but no but: Better to ban all buildings including those already given consent: Back to the drawing board and make them climate resistant by design, not depending on machinery.

Building is not the solution to homelessness. Population limits are. Nobody Can Build Faster Than Millions Can Arrive.

And ALL air conditioning should be fitted with virus filters. Astonishing that this has not been implemented already. 
Air conditioning cannot be retrofitted for thousands of residents in flats and houses in London because of the noise problem with the mini-splits etc. The same with the freestanding units.  Yet it is possible to produce almost silent fans to go in these units, that would reduce the noise level and make them acceptable for home use.  Toroidal fan blades!!!   The electricity use of all the extra air con could be offset by using solar panels that will fit over people's windows, and by using vibrational energy production.  More resources please for these technology developments and production start-ups.

Good ideas, but not only trees,  as a one-size solution. The saplings will not survive. We have drinking water in the world for only an estimated 9 years. Other plants and other, more resistant and climate friendly greening is needed. Native shrubs and bushes, grasses, fast growing shade plants, drought resistant methods are needed.  A population policy is needed. 

As a pretty good rule of thumb, if a solution  is one-size, it's wrong size

I am interested in history and genealogy and have spotted parish register references to extremes of weather causing poor harvests and flooding and of course the Thames icing over although that was probably because the river was wider and shallower at the time.

This is an excellent point and one which an information campaign at the very least would help to keep it in the mind of people who are unaware of how much energy is wasted through the inefficient managing of cooling and refrigeration systems. I often notice that in many supermarkets the fridge doors are left open and where a simple sticker on the door reminding people to close (and why) would at least show there is some thought to do something about it.

Excellent idea, should be implement with all possible speed.  Shops and restaurants blast out air from air conditioning onto streets, onto residential buildings, onto workplaces - these should all have heat exchangers fitted, and virus filters so they don't spread the next pandemic.  

Very good points. Even where people need hardstanding, it can be permeable. No public authority should continue to use impermeable, and there could simply be an order against such private behaviour.  Politicians and preaching slebs should also be asked to ensure everyone like the Bournemouth Bus Shelter Couple are housed, in hotels, ahead of any incomers, instead of being told by the council to live in the street. (90's, he a wheelchair user, vacated private tenancy when landlord sold up, but were rejected by private landlords with 30 applicants for every vacancy, and rejected by Local Authority for the sin of having lived frugal lives, careful to have life savings for old age, as was normal for the Silent Generation)  Why is there no policy, local, national or worldwide, on population increase, or on population density?

Good  idea, best practice anywhere should be copied, though adapted to local difference: London/UK has no surplus cash in the tax-purse to "pay" home owners. An instruction to do the climate-right thing, plus an offer of a loan against the title deeds, should suffice. When the day comes that nobody has health or social care needs unmet, the surplus money could be provided as 'free gifts' for those who have in recent years earned more than the average worker, (and what is more paid no tax at all on the increased assets)   simply by owning house deeds.   

By the way it is rather obscene to have no upgrading of council tax, no tax on empty homes or party homes or second homes or homes bought to rot, by overseas residents wanting a place to dump cash.

Rather obscene, too, to have a golden caste of tenancies, subsidised, secure for life, versus private tenancies where official policy is to drive private landlords out of business, with the predictable result that thirty excellent private tenants with perfect credentials must fight for a single private tenancy. This, at a time when millions of undeclared or declared people are unable to even pass the tests to apply for a tenancy, after a lifetime of paying  on time, and being perfect tenants in every way: No private landlord, with thirty applicants who are all double income high earners, is going to allow an application from the Bournmouth Bus Shelter Couple, in their 90s, he a wheelchair  user. No hotel room or hostel for them, either, no going home to mum, no sofa surfing when they have outlived their contemporaries. And no council place because with no private pension, many in the Silent Generation lived quiet lives of penny pinching, in order to live on savings in their last years, but life savings are punishable, pretty literally, by death from exposure to the elements, after becoming  homeless in old age if a landlord sells up. 

Ex footballers, Khan, MPs and luvvies virtue signal a lot, at cost to our elderly displaced.

Excellent points, thank you, though  with some reservations:  

 Nationalising gives ownership to governments and, more to the point, to civil servants, who are proved to be incapable of the equivalent of tying up their own shoelaces. These public servants got us where we are today. As with NHS, or rail, or anything else, more of the same is a bad plan.

Insulate and air pump Council homes LAST; Council/Social tenants already have the golden lottery ticket of entitlement: Subsidised rent and a secure-for-life home. Out of all tenancies, theirs are the least in need of any extra taxpayer money; they are rolling in advantage, paid for by the private tenants who get absolutely nothing except bearing the brunt of the inexplicable official war-against-private- landlords, plus the competition from the millions and millions  of extra millions of people wanting to live in London and all major cities, already fighting for a space in a shed,   with no hope of ever, ever, having a secure tenancy of their own. 

(Nor even a space in a hotel or hostel, sincer  there is no legal obligation to house The Bournemouth Bus Shelter Couple or thousands like them, in their 90's, he a wheelchair user.  They not only had no priority, they had no right to any help from the council and of course were not considered by any new private landlord when their old private landlord sold  up. )  

Air pump is a one-size solution: Ireland has been retrofitting underground heat recovery for decades. Other methods are available too. Heat pump obsession risks starving funds to better alternatives.

Cycling is unsuited to frail walking frame users among millions of others, so the "non-standard" needs to include the excluded and flat-dwellers

"Schemes for" need to be self funding, not by taking from the impoverished, frail, old and vulnerable who can NOT get there.

"Support to" [do the climate-right action] must be a loan against the title deeds, not a gift from tax payers, i.e. often taken from have-nots.

Good points. But councils need money,  and not from raising council tax bills.  However, they should and must update the basis of valuation for charging council tax, because it is unfair that people in million pound property pay less than those in modest flats, due to flukes in the historic valuations. It would raise income from those best able to pay, not those with the least. They should and must tax second homes and party homes and ban or prohibitively tax overseas ownership, as other countries do.   

15 minute neighbourhoods are unrealistic, think about all the deliveries that are needed to maintain services that are only 15 mins away from similar services in The adjacent neighbourhood. 

Good points. Always look for best examples overseas. 

But the one-size answer of  using a bike or a bus overlooks millions who for instance use a walking frame, so cannot use a bike, or even get to a bus stop.

Good point. Overzealous and irrational worship of the past will remove our future. There are ways of modifying within reason. It would be interesting if the royal family, or one of the controllers of any of the thousands of historic London buildings, choose to climate- adapt one of their own buildings, using it as an example of what can be done sensitively and without too much cost. No doubt RIBA or the Design Centre has some examples and ideas.

Wallpaper/linings can be insulated. A temporary winter ceiling could rest at  picture rail height, to save heat, then be taken down in summer, to cool the room. Solar has advanced to the point it can be just a film over a window. Secondary glazing should never be banned nor need it be obtrusive. Roof tiles can be solar panels. Underground heat recovery and individual carefully positioned air and wind recovery will become steadily cheaper the more they are encouraged by planners.    

Good point about water. We and the world have no reserves, yet keep increasing the population, keep allowing watering of grass, keep allowing provision of water to people with no water meters, and keep refusing to set a ration per person for essential scarce resources, starting with water, so anything over the limit can be charged at increasingly prohibitive surcharge, to reduce incentive to waste.  That, however, would need an order that water companies must by law turn off the supply at the point customers go over the limit. In times of drought, that could be just enough ration for drinking water and a couple of bowls of water for cooking and washing.   

That is one half of a good idea, though "vulnerable people" are extremely unlikely to be able to travel to a designated space, and in any case, being vulnerable, need to shelter from the diseases other people will carry.  Work spaces to rent by the hour are already available, and need not be provided with  'free' money from the taxpayers.   Air conditioning uses power, adding to climate change and raising bills. It should not be needed.  Climate change needs to be an element of design, NOW, not one day in the future when all the developers suddenly agree they are willing to allow the governments and planning authorities to change the planning laws.

I have always thought that some of these old stone built churches would be ideal places to cool down in hot weather. Otherwise, places like Chislehurst Caves used in WW2 for safety, or something similar. I believe there are some disused underground areas in central London which would be cooler.

Yes, adding that trees are not the only option, and a few never -watered saplings would be best substituted with native tough shrubs and whatever will grow as weeds and grass. Grass must never be watered, by law. Fake grass must be removed, by law. Underground heat recovery and through draught by natural means, not air conditioning, must be standard. Insulation must be for heat and for cold. But there must be a world and a national and a local Overpopulation Policy too. The world has about 9 years worth of water left, yet the populations are rising, and moving, and moving to London. It defies logic to  pretend everyone can be given a council tenancy as fast as they turn up and ask.

All good ideas, but all parties have agreed to throw towns 'under the bus' by turning them into  living-hell, uninhabitable, terrifying,  skyscraper jungles, and with no suggestion of any alteration to planning laws.This is because nobody is willing to mention overpopulation,  and nobody in power will accept that it is impossible for London to build a new council house for everyone in the world, faster than they can all arrive. Each MP knows his own constituents dislike having the results of overpopulation on their own doorstep, so the tacit all-party agreement is to stack as many millions as possible, higher and higher, in town centres, while MPs themselves (and ex footballers, and bishops,) take their chauffeured cars and second homes and private health insurance, and live somewhere pleasantly  uncrowded.