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Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

fortune.com

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Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#91

Post by woodpanel »

manacit wrote: post #86
aliasxneo wrote: post #68

Just a friendly reminder that Fortune has been owned since 2018 by Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon, a member of the Chearavanont family that controls the CP Group conglomerate. CP Group created Siam Land Flying in 1991 as its in-house flight department for executives. It later added charter (Executive Wings) and air-ambulance services and still operates King Air 350 and Hawker jets. These owners don't care abo…

I’m sorry but the gotcha here is that.. the owner is in a family that also owns an air charter business with all of four small private jets and an air-ambulance business? Give me a break, what does this have anything to do with the content of the article.

> feelings on climate change

That. You can't reach these people with reason, the whole debate, the wholse society and entire law has to abide to their feelings.

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#92

Post by bobthepanda »

lukaslalinsky wrote: post #55
MomsAVoxell wrote: post #4

Just took a train ride from Vienna to Budapest for a few days, and couldn’t help but notice how very, very dry everything is .. as an Australian living in Europe for a few decades now, I’ve always been intrigued by just how green everything is, literally something growing in every single crack in the pavement, or endless rolling green fields of prosperity during spring - whereas, where I’m from its year-long spinifex…

I had a similar observation this year. In 2015, I was in California, was doing some hiking on the weekends, and I found it very unnatural how all the grasses were dry, trails dusty, on the hills/mountains. I came back to Slovakia, and I was happy to see the green grass. Fast-forward to 2026, and our grasses are equally dry and trails are equally dusty. Water management seems to be more important than ever, because th…

Underground cisterns are generally the way to do it and even the Romans were building them

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#93

Post by abroszka33 »

hn_submit wrote: post #46

Complete nonsense. Even climate chance won't change the amount of rainfall we get over the course of the year. In fact, it will most likely be wetter due to it. But it will become more uneven, with droughts followed by torrential rains and floods. We simply need to adapt by creating underground water basins that store torrential rainfall preventing floods and also serve as buffers for when the drought comes. I do bel…

Of course it does, Hungary is turning into a desert. Quite easy to see if you live here. And it's only the beginning.

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#94

Post by ahartmetz »

oytis wrote: post #89
usern20260720 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh, yes. Anything but stopping the extraction, trade or combustion of fossil fuels. Even if the workarounds have unforeseen consequences.

Any solution relying on collective sacrifice is unrealistic IMO. I believe in geoingineering because it's better compatible with how economy works. Either that or we discover a magic abundant non-polluting energy source, but I woldn't rely on that

We're already doing it and making progress. It's not instant and we still have delayed consequences to deal with, so short-term fixes also make sense.

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#96

Post by dpc050505 »

usern20260720 wrote: post #60
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #54

Atmospheric injections of Sulphur is going to be the only answer.

oh, yes. Anything but stopping the extraction, trade or combustion of fossil fuels. Even if the workarounds have unforeseen consequences.

How do you do that without completely messing up the supply chains that keep us fed and alive for the next 6 months? The wealthiest people (who also happen to be ones that are a bit more sheltered from the climatic crisis) will still be able to afford food. Billions of poor people would just starve without petrochemical fertilizers and the diesel required for industrial farming and transportation of food. We could've had a smooth transition a few decades ago. Now it's super late and the choice is short term catastrophe vs long term catastrophe. Do you know how much fossil fuels it takes to build and maintain a wind farm or an electric truck? How much petroleum coke is burnt making the cement to build the towers that make walkable cities possible?

The alternative to fossil fuels and the climate crisis is basically an incredibly deadly and uncomfortable step out of the industrialized world. No one is making that decision. It's a fancy trolley problem where the amount of people on the tracks has 10 figures on both sides and blurry timelines.

Just the increase of gas prices due to the iran war is going to cause some fucked up harvests in africa, south america and asia. The poorest farmers aren't able to afford fertilizers. I have a coworker who has ties in Guinea-bissau. The farmers there are basically getting spitroasted by the combination of climate changed caused droughts messing up their cash crops followed by increased oil prices due to wars they have nothing to do with increasing the price of their agricultural inputs. Your simplistic view on fossil fuels will not keep them alive long enough to see the even worst effects of climate change that are coming. If it was easy to stop emitting greenhouse gases we would've managed to do it 25+ years ago.

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#97

Post by oytis »

ahartmetz wrote: post #94
oytis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any solution relying on collective sacrifice is unrealistic IMO. I believe in geoingineering because it's better compatible with how economy works. Either that or we discover a magic abundant non-polluting energy source, but I woldn't rely on that

We're already doing it and making progress. It's not instant and we still have delayed consequences to deal with, so short-term fixes also make sense.

You can use different metrics for progress, but it looks like world oil consumption has nearly doubled since 2000

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#98

Post by fasterik »

gniv wrote: post #36

The timing of this article is a bit unfortunate. It's been raining here (France) every day for the past week, sometimes heavily.

The article is talking primarily about Eastern Europe. It's also not inconsistent to say that it's raining during a drought. That's why we distinguish between weather and climate.

Re: Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

#99

Post by tyrabound »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #4

Just took a train ride from Vienna to Budapest for a few days, and couldn’t help but notice how very, very dry everything is .. as an Australian living in Europe for a few decades now, I’ve always been intrigued by just how green everything is, literally something growing in every single crack in the pavement, or endless rolling green fields of prosperity during spring - whereas, where I’m from its year-long spinifex…

It’s not really a common perspective, but I have a theory that the primary cause of especially this kind of drought has way more to do with Europe essentially draining itself through all of the river straightening projects of the 19th century. How could it not be.

Before all the industrial age river straightening that has gone on until even rather recently with damming and concrete encasement projects in I think even the 1990s, you not only prevented the river water, i.e., mountain glacial waters and evaporative rain waters from meandering and saturating the lowlands, but you even speed up the pace not to mention shortening the distance.

Sure, it wasn’t a fast process, but as anyone who has had a small water leak in their home can tell you, constant flow of water at even a small rate adds up over 24/7/365 and 200 years. You’ve literally not just been draining all your fresh water into the ocean, but you’ve been draining your water battery in the form of the saturated wetlands, soil and structures like the gravel aquifers of Central Europe of water. More people are befuddled why there is a drought after they drained the water cycle battery for 200 years, not to mention that the European population has almost quadrupled over that time and people used far less water in the past, not even to mention that the EU is doing to drive tens of millions of more people into Europe.

Ironically and in seemingly typical contradictory and counterproductive manner, the EU seems to quietly and maybe even ignorantly agree with me based on several directives and regulations they’ve been passing to restore some wetlands, river flows, and floodplains. Unfortunately it’s very little and very late (as people may be noticing) the rule of thumb is that what was destroyed takes at least 6x the effort to restore.

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