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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

#461

Post by bit-anarchist »

uv-depression wrote: post #194
api wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get in a time machine. Go back to 1970. Make sure world starts phasing out all coal power by 2000, replacing with nuclear and what renewables are available then, and make sure modular scalable reactors are available for China so they use that instead of coal to power their rise. Convince everyone that late 20th century unscientific greens are full of shit and nuclear power is better than coal. (Renewables were not fu…

This is a gross misunderstanding of what degrowth means. The fantasy is that an economic system predicated on infinite growth can be made compatible with finite resources. Take, for example, the fact that renewable energy keeps growing as a percentage of total energy generation, yet total GHG emissions keep rising. That's a result of the system of incentives set up by capital. Yes, the economy can become less coupled…

> The fantasy is that an economic system predicated on infinite growth can be made compatible with finite resources.

Good thing that's just degrowth propaganda.

> This economic system is extremely terrible at meeting base human needs.

Except in comparison to all others. Crop failures and famines were common in feudalisms. Planned socialism is known for food insecurity. The system today might not be best possible, but it's, by no means, terrible.

> This is an absurd strawman.

Need to read more degrowth fiction then.

> What degrowth advocates for is taking as our first priority meeting human needs and living sustainably (which can be made compatible with most of the technology we have today in some form)

The problem here is the "human needs" part, which are famously infinite.

> ...than the ideology of growth for growth's sake, which mainly results in massive amounts of wasted resources and funnelling wealth into the hands of a few.

Also degrowth propaganda. No one "grows" for the sake of "growing", lest they have a need for it. All choosing actors act towards fulfilling their needs, regardless of whether anyone find them "fundamental" or not.

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

#462

Post by tyrabound »

crote wrote: post #398
tyrabound wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It takes very little time for water to reach the sea. From rain falling in Germany or snow melting in the Alps to it entering the North Sea takes less than two weeks. Even at the current extremely low flow the Rhine is still delivering 800 m3 / second to The Netherlands, and during high-flow periods it can deliver over 12.000 m3 / second. Any kind of meaningful retention just isn't going to happen, short of a giant h…

You are not catching on my friend. That is precisely the issue, that the straightening of the rivers... you are aware that was done, right? ... and channeling them out of wetlands, flood plains, and meanders and oxbows has effectively narrowed and sped up the water flows, while also shortening, i.e., both length and water time in river/land, largely because meandering, longer natural rivers are also flatter, i.e., the same elevation gain/drop over 30% more length and they are wider, i.e., the past volume of greater water stored itself in gravel "batteries" (hence where Kiesgruben" come from which fill into a Baggersee) and left by glaciers a very long time ago.

It's really not all that complicated when you realize what I am saying and it just seems to proximal for Europeans for some reason, i.e., they don't really seem to have a sense for how things were in the past, based on my experience talking to them, i.e., they think the rivers they have have always been more or less the way they currently are even if they are maybe manicured with banks or something. For additional context; the Rhein was up to 30 times wider than it is today before being straightened.

Here's a decent illustration of that [1] which shows not only how the river was straightened from the meandering oxbow river into the straight red river, but also notice that all of the green area is the historical path of the river and the flood plains it produced which would have been fed by all those meandering oxbows. All of that is now gone with the drainage of Europe having been completed over about 200 years now.

It's really not all that different in the USA either in case you were wondering, but e.g., the Mississippi has only been straightened since the 1930s and is still very much not really fully controlled even though the straightening along with deforestation and soil erosion has also led to the USA being essentially drained. And here too, people are wondering why it's getting dryer more. We have similarly also chocked our country full of way more people that can sustainably be supported in an ecologically sound manner, but liberals and conservatives have one thing in common, they slap the roof of the car and proclaim "this bad boy can fit so many f--king people in it." out of a toxic combination of lust for power, decadence, entitlement, and greed.

[1] https://eucorkarten.ub.uni-freiburg.de/wp-content/uploads/20...

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

#463

Post by static_motion »

mikrotikker wrote: post #344
IshKebab wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with AI really. It's a century of pumping out CO2, not 2 years. Maybe in the future... but you can't blame AI for this year.

Yea but I bet if you still had beavers in Europe you'd still have water.

The conservation status of the Eurasian Beaver is "least concern" and the population is increasing. Their distribution doesn't cover all of Europe, but there's certainly no shortage of them.

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

#464

Post by locallost »

epolanski wrote: post #244
locallost wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with that, but was specifically referring to the description of everything being very dry in that area. I noticed this already 15 years ago, the area around Budapest was much more yellow and dry compared to countries up north. But yes, the intensity and especially the duration of the heat has intensified. I stopped visiting my family in the south of Europe around five years ago, and visit in either fall or sp…

I don't think it ever got to the current levels where even nuclear plants had to be stopped due to lack of water in the Danube.

Probably not. But it's not the first time the grass is no longer green in August. The only thing I said really.

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

#465

Post by sfn42 »

tsunamifury wrote: post #447
sfn42 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The little ice age is in the graph, it was just completely insignificant on a global scale, as opposed to global warming which as you can see from the graph is extremely significant on a global scale. You are expecting to see the little ice age on the graph because you think that was a comparable event to global warming, but the fact is it wasn't. Local changes due to global warming are even more significant than the…

We are discussing aridification in europe, a specifically local event? Also one that can happen regardless of global warming and has happened severalt times in the last 5000 years. Do you not even track what conversation context you're in before going off? edit: im editing here to respond to the absurd response below. The reponder, while lecturing rabidly missed several things like the difference between aridificatio…

> missed several things like the difference between aridification and heat, local vs global, and europe not being the world.

I didn't miss any of that. I have already pointed out that difference in earlier comments, like when I informed you that the little ice age was local and that the arctic is warming much faster than most other places. Europe has also warmed more than many other places. And obviously the aridification is a direct result of the warming and prolonged heat waves. This article comes right after Europe experienced it's hottest summer ever recorded.

You haven't demonstrates that anything I've said is false. You referred to the article I linked as "junk science" despite the fact that it's from a very well respected organization, then you went on to just move the goal posts entirely and now you're just slandering me.

And I have in fact proved, as well as reasonably possible in an internet comment section, that the planet is warming. That was the very first thing I did, by linking an article that proves it beyond any reasonable doubt, and highlighting a chart that visualizes the severity and clear cause of the issue in a way any moron could understand if they weren't willfully ignorant.

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

#466

Post by cromka »

OJFord wrote: post #448
cromka wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shuts down You're free to continue conversing. > all conversations Also a fallacy.

I wasn't conversing in the first place, I'm just bored of reading through exchanges where at some point someone says Aha! That's a fallacy! Got you, I win!

I know you weren’t. Which was my point: the conversation was not shut down. If pointing out someone’s manipulation is not OK to you, then you’re probably better off trying a different discussion board.

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

#467

Post by bopou »

otherme123 wrote: post #188
daedrdev wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unironically the anti nuclear luddites killed the main chance to be divert climate change that we had over unfounded fearmongering

Antinuclear have and always had zero power to stop nuclear plants. Except for Germany, if nuclear stopped growing was because of its economics. The same economics that stopped solar photovoltaics until it made sense. Even France, that is heavily pro-nuclear, can't find the economics to build new nuclear energy at decent pace. Also, nuclear was not replaced by more carbon, except again a for a couple of years in a sma…

You're acting as if politics AKA overregulation (first person to say "You think nuclear should be unregulated???" gets a medal) has had no effect on the price of nuclear energy.

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

#468

Post by netsharc »

paganel wrote: post #214
netsharc wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like low prices, but I'm not looking forward to the chaos (political, social, what else) and deaths which I'm guessing will affect me within in the next 10 years.

The chaos is already here for us, the majority who are suffering the higher prices. Why do you think we're voting for the "extremist" parties? It's not because of "Russian propaganda", it's because life for the majority of us, normal Europeans, has become quite dreadful, economically and not only.

Duh and duh...

You're commenting on a comments thread about the possible desertification of Europe, a conversation we're having in the context of the record hot summer.

The extremist parties offer scapegoats and solutions for the unthinking ("The brown people! Remigration! The elite, except we're getting funded by the elite and we'll protect them and fuck you!"), and sadly there's too many stupid people who can't be spoonfed any concept of "think deeper" that like buying those...

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

#470

Post by ElFitz »

hn_submit wrote: post #459
ElFitz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been to quite a few deserts that get the occasional seasonal torrential rain. They still remain deserts nine to ten months out of twelve. The water saturates the soil, can’t percolate to underground aquifers where it could otherwise be stored, and runs into (ephemeral) rivers, washing away some of whatever is left of the soil with it. I wouldn’t be surprised if two places could have roughly the same yearly amoun…

A torrential rain once a year doesn't really make much difference. There's no life on Earth that can survive on one downpour for a year.

You seem remarkably confident about vast, complex topics.
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