I'm not sure if Clarkson's farm has much of a following outside of the UK. Last year they had several crops fail due to the drought over summer and honestly this year was far worse. I believe he may not have even bothered planting the normal cash crops, so it will be interesting to see how that works out. That said, the year before I think it was so wet early in the year that farmers really struggled to get crops in the ground.

In areas like Valencia there are ancient irrigation systems and water rights controlled by water councils older than many countries. I wonder if the UK will need to do similar, irrigation ponds, flood control structures and canals to control the flow of water through the landscape.

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

California was also in a super drought at that time

Meh, almost nobody will want to live in most of Europe post AMOC collapse in 20-40 yrs

Yes, good clarification, I personally spend my times at Grillplatz 11 on the Neue Donau side of Donau Insel (Danube Island) .. it has been a wonderful summer and the water is delightful. Very safe and rewarding swim, every time.

I’ve had it explained to me that it evaporates in the heat and gets deposited in the mountains and the atmosphere above the more northern states, where .. once things cool down, it condenses and moves through tributaries in a big rush or two during the massive temperature changes of October/November.

The thunder storms we’ve had in Vienna in the last few years have produced amazing floods - reminiscent of the desert storms of Australias north-west, where I am from - and a couple years back, the engineering of Viennas water ways was put to the test, with the floods overflowing railway lines and traffic arteries of the city in ways not seen much before this decade...

Finland has escaped most of the heat of Central Europe. We have had hard rains occasionally, but overall not that much more rain. From stats look like 100-150% of historic numbers.

So it has really not rained outside the high pressure zone. So I am not really sure where it all would be.

Interesting theory and I can see how you get there.

But if drainage changes were the primary cause, we would've seen drought severity increasing across the time period where straightening/etc were happening... instead the drought severity increases begin _after_ that period, better aligned with temperature changes.

Additionally, your analogy to a water leak from a tank doesn't hold, because the water recharges over time...

Further, your complaints about immigrants also doesn't make sense, as water usage has been going down (and residential utilization is quite low, altogether).

As such, my theory is that you're just a right-wing crank who wants to find a reason to deny global warming, and to hate immigrants.

I don't think this view is especially controversial. Many past infrastructure and industry projects make the drought worse today - dams, channels, mines (especially open-pit). In my area (eastern Poland) single communist-era irigation project is responsible for destroying 73% of peat bogs, meadow marshes and wet meadows [1]. Restoring them to previous condition is completely infeasible.

[1] https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana%C5%82_Wieprz-Krzna

> How could it not be.

Plenty of ways. That's what we have science for. For one, why choose 19th century projects when we did millenia of terraforming, mostly by doing away with forrests and wetlands, but also planting artifical forrests over dry sand areas (see the Cap Ferret fire) etc. etc.

but also, the heatwaves of this summer mostly consist of hot air from Sahara being driven to Europe and staying there.

> that the EU is doing to drive tens of millions of more people into Europe

what

That's a really good point. I've seen some work on retaining moisture in the desert, and if memory serves, the successful ones create small check dams to retard water flow down a watercourse, giving it time to soak into the ground and replenish groundwater.

It would be interesting to see whether one could apply that to European waterways as part of marshland regeneration.

> not even to mention that the EU is doing to drive tens of millions of more people into Europe

Interesting how lived perception of resource scarcity and socio-economic change will attribute it all to ... others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_theories

Nah, the water cycle is a myth. Don’t you see all these other replies? Clearly science is only supposed to be cherry-picked to fit a narrative.

I can’t imagine what the Netherlands would look like if desertification would occur. It seems implausible that those flat, flat lands would ever turn brown and grey and dusty - but I won’t be surprised if things turn that way in a few years. I hope the Dutch have a solution, they always seem to when it comes to water control ..

Drought in The Netherlands is artificial though. Millionaire farmers are pumping up water to water their crops during the day. Due to the heat most of the spray evaporates before it touches the plants. During the winter they artificially lower the ground water level for personal benefit.

Also of this so they can gain even more millions by exporting all the food across the border. Time to block some more highways, destroy some more property and kill some more people in order to secure those sweet EU subsidies.

Wow, that's kind of incredible. I've always been able to walk out into parts of it for quite a distance in prior visits over the years but I'm guessing this new average is an extreme.

As an European, no, current situation is unprecedented.

It was getting bad already, but like this? Absurd.

Hungary was largely swamps and marshlands in the past, much of which was drained to give way for large-field monocultural agriculture, this started in the 19th century, and was further developed, until we got here. Now the "non-existent climate change" is added to that, and I wonder if our forests will survive me...

Also soil erosion is a problem, so I think I'll live to get it all to a desert.

Sure, it gets dry in summer, it’s not always so lush - at least in my experience over the years.

But, parks of dead grass, and dust devils blowing in the corners? Can’t say I’ve seen that much over the decades of visiting the region. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much dry, dead grass.

I, for one, am very grateful for my neighborhood turning the streets into cooler, greener little oases for pedestrians. Perhaps those eucalyptus trees the Schönbrunner Zoo keeps for its koalas will be of use in providing avenues of shade in the decades to come, who knows …

i am currently hiking through switzerland (in cossonay this evening) and have been struck by how wet the forest ground is compared to my home (colorado, usa). locals have told me that’s very recent because of the storms that came through a few days ago.

the mittelland seems dry but since i’m walking through farmland, mostly, everything around me looks green, while i walk on dusty paths.

today was very hot.

In Europe, we're already degrowing since 2008, even more so if you only look at the real, physical economy because we have to import our fossil energy. We won't be able to power the same lifestyle with nuclear and renewables either, the math doesn't add up. Jean-Marc Jancovici is a french engineer explaining this in great detail, see for example https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/84-jean-marc-... if you don't speak french.

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 to resources (as it has), but there is a limit, unless you seriously want to argue that iron (for example) can be an arbitrarily small portion of the economy.

An economy is a method of allocating resources. This economic system is extremely terrible at meeting base human needs (consider that we produce many times the amount of food that's needed to feed everyone's needs, but massive amounts of it used for industrial meat production and biofuels).

> we are never returning to pre industrial times

This is an absurd strawman.

> everyone needs to become poorer

This is, in fact, the industry propaganda. 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), rather 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.

> “Hey Africa, we know we colonized you and all but can you do us a favor and stay poor to help fix the problem we mostly caused?” There is not enough “fuck you” in the universe for that one.

This is misdirection. Getting water, food, shelter, and medicine for everyone on the planet is well within our means as a species. It is the ideology of free movement for goods but not people and infinite growth that makes it impossible to meet those needs, because it requires and underclass who can be used for cheap labour and contained in states built for that purpose.

It's not poor people who stand to lose from degrowth, it's the ultra rich.

"we are never returning to pre industrial times"

We are, one way or the other. It is just a question of the choices we make on the way and how pre-industrial we end up.

There is no a position of leverage, the climate is behaving as modeled and expected. We know what will happen next.

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 small country (by global standards) called Germany. Everyone else is planting more clean energy.

What we did: growing China and all Asia at high rates based on coal, for decades. Offsetting by a lot internal combustion engine efficiency by buying bigger and more cars. Buying stupid and useless stuff on the other side of the planet. Everyone first hobby today is "travelling the world", preferably by plane. Being 10 billion people, and richer (more capita and more consumption per capita). None of those thing would be solvable with more nuclear plants.

Successful massive nuclear and renewable deployment at world scale, would it have happened, would have only solved one third of the problem. Agriculture, construction and all carbon-emitting industry processses (steel production) require their own solution too.

Many of the "luddite" groups were funded, and in some cases entirely formed, by fossil fuel interests.

I think it is extremely simplistic to blame the nuclear transition's failed potential solely on them.

1. The fact that nuclear power has been quite safe so far does not mean that it would have been just as safe if its deployment would have rapidly spread.

2. Nuclear energy is unfortunately tightly coupled with nuclear weapons, as well as the treaties and geopolitics that were designed to keep them only in the hands of the few. Quite many late 1900s crises in Europe could have looked different if nuclear material was even more widespread than it was. I don't even wanna think about nations outside Europe that have been extremely unstable in the past and in recent history.

3. Seeing how intensely fossil fuel companies spread misinformation and disinformation about green technology and climate science, it's hardly a far-fetched idea that that same industry had a hand in helping policymakers steer away from an energy source that would unseat it from the throne.

No. You can shit all you want over the antinuclear boys but:

* Building nuclear plants is a 5-10 year plan. More if you haven't built them in a while.

* The first economy in the world has quite literally started wars over oil because it wants to keep using it.

* The countries that would be the biggest emitters right now are also the ones doing the most in electrification.

Building more nuclear wouldn't have changed shit: there is an ongoing work to maintain the world dependent on fossil fuels. We can't even get electric cars to properly pick up.

I don't buy it.

Climate change is related to our consumptions, period, focusing only on energy or transport doesn't tackle the whole problem: we consume too much, eat too much (cattle and fish in particular) and destroy too much in our quest for more and more.

Inefficient transport or energy is just one aspect of the whole problem.

But I'm tired of hearing how it is just a matter of energy or transport, it's literally missing the forest for a tree, even if it might be a particularly big one.

I'm totally with you. The proliferation of AI, to me, is a collective choice of convenience over climate. Remember Covid? We can do something, we just won't.

I think it often gets overlooked that effective carbon taxing would tax you right out of pretty much all modern convenience. Which would be the point, but people would fuckin revolt if it actually happened. Parent is complaining about 0.00000000001% of the damage done over the last 100 years.

> Who cares if a small burger pollutes more than commuting with a SUV.

Can you give some references basing that?

I would like to educate myself a bit (I'm a vegetarian myself)

The beef is not the source of this.

Ruminant meat is the best food there is for humans. (i eat daily as part of ketovore diet)

I don't know, the last few years have taught me that humans have exceedingly short memories

We'll see whether the heatwaves and drought have been forgotten or not in May...

We’ve engineered so that rain water goes into rivers and out to sea.

Whereas we really need to slow it down so that it permeates the ground

Yeah they still have restrictions in my area but I don't know how to find out the real situation. I am close to the Seine and I've seen it quite high the other day, but that's probably not a good indication of the general state.

I said nothing about the drought. My comment was on timing, which affects the optics of those who read it. Imagine going on vacation for 2 months, as they do, then coming back and reading this article while seeing heavy rain outside. With all the fake news you can see how some folks would be skeptical.

Agreed, and also Moscow sees this as a huge positive change. More ice-free ports, more arable land, plus avoiding action means they get to keep selling their major export.

Agreed that would help, but even if everyone were to eat, say, half the amount of meat they would normally eat that would be huge.

Non-issue

No....because it would make no difference.

https://youtu.be/sGG-A80Tl5g?si=dAqbVb9JV_uzLRl1

This! I live in Western Europe and have never owned a car. I mostly travel by public transport or bike. I rent a car about once a year, but could do without that as well. Before people tell me that I am an exception: I know other people like me in various other places in Europe! It is possible and actually good for your body to have to move, at least to the train station, carrying groceries etc.

It was in a much steadier state for hundreds of thousands of years before the 20th century. Don't be obtuse.

I live in Portugal, near Lisbon (not in Lisbon, as it has become impossible to afford for locals, even tech workers). Many times it would be cheaper for me to travel by plane to a city like London, than the gas+tolls cost to visit my family that live less than 1h away by car. It takes ~2h30 minimum by public transport.

I find it pretty ridiculous how the carbon taxing is extremely heavy on cars, but pretty much non-existing for air travel here. Tourism is a terrible industry that doesn't even contribute that much to our economy, depletes the housing stock, and removes local businesses and culture, but the tourists are always prioritized by government.

> 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.

Yes, we really need big investment in infrastructure. At the moment parks and gardens don't have automatic watering as we expect rain to do its job, and we suffer from hosepipe bans because infrastructure to store water is not fit for purpose.

Ok, summer has been a record dry, as said... not the first time it looks like that but perhaps the longest and driest.

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.

It's too late for that. We had to do it 20 years ago. Plus, you and I have no power over fossil fuel extraction, but we do have the individual ability to put sulphur in the upper atmosphere (with effort). Game theory rules everything.

Sulfur or similar may be more politically viable due to the tradgedy-of-the-commons. They can be enacted without as much consensus, maybe.

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

Let's say a magical enviro-fascist cabal of superhumans appears tomorrow and are somehow able to completely dismantle and ban all sources of energy that emit large amounts of CO2 while also somehow providing replacement quantities of non-emitting alternatives (e.g. wind, solar, and nuclear).

In this environment we will still need to geoengineer the planet for as long as the carbon we have already burned remains in the atmosphere. We are already way outside the pre-industrial baseline. And carbon capture is very energy-intensive, so no matter how much of our solar energy abundance we put into it, we are going to be geoengineering for decades.

Even if we hit carbon neutral tomorrow it's too late.

As described in Edward Tenners classic book "Why Things Bite Back. Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences", 1996 (oldie but goldie)

We really need to be pursuing Ocean Iron Fertilization https://www.whoi.edu/ocean-learning-hub/ocean-topics/climate... . We need to both drastically reduce our release of GHG emissions and work to pull CO2 out of the air. This is the only method that seems remotely plausible. I agree that I don't like the sulphur seeding because it doesn't actually remove C02, and higher concentrations of CO2 are toxic to humans.

Yearly - since when?

What's your next beef after that? Should we put cows and sheep under AC? Forests and fields under AC? Iceland should start installing AC? The Magreb countries should live under the surface of the Earth like mole people? Why don't people relocate to the Antarctic, those idiots?

Reality is much of Northern Europe hasn’t needed air conditioning until about 5 years ago

Throughput the summer my phone regular tells me the temperature is 15°C above the average for the time of year

Including executives that still refuse to price in the environmental externalities of their business practices.

And don't forget the politicians and media personalities who knowingly or negligently denied that there was even a problem.

And since we've all known about this for 30+ years, is it still their fault, or is it ours?

Where did the greens hold power?

I blame fossil fuel companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_deni...

They're the ones who lied about climate change. They also funded anti-nuclear propaganda.

The Christian-Democrats signed the end of nuclear power in Germany, not the Greens. Please stop this mindless scapegoating. And electricity is only 30% of our global carbon emissions.

More like 6%, roughly in line with its population share (5.4%). Not sure if that includes air travel, international air travel often isn't included in national statistics. https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025

If it's not significant, can I have 5% of your net worth?

If the EU mandated that products imported are made in a carbon neutral fashion, then importers of products will pay attention. Unfortunately it means higher prices, and the governments will get voted out of office by people voting for the populists selling the electoral promise of "Make Prices Low Again!"...

The EU is responsible for a lot more than that once you factor in emissions in other countries producing goods bought by people and businesses in EU countries.

Note that this 10% is heavily skewed toward the richest, biggest cities.

In bigger cities, it might be closer to 20-30% of their economy.

Take that away, and it would have a cascading effect through entire countries.

10% of an economy is a lot, you don’t need to lose much of that to hit the entire sector very hard.