from the in-the-car-and-on-my-way-to-Stonehenge dept.
Europe's drought exposes WWII ships, bombs and prehistoric stones:
Weeks of baking heat and drought across Europe have seen water levels in rivers and lakes fall to levels few can remember, exposing long-submerged treasures – and some deadly hazards.
In Spain, archaeologists have been delighted by the emergence of a prehistoric stone circle dubbed the “Spanish Stonehenge” that is usually covered by waters of a dam that have fallen in the worst drought in decades.
[...] The stone circle was discovered by German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier in 1926, but the area was flooded in 1963 in a rural development project under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. Since then it has only become fully visible four times.
Another of Europe’s mighty rivers, the Danube, has fallen to one of its lowest levels in almost a century as a result of the drought, exposing the hulks of more than 20 German warships sunk during World War II near Serbia’s river port town of Prahovo.
[...] Memories of past droughts have also been rekindled in Germany by the reappearance of so-called “hunger stones” along the Rhine river. Many such stones have become visible along the banks of Germany’s largest river in recent weeks.
Bearing dates and people’s initials, their re-emergence is seen by some as a warning and reminder of the hardships people faced during former droughts.
Dates visible on stones seen in Worms, south of Frankfurt, and Rheindorf, near Leverkusen, included 1947, 1959, 2003 and 2018.
See also:
Europe's Rhine River Runs Dry
European Drought Dries Up Rivers, Kills Fish, Shrivels Crops
Drought Forces Water Use Rethink In Spain
Related Stories
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Faced with a historic drought and threatened by desertification, Spain is rethinking how it spends its water resources, which are used mainly to irrigate crops.
"We must be extremely careful and responsible instead of looking the other way," Spain's Minister for the Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera said recently, about the impact of the lack of rain.
Like France and Italy, Spain has been gripped by several extreme heatwaves this summer after an unusually dry winter.
That has left the country's reservoirs at 40.4 percent of their capacity in August, 20 percentage points below the average over the last decade for this time of the year.
Officials have responded by limiting water use, especially in the southern region of Andalusia, which grows much of Europe's fruits and vegetables.
Reservoir water levels in the region are particularly low, just 25 percent at most of their capacity.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Once, a river ran through it. Now, white dust and thousands of dead fish cover the wide trench that winds amid rows of trees in France's Burgundy region in what was the Tille River in the village of Lux.
From dry and cracked reservoirs in Spain to falling water levels on major arteries like the Danube, the Rhine and the Po, an unprecedented drought is afflicting nearly half of the European continent. It is damaging farm economies, forcing water restrictions, causing wildfires and threatening aquatic species.
There has been no significant rainfall for almost two months in Western, Central and Southern Europe. In typically rainy Britain, the government officially declared a drought across southern and central England on Friday amid one of the hottest and driest summers on record.
And Europe's dry period is expected to continue in what experts say could be the worst drought in 500 years.
Climate change is exacerbating conditions as hotter temperatures speed up evaporation, thirsty plants take in more moisture and reduced snowfall in the winter limits supplies of fresh water available for irrigation in the summer. Europe isn't alone in the crisis, with drought conditions also reported in East Africa, the western United States and northern Mexico.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Water levels on the Rhine River, Europe's second-largest river, have continued to drop owing to soaring temperatures and lack of rainfall, preventing many vessels from navigating through the waters at full capacity. The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission has captured part of the Rhine River near Cologne, showing the stark difference between August 2021 and August 2022.
Flowing from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea, the Rhine River is an important shipping route for many products from grains to chemicals to coal. When water levels drop, cargo vessels need to sail with reduced load, so they don't run aground.
Water levels at the chokepoint of Kaub, near Frankfurt, fell to 32 cm in depth on Monday, down from 42 cm last week. Ships, however, need around 1.5 m to be able to sail fully loaded making it difficult for larger ships to navigate through the waters. Freight ships continue to sail, but only with around 25% to 35% of the ship's capacity.
The low water levels are emerging earlier than usual, with the lowest water levels typically recorded in September or October. However, reduced temperatures and predicted rainfall forecasted for this week may offer relief to the Rhine.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Tuesday August 23 2022, @07:30PM (3 children)
I notice a LOT of silence these days as global heat waves, freezes, draughts, and other massively uncharacteristic climate responses are happening. Too damn late, but it looks like many are finally starting to get it.
Still some holdouts, people very wedded to the lie that cannot admit they have been so violently and vehemently wrong this whole time. No saving that group.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday August 24 2022, @01:00PM (2 children)
And yet, you've still got conartists being allowed to sell fake carbon credits to enable corporations, including the same fossil fuel ones that caused most of the problem, to green wash their operations. It's absolutely disgusting that you've got companies like Ryanair allowing customers to pay to offset the emissions of the flight, and then using the money for protection fo dolphins and whales that aren't relevant to the emissions in the first place. Or to protect land that is already protected, or to plant forests that are of completely the wrong type of tree and only one type.
I've considred buying some offset credits to help reduce my footprint, but it's pretty hard to find legitimate companies that would deliver one what they're promising. And even when they do deliver, the delivery can be years coming as trees and the like take time to grow.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Wednesday August 24 2022, @01:34PM (1 child)
It's all a scam. The idea of "footprint" is also a scam to deflect blame from the source to the consumer -- the bottom line, most of the so called "footprint" is unavoidable and embedded and we don't have a choice. If there was some magic, like Carbon Tax, where the price of pollution would start to get embedded into the product ....
Ryanair allowing customers to pay to offset the emissions of the flight
TBH, I don't understand this preoccupation with Ryanair. Every airlines selling this crap and greenwashing. But Ryanair is actually one of the more efficient airlines per passenger-mile per CO2 emitted due to new aircraft and sardine-like layouts.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday August 24 2022, @09:08PM
That's more or less what my conclusion was. There isn't a proper 3rd party with standards to ensure that the products will remove the stated carbon that weren't already going to be built. They were going to be built anyways, then it's not really much of a credit. Even if the particular credits are intended to be honest, there's no way of knowing.
As far as Ryanair goes, it's a byproduct of the gimmicks. In this case, though it was just a pretty clear-cut example of a company offering something that may have been well intended, but not as advertised.