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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.
As he walked in the 15-meter-wide (50-foot-wide) riverbed in Lux, Jean-Philippe Couasné, chief technician at the local Federation for Fishing and Protection of the Aquatic Environment, listed the species of fish that had died in the Tille.
"It's heartbreaking," he said. "On average, about 8,000 liters (about 2,100 gallons) per second are flowing. ... And now, zero liters."
In some areas upstream, some of the trout and other freshwater species are able take shelter in pools via fish ladders. But such systems aren't available everywhere.
Without rain, the river "will continue to empty. And yes, all fish will die. ... They are trapped upstream and downstream, there's no water coming in, so the oxygen level will keep decreasing as the (water) volume will go down," Couasné said. "These are species that will gradually disappear."
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 14 2022, @08:00PM (2 children)
That whole people moving thing? Where are they going to move to? How much you want to bet they want to squat on the newly arable land that should be feeding them?
Leave the cities where they are, move the farms wherever the arable land is, and truck the food to the cities. Better yet, let's make a rail system that runs on time, so we can ship the food by rail! That would be really cost efficient, and far less polluting.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 14 2022, @08:05PM (1 child)
Like Russia is moving their farms to the Ukraine? Expect a lot more of that in the future.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2022, @02:48AM
Except they're not. They're just mining the fields and burning the crops, depending on the mood of the day (and supply/logistics). Russia has no military objectives in Ukraine save extermination of Ukrainians.