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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 d

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.

ignoramous 17d ago
> 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_theories
rickydroll 17d ago
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.
maciejw 17d ago
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 https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana%C5%82_Wieprz-Krzna
porkpieshoe 17d ago
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.
- cindyllm 17d ago
  [dead]
tpm 17d ago
> 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
lukaslalinsky 17d ago
The concept of winter pretty much stopped existing where I live. It's just colder autumn. The ground doesn't freeze. Snow doesn't accumulate. No amount of meandering is going to compensate for the fact that the mountains do not hold water. Something needs to feed the springs and rivers. And the source is gone. Europe is shifting into a different climate, where water primarily comes as rainfall, causing floods. I imagine it's similar to Asian countries, and we will have to learn to deal with that.
- tyrabound 16d ago
  I get what you are saying. I think I mentioned that I am not really all that optimistic that the process has not become irreversible in the near term, but the way I see it the only way that you could try reversing it is to effectively try to retain as much water as possible, which would require things like flooding flood plains with river water when it is available in the near term, planning for "wilding" river flows back into historical flood plains over the medium term, i.e., 50 years, and making policy that would move people out of flood plains to expand the wilding, using channels and dikes to lead river water into meadows and plains and dissuading populations in flood plains, and reversing the population growth of a population that is about 4x the size of what it was in 1800. It sounds drastic, but all I keep hearing is that we need drastic actions, but those drastic actions seem to always be based on diffuse, abstract, and really rather meaningless and insignificant things like reducing energy use, while at the same time driving tens of millions of more people from low energy consumption regions into relatively high energy consumption regions. But to address your point too, yes, Europe seems too be shifting into a different climate, but it's because based on my theory, Europe has effectively drained it's water cycle of the very moisture it needs. Sure, climate change has warmed things everywhere, but don't you think if Europe had the moisture it drained into the oceans that could evaporate under the higher heat into clouds that both would provide ray reflection/shadow/cooling, and deposit rain into the alps in the form of snow in winter; things would likely look a lot different? The thing is that the source does not have to be gone, because it is actually not in Europe at all, but you have to kind of "kickstart" the cycle again if that is even possible. The source of European moisture in the European water cycle is effectively the USA and the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean area. The Gulf Stream then drives that moisture by way of the energy in the water towards Europe, where it then is driven inland from the north through the cooling at the poles. What I am saying is effectively, if you drain your lawn with elaborate drainage systems that suck all the moisture out at a faster rate than you can even water it, you should not be surprised that it still will dry up and die. There are clearly things going on, e.g., the US has not really had anywhere near the number of hurricanes that keep getting predicted, but I can assure you that the heat is generating a lot of storms and clouds. It's a bit anecdotal, but I am actually oddly surprised at how "cool" the ocean water is this year in particular compared to the past. I hope it's not the other wild prediction scientist have made that he AMOC seizes up and you guys end up wishing there were more global warming, but that's for another day. May you live in interesting times
crote 17d ago
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 hydro reservoir. Some river straightening isn't going to be more than a rounding error. The real issue here is the loss of the glaciers, which are the actual "water batteries". Previously a lot of snow fell in the winter, stayed there, and slowly melted off during the summer. Nowadays a lot of rain falls during the winter, and it immediately flows downstream, with nothing to melt during the summer. Population is completely irrelevant here, by the way. Any water used by people ends up going back into the river after some filtering. No need to invent an immigration conspiracy.
- toasty228 16d ago
  Modern mono culture fields also do not retain water at all, which doesn't help.
- tyrabound 16d ago
  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/2018/08/H_Gemarkung_Rheinstrom-72.jpg https://eucorkarten.ub.uni-freiburg.de/wp-content/uploads/20...

ignoramous 17d ago

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

rickydroll 17d ago

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.

maciejw 17d ago

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

porkpieshoe 17d ago

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.

cindyllm 17d ago
[dead]

tpm 17d ago

> 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

lukaslalinsky 17d ago

The concept of winter pretty much stopped existing where I live. It's just colder autumn. The ground doesn't freeze. Snow doesn't accumulate. No amount of meandering is going to compensate for the fact that the mountains do not hold water. Something needs to feed the springs and rivers. And the source is gone. Europe is shifting into a different climate, where water primarily comes as rainfall, causing floods. I imagine it's similar to Asian countries, and we will have to learn to deal with that.

tyrabound 16d ago
I get what you are saying. I think I mentioned that I am not really all that optimistic that the process has not become irreversible in the near term, but the way I see it the only way that you could try reversing it is to effectively try to retain as much water as possible, which would require things like flooding flood plains with river water when it is available in the near term, planning for "wilding" river flows back into historical flood plains over the medium term, i.e., 50 years, and making policy that would move people out of flood plains to expand the wilding, using channels and dikes to lead river water into meadows and plains and dissuading populations in flood plains, and reversing the population growth of a population that is about 4x the size of what it was in 1800. It sounds drastic, but all I keep hearing is that we need drastic actions, but those drastic actions seem to always be based on diffuse, abstract, and really rather meaningless and insignificant things like reducing energy use, while at the same time driving tens of millions of more people from low energy consumption regions into relatively high energy consumption regions. But to address your point too, yes, Europe seems too be shifting into a different climate, but it's because based on my theory, Europe has effectively drained it's water cycle of the very moisture it needs. Sure, climate change has warmed things everywhere, but don't you think if Europe had the moisture it drained into the oceans that could evaporate under the higher heat into clouds that both would provide ray reflection/shadow/cooling, and deposit rain into the alps in the form of snow in winter; things would likely look a lot different? The thing is that the source does not have to be gone, because it is actually not in Europe at all, but you have to kind of "kickstart" the cycle again if that is even possible. The source of European moisture in the European water cycle is effectively the USA and the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean area. The Gulf Stream then drives that moisture by way of the energy in the water towards Europe, where it then is driven inland from the north through the cooling at the poles. What I am saying is effectively, if you drain your lawn with elaborate drainage systems that suck all the moisture out at a faster rate than you can even water it, you should not be surprised that it still will dry up and die. There are clearly things going on, e.g., the US has not really had anywhere near the number of hurricanes that keep getting predicted, but I can assure you that the heat is generating a lot of storms and clouds. It's a bit anecdotal, but I am actually oddly surprised at how "cool" the ocean water is this year in particular compared to the past. I hope it's not the other wild prediction scientist have made that he AMOC seizes up and you guys end up wishing there were more global warming, but that's for another day. May you live in interesting times

crote 17d ago

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 hydro reservoir. Some river straightening isn't going to be more than a rounding error. The real issue here is the loss of the glaciers, which are the actual "water batteries". Previously a lot of snow fell in the winter, stayed there, and slowly melted off during the summer. Nowadays a lot of rain falls during the winter, and it immediately flows downstream, with nothing to melt during the summer. Population is completely irrelevant here, by the way. Any water used by people ends up going back into the river after some filtering. No need to invent an immigration conspiracy.

toasty228 16d ago
Modern mono culture fields also do not retain water at all, which doesn't help.
tyrabound 16d ago
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/2018/08/H_Gemarkung_Rheinstrom-72.jpg https://eucorkarten.ub.uni-freiburg.de/wp-content/uploads/20...