Drought Is Declared in Parts of a Hot, Dry Britain (nytimes.com) 110
The British government declared a drought for parts of southern, eastern and central England on Friday as the country, unaccustomed to such extreme heat, endured another day of scorching conditions. From a report: The declaration came after a group of officials and experts, including the National Drought Group, met to discuss the government's response to "the driest summer in 50 years," the Environment Agency said in a statement. Extreme-heat warnings have also been issued for parts of southern England and Wales, just weeks after Britain withered under some of its highest temperatures on record. "We are currently experiencing a second heat wave after what was the driest July on record for parts of the country," Britain's water minister, Steve Double, said in a statement released after the drought group's meeting.
"Action is already being taken by the government and other partners," to deal with the drought, he added. The drought announcement will allow water companies to impose stricter conservation measures. Several water companies have temporarily banned the use of hoses to water yards and gardens and to wash vehicles. The Met Office, Britain's national weather service, issued an extreme-heat warning through Sunday for much of the southern half of England and for parts of Wales, underscoring that the soaring temperatures could not only disrupt travel but also raise the risk of heat-related illnesses for certain groups.
"Action is already being taken by the government and other partners," to deal with the drought, he added. The drought announcement will allow water companies to impose stricter conservation measures. Several water companies have temporarily banned the use of hoses to water yards and gardens and to wash vehicles. The Met Office, Britain's national weather service, issued an extreme-heat warning through Sunday for much of the southern half of England and for parts of Wales, underscoring that the soaring temperatures could not only disrupt travel but also raise the risk of heat-related illnesses for certain groups.
Flood/drought rarity = lack of infrastructure. (Score:2)
The same places don't invest in AC or thermally efficient construction, so they turn into zombie apocalypses in "heatwaves" nobody would notice where it's standard.
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The drought announcement will allow water companies to impose stricter conservation measures. Several water companies have temporarily banned the use of hoses to water yards and gardens and to wash vehicles.
As a response to drought they've temporarily, just temporarily, banned turning on your hose, throwing it on the lawn, and leaving it to drain your local reservoir dry. If this is the best they can do in terms of water conservation it's no wonder they're in trouble. What will they do when it gets really severe? Restrict showers to a maximum of 45 minutes and only allow filling of backyard pools to 95% of the usual level?
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Taking baths vs. showering is a lot more common in UK than in the US, and they also have bigger tubs because both men and women use them, so probably quite a lot of people already use more water to bathe than a 45 minute shower.
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Ah, good point, I'd forgotten about that one.
Originally I was going to say that they were setting a limit of 27 cups of tea per person per day, but that'd just be silly :-).
We're not florida (Score:3)
Neither our infrastructure systems nor our temperate ecosystem is set up to deal with this sort of heat and drought. Some trees are shedding their leaves already 2 months early.
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Yes, it's a blistering 27C right now. I might get heat stroke!
You forgot to mention that's 80.6 in Freedom units. That also reminds me, one of these days I need to upgrade to a higher eagles per hogshead air conditioner. The one I have now really runs up the bill in the summer.
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Human comfort is subjective. Water boiling at sea level is not.
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WTF. It's 100F where I am right now. You'll be fine, just go sit in front of a fan and drink something cold.
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Well thats nice. Its 33C here near london right now and we haven't had any significant rain since July 2nd. But yeah, apart from that perfectly normal.
Moron.
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Re: We're not florida (Score:3)
33C isnt "warm" for the UK, it's hot. Stop comparing us to wherever you come from.
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BTW, I remember standing on a train station platform near London, waiting for a train to arrive. It was winter but not particularly cold, maybe a couple of degrees above zero. There were a few other people waiting too. Then a few flakes of snow started falling. Literally a minute or so later, all the trains listed on the train information screens changed, one by one, from "on time" to "delayed." We looked at each other & rolled our eyes.
Re: We're not florida (Score:2)
But you're not from here so you dont have a fucking clue what a normal summer was here so stop talking out your arse. 33C is HOT for the UK. OK?
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BTW, your nickname's a bit rapey, isn't it?
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"No, it isn't. It's warmer than usual. There's a difference."
No, its hot. Summer temps for the UK hover in the low 20s. Sorry if thats inconvenient for your climate change denial BS.
"BTW, your nickname's a bit rapey, isn't it?"
That says more about your thinking than my nic. Obviously you didn't live through 90s dance music.
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No, its hot. Summer temps for the UK hover in the low 20s.
No, it's warm. Body temperature is 36-37C. We feel temperatures relative to that. At 33C, humans can easily dissipate excess heat although we tend to sweat more than usual. People still work in fields at 33C. Apparently, it's been "very hot" in Antartica this year (40 degrees hotter than usual) but I wouldn't recommend going out in your shorts & t-shirt & I don't think anyone there is getting heatstroke.
You have my sympathies if you find warm weather uncomfortable.
Sorry if thats inconvenient for your climate change denial BS.
I haven't said anything about clim
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"No, it's warm"
For you maybe. For the UK its hot and this isn't up for debate:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-... [bbc.co.uk]
"The Met Office's heatwave thresholds vary in the UK between 25C to 28C, with London previously the only area to have a limit of 28C."
If you want to argue with the Met Office go ahead but don't waste your time with me pal.
"I haven't said anything about climate change."
I think the implication of your thinking is clear. Now eff off.
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I think the implication of your thinking is clear. Now eff off.
Just goes to show that your reading comprehension is bad &/or you're having an imaginary conversation with an imaginary person in your head. Or perhaps... you're triggered? Do you have pronouns?
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Climate change deniers all have a similar argument pattern. "Its not hot, just warm/normal", "We had a summer like this in 76, nothing to worry about", "its all natural variation" etc etc.
Climate change is science, CO2 and methane are infrared absorbers and scatterers whereas wokism is blind ideology which seems to be more your area.
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Breathe & count to 20. Rest & relax for a couple of minutes while thinking about something calm that doesn't trigger you. That'll give the modulating hormones in your brain a chance to dissipate so that you can relax & be more rational & analytical so you don't misu
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Here we call that kind of weather "a nice day."
Why would you call a declaration of drought and emergency conditions for water management a "nice day"? You do realise this article isn't about the temperature or the fact that it's sunny right? What is nice about utility problems? What is nice about water restrictions?
What do you call a "great day"? Going outside with a gun and blowing up your local power transformer so everyone has a blackout? Are you in Florida or in a cave in Pakistan plotting the next attack?
Climate change is messing up the water cycle (Score:1)
About $60-$80 billion is needed to build and maintain desalinization plants and aqueducts, and even that's a band-aid. We need to swi
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That seems unlikely (Score:2)
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Re: That seems unlikely (Score:2)
What, you think they could easily build a pipe from Scotland? Seriously, the problem is lack of rain all year. Some areas have had the lowest rainfall since records began 130 years ago. Up until the beginning of August, some areas had had nearly 60 days with no rain at all, and 160 days with less than 0.5 mm. Not really the stereotype most foreigners have of rainy London Town.
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The main problem is the crumbling infrastructure where large percentages of processed drinking water are lost from leaky pipes.
That certainly doesn't help, but it's also dry at the moment. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/a... [metoffice.gov.uk]. It's dryer than 1976, for example. Dry in most places apart from
Northern Scotland received 98% (99.4mm) of its July rainfall,
February was unusually wet, but that's mostly been good for fish in the sea.
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Not in the short term (Score:2)
Short term you solve it with water conservation and desalinization. Long term you stop pumping CO2 into the air.
We used to be a science and tech forum. That implies futurism. Seems like we'd actually want there to be a future, and to think about how to make it something other than a regression back to medieval times.
Need a large internal salt sea. (Score:1)
Then desalinate to create water and put the brine into the salt sea for evaporation. Should not dump it back into the ocean.
Should able to roll out dew catchers in a big way too.
Yet still on some UK phone in radio shows.. (Score:5, Informative)
"Its summer, it gets hot, stop making a fuss!"
I honestly don't know what it'll take to convince these people there's a problem. If they were young I could understand it because they perhaps wouldn't remember the weather here when summers - with a few exceptions - were temperate and rainy. But its normally 50+ year old talk show hosts who should know better. This weather is NOT normal. One major heatwave is rare , 2 in the same summer with almost zero rain is unheard of.
Perhaps just refusing to believe there's a serious problem is their way of coping.
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To be fair that's not a UK issue. I've heard the same on the continent despite the fact many countries are facing the worst drought in 500 years and no one alive has ever seen most of the river levels as low (or dried out completely) as they are right now.
No country has a monopoly on idiots. It's one of the few things which transcends race and culture.
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To be fair that's not a UK issue.
Of course not. It's a global issue and it's called climate change.
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Maybe if you told them that we used to have snow in Christmas in the past?
Not exactly true, but maybe something that makes them think. Just make sure to use the word "Christmas" and not something like "Holidays" which is likely to trigger them.
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Oh, I can tell you what it'll take: when people like yourself understand that the period length of climate cycles can be enormously long -- as in thousands of years. So you're having the hottest weather in 50 years? Yeah, that length of time is kind of blip, really.
Re: Yet still on some UK phone in radio shows.. (Score:2)
In 50 years? There is NO record of 40C in the uk weather records.
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In 50 years? There is NO record of 40C in the uk weather records.
Until this year, there were no records of it ever being 40C in over 100 years of recorded temperatures.
Here's a list of the hottest temps recorded in the UK, you'll notice all but 1 have occurred since the 1990's and half have occurred in the last 8 years.
40.3 C (104.5 F) 19 July 2022
38.7 C (101.7 F) 25 July 2019
38.5 C (101.3 F) 10 August 2003
38.1 C (100.6 F) 18 July 2022
37.8 C (100.0 F) 31 July 2020
37.1 C (98.8 F) 3 August 1990
36.7 C (98.1 F) 1 July 2015
36.7 C (98.1 F) 9 August 1911
36.6 C (97.9
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So long in fact, that human civilization has never had to endure a change in the global climate cycle.
Until potentially now. (probability stated as very high)
The latest change (Last glacial period) "ended" about 10000 years ago. Coincidentally, that's when civilization/farming starts. That average global temperature change was 5C over 20000 years. Today we're talking 3C over the course of 200 years.
Geologically, that's on the timescale of an asteroid hitting.
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And it's going to get worse too. :(
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"Its summer, it gets hot, stop making a fuss!"
I honestly don't know what it'll take to convince these people there's a problem. If they were young I could understand it because they perhaps wouldn't remember the weather here when summers - with a few exceptions - were temperate and rainy. But its normally 50+ year old talk show hosts who should know better. This weather is NOT normal. One major heatwave is rare , 2 in the same summer with almost zero rain is unheard of.
Perhaps just refusing to believe there's a serious problem is their way of coping.
Nah, it's just the "I need to pretend I'm tough" brigade. The same kind that squeal and shout "someone do something to help me" when Texas "gets a bit cold".
BTW, to our rational Texan friends, I'm saying that not to make light of when Texas drops into the minuses the same way you shouldn't make light of when the UK runs into the 30's (Celsius, I'm not sure what that is in old money) for days on end. It's really _NOT_ what everything in the country is designed for UK houses and buildings are designed to r
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Slashdot? For 20 years this place has been a hotbed of climate change denialism. The comments at least, I don't think the editors have every done it.
My British Solution (Score:2)
My British Solution to this unusually hot and dry summer has been to massively increase my consumption of ice cold cider and beer. And I drink iced tea and coffee instead of hot. I am feeling very relaxed.
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hey but at least you still got (Score:2)
Steam engine (Score:2)
Not only the UK ... (Score:2)
The drought is not in the UK only.
It is in Germany, and France too.
See what the Rhine River [bbc.com] looks like, for example ...
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The Rhine water level is a particularly good example of a clusterfuck in slow motion gaining speed...
Germany developed the Energiewende, building out renewables, but also increasing dependency on Gas.
Gas comes through NordStream, that's from russia.
Russia invades Ukraine. Gas supplies become an economic weapon.
German/European Gas supplies start dwindling.
Germany frantically goes back to coal. (Not only Germany, but for the Rhine story that's all we need now)
Germany transports coal (By the way also imported
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Lie
No new coal foundries. They are using coal in previously gas fed steam generators as a stopgap until they can build enough reliable non fossil capacity
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Germany has been building non fossil capacity for over ten years. It is not reliable. If gas runs out this year, coal is the only other option. A solution is needed now.
"Frantically goes back to coal" -- Reactivated mothballed coal power plants, and started feeding coal into any generator that would accept it. I'd say that's frantic.
New plants couldn't even spring up so quickly, and I agree that to my knowledge no plan to build out more coal plants exists.
It is expected Germany will import 10-20% more coal
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Yes, the Russian market manipulation is causing problems BECAUSE insufficient buildout of solar and wind.
Give it up, fossil fuels are killing the planet, record heatwaves, French nukes shut down for overheated rivers, your Kentucky deplorables either are now, or will soon be, disposable labor on the market.
No rain is good in the UK (Score:2)
Every little rain-shower makes the waste-water companies pump raw shit-water into rivers and lakes and oceans about 400.000 times a year, over 1000 times per day, because neither the Romans nor the Victorian built storm-drains or rain-water-collectors and you can't expect the British taxpayer to pay for those.
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"Perhaps you could be a little more constructive with your comments."
I'm curious. Which behaviour would you like to ban from Slashdot? Humour or sarcasm? Or both?
Humour... well, maybe that'll fly. But sarcasm? Good fucking luck.
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I'm more concerned about the fact that we don't have a government to react to things like this, and both the candidates to take over the next one are useless.
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It wouldn't help if they got their shit together because the Tories are obsessed with privatising profits beyond any logic except pure avarice. Under investment in infrastructure leads to this kind of thing from 4 days ago:
https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
glad we're going to have hosepipe rationing, much better than eating into Thames Water's profits.
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I fear that things will have to get a lot worse, before they start getting better.
Re:Hot? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why do you need "the government" to react to this?
People pay taxes. They should get services in return.
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Why do you need "the government" to react to this?
People pay taxes. They should get services in return.
Exactly, disaster relief and mitigation is exactly what a government should be doing. Governors jetting off to Cancun when the weather gets a little unusual isn't the sign of a capable and responsible government.
Looks at Boris, Liz and Rishi... OK, in theory a government should be capable and responsible.
Government? (Score:1)
What do you think the government could do about this crisis, other than perhaps call for pray and fasting / sacrifices for early rainstorms? OK - so this has great potential; each religion gets a slot and if the drought breaks when they've been doing their stuff, they get the kudos (for the record the 1976 drought broke after Sikh temples in England were praying for rain was shown on the TV news, but certain Christians who didn't get the same publicity assert they had also done something significant about t
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https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/101921/ [songmeanings.com]
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What do you think the government could do about this crisis, other than perhaps call for pray and fasting / sacrifices for early rainstorms?
They can get back into Europe and have some proper European weather.
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But it's worse over there...
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/envi... [lemonde.fr]
True but meaningless (Score:2)
The challenge was what role does the government have in the immediate short term to address this issue. It doesn't need top level action to cause: 'Manage the supply of water so that those who are vulnerable and need it can get it', given that there have been no reported cut offs of water supply through taps anywhere except in ONE village.
Re: True but meaningless (Score:1)
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We have a global climate emergency and people are voting guys like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson to power. The right wing and conservatives in the US are drowning in a mud of disinformation and conspiracy theories, while conservatives in UK are just fucking around at parties and focusing on their clinch to power. I don't know what to say. If humanity is this stupid, probably we don't deserve to survive.
Re: Hot? (Score:2)
Even when we had a government, they did nothing. Weâ(TM)ve known for years that the water companies are losing a quarter of their water through leaks. Neither Labour nor Tory governments have resolved this despite having plenty of time.
Climate vs Weather (Score:5, Informative)
This is nothing to worry about.
Correct, as reported it is nothing to worry about because they are reporting on the weather which always has large fluctuations. What is concerning is the frequency of such weather events, not one event in isolation. It's important to make this distinction because we do not want people to think that climate change has magically gone away if the next several years return to more normal rainfall patterns.
There is something to worry about (Score:5, Insightful)
even if it was a one off. 2 heatwaves so far this summer with record temperatures have left the entire countryside south of the midlands in a serious fire risk with water shortages already in some places and farmers struggling. This is getting serious.
Yes there is, but not the one-off event (Score:2)
even if it was a one off. 2 heatwaves so far this summer with record temperatures have left the entire countryside south of the midlands in a serious fire risk with water shortages...
Worse droughts with longer dry spells have occurred before - 1976 [wikipedia.org] was a prime example and I vaguely remember it as a young kid because the soil dried out so much I lost matchbox cars down some of the larger cracks and my parents bought a large plastic water tank and tried wheeling it around on my brothers go-kart because they were cutting of water to homes and putting standpipes at the ends of streets to force people to use less water.
That was a worse one-off drought event. The problem is that there hav
Re: Yes there is, but not the one-off event (Score:1)
Re: Yes there is, but not the one-off event (Score:2)
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Well I think the idea isn't to pile more shit onto those who come after you. Historically speaking we've tended to make the place slightly better going forward. And by that I don't mean they made the place roses and kittens, but usually farming got easier, education became more available, things became a bit more convenient. But we've been here of late doing a bit of the reserve. Now obviously I don't mean we're just shitting on everything, but farming is getting a bit harder, education has become a bit
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Over populated. No one wants to say it but we are clearly over consuming while not living sustainable lifestyles. There are lots of ways we could design our homes and businesses to be much more energy efficient with passive cooling and heating, as well as water collection and storage.
We seem more driven as a consumption based society that must ever grow and faster rather then a sustainable society that grows slower but still grows.
Now, we have so many people stacked upon each other in huge, unsustainable li
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You kid, but there are a lot of morons that think the Earth can return to a previous state. That if you bury a bunch of trees for a hundred million years that it will turn into coal, and a bunch of bacteria for a billion years it becomes oil. But that's no longer the case, the conditions no longer exist for that to happen. Natural carbon trapping is not going to happen. And future of hot steamy jungles are less likely than a runaway Venus.
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Actually, it's the *lack* of bacteria and fungi that could eat the tree / plant debris that made the coal. Those ideal conditions lasted about 70 million years. Today's bacteria and fungi are constantly trying to break plants down (even while still alive).
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Dear Well-ackshually,
There were bacteria and fungi back then. Lots and lots of it, rather than a lack of it. Oil fields are left over layers of single celled microorganisms. Which is why I mentioned bacteria and oil specifically.
I assumed everyone saw the same episode of Cosmos where it showed that cell walls could not be broken down by earlier microorganisms, leaving huge piles of plant material to build up and turn into coal.
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Yea, that's what I was trying to say. I was not clear about that.
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Yeah, it's really amusing listening to people not use to hot weather lose it. Living in San Diego, it's always warm and sometimes hot. If it snowed here in the city and stuck around for a few days, I'd lose my shit, absolutely. So I'm sorry it's so hot and you have no AC. I've lived in really shitty apartments that had no AC and it was hell when it was in the 90F-100F+ range.
I say go buy a portable AC from Target or whatever y'all have over there. It's worth every Pound it will cost ya.