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Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

Glass half full, I suppose. Germany is in the grip of an unusual and prolonged drought -- clear skies, intense daytime heat, no rain.

> https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78gn8zvrx4o

I'm near Graz, in Austria, where we're also in the middle of a drought and in truth I can't remember a summer as hot as this one...

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I think the biggest impact for Germany is gonna be economical from shipping. Much of Germany's industry is along the Rhine and they get their raw materials via barge on the Rhine. The Rhine is already close to all time low which reduces capacity and increases cost. Usually low water happens between August and November. It was already close to record low in July! I wouldn't be surprised if shipping will have to stop entirely some time this year.

I watched a report that has an interview with the CEO of a cereal factory. They get all their wheat via barges. He said they already paid €100k extra this year for low-water surcharges for shipping and that they'd need 6,500 trucks annually if they'd replace the barges with trucks.

Yeah. Bad timing that this also coincides with a period where the rail system is in chaos, and running beyond capacity due to overdue upgrades.

I think you can select any day, week, or month and the rail system in Germany will always be in chaos.

That was not generally true before the system upgrades started. It's been true for a while though.

I didn't mean short-term bad timing, I mean it's bad that we're getting hit by increasing droughts in the same decade the train system hit its breaking point and needed fixing.

It's been true for at least 16 years though, admittedly - it's gotten even worse since Corona

Neglect of the rail systems has been true for over 16 years, but there was distinctly less chaos before 2020, because the systems were just left in operation as they rotted.

Post pandemic, it was decided that they had to fix it, at the same time that there's been a sustained surge in ridership. The operations to fix the rail network combined with decay, combined with higher ridership than ever before is what causes the chaos.

Yes, although it's nowhere near as bad as the Danube, whose level sits at currently -93cm [0] - a record low which meant the nation's nuclear reactors had to be scaled back to just a single turbine and was only a few centimeters away from having to completely shut down as the intakes for the cooling pump sit at a certain level - this water level was apparently mentioned as a 1 per 100.000 year event in the risk management.

[0]: https://www.vizugy.hu/?mapModule=OpGrafikon&AllomasVOA=16496...

Note that even before it's been running at down to 10% of capacity due to the draught.

On news there was a message from Siemens about 500 t turbines, which can be transported best only by Rhine.

Europe is only going to get hotter and more dry for the foreseeable future.

Extreme Heat Has Transformed What Summer Means Across Generations in Europe - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/world/europe/europe-summe... | https://archive.today/XsX2m - August 1st, 2026

Europe’s Heatwaves Are a Taste of the Climate Costs Yet to Come - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-07-27/europe... | https://archive.today/AqWba - July 27th, 2026

Why Is Europe Warming Twice as Fast as the World Average? - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-26/europe-he... | https://archive.today/o68OH - June 26th, 2026

TLDR: 3 reasons. First the quickest warming is actually the poles (technically the south pole) which means the North pole cools Europe less. Europe's reduction in CO2 and other pollutants output, cause both more sunlight to hit the ground in Europe and make the likelihood of big airflows coming from the South (ie. Sahara) larger.

And yeah, my read is that this is more arguments in favor of: it doesn't matter which way CO2 evolves, we'll need to take control over the climate if we want cities to remain where they are.

We could start by running container ships on High Sulphur Fuel Oil. Same CO2, more cushion against Sun Rays.

I would a well. Unfortunately, it seems that deliberate geoengineering always brings up concerns from people who think it's more ethical to just state at the lever as the trolly goes by. I partially blame the legal system. There won't be a lawsuit about not having deliberately spread more sulfur oxide.

If you want to do the sulfur oxide thing then just do it. No one is stopping you.

We stopped high sulfur when we realized it was causing acid rain. CO2 is also acidifying the oceans, so there aren't a lot of things we can pump into the atmosphere without consequence. Best to avoid doing that altogether.

We won't stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere (Germany, India and China actually increased coal burning in 2026, in all 3 cases despite all the good news about solar installations). Also we can't prevent fossil fuel producers from digging up fossil fuels.

And, because of entropy, reducing CO2 already in the atmosphere is a non-starter. For one thing, one can reasonably assume that would at minimum require doubling human energy output (because unmixing costs a lot more energy than mixing)

I mean if you put the belief behind the whole CO2 reduction in words, it's like this: if we slightly reduce CO2 output (not stop, reduce by single digit percent), we won't have to adapt. And if you put it like that it becomes easy to see: "no way in hell that's going to be true".

So there's not much of a choice: geoengineering it is. Next question: which method?

Well... the holy grail is something that traps CO2, slows down hurricanes-typhoons, slows down desertification, makes urban heat sinks more bearable. What that could be, I have no idea.

You are obviously referring to trees. So assuming that's what you mean: that won't work.

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/why-dont-we-just-plant-lot-t...

Trees quickly reach equilibrium at which point CO2 out equals CO2 in. While they can sequester some CO2 while growing, they also generally cause an albedo increase (forests trap heat). So, for arguments sake, the opposite would actually help more: destroying forests reduces albedo reducing the planet's heat uptake, while not releasing most of the CO2 in the atmosphere, in fact, that causes it to get flushed into the ocean and it won't come back for millenia at least. Despite appearances, forest fires actually help against global warming. But not much.

In other words: right now to merely pause global warming we'd have to stop 99.7% of CO2 usage. If every square meter of the planet was covered in forests, merely to stop global warming from getting worse every year we'd have to stop ... 99.7% of CO2 usage (maybe 98% would do for 2-3 years while the trees are growing). And that's disregarding the massive albedo increase.

Also, global warming is causing massive forest expansion worldwide ... and that's making global warming worse, not better. If countries started destroying the many forests that have grown since 1900, that would help.

You want a suggestion that would actually do something? Seeding the oceans would help. It would mean global warming can be paused by a mere drop of 92% of fossil fuel usage, a big increase, at the cost of a HUGE loss of oceanic biodiversity. So I hope it's clear that while that is a far better suggestion, it is very far from a solution, and doesn't come without costs. Besides, if the climate warms further, my bet is that the oceans will "seed themselves" more and more.

I'm sorry to repeat, but no: the planet will not help us and stay static and stop warming (or even go back to normal warming) if we just "stop destroying nature". And building a few parks in cities, like it seems your real suggestion is, will do nothing at all.

> the oceans will "seed themselves"

Yes they already do, as evidenced by the sargassum that wrecked this season for Florida and Mexico.

I don't think it's as dire as you're supposing. I hadn't expected the rollout of renewables and the growth of EVs to be as swift as we've seen.

If we can cut emissions entirely then that's the first step. Next devote 5% of energy generation to CO2 removal and we'll take out a year of 100% emissions in less than 20 years. We don't need to go back down to 280 ppm, something like 320 would be fine. It's a long term project but it can work.

Need step one first though.

Germany's output is almost irrelevant in this context: it amounts to a mere 1.4% of the global output.

To add to that: there are no good alternatives to coal as the stabilizer in a renewables-fed grid, for Germany. They don't have hydro and don't have nuclear. Even Spain now runs some coal despite having near-100% renewable grid for a year. That big blackout was a big lesson for all grid operators. Please don't shame countries for running a small percentage of their grids on coal.

    > there are no good alternatives to coal as the stabilizer in a renewables-fed grid, for Germany.

Why not natural gas?

From different perspectives:

1) political: the only economical natural gas comes from Russia, which means it's a betrayal of Ukraine (especially after the many German, and worldwide promises not to do so)

Obviously that hasn't stopped Germany. Neither the promises nor the betrayal aspect. Hasn't stopped Spain either.

2) physical: the lines got bombarded, so Germany does not have physical access to Russian gas ("kinetic sanctions"), at any price (oh and, not that it actually matters, but Germany is not willing to invest in rebuilding the lines, and before you say it can't be done, Ukraine is rebuilding Russian oil lines that Russia bombed on Ukrainian soil. Germany can rebuild, for example, Nord Stream, they just don't)

3) second political reason: only LNG is doable. There is Qatarese gas, except not right now due to Iran war, and US gas, which Germany doesn't want (it's a little more expensive). So it's buying US LNG for at least the next decade (they had to sign long term contracts to get it at all).

4) ecological. Coal is 750g-1000g CO2 per kWh, but less than half that (ie. 300g per kWh with carbon capture, which is widespread in Germany). LNG, due to the many inefficient processing steps is 350g-750g CO2 per kWh. Qatar hides their numbers, but US LNG is certainly 650g per kWh. Canadese LNG is actually worse.

So LNG natural gas is not better than coal (anymore) and it's the only kind accessible to Germany (same goes for Spain and EU)

But let's not pretend Germany cares in the slightest, after all the German Green party supported switching to coal in 2023 and again in 2026 rather than switching back to nuclear. This is not the only choice Germany has, it is the one they decided on.

Btw: in order for CO2 to reduce, fossil fuel producers (ie. Russia and Saudi Arabia mostly) need to stop digging up oil. Other posts correctly point out that if Germany just stopped, or even absorbed the amount of CO2 it currently produces, that would be a rounding error.

Or we could spread aerosols in the atmosphere (because oil will run out, which means atmospheric CO2 will start reducing by itself, according to IEA predictions, around 2050)

Ok, overall, this is a pretty good reply. My only issue is this part:

    > Coal is 750g-1000g CO2 per kWh, but less than half that (ie. 300g per kWh with carbon capture, which is widespread in Germany).

The last part is definitely not true. I did some research. Germany has no commercial coal-fired power plants operating with carbon capture and storage (CCS), and CCS is not widespread in the German power sector.

Imagined numbers are crucial to the increasingly unhinged fossil fuel lobby. They need you to stop believing facts and listen to them explain how up is down and actually there's not a problem or if there was it's not their fault and actually they're the solution.

Ahhh, right. I get it. You are now "part of the unhinged fossil fuel lobby", because the Green party in Germany and it's adherents:

1) have a 20 year history of increasing fossil fuel use, and on a dozen occasions, when choosing between a nuclear compromise and more CO2, systematically choose "no compromise!"

2) technically part of 1, but so serious it deserves it's own point, when this decision turned out in 2014 to be far more disastrous than initially expected, the Greens doubled down choosing to warm the climate further

3) Again, technically part of ... but after 2023 and the "kinetic sanctions" in 2024, progressively worsening with now also the Iran war making it worse, the Green's decision is responsible for not just massively worsening Germany's CO2 output but doing so WHILE causing a doubling of energy prices.

4) this total lack of willingness to compromise guarantees yet another fight over global warming in parliament. The Green's party actual politics are: grandstanding and demanding HUGE compromises "in the name of global warming". In reality the tactic is different: they cause big problems, everywhere (nothing on the scale of the nuclear closure, but you'd think they would compromise to ease the effect of the factory closures. The opposite is true). They do this so there's fights, and they appear to be "fighting for global warming". The opposite is closer to the truth.

5) this then caused emergency reactivation of coal power plants ... no objection of the Greens and even a further statement that they WILL NOT COMPROMISE ... okay.

And there's "a lobby" because everyone else points out ... but Green policy, and their total lack of willingness to compromise is responsible for half of Germany's CO2 output, and now $other_party has to compromise to fix that? WTF? Of course the answer? "The lobby is unhinged". Because we all know further Green party policy will only lead to further disaster (for example further destroying the auto industry [1]).

The only thing the Green party sees is a chance for more votes. You will not catch them doing any sort of discussion about policy, or the policy's effects. Just shouting about how necessary it is, fight, distract, obstruct, sabotage. Shout, shout, shout. And every adult in the room realizes what the situation is, but adults don't vote Green in the first place, work in factories, and will soon be fired and unemployed anyway.

I just don't understand how you a political party can be that deeply evil, playing on pure identity politics, willing to damage everything, the climate, the environment, society and politics JUST to get votes and power.

[1] https://www.gruene.de/artikel/merz-draengt-eu-kommission-und...

Very amusing that you don't even snip the "Chat GPT" attribution off that link.

Yes, the LLM can invent elaborate fantasies for anybody who will listen to it, but everybody actually lives in the real world. In the real world Germany decreased fossil fuel use in its production of electricity both proportionally and in total as you can see in the data.

None of what you wrote addresses the very obviously bogus original claim, probably because to do that you'd have to understand that facts are true which is confusing if you're just generating plausible nonsense.

> Germany's output is almost irrelevant in this context: it amounts to a mere 1.4% of the global output.

Conveniently Germany is about 1% of the world population. You realize that if most countries use the same argument nothing ever change? (It's only 1% how can it make a difference)

> Even Spain now runs some coal despite having near-100% renewable grid for a year.

In fact Spain has less coal now than it did in 2025, or 2024, or 2023 and so on.

And no their grid isn't "near 100% renewable", they do have a lot more than most European countries but they have large gas imports too to run some of their conventional thermal power plants - what they're getting rid of, sensibly, is coal.

There's a 4x seasonal swing between summer and winter for Spain's solar power, and obviously the maximal swing (clear summer's day versus overcast mid-winter) is much larger, but they're nowhere close to being rid of fossil fuels even in July, much less January.

This whole "blackout was caused by renewables" stuff was crap when it was first spouted and didn't get any more plausible once we had more information.

No, I agree renewables didn't cause the blackout themselves. Spain due to not having hydro power had to use renewables that were inverter-based and didn't have rotating mass to dampen any oscillations. The Entso-E report said there was a direct consequence between not having this inertia and the resulting blackout. There is absolutely nothing wrong with renewables themselves, although it also has to be said if they never used renewables or not to this extent, this event simply wouldn't have occurred.

> The Entso-E report said there was a direct consequence between not having this inertia and the resulting blackout

That isn't what it said

> if they never used renewables or not to this extent, this event simply wouldn't have occurred

This is an entirely speculative counter-factual and so is even more useless than it appears.

Yes, I see that now. That excerpt I took paraphrasing a google summary which apparently used a youtube video as its source. But I see it now it's not true, thanks. However I do stand by the part where I said if renewables were never used this likely wouldn't have happened - even though, as you say, it is a useless argument.

I think we should pump so much sulfur into the upper atmosphere it reduces the average temperature to -20 degrees. And when countries tell us to stop, we offer to stop if they stop emitting CO2.

> We stopped high sulfur when we realized it was causing acid rain

Coal AFAIK a bigger source of acid rains and world has not stopped using coal.

> Why Is Europe Warming Twice as Fast as the World Average?

You'll find articles about every single land mass "warming up faster than average"... that's because the average include the 70% of the planet that is covered by oceans, these don't warm up nearly as fast as landmasses. We're all pretending we'll manage +1.5c or +2c by 2050, and in the average Joe's head that not much, in reality we're already fucked, July was +4c above normals in France, and we're in 2026 not 2025.

Australia is Warming Faster than Global Average: https://www.statista.com/chart/20404/mean-annual-temperature...

China warming faster than global average: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202607/02/WS6a462fd5a310986e...

Europe’s warming accelerates beyond global trend: https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/europes-warming-...

Warming in Brazil is already higher than the global average: https://www.wwf.org.br/en/?90683/Climate-Warming-in-Brazil-i...

Africa is warming more rapidly than the global average: https://www.cseindia.org/africa-is-warming-more-rapidly-than...

Sabine explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9cDpdTlQrc

Without watching that video yet (so it could be good) I must warn that Sabine is a known grifter when speaking outside her field of particle physics.

I was going to write that too, same thing in France: warmest month ever recorded since 1900, 35% sunnier than usual, large fires in places which rarely had small ones in the past, 4 consecutive heat waves in a bit more than a month... nothing to be happy about

It's truly unbelievable hot right now, this "good news" of solar production is pretty sad actually

Hot does not necessarily mean good solar production. Solar production in winter can be equally good (although days are shorter).

Also the efficiency of panels decreases with higher temperatures.

Efficiency loss from solar panels heating up in sunlight is more than compensated by the sunlight.

The comparison with France right is interesting. They are shutting down nuclear reactors because the drought means they don't have enough water to cool the reactors.

Base load, eh?

I'm in Zurich and twice now the weather apps radars said it was raining heavily right where I am but no rain was making it to the ground. Instead it was unbelievably humid. I think the rain was falling but evaporating before it could reach the ground.

A few weeks ago we had 30 degC indoors at 70% humidity after a brief thunderstorm. That felt... stressful - at a wet bulb temperatures of only 25 degC, see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Diagramm.... Apparently dangerous/lethal wet bulb temperatures begin at 30/31 degC and now I can see why.

Also what you describe is called "Virga".

Southern Germany to be more precise. Northern Germany is slightly affected, but nothing unusual.

https://www.hitzewarnungen.de/index.jsp

https://weatherkit.apple.com/alertDetails/index.html?ids=081...

I'd describe it a little differently myself.

The OP talked about drought, not current heat.

Dro(a)ught monitor: https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937

Drought, not draught. A bit of draught would be kind of nice about now.

Thanks. Yeah! :-D

The Deutsche Wetter dienst is just as 50/50 as any meteorological service. May/June were atypically warm, but rainfall sufficient in the north east. July has been mixed extremes from Saxony to the Baltic with sufficient rain that we have not had to water the Garden. 320km north, Grandmother territory, same. The droughts of previous years were much more destructive. We'll see when the crops come in.

Yeah? I live in Northern Germany for more than a decade now and in the past months I have witnessed multiple of the hottest days during these ten years, including one where my thermometer measured a whopping 37°C at midnight.

You are the second one who isn't referring to the OP. It is about drought, not heat!

Vienna, Austria, checking in .. I'm Australian, been here for decades, this is definitely the warmest I've experienced it. I love it though, feels like home. ;)

Warmest anybody in Vienna has experienced, haha.

Today the all-time record in Austria was broken with 40.8°C (105.4°F) in Vienna.

> https://www.krone.at/4242196

Thank the wisdom of the forefathers for getting the Donau under control and giving us Wieners a great place to sit out the heat.

I can't find it just now but I'm sure I read that record was broken later today with 41.3C.

I'm in Germany right now and it rained today

To be frank the best summer I’ve ever had in Berlin. Everyday warm and sunny and love it.

[flagged]

I don't think any opinions should be criminal, but some deserve downvotes.

Are people that bitter? like someone enjoying the summer weather deserves a downvote?

In Germany there are criminal opinions, mostly about Jews and Nazis.

True, but get off free if you’re supporting a genocide, but can go to jail for telling a politician is dumb

As long as you support the correct genocide.

There is no such thing as correct genocide

There is in Germany.

> What's next? "BaCk iN mY DaYs SumMeRs WeRe HoT ToO" ?

Please don't sneer like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

People are literally dying due to the heat.

So what? People die everyday due to many reasons. Should I not supposed to enjoy life because people are dying?

I was there last week. It was 37 degrees one day. Not most peoples' idea of a good time.

There was just one day with 37 degrees and it was a wonderful day spent by the a lake for me. If you live in Berlin you'd actually start to appreciate those days because if we're lucky we'd get like max. two weeks of sunny warm days and rest is rainy, cold, gray depressing weather

You get completely drenched in sweat if you take the metro or S-bahn even at 30 degrees. There's no AC there. It's just miserable to commute. Also, most buildings don't have shutters and are not designed even for high 20s.

Berlin is an absolutely miserable place in this weather if you commute or just trying to sleep at night. Like, you can't efficiently cool the apartment down if it's 20 degrees at night and there's no wind.

I agree, that's a total failure of the Berlin government, they even ordered new U-bahn without A/C. As for S-bahn, most are air conditioned. I take the ring bahn to work and it's ACed.

There was one day it didn't cooled down at nice for this year (when day temperature went close to 40 degrees). Other than that, for I sleep with all windows open and I create an airflow with two fans. The apartment gets cooled during night and during the day I just keep the curtains closed. It hasn't gone above 25 degrees inside the apartment during the day time.

> they even ordered new U-bahn without A/C

AC is fairly problematic for narrow underground tunnels. This is one upside of the massive 9m diameter tunnels being used for a lot of new underground lines; way easier to ventilate. But, ah, not something you can really retrofit.

It could be worse, however: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling

That’s kinda incompetent excuse in my opinion. There are many other ways they can cool down the underground stations and trains. Would be expensive, but doable. However, given the track record of constructions in Berlin it would take like 100 years to do it for all Ubhan lines.

    > Like, you can't efficiently cool the apartment down if it's 20 degrees at night and there's no wind.

I don't get it. 20 degrees at night sounds lovely. Get a window fan and you will be golden.

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