Drought Threat Intensifies Across Western, Southern Europe - LA Times

[hatrack]

EDIT

Winter rainfall has been disappointing across much of the continent. With some countries still recovering from the effects of a relatively dry winter last year and the heat wave of 2003, sustained heavy rain over the next two months would be needed to avoid the risk of drought this summer. The electricity sector and energy-intensive industries could be among those hardest hit because of the lack of hydroelectricity and consequent higher prices for energy and for carbon emission allowances under the European Union's greenhouse gas trading scheme.

Met Office, the British meteorological service, said: "The dice is loaded toward a dry theme continuing across Europe. That is the balance of probabilities."

Scandinavia is likely to be particularly dry, but the mid- and eastern Mediterranean regions are likely to be slightly wetter than normal. However, the British weather office warned that predictions of precipitation were sometimes unreliable. Fearful of another summer like 2003, when dry weather fueled forest fires and emptied reservoirs, governments have begun to take action. In Britain, the government warned of lawn watering bans in the southern counties.

The French government has launched a campaign to urge farmers and the public to use water sparingly as the country endures its third consecutive year of drought. Corn growers are being asked to consider the viability of their particularly thirsty crop. The water level is 20% to 70% below seasonal norms across a large part of the country, according to the government, after low rainfall during last autumn and this winter. Parts of the Rhine River are so low that they are impassable to some ships.

EDIT

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-ft-drought13mar13,1,4101205.story?coll=la-headlines-business

[cliss]

1. Last summer, there were fires burning

in southern France. The fires kept smoldering for about 1 week. It actually caused some panic down there; the Riviera was hurt financially.

They say that southern France, parts of Italy and even Monaco will become desert. I've read that large parts of Spain have already become desert. Portugal may lose its cork trees which supply the world's supply of cork for wine bottles.

It's amazing how much punishment people are willing to take before they take action.

[hatrack]

2. "There may be no moment of clarity, only new kinds of delusion & disorder.

We'll keep behaving the way we do until we can't, and then we won't." - James Howard Kunstler