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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...

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.

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

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.

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".

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

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

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

I'd describe it a little differently myself.

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.

> 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...

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.

Somewhat similar to 1992, which had a very hot August and 2nd half of July.

Either you are a super human walking in water bowling water.

Or some US america who does not get fact that this context is talking about German Energy and the European heat wave and Fahrenheit is not used any metric in this part of the world. I considered especially rude that you assume the reader should convert the value though Fahrenheit is mostly used in USA.

> Yeah I was in Europe for a month last month and this summer was the best ever.

I imagine you don't intend it like that, but last month killed an extra five thousand people in Germany alone [1], more than one thousand of them in a single day [2].

"People may have died and the economy may be in trouble but my summer was amazing" is not the best take.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-june-heat-wave-linked-to-5000-...

[2] https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/gvL9c/4/

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

People are literally dying due to the heat.

In 2026 it should be criminal to have such stupid opinions about climate change, the only valid reason to have such takes is if you're a boomer about to kick the bucket.

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

No they aren't, it looks like the prices doubled and the government significantly cut taxes to hide the increase. That's not to mention the 3 year price spike during 2021-2023. Who's paying for the lost revenue from the tax cuts?

It’s not possible to truly estimate what our military costs would be without those conflicts, but I would be interested in our energy costs if you incorporated the military costs into that. I’m willing to bet we pay more than nearly anyone else if you lump it in relatively fairly.

We've gotten pretty good at digging holes in the ground and there's a lot of existing energy down there under our land (and near-by water). So yes, we've certainly had misadventures in the middle east, but we've also embraced the "drill baby drill" mantra of late.

Texas is probably our national leader in terms of deploying solar and wind power, which feels ironic but is totally rational and logical.

Who is making all those solar cells and batteries? I'll give you a hint, it's not a European country.

> The further we go down the renewables route the less we depend on despotic states for our energy.

80% of solar panels/batteries/windmills are made in China. We wouldn't even be able to make them without fossil fuels in the first place. Not even talking about the electronics that is needed

Even if prices were in line with Germanys neighbors, that does not mean a lot. Germanys industry is notoriously energy hungry. Germany is home of the biggest chemical companies in the world and they need easy access to gas, oil, electricity etc. Also the car industry is obviously still big. And so on. Most countries in the world lost their industrial base during the last 20-40 years but Germany kept it for the most part because of several factors. But this means that the average company in Germany needs easier and cheaper access to energy and raw materials than other average companies in other countries

-- If a company makes good usage of batteries, they could actually have quite low prices since the electrical price undergoes huge swings throughout the day --

Either, you are not from Germany or your example is a clear MBA-101-Bobo-Textbook example :-D

> Germany's electrical prices are mostly in line with it's neighbours

PL: ~21ct/kWh

LX: ~20ct/kWh

AT: ~19ct/kWh

NL: ~19ct/kWh

BE: ~17ct/kWh

FR: ~16ct/kWh

DK: ~9ct/kWh

Germany: 23ct/kWh (or: about 25% higher than the EU average)[0]

Of course Germany "is mostly in line" if your ideology depends on it.

[0] https://cubeconcepts.de/en/europes-industrial-electricity-pr...

Hungary just instituted quite extreme power savings policies (including stopping all industrial train traffic during the day), because it can't cool its nuclear power plant due to a lack of water in the Danube and 40% of its electricity production went bye bye. Same situation in Romania and France had similar problems a few years ago and will likely have them again this year.

"Green" supporters prefer renewable energy, because it allows you to build a resilient and distributed network of production, distribution and storage that can't be easily disrupted by any one shock event at the fraction of the cost of nuclear (if you count subsidies and government financed research, not even considering the socialization of insurance against accidents).

anxious whistling

Athens can’t build flat, stable, standardised side walks. The Italians own and operate their trains and when 50 students died in a very preventable head on collision no one has been held accountable in any real fashion.

Solar panels? They gotta fix the brain drain first. Anyone with the capability to bounce understandably does.

The only people with money are Israeli and Qatari real estate investors.

GDP per capita in Greece is €29,696, in Germany it is €65,303. Rich countries can afford to decarbonise more quickly.

> Maybe the effect is that solar panels lose efficiency when too hot

They do. One of the odd fringe benefits of agrovoltaics is that the plants beneath the panel slightly lower the panel temperatures through transpiration.

About 8 trillion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_battery

Standard NiMH AAA battery is ~1Wh so 12 Trillion (12,000,000,000,000)

You skipped GWh.

12B kWh = 12M MWh = 12k GWh = 12 TWh.

European utilities also bill by the kWh, the markets bill by the MW or MWh (depending on the market product), yet we’d still use TWh to write this number.

The American way of handling units is always surprising.

>And as a sidenote, why do people downvote a question rather than answer it? Some of us like answering questions and deadening a question removes that ability.

if its just [dead] (no [flagged]), as the case with tyromaniac, that's automated by the site (suspected spam/ai/bot/etc.).

the comment can be vouched for to lose the [dead] status by users with 500+ karma (i think? maybe 1000)

comments don't gain [dead] due to downvoting.

I'd like a nuclear power plant with a capacity of 1 Wh to play with.

Turns out the glass was half-empty and half-empty then

That reminds me of my friend who wants to fly around the world to see the Great Barrier Reef before it's gone.

Thats around 20 EUR per month - please tell us the provider! :-))

This. Plus the fact that it would have been politically absolutely infeasible to get anyone except the Greens to agree on a coal before nuclear phase out at any point until at least 2018. SPD, CDU especially were and are very close to to the coal industry (voters, company boards, etc.).

In addition, without the Greens-pushed and initiated renewables subsidies, there would have been basically no big market worldwide for solar manufacturing to even be built out the way it was and all solar tech and industrialization would likely not be as good as it is now.

> ... don't make up shit and say that they made up for the nuclear exit by burning more coal, that is untrue.

It's true, though. Emotions seem to be clouding your judgment. Renewables could've been replacing coal. Instead, they're making up for the lost nuclear capacity.