Weeping Stones & Summers to Come
Last month was the hottest July ever in the U.S. in the 132 years since official records have been kept. The average temperature was 76.89 degrees Fahrenheit in the lower forty-eight states, making it a fraction of a degree hotter than the scorching days of the Dust Bowl. Wildfires and drought defined much of the Western U.S. as Easterners struggled with the sheer heat and smoke from Canada, which was also burning. The real story, however, was not in the U.S., but across the ocean in Europe. At the moment (August 10th), Europe is about to fall prey to the fifth heatwave of the season, driving the mercury in France to 40 degrees Centigrade (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
The heat is causing problems with the infrastructure of society. Highways in Germany are buckling in some places as the asphalt is stressed, and train tracks are being deformed by the heat. Early last week a train in England derailed, and the very next day a second train came off the tracks. Then there was the one in Sweden in late June 25–26, where a 600-meter freight train with about ten derailed carriages came off the tracks in Bollebygd, in the Gothenburg–Borås corridor. Also caused by track morphing due to heat. These wrecks and the need for increased vigilance have caused problems for people who depend on rail for their commutes. Also, in England there have been widespread outages of refrigerators in supermarkets because of the ambient heat. Bristol-based refrigeration expert Dr. Alan Foster said the appliances were “designed decades ago in a much cooler world.” And the demand for air conditioning in those European homes that have it is creating the potential for brownouts and blackouts at precisely the worst time, as conventional power plants are overwhelmed and nuclear power plants are scaling back because there is not enough river water to cool their reactors.
Unlike the U.S., this summer is not the hottest on record for Europe. That record was set in 2024, surpassing a previous record set in 2022. Yet this summer is hardly over, so who knows what is still possible?
While everyone in heat-stricken Europe has been inconvenienced or distressed this summer, some Europeans will never see another summer. For example, just in the week of June 22–28, there were approximately 2,025 deaths in France beyond the norm for the same period historically. The Netherlands sustained 577 such deaths, and Germany 5,753, for that same week. Belgium reported 1,747 excess deaths for its June 18–July 1 heatwave period — the deadliest heatwave on record there since such tracking began.
Because heat is not recorded uniformly as a contributing factor on death certificates across the continent, researchers had to develop a special statistical approach to estimate the true toll. Absent that, the number of deaths due to heatstroke, dehydration, and related causes would have been woefully under reported.
Who still believe climate change is a hoax?
It’s unfortunate that science is often disregarded when the facts amount to what former Vice President Al Gore called “an inconvenient truth.” It may be that several mountain peaks of the Sierras got a brief dusting of snow last week even as other parts of the U.S. baked, but the evidence in support of climate change seems clear enough to most people except for conspiracy theorists and their enablers. Even confirmed capitalists are speculating on where in northern Canada the fabled “Northwest Passage” will open and how much money they could make if they buy in early.
Part of the problem deniers have is that they confuse weather with climate. When I was in Thule, Greenland, in September 1969, I did not need a parka. The temperature was entirely tolerable and well above freezing. The famed Arctic explorer Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) would have been underwhelmed. That was a weather pattern at the time. As I write this, it is 53 degrees Fahrenheit in Qaanaaq as Thule is presently called. And last night the temperature plunged to 45 degrees, F. Brrrr.
The primary difference between climate change and weather is time. Weather varies day to day and season to season, but climate change eventually wins out because it develops and is sustained over centuries, which is what ultimately dictates migratory or habitat changes in animals, the amount of land available to cultivate, the borders of deserts, and so on. Over the last century, the average annual temperature of the United Kingdom has risen from 49.1°F to 50.5°F. Stretch that same rate out over a millennium and you’d find an increase of roughly fourteen degrees. What if this were Qaanaaq? At some point the ice cap would start to recede and thin out, as it is currently doing. The other thing is, to say there’s been a rise of a degree or more in the UK over the past century does not imply that the rise is uniform. Some places in the UK may see a three-degree increase over the century while other places might record a fall by a degree or two.
This sounds a bit like early James Lovelock (1919–2022), the British author and scientist who consulted for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is best known for his research on Gaia (i.e., Earth), in which he postulated that the planet strives to maintain a kind of “homeostasis” by cooling some areas to offset temperature rises elsewhere.
Still, why should we care if we won’t be around to see it? There are actually all sorts of reasons, from the stewardship charge humanity has held since the very beginning of life on our planet (Genesis 2:15), to the desire to avoid the extinction of some species and the perpetual misery of others (including Homo sapiens).
Longyearbyen, located in the island chain of Svalbard in Norway, has a population of roughly 2,556 and holds the dubious honor of warming faster than any other town or city in the world. In fact, since 1971, temperatures on Svalbard have risen five times more rapidly than the global average. Temperatures there are projected to keep climbing through 2050.
This is true for other cities in Europe as well, but not quite as rapidly. Still, the change in climate over the next twenty-four years will be inescapable. Madrid, Spain will have the climate of present-day Marrakech, Morocco. London will feel more like Barcelona, and Stockholm, by the mid-century point, will have a climate more like Budapest’s.
A dying Danube
Tethys bare to Ocean eddying rivers, Nilus, and Alpheus, and deep-swirling Eridanus, Strymon, and Meander, and the fair stream of Ister…
“Ister,” or iστρος (Istros) in Greek, was the Greek name for the Danube. Altogether, Tethys and Oceanus were said to have borne three thousand or more children including the Oceanids, and three thousand river-god sons, the Potamoi. Some were known for their beauty, others for their prowess — Scamander, for instance, fought against the great Achilles — but Ister, by contrast, never earned a story of his own.
Yet the Danube is the only river in the world that flows past the capital cities of four different countries: Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and Belgrade. In the process, it winds its way through or past ten different countries. Altogether, the Danube is approximately 1,770 miles, starting at the Black Forest of Germany and meandering to the Romanian coast of the Black Sea. Songs have been written in love of and in honor of the Danube, just as they were in the New World for the Shenandoah.
The Greeks saw rivers as living gods, and mortals were generally respectful toward them when they needed to ford a river or wanted an abundant source of fresh water. The Danube is now suffering under drought: his normal depth approaching Budapest is six to twenty feet, but as of early August 2026 it has fallen to a new record low — in places only a few inches deep.
The Danube River is home to many sights. Barges are everywhere. But for a careful observer, one moment the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre from the era of Emperor Trajan (53 A.D.–117 A.D.) emerge from the morning mist, while other times one might encounter a Nixe or two — literally water sprites — as the tragic figure Hagen did, as described in Âventiure 25 of Das Nibelungenlied.
At this moment, with record-low water levels, the wrecks of dozens of German World War II warships are emerging, further complicating commerce and tourism. After the warships the the river exposed tanks, then motorcycles, and in the past few days the bodies of Wehrmacht soldiers who rode the motocycles to their death. People in Romania and Hungary, meanwhile, are at risk of blackouts because the low river level cannot adequately cool its nuclear reactors at the Paks plant. Drought causes a myriad of cascading inconveniences and failures.
European forecast for the last two weeks of August
According to the European Commission Joint Research Centre
Seasonal forecasts point to continued pressure in the months ahead. An ensemble of eight forecasting systems contributing to the Copernicus Climate Change Service indicates much drier-than-average conditions across large parts of Europe from July to September, especially in central-western Europe and southern Scandinavia. Wetter-than-usual conditions are, however, expected in the Mediterranean areas. For August, the outlook points to a continued risk of heatwaves affecting much of Europe. River-flow forecasts from the Copernicus European Flood Awareness System (EFAS), implemented by the JRC, indicate low to extremely low discharges levels in August across many catchments in France, the Alpine region and eastern Europe.
There is still time to act, but only barely so and the window is closing fast. China and the U.S. in particular need to make drastic forward-thinking changes while there is still time.
