v létě je horko, v zimě zima

Germany, Czechia, Poland and Hungary swelter through hottest days on record | Extreme heat | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/28/temperature-records-tumble-across-europe-as-heatwave-moves-east

Nez se svrhnou vlady, muzou se aspon plnit instagramy a datacentra novymi zazitky

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I have truly witnessed an unbelievable thunderstorm outbreak in Amsterdam tonight. We’re going on 4 hours straight of constant lightning and downpours.

At peak ~30,000 strikes were detected in 30 min across Netherlands and northern Germany, ~17 lightning strikes a second.

Colin McCarthy on X: "I have truly witnessed an unbelievable thunderstorm outbreak in Amsterdam tonight. We’re going on 4 hours straight of constant lightning and downpours. At peak ~30,000 strikes ...
https://x.com/i/status/2071030194077335952

Europeans should learn to love the air-conditioner
https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/06/18/europeans-should-learn-to-love-the-air-conditioner

❝ Americans and Europeans differ loudly on many issues, from health-care policy to gun-carrying etiquette. But a quieter division appears every summer when they visit each other’s continents. Europeans touring America complain that shops and restaurants are so frigidly air-conditioned as to require a jacket; step outside again and your glasses fog over. Yanks holidaying in Europe expect cool comfort, and grow surly on finding that many old-world buildings require them to sweat and bear it.

The divide is rooted in both climate and culture. Long before General Electric began cooling using circulating chemicals, southern Europe was built to handle heat. In traditional houses, white paint and shaded courtyards keep things cool. Windows are thrown open and rooms aired in the mornings. Shutters keep out the midday sun, and siestas allow one to skip the hours when it is too hot to do much anyway. Europe’s southerners think coddled Americans don’t know how to cope with heat naturally. Northern Europe, meanwhile, is mostly spared the problem: June days can be cold enough for a Scandinavian knitted sweater. Flinty northern Protestants regard buying an air-conditioner for the year’s few scorchers as an expensive environmental sin.

These days, climate change is putting such attitudes to the test. Europe is expecting a broiling summer, in part thanks to the El Niño weather event. As it is, heat contributes to around 175,000 deaths a year on the continent, the UN reckons. Yet Europeans who think first-world lifestyles are largely to blame for global warming may feel pangs of carbon guilt about equipping their houses with air-conditioning, or using it if they have it. They needn’t. The impressive build-out of renewable energy in Europe’s hottest places means that judiciously dialling down the temperature will not do much to melt the glaciers.

Take Spain, where solar capacity has grown nearly tenfold in the past decade. Readers sweating it out in Seville can head to app.electricitymaps.com to reassure themselves: on June 10th a kilowatt-hour of Spanish electricity produced just 86 grams of CO2 equivalent. In the American state of Georgia the figure was 442. On a sunny summer day at noon, only about 10% of Spain’s electricity comes from fossil fuels; around half comes from solar. Portugal does just as well, and France better still, thanks to its dozens of nuclear reactors. Italy is a laggard, getting 30-40%of its electricity from gas. But its 224g of CO2 per kilowatt-hour is positively verdant next to much of America.

Not all of Europe can congratulate itself. Poland remains heavily reliant on coal, making its electricity mix about as bad as America’s. Germany’s rash decision in 2011 to eliminate nuclear power left it dependent on coal and gas, producing three times as much CO2 per watt-hour as Spain. Britain, depending on the weather, falls between Italy and Iberia. There are also unexpected bright spots like Albania, which sometimes gets 100% of its electricity from hydroelectric dams. Latvia is the greenest of the Baltics, thanks to more solar power than you might expect.

Climate morality aside, many on the old continent fret about how to pay for cranking up the aircon dial. Americans are roughly a third richer than Europeans, and to add insult to injury their household electricity costs about half as much. Even middle-class Europeans worry about a sudden bump in energy prices owing to an unexpected geopolitical crisis—say, a war in Iran.

Yet European homes are smaller than American ones, and use about a third as much electricity on average. Moreover, the solar boom means that power is not just greener but cheaper on hot, sunny afternoons. Setting the dishwasher to run overnight (prices are generally highest around 9pm) can free up room in one’s budget to cool off the home before going to bed. Smart meters make this sort of demand-shifting easier. And astute governments offer funding to make old houses energy-efficient, which can pay for itself (provided they do not make the mistake of Italy’s “Superbonus” programme: failing to check that the renovations take place).

The war in Iran has driven up fossil-fuel prices, but in parts of Europe (notably France and Spain) electricity bills have risen much less. That reflects smart policies. After the war in Ukraine many Europeans not only throttled their use of Russian gas, but reduced reliance on it in general. The countries that decarbonised fastest have reaped the greatest benefits. Voters might consider taking the revolutionary step of rewarding politicians who made good decisions. They are probably best equipped to bring Europe the vast expansion of power capacity it needs for the future.

A chilling realisation

To be sure, Europe faces an energy crunch. It must electrify industries to compete with China and expand its data centres, dwarfed by America’s, lest the artificial-intelligence revolution render it a vassal. That means better-connected electricity markets; France should let its reactors compete with Spanish solar farms. It means accelerating the build-up of battery storage, upgrading grids, and adding vastly more renewable energy. In this equation a bit more domestic air-conditioning is little more than a rounding error.

For green politicians buffeted in recent years by falling support, a call to chill out in front of the AC may sound like surrender. That, however, is a script that ought to be flipped. It is precisely because climate-conscious governments have prodded Europe to quit fossil fuels that the continent’s electricity is becoming less harmful to the planet—and less expensive. As the world warms, Europe is heating up faster than any other region. Europeans poor and rich will be using more air conditioning, both to make lives more pleasant and in extreme cases to save them. Those who prefer to tough out the summer are free to do so. But the goal should be to make cheap, clean air-conditioning available to everyone. ❞

Where in Europe is tap water the most and least safe?
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/05/08/where-in-europe-is-tap-water-the-most-and-least-safe

In Luxembourg, 79% of mapped groundwater bodies failed to achieve a good chemical status in 2025, 55% in the Czech Republic, 41% in Belgium and 40% in Germany.

Pesticides remain one of the main threats to water quality. For example, trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) has been detected in 94% of 36 tap water samples collected in 11 EU countries, according to the Water Atlas.

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More than 20% across the bloc is in a poor chemical status, meaning that harmful substances, such as mercury, cadmium, and others, are above levels set by the EU Water Framework Directive, says the European Environment Agency.

Adding to the pressure is the enormous social and environmental cost of treating it for drinking and sanitation.

Just treating nitrates — often found in fertilisers — is thought to cost the EU as much as €320 billion per year.The EU's limit is 50 milligrams per litre, but according to the European Commission, that level was exceeded at 14% of Europe's groundwater measuring stations.

Norway Faces Energy Shortage As Lack Of Winter Snow Depletes Reservoirs - CleanTechnica
https://cleantechnica.com/2026/04/03/norway-faces-energy-shortage-as-lack-of-winter-snow-depletes-reservoirs/

This winter was Norway’s coldest since 2010, the result of persistent high pressure near Greenland that blocked flows of moist Atlantic air into the Nordic region, Bloomberg says. With little precipitation, snow reserves have fallen to their lowest levels in two decades, creating a deficit of about 25 TWh of electricity — equal to 20% of Norway’s total hydropower output last year, according to Tuomo Saloranta, a hydrologist at the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate.
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Consumers are already feeling the pinch. Electricity sales to the UK and Germany — major export markets — have plunged by about 50% and 40% respectively this year. In northern Sweden, energy prices are up more than four times over 2025 levels.

Pesticides, pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals found everywhere in seawater
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2026/03/22/pesticides-pharmaceuticals-and-industrial-chemicals-found-everywhere-in-seawater_6751696_114.html

The researchers detected a total of 248 human-made compounds in the waters of the Pacific, North Atlantic and Indian oceans, which, across all the samples analyzed, made up a median of 2% of dissolved organic matter. Among these were pesticides such as DEET and icaridin (both insect repellents), additives used in plastics such as phthalates, UV filters from cosmetics, surfactants and a whole range of pharmaceutical residues, including beta-blockers, antidepressants and anti-infectives such as chloroquine.

The analyses also revealed that levels of chemical pollution were particularly high near coastlines, with a median proportion of contaminants from human activity amounting to 20% of all dissolved organic matter, and reaching as much as 63% in the most extreme cases.

"I was quite shocked when we first saw the results. (...) When you think about it from a hydrological perspective, I think this also makes complete sense," noted Petras. "In Germany, for example, during the summer months, a large portion of water contribution to the major rivers comes from wastewater treatment plants. Those can currently not remove all/most of the organic compounds, so they will end up in the river and then in the ocean."

Marine waters contain "about 700 billion metric tons of dissolved organic carbon – a mix of proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and other molecules – mainly from the biological activity of marine organisms and river inputs," explained Sempéré. The fact that human-made molecules in the ocean account for 2% of the chemical signal is, in his view, "far from negligible," and a figure of 20% in coastal areas "is huge."


Widespread presence of anthropogenic compounds in marine dissolved organic matter | Nature Geoscience
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-026-01928-z

climax

https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322%2825%2900391-4

Point of no return: a hellish ‘hothouse Earth’ getting closer, scientists say | Climate crisis | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/point-of-no-return-hothouse-earth-global-heating-climate-tipping-points

Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish “hothouse Earth” climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would also be very different to the benign conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilisation developed.

At just 1.3C of global heating in recent years, extreme weather is already taking lives and destroying livelihoods across the globe. At 3-4C, “the economy and society will cease to function as we know it”, scientists said last week, but a hothouse Earth would be even more fiery.

The public and politicians were largely unaware of the risk of passing the point of no return, the researchers said. The group said they were issuing their warning because while rapid and immediate cuts to fossil fuel burning were challenging, reversing course was likely to be impossible once on the path to a hothouse Earth, even if emissions were eventually slashed.

It was difficult to predict when climate tipping points would be triggered, making precaution vital, said Dr Christopher Wolf, a scientist at Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates in the US. Wolf is a member of a study team that includes Prof Johan Rockström at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

“Crossing even some of the thresholds could commit the planet to a hothouse trajectory,” said Wolf. “Policymakers and the public remain largely unaware of the risks posed by what would effectively be a point-of-no-return transition.

Ministers from European countries bordering the North Sea pledged sizable investments into expanding offshore wind energy at a summit in Hamburg, Germany today. The German government says the plan is to add an initial 100 gigawatts of energy to Europe's grid from offshore windfarms. It's a landmark step towards sustainable energy, and also marks a pivot away from reliance on Russia.

EU wind power deal: How much Russian energy can it replace? | DW News
https://youtu.be/h0EgssV1i3E?si=R65ZgJl-o6lAmqlE

TADEAS: aneb naznaky klimatickeho povstani, pro mainstream levicova anarchie.


We can no longer afford the rich.
We can initiate the end of the imperial lifestyle.
We can stop the plundering of the Earth.
In the greed for energy, the Earth is being drained, sucked dry, burned, abused, razed, raped, and destroyed. Entire regions are rendered uninhabitable by the heat. They simply burn up. Or habitats disappear beneath the waves during floods or due to rising sea levels.
Shutting down fossil fuel power plants is a task that can be accomplished by hand. Have courage.
We know we must interrupt this destruction. We know we are not alone. Don't give up hope for a world where life has space, not the greed for money, power, and destruction.

...

Last year, the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere rose to 423.9 parts per million, a value that surpasses all previous records. At the same time, climate scientists agree that the massive transatlantic ocean currents will collapse sooner or later due to global warming. This collapse of ocean currents, which has so far afforded the North a mild climate, is only one part of the catastrophe that awaits us. The extent of this devastation is simply ignored, abstracted, and discussed at global climate conferences until the scale of the destruction disappears into tables and declarations of intent.
But the insatiable hunger for energy is eating its way through the Earth's crust and our lives, among other things to feed artificial intelligence, which then spouts stereotypes and absurdities, confusing, disorienting, and/or manipulating us. Meanwhile, with each new "learning" of the AI ​​using previous data, language, expression, and vitality are increasingly reduced, mutilated, and limited.

...

We don't claim to know the way out. But we do know we must stop this destruction. Hedonism can no longer hold us captive once we've tasted the sweat of fear that spreads when there's no way out. No going forward, no going back. Only the horror of where we, as humanity, have ended up. When the question falls back on us, what did you actually do to prevent what was coming? You saw it coming, the survivors, the next generations, ask us. Please don't bring up the political parties. Please don't bring up the brown-shirted alternatives in pinstriped suits and dresses. And not the Greens or the Left either. Don't bring up the economy, whose free market will supposedly solve the problem. Economics and politics deal with death every day. With dictatorships and butchers. Their concerns vanish into thin air when it comes to satisfying our energy needs, for example. Russia is still supplying gas to Europe via Nord Stream 1. And the US wants Venezuela's oil. That's why military attacks are now taking place. And fracked gas arrives by ship from all over the world. Currently, 79% comes from the USA! Fracking is extremely environmentally damaging in its production. Even during extraction, a methane loss of 6 to 10 percent is assumed, which further warms the atmosphere.

95% of the gas burned in Germany is imported. At climate summits, only tactical lip service is forthcoming because the oil-producing countries are not interested in climate protection but in money. Because the major cities base their policies on money and growth, lobbyists in Europe are being handed the end of the combustion engine phase-out.

For example, the German Minister of Economic Affairs, Katharina Reiche, was State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Transport, a lobbyist for the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKM), and a manager at the E.ON subsidiary Westenergie. Minister Reiche presents herself as a supporter of hydrogen but primarily relies on natural gas. She intends to issue tenders for additional gas-fired power plants with a capacity of 10 gigawatts, which are to be connected to the grid by 2031, corresponding to approximately 25 new power plants. 20 billion euros are earmarked for these new gas-fired power plants.

Reiche would prefer to postpone Germany's climate neutrality target from 2045 to 2050 anyway.

The main culprits behind human-induced climate destruction are not those who suffer the most, those who pay with their health and their lives. The people of the Global South are already paying the highest price. The countries of the Global North, and soon China among others, are deciding the fate of everyone. China, as a communist, racist, and patriarchal dictatorship, can use "rare earth elements" to blackmail countries that don't toe the line, gradually weaving countries, cultures, and political systems into the cocoon of this new dictatorial world power. Over 85% of the world's refined "rare earth elements" come from China. And it is the rich who are the problem. It is the super-rich who are setting the world ablaze. In the East, in the West, in the South, and in the North. Sixty percent of the super-rich's investments worldwide go into gas and oil. And around 300 super-rich countries emit more CO₂ than the 110 poorest countries in the world. These criminals know it. They don't care. Their greed for even more wealth and power sets the standard by which everyone else follows

Next EU climate target to allow carbon offsets from 2036, draft shows – POLITICO
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-comission-climate-target-2036-plan/

The European Commission will permit countries to outsource a portion of their climate efforts to poorer countries from 2036, according to a draft proposal obtained by POLITICO.

The EU executive plans to present the bloc’s 2040 emissions-reduction target on Wednesday after several months of delay. The goal will be set at 90 percent below 1990 levels, the draft amendment to the European Climate Law shows.

But as POLITICO reported in mid-June, the Commission intends to meet up to 3 percentage points of the new target with international carbon credits, despite fierce criticism from its own scientific advisers. This plan aligns with Germany’s position on the 2040 goal.

hmyz? zrušeno

‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects | Insects | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/03/climate-species-collapse-ecology-insects-nature-reserves-aoe

The declines witnessed by Janzen – and described by others around the world – are part of what some ecologists call a “new era” of ecological collapse, where rapid extinctions occur in regions that have little direct contact with people.

Reports of falling insect numbers around the world are not new. International reviews have estimated annual losses globally of between 1% and 2.5% of total biomass every year.

“But what we see here in the preserved areas – that as far as we can tell, are free of even these destructive insecticides and pesticides – even here, the insect numbers are going down horrifyingly dramatically,” she says.

Long-term data for insect populations – particularly less charismatic species – is still patchy, but Janzen and Hallwachs join a number of scientists that have recorded huge die-offs of insects in nature reserves around the world.

They include in Germany, where flying insects across 63 insect reserves dropped 75% in less than 30 years; the US, where beetle numbers dropped 83% in 45 years; and Puerto Rico, where insect biomass dropped up to 60-fold since the 1970s. These declines are occurring in ecosystems that are otherwise protected from direct human influence.

Faced with major security challenges, Europe is preparing to boost its defence capacity. To defend itself against Russia without the United States, Europe needs to rapidly increase spending from the current level of about 2 percent of GDP to an estimated 3.5 percent of GDP – an increase of about €250 billion annually (Burilkov and Wolff, 2025). In March, the European Commission proposed the ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030 1 , which seeks to mobilise €800 billion in defence spending.

Some see increased defence spending as being in conflict with the climate agenda 2 , arguing that boosting defence spending by 1.5 percent of GDP while increasing climate spending by 2 percent of GDP, as required to meet EU climate objectives (Pisani-Ferry and Tagliapietra, 2024), would be unsustainable.

While there will be a trade-off when it comes to public spending – especially in the budgets of countries with more limited fiscal space than Germany, but also in the EU budget itself – the defence and climate agendas are not entirely in conflict. Here, we outline seven major converging interests. These areas should form the basis for a common defence and climate agenda which would allow the EU to develop more coherent policy for the future.

Defence and climate: seven points for a common agenda
https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/defence-and-climate-seven-points-common-agenda

PAN_SPRCHA: je to tak, vnímám to stejně.

White House says order will ‘make America’s showers great again’ and ‘end the Obama-Biden war on water pressure’

Trump signs executive order on water pressure to ‘restore shower freedom’ | Donald Trump | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/trump-water-pressure-executive-order

Mezitím v Německu - sucha hned z kraje jara

Německo čelí stále rostoucím problémům způsobeným dlouhodobým suchem, které má dopad nejen na vodní plochy, ale i na zemědělství, dopravu a ostatní ekosystémy včetně lesů. Snížené hladiny řek, vysychající jezera a opakující se lesní požáry jsou jen některé z viditelných projevů klimatické krize, která naše západní sousedy postihuje. Na viditelnou změnu, kterou lze pozorovat například na Labi upozornil deník Bild.

U Düsseldorfu se Rýn zúžil na velikost potoka, což výrazně komplikuje nákladní dopravu.

Tento extrémní nedostatek vody ovlivňuje i zemědělství. V mnoha oblastech země, jako je Meklenbursko-Přední Pomořansko, se zemědělci potýkají s obrovskými oblaky prachu při orbě, což je důsledkem nejen sucha, ale i stále rostoucích teplot způsobených klimatickými změnami. Podle meteorologické služby byl březen o 2,4 stupně teplejší než činí průměr, což vedlo k rychlému odpařování vody.

Německo trápí dlouhotrvající sucha: Labe se mění, část koryta Rýna se zúžila v potok - Echo24.cz
https://www.echo24.cz/a/HMkgQ/zpravy-svet-sucho-nemecko-labe-se-meni-klimaticke-zmeny-ryn-bodamske-jezero

Dry Spell In Germany After Severely Low Rain; Drought Conditions Hinder Rhine Shipping | WION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Q4vG_uNB4

Much chatter, little impact: Net zero reference slipped into German constitution - Euractiv
https://www.euractiv.com/section/eet/news/germany-climate-law-legislation/

BERLIN – As part of the deal over Germany's massive defence and infrastructure spending package, the Greens managed to write spending earmarks with a reference to climate neutrality into the country's constitution.

Champions and critics of climate action alike have been trying to play up the significance of adding in a mention of Germany's 2045 net-zero goal, although legal experts largely see the change as lacking broader legal significance.

The amendment to Article 143 of the Basic Law, Germany's constitution, allows for “a special fund with its own credit authorization for additional investments in infrastructure and for additional investments to achieve climate neutrality by 2045, with a volume of up to €500 billion.”

One line in the paragraph specifically sets aside €100 billion in an off-budget special fund for climate projects toward bringing emissions down to net zero, a goal already set down in Germany's Climate Action Act.