Almost two-thirds of Europe is having what used to be known as a brutal summer, before climate hysterics rebranded the weather, and the latest panic is the re-emergence of grim Hunger Stones from ancient riverbeds gone dry.
The heat wave combined with the drought currently tormenting the continent truly is miserable. High temperatures are overwhelming Europeans, crops are shriveling, and rivers are drying up. The diminished waterways are crippling crop irrigation, supply chains, and even the capacity to cool nuclear power plants. But the drying riverbeds have also yielded something else: proof that such things have happened before there were tailpipes or cow burps to blame.
The Hunger Stones of Europe are sub-aquatic cousins of high water markers. During historically severe droughts, local chroniclers would chisel marks and messages into large stones that were only seen roughly once a generation. Some of the low-water markings also included laments of the human tragedy that accompanies drought, notably starvation.
Dutch journalist Olaf Koens tweeted images of the ominous boulders newly re-emerged from the depths of Europe’s busy waterways:
Huiveringwekkend. Door de droogte in Europese rivieren komen er Hungersteine bovendrijven. Macabere waarschuwingen van onze 15e eeuwse voorouders over hongersnood.
'Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine'https://t.co/kbo03caaZX pic.twitter.com/CMTcMvfQQp
— Olaf Koens (@obk) August 11, 2022
If your Dutch is rusty, the internet says he wrote:
Horrible. Due to the drought in European rivers, Hunger Stones are surfacing. Macabre warnings from our 15th century ancestors about famine.
‘When you see me, cry’
At least Koens had the sense not to write, “Due to climate change…” Because unless his 15th-century ancestors had scuba gear and a weird sense of humor, those bodacious boulders were high and dry centuries before global cooling global warming man-made climate change was ever thought of.
A group of Czech researchers relied on Hunger Stones for some of the data that went into their 2013 report, Droughts in the Czech Lands, 1090–2012 AD. They described the stones and listed the previous drought years they commemorate:
Hydrological droughts may also be commemorated by what are known as “hunger stones”. One of these is to be found at the left bank of the River Elbe (Deˇcˇ ́ın-Podmokly), chiselled with the years of hardship and the initials of authors lost to history (Fig. 2). The basic inscriptions warn of the consequences of drought: Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine [“If you see me, weep.”]. It expressed that drought had brought a bad harvest, lack of food, high prices and hunger for poor people. Before 1900, the following droughts are commemorated on the stone: 1417, 1616, 1707, 1746, 1790, 1800, 1811, 1830, 1842, 1868, 1892, and 1893.
A tree-ring study printed in Science Advances, a journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, confirmed that “megadroughts” used to be more common before the evil Industrial Revolution kicked off all of that cursed First World tech:
In addition, megadroughts reconstructed over north-central Europe in the 11th and mid-15th centuries reinforce other evidence from North America and Asia that droughts were more severe, extensive, and prolonged over Northern Hemisphere land areas before the 20th century, with an inadequate understanding of their causes.
In fact, over the four-and-a-half billion years the earth has been around, its climate has never done anything but change. It’s been much hotter. It’s been much colder. A good volcanic eruption can cool the climate for years. One time, it rained for a million years straight. The very spot where I’m currently typing was covered by a mile-thick sheet of ice a geological second ago.
I’m not saying Europe isn’t in a dire situation right now. It’s very hot and dry, and the modern systems Europeans have built are being seriously stressed and challenged. The last time it was this droughty, there weren’t nearly as many people or as much infrastructure to be affected, and so the hardship and the toll will be gravely compounded this time around.
Related: Russia’s Hunger Weapon
What I am saying is that this drought may not be because of anything we did; at most, we’ve had only a fraction of a fraction of an infinitesimally small effect on the climate. Droughts have happened before and they’ll happen again. Meanwhile, if all the do-gooders who run the global deciding apparatus truly want the best for humanity, then this is not the time to shut down reliable, cost-effective energy generation, or ban farmers from using the fertilizer that actually works, or force the bloody destruction of hundreds of thousands of livestock. Famine and want are already looming over too many vulnerable people; why in the name of God would you make it worse?
