Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 129 posts

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#101

Post by exporectomy »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #94
exporectomy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with heavy AC/heating use during extreme weather events? You say runaway as if there's some sort of feedback loop. Insulating houses is balance between cost of insulating and cost of heating/cooling. It's no use spending more on insulation than you save in power use. So "as much as possible" is a wrong goal, as well as being obviously unachievable.

> What's wrong with heavy AC/heating use during extreme weather events? You say runaway as if there's some sort of feedback loop. Emissions is the feedback loop. I'm not talking about spending money. Using more heavy AC/heating during extreme weather events means we use more energy which makes it even harder to bring renewables online because as it is renewables aren't cutting it. Of course with money it makes no sen…

Extreme events are rare by definition so I don't think the energy use is significant in exacerbating climate change.

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#102

Post by sevagh »

abuehrle wrote: post #78
sevagh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about being smug, put fucking European units in an article about European temperatures in a European location. Not everybody knows who or what Axios is, but we know what Europe and Sicily are.

Surely the publication's location and readership are the salient factors, and not the article's topic? Or should the article be in Italian because it is about Italy?

The English language is more widespread than Fahrenheit, so that's a weak comparison.

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#103

Post by [deleted] »

snemvalts wrote: post #48
perardi wrote: post #38

Yes, OK, everyone, Fahrenheit, we get it, metric system, cut the smugness, Axios is a US-centric publication, discuss the issues. Such as: the feedback mechanisms that may come into play here. Europe, broadly, hasn’t been big on AC. That may have to change, as 322 Kelvin is just not bearable. But that means more power use…which means more energy use…which probably comes from fossil fuels…which means more issues with…

Depends where you live. Germany has done an idiotic 180 away from nuclear, but France is heavily into it. https://www.electricitymap.org/

[deleted]

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#104

Post by falcolas »

sevagh wrote: post #93
abuehrle wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the publication's location and readership are the salient factors, and not the article's topic? Or should the article be in Italian because it is about Italy?

>Temperature of 48.8C sets new record high in Italy and Europe https://weirditaly.com/2021/08/11/temperature-of-48-8c-sets-... Now there's a readable headline.

Sure, if you're in Italy. TFA is not.

Of course, TFA lists the Celsius measurement in the first sentence, but who reads articles these days?

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#105

Post by q1w2 »

lhorie wrote: post #25

That's 48.8 Celsius for the non-americans. Scrolling through the tweets, some people are saying it's likely a short spike in temperature due to foehn winds[0] and that this reading doesn't really mean much due to the source of the reading. Here's an interesting thread nitpicking things apart[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_wind [1] https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1425424519129407489

Global warming is about average temperature increases. Individual one-off high temperatures only gives ammunition to climate deniers when they see a record low temperature somewhere in the world.

It does more harm than good to raise the climate change alarm for these events, and requires some statistical gymnastics to conclusively tie it to global warming.

The real alarms are more than sufficient.

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#106

Post by [deleted] »

rootusrootus wrote: post #32
dimitrios1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who really cares Engineers, Scientists, Mechanics, Carpenters, etc.

No, these people do not care. People on the Internet care. Engineers, scientists, mechanics, and carpenters in the US do just fine with imperial measurements.

[deleted]

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#107

Post by thebruce87m »

ortusdux wrote: post #54
rootusrootus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK uses miles for distance, stones for weight, and I'm pretty certain that many things in the US are measured using metric. The real question I have is ... who really cares? I certainly don't complain when someone uses a celsius temperature, I just convert it to terms I'm more comfortable with.

Fun fact, British gallons are larger than American gallons (160 fl oz vs 128). This makes fuel efficiency comparisons quite confusing. I can't find the article, but one American went as far as suing Volkswagen because he imported a car under the assumption that it would get 80 MPG.

Should have just imported the fuel…

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#108

Post by Karrot_Kream »

pembrook wrote: post #100
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #72

We need to mandate (by appropriately subsidizing improvements while taxing externalities) houses become more energy efficient at heating and cooling, so we can use as little AC and heating as possible and try to stop some of the runaway energy usage due to extreme weather events. Install window fans, ceiling fans, attic fans, use evaporative coolers in dry climates, install H/ERVs. Change your AC and heating to a hea…

Air conditioning accounts for less than 5% of the average home’s energy use in homes that use it (the US is a good source of data here, with hot summers and 90% of homes having air conditioning). Sure, let’s make it more efficient where possible, but let’s stop pretending air conditioning is some evil we should feel guilty over. If you want to really save energy, focus on the heating side. It takes far more energy to…

> Air conditioning accounts for less than 5% of the average home’s energy use in homes that use it (the US is a good source of data here, with hot summers and 90% of homes having air conditioning)

The number is higher in places like the South. I don't mean to demonize AC; I think AC should be a fundamental part of living in high-humidity climates. I just think we need to do everything we can to make its use more efficient.

> If you want to really save energy, focus on the heating side. It takes far more energy to heat a house in the Midwest from 10F to 70F in the winter than the trivial amount it takes to cool a home from 90F to 70F for a few weeks in the summer.

Definitely! Heat pumps should be mandatory for heating. In many newer building codes they are, but it's too expensive for residents of older buildings to upgrade.

Re: Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

#109

Post by Thiez »

alexgartrell wrote: post #22
shmde wrote: post #16

In India there is a running joke amongst physics teachers/professors that whenever a student forgets to write unit of measurement of the final answers they are mocked by saying 120 degrees what ? Banana ? Apple ? Centigrade ? Applies to this title too.

I don't think it's particularly ambiguous since anything other than Fahrenheit would imply that everyone is dead.

We overwhelmingly use Celcius for temperature in Europe though, so the Fahrenheit option isn't as obvious as it might be in the US.
Post reply on HN