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Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

lse.ac.uk

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Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#171

Post by thayne »

alexhans wrote: post #76
lwansbrough wrote: post #9

Europeans don’t get scolded enough for their resistance to air conditioning. In terms of accounting for preventable deaths, Greece has 2x more heat-related deaths per capita annually than Mississippi has gun deaths. By comparison, the worst US state for heat related deaths, Nevada - a literal desert - has >10x fewer deaths per capita than Greece.

Living in London and Dublin, what I've observed is that we get the following contradictory statements: - "We don't need AC, It's only hot a few times during the year." - "Oh what a terrible heat, global warming is getting worse every year." Pair to that the fact that in many places windows don't open all the way due to bureocratic regulations and many interior designs are very questionable in terms of air flow and yo…

It seems like a bidirectional heat pump would be a good solution, since the same device can be used to heat the building when it's cold. And a lot of europe (including the mentioned UK and Greece) don't often get cold enough that a heat pump is inefficient.

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#172

Post by ffsm8 »

alexhans wrote: post #76
lwansbrough wrote: post #9

Europeans don’t get scolded enough for their resistance to air conditioning. In terms of accounting for preventable deaths, Greece has 2x more heat-related deaths per capita annually than Mississippi has gun deaths. By comparison, the worst US state for heat related deaths, Nevada - a literal desert - has >10x fewer deaths per capita than Greece.

Living in London and Dublin, what I've observed is that we get the following contradictory statements: - "We don't need AC, It's only hot a few times during the year." - "Oh what a terrible heat, global warming is getting worse every year." Pair to that the fact that in many places windows don't open all the way due to bureocratic regulations and many interior designs are very questionable in terms of air flow and yo…

Northern Europe will actually get colder with global warming... Well, only on average, the heat waves in the summer will stay.

But it's always funny how many people don't really realize how soon the AMOC will likely collapse (probably within the next 30 years - definitely within the next 70 years) and just unlivable most houses will consequently become, as what we currently consider an extreme winter would consequently become a mild one... The infrastructure just hasn't been built for -20°C

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#173

Post by hmry »

brookst wrote: post #147
brigandish wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does on my balcony where the fan pumps to, which has made doing any gardening difficult, but to the overall outside temperature it's just a drop in the ocean.

Sure. And each car is just a drop in the ocean of CO2. And each plane flight. And smoking one cigarette. Humans have a really hard time understanding compounding risk. But there are billions of us. How many billions of drops can you handwave away?

8 billion people running a 2000 watt AC continuously for 8 hours a day = 5 trillion watts of heat. (Only the electricity consumed by the AC is turned into new heat. The heat from inside the house would have moved outside anyway, at the same rate, since it's an equilibrium)

The sun = 175 quadrillion watts of heat.

So I would say, the heat from running ACs is not significant. It's also additive with all the other existing forms of energy use we have. Unlike greenhouse gases, which are multiplicative.

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#174

Post by manmal »

alexhans wrote: post #76
lwansbrough wrote: post #9

Europeans don’t get scolded enough for their resistance to air conditioning. In terms of accounting for preventable deaths, Greece has 2x more heat-related deaths per capita annually than Mississippi has gun deaths. By comparison, the worst US state for heat related deaths, Nevada - a literal desert - has >10x fewer deaths per capita than Greece.

Living in London and Dublin, what I've observed is that we get the following contradictory statements: - "We don't need AC, It's only hot a few times during the year." - "Oh what a terrible heat, global warming is getting worse every year." Pair to that the fact that in many places windows don't open all the way due to bureocratic regulations and many interior designs are very questionable in terms of air flow and yo…

TIL there will be 35 degrees Celsius in London today. I thought that basically never happens. I remember people telling me a few years ago that they are lucky to ever get 30 degrees.

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#175

Post by reenorap »

sph wrote: post #169
lwansbrough wrote: post #9

Europeans don’t get scolded enough for their resistance to air conditioning. In terms of accounting for preventable deaths, Greece has 2x more heat-related deaths per capita annually than Mississippi has gun deaths. By comparison, the worst US state for heat related deaths, Nevada - a literal desert - has >10x fewer deaths per capita than Greece.

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Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#176

Post by adrianN »

ericd wrote: post #112
PaulKeeble wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. Historically AC has not been necessary for the one to two days a year it was needed, but that world is gone now and the situation has changed and the widespread adoption of AC is now necessary. Its going to be a huge challenge because the buildings are not designed with that in mind, many buildings are hundreds of years old making these sorts of renovations notoriously difficult and expensive, but…

Is it that hard to drill an 8cm hole to run some refrigerant pipes through the wall?

If you rent the place and your landlord doesn’t want it you’re out of luck. If you own the place and your neighbors don’t like the noise of your AC you’re out of luck too. If your building is one of the many buildings protected for historic reasons only God can help you.

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#177

Post by adrianN »

jatora wrote: post #37
PaulKeeble wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. Historically AC has not been necessary for the one to two days a year it was needed, but that world is gone now and the situation has changed and the widespread adoption of AC is now necessary. Its going to be a huge challenge because the buildings are not designed with that in mind, many buildings are hundreds of years old making these sorts of renovations notoriously difficult and expensive, but…

So you are saying temperature has risen enough to warrant an AC now? Due to climate change? I thought climate change was on aggregate ~1C difference but my data is a decade old the last time i looked into it

The relevant data is number of days per year with temperature above X degrees. That number has risen quite a bit over the last decades.

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#178

Post by crote »

lwansbrough wrote: post #9

Europeans don’t get scolded enough for their resistance to air conditioning. In terms of accounting for preventable deaths, Greece has 2x more heat-related deaths per capita annually than Mississippi has gun deaths. By comparison, the worst US state for heat related deaths, Nevada - a literal desert - has >10x fewer deaths per capita than Greece.

Well yeah, because it requires re-engineering the entire built environment!

Heat waves only became a serious problem in Europe in the last decade. The vast majority of buildings predate the need for air conditioning by several decades - and in plenty of cases by several centuries. The buildings are designed around being livable in a pre-climate-catastrophe climate without needing air conditioning - which is perfectly achievable if you aren't stupid enough to build a city in the middle of a desert.

Adapting all those buildings and streets will take time. Blindly putting AC everywhere and forcing everyone to drive from building to building in an ACed car isn't going to work, that kind of wasteful behavior is how we got into this situation in the first place. You need to redesign the heat management, and you need to start with things like mandating shades to prevent heat from entering buildings in the first place, and planting trees to avoid the heat island effect.

AC will indeed be needed to deal with the final heat peak when outside night temperature is in excess of 30C, but it isn't the one-size-fits-all solution for every heat-related problem it might seem at first glance. If your AC needs to run for more than a few days per year, you've seriously screwed up.

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#179

Post by manwe150 »

rpnx wrote: post #168
brookst wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. And each car is just a drop in the ocean of CO2. And each plane flight. And smoking one cigarette. Humans have a really hard time understanding compounding risk. But there are billions of us. How many billions of drops can you handwave away?

It is worth noting that if the Air Conditioner is powered by electricity that came from solar panels, the net heat produced compared to letting the sun heat solar panel colored ground is exactly 0. Air Conditioners do not produce a net heating effect unless you power them by burning fossil fuels.

Not net zero exactly, since it’s a flows and rates problem, not static equilibrium. So it could even be strongly positive effect or negative effect based on how quickly the heat gets radiated back into space depending on how the wavelengths interact with the surroundings and the atmosphere.

Our current cities and infrastructure are designed to be black heat sinks to soak up heat and hold onto it and ground level. But there is research into what would happen if we flipped that design around.

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#180

Post by jesse_faden »

jcranmer wrote: post #58
shitloadofbooks wrote: post #6

"Extreme Heat" seems to be 37-40 degrees Celsius which is bafflingly mundane to me as an Australian who grew up in rural New South Wales. We'd pack 30 kids and a teacher into an un-airconditioned classroom with just a ceiling fan and the windows open in that temperature. I imagine the buildings there just aren't built to support that heat plus the body height of hundreds or thousands of attendees?

People tend to rely on air temperatures when in reality the lethality of heat is probably more linked to the wet-bulb temperature. The human body has a natural resting temperature of about 37°C, and metabolism of course generates more heat constantly, so we constantly have to shed that heat. When the temperature is low, we can rely purely on conducting the heat into the atmosphere to shed the heat (which is probably…

Dew point is a much better measure of the oppressive, muggy, sweltering feeling than humidity. The dew point in Australia ranges in the 5ºc - 15ºc range at which 30ºc after sunset feels vastly different, way cooler than South East Asia where the dew point is constantly above 24ºc.
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