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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

#211

Post by crote »

boc wrote: post #19
FacelessJim wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans don’t get scolded enough for their abuse of AC. In terms of accounting for preventable waste of energy, US guzzles more electricity on cooling than most countries do on everything else.

Are you going to also scold Americans for using heat in the winter? Our continent has more extreme weather than Europe... we've adapted accordingly because we value human lives. Have you?

When you refuse to build climate-appropriate homes with things like isolation and instead guzzle giant amounts of fossil-powered energy to compensate for it? Yes. That's not adapting, that's brute-forcing.

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#212

Post by robocat »

jdkoeck wrote: post #118
mylifeandtimes wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air conditioning only works for things inside of buildings. Not so good for the plants and animals our lives depend on. And it raises the heat outside of buildings. Not so good for people who have to be outside, think first responders etc. "just turn on the AC and keep burning the world down" isn't really the answer.

That kind of thinking kills more people each year in Europe than guns do in the USA. Let that sink in.

So the stats say we need to encourage more guns and shooting deaths in the US...

Maybe Europe should sell guns to the states - ideally sold in €

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#213

Post by vasachi »

basisword wrote: post #102
lazide wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason they seem allergic to AC - see the rest of this thread.

COST. People don’t have the money to spend installing aircon to save themselves from a couple of weeks of discomfort per year.

I don’t get it. How much do AC units cost in EU? I can buy one for, like, $200-300.

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#214

Post by jjmarr »

ffsm8 wrote: post #172
alexhans wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 consequent…

The Day After Tomorrow (2004) predicted this.

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#215

Post by thayne »

robhlt wrote: post #143
Noaidi wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not debating that the sun is stronger heating source. I’m just saying air-conditioning increases climate change because it uses fossil fuels and also the law of thermodynamics dictates that he will be created in this instance.

Air conditioners don't need to use fossil fuels. Solar power and AC work really well together because peak solar energy is exactly when you need AC the most. No heat is created either, that would explicitly violate the first law of thermodynamics. An air conditioner powered by solar energy (or anything solar powered) ends up releasing the exact same amount of "excess" heat as the sunlight would have if it hadn't been…

> An air conditioner powered by solar energy (or anything solar powered) ends up releasing the exact same amount of "excess" heat as the sunlight would have if it hadn't been absorbed by the panels.

Sure. But solar panels are intentionally designed to absorb a lot of energy. So if you are putting the panels over a dark surface, like asphalt, you'll probably have a net zero effect on heat. If you put them over something light colored, you are now converting more visible light that would have been reflected into space into heat. To be clear, that is still a lot better than burning fossil fuels, but it isn't completely free either.

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#216

Post by hannasm »

ActorNightly wrote: post #203
sph wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> us simply cannot have AC Im really curious how this works. Do standalone units not exist?

Same question. Electricity and logistics are really the only physical barriers. With solar and a single mini split couldn't you essentially prevent heat death with some very high probability?

Freezing to death in winter should be a harder problem at this point right?

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#217

Post by seydor »

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.

Greece is full of air conditioners

Dont take pieter levels so seriously

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#218

Post by crote »

quotemstr wrote: post #198
crote wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Blindly putting AC everywhere ... actually works just fine. How do you think mass AC adoption in the US happened? Window units work just fine. Fancy splits and central ducting can come later. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

Look at the population graph of a city like Las Vegas. It basically didn't exist before the invention of AC.

Window units don't work in most of Europe because our windows aren't compatible with them. If they were, I would have one.

And again, it doesn't solve the core cause. If you want to cool down your home, your first step should be to stop heat from entering. If you can get the same result from €900 of shades and €100 of AC as from €1000 of AC, you'd have to be stupid to go for an energy-guzzling AC-only approach.

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#219

Post by [deleted] »

thayne wrote: post #171
alexhans wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning

#220

Post by seydor »

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?

Yeah we ve reached stupid levels of weather scare. France did have some extreme temperatures over 42, but 40 is a typical Mediterranean heat wave, not Armageddon
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