481–490 of 505 posts
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I'd argue that these temperatures are not a new thing. It's just a contradiction that is almost a tradition at this point, imho.
You could argue that. But you'd be wrong. :-)
For at least 6 years we've had AC worthy temps.
"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?
Euro buildings are built to keep heat in. Aus buildings are leaky tents.
When the heat wave struck, initially that thermal inertia works in your favour as the cool building keeps the interior cool. But after a day or two it heats up. Once that happens, the temperature at night doesn't drop. As you say, ventilation is not good, so the humidity rises too. The thing becomes an overnight sauna.
After one night of this, I went looking for a fan. In my Australian home, every room has a ceiling fan. In this German dwelling (rented by my daughter, an Aussie, for the past few years) there wasn't a single fan in the house, and worse none of the nearby shops sold fans. It looked to me like there was no "social knowledge" of fans or how to handle heat in general. I eventually got a fan off Amazon, who thankfully delivered the next day.
We were also there in another year in winter. These same buildings were amazing the cold. They could maintain a cosy inside temperature with very little extra energy. But geeze, you don't want to be in one in a heatwave that goes on for days.
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.
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.
If we want to reach the climate targets, we need to reduce our yearly CO2 "budget" per capita significantly. It was at about 800kg per person & year for 1.5 degrees a few years ago. As we have resigned that target already, we're at about 1500kg per year & person for the 2 degree target. (estimations of total CO2 budget until 2050, divided by #people on earth).
After 2050, that number per person should go to net zero.
So the way Air Conditioning is used is a significant problem. If the entire world would use it like it is used in the United States, we would get into a runaway situation. And we kind of are heading towards it.
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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…
This for sure. I notice quite a difference with 30 degrees in rural Portugal vs the Netherlands. You sweat a lot more due to the higher humidity.
It may be that you sweat the same at 30C (i.e., water coming out of your pores), it's just that with higher humidity the sweat cannot evaporate and collects on your skin in beads, which you notice.
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European windows open sideways not up and down. So we can't just stick an ac unit on the window.
You don't stick a portable AC unit in the window. The unit sits inside. You just run vent hoses out the window for the compressor. Opening sideways also shouldn't matter for a casement AC unit.
[0] obligatory TC rant: https://youtu.be/_-mBeYC2KGc
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An AC unit essentially requires just a small hole in the wall and a bracket to hold the compressor unit. Europeans have walls don't they? I'm European and I have a wall that could host an AC unit. The barrier is regulatory not engineering.
You also need an electric wire/fuse with a certain capacity and not every house has that, esp. when it's old, they cook and heat with gas; worse if the cabling etc. up to the property has to be updated too. And this might sound trivial but if it's a block of flats and every flat installs at least one AC unit all of this adds up to huge additional demand which is far far more than a small hole.
Trust me, the rest of the world has figured this problem out a long time ago. The hottest countries in the global south tend to also be the countries with low electrical capacities.
If you live in a country where 3kW is the electrical capacity of your entire house, you just buy an AC that draws around 1kW.
You size the AC units to your circuit you don't size your circuit to the AC.
Sitting here in central London on the day of the conference it seems a bit wimpy to me. Max today is 34C which is hot but not life threatening. Some trains may be delayed but they do that all the time. I assume the LSE library is aircon. Most such buildings are these days. You'd think a bit of heat would be a bonus given the topic.
I find it unintentionally hilarious to see our weather reporting channel (Weather Network in Canada) constantly ringing the "extreme weather warning" bell! They manage to have an alert or warning at least every week. In the winter, -10C is extreme cold; in the summer 34C is extreme heat. The words have lost meaning to me along with old advertising terms like "premium." 34C is hot and it's legitimately difficult to wo…
Now, despite that, for some reason the Weather Network forecasts do tend to reflect reality than the Govt. ones. Maybe their hype is working on me.
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We have had heatwaves in Europe forever. The thing is people were used to adapting to them with shades and night/morning ventilation, and shifting their activities out of the hottest part of the day. This somehow seems to be beyond today's population and society. How dare this weather impact my schedule!
This is the kind of ignorant comment we thankfully see less and less. You can no longer shift your activities when the weather reaches 35C (95f) every day for weeks without noticeably cooling down in the night. And even if activity shifting was possible, which again, it is not anymore, the authoritative, fatalistic poverty mindset required to demand that one does not actively cool during hot hours is a European menta…
I do not 'demand' you do the same. I just point out that there were options besides cancelling the meeting, some involved airco, LSE has airconditioned meeting rooms, admittedly without the gorgeous historic atmosphere, some didn't.