Live data from Hacker News

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

axios.com

91–100 of 129 posts

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

#91

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…

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.

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

#92
post #66
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'm not AIcist, but it really shouldn't take more than a second to understand what the scale is. 120 degC = mass extinction. No one uses Reaumur and Kelvin is only used as a joke or by absolute pedants. Hence, it's Fahrenheit.

It could be read as a longitude if you’re poor in geography.

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

#93
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?

>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.

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

#94

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…

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 sense to spend money on insulation if you're only going to spend a fraction of that on AC costs for extreme events, but that's because externalities are not being passed on to emissions costs.

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

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read TFA. The celsius measurement is in the first sentence, listed before the farenheit equivalent. "A weather station in Sicily may have set an all-time high temperature record for all of Europe on Wednesday, when the temperature climbed to a scorching 48.8°C (119.8°F) amid a regional heat wave that has shown few signs of relenting."

It’s a single byte of information, maybe 4 at a push. It doesn’t take much to include and avoids a lot of ambiguity.

[deleted]

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

#96
post #28

dang, can you edit the title to maybe say "120°F/48.8°C" or some such? Lest most of the comments continue to be by people demonstrating how smart they are to realize that the scale must be Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. (And I'm saying that as someone from Europe who grew up with Celsius.)

The precise C rating is in the first sentence of the article.

I read «C» and had another C in mind, and confirmed - most of us have read the Kerrigan and Ritchie, many of us in front of the title though "ok minus 32 times by 5 divided by 9..."

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

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even half way to boiling really. Although it refers to Europe, it is using farenheit as its scale, as it is a US based publication. Although for that reason temperature measurements should always include the type for reference.

"Halfway" from where?

It's an important point that multiplying and dividing temperatures in F or C makes no sense. Some people are somehow assuming half way from freezing which is arbitrary. Would a F user assume it means half way from 32F or 0F?

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

#99

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…

In many European countries AC in homes is a fairly new phenomenon (20 years or so).

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

#100

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 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.

Post reply on HN