Europe's Record Heatwave Kills 25,000, Dries Rivers, Shuts Nuclear Plant, Exposes Submerged Warships (www.cbc.ca) 194
"The European Union's Copernicus climate monitoring service confirmed Monday that June and July were the hottest on record in western Europe," according to a report from the CBC. "The period saw an estimated 25,000 heat-related deaths."
CNN has before-and-after photos of Europe's drying rivers, calling it "a crisis so dire it can be seen from space" River levels are so low that commercial ships have had to reduce their loads by as much as 80% to avoid running aground. It's disrupting supply chains and making shipping more expensive.
Other effects of Europe's drying rivers
CNN has before-and-after photos of Europe's drying rivers, calling it "a crisis so dire it can be seen from space" River levels are so low that commercial ships have had to reduce their loads by as much as 80% to avoid running aground. It's disrupting supply chains and making shipping more expensive.
Other effects of Europe's drying rivers
- The BBC reports that Romania has "shut down its only nuclear power station because of extremely low water levels in the Danube river."
- A bridge built in the year 39 AD by the Roman emperor Caligula "is usually entirely underwater," reports CNN, but this year full blocks of the ancient structure are visible, giving archaeologists a rare opportunity to study it." The reports adds that the drying Tiber has also now also revealed formerly submerged e-bikes, scooters, refrigerators and a car."
- The CBC reports a dozen Nazi warships scuttled in a river during the Second World War are now resurfacing as water levels plunge. "Elsewhere, the drying Danube has revealed a German military motorcycle in Hungary, an unexploded 700-kilogram British bomb in Slovakia, and what are believed to be the ancient remains of a mammoth in Bulgaria."
No problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Its just the earth trying to get rid of a virus. Keep glug glug that vroom vroom, the earth will do the rest.
Yeah, pretty much this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: European here.
4th epic heatwave this year in Germany right now. I'm currently in Karlsruhe and it's 37 degrees Celsius outside (too lazy to convert to bananas or whatever you guys use). Got an SUV rental and it's AC couldn't keep up this noon. Concrete on the Autobahn cracked open in the last heatwave and they had to close down to repair it. Right now NRW is seeing it's largest forest fire since ever.
I was up north on the island of Fehmarn at the start of the week. Summer was bearable there although I did get sunburn. Anything south of Bremen though has unbearable heat at noon. Not fun. The Rhine is at an all time low, you can almost wade through it ( this has never happened ) and Hungary is having an energy crisis because they had to shut down both of their fission plants because the didn't have enough cooling water. France is closing in an the same problem once again too.
Climate change is hitting us like a fist this year. Not fun.
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That sounds like a pretty lousy SUV...
People drive SUVs in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Las Vegas and other places which regularly see temperatures much higher than 37C, the AC works just fine and the roads are just fine.
Re: Yeah, pretty much this. (Score:4, Informative)
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Basically the same as 2018.. yea you beat a record yet hardly unprecedented.
It's nothing at all like 2018. In 2018 there was a minor economic issue where it become uneconomical for certain ships to carry certain loads on the Rhine due to the ship draft. Meanwhile right now the Rhine is cut in two. Literally. It's not possible to canoe up it let alone move a ship through it.
No shit. It is going to take some time for Hungary to recover from Orban's mismanagement of the countries energy infrastructure.
Nice typical braindead AC take. This has nothing to do with Orban, which is obvious when you put down your tiktok and read to the end of the OP's sentence.
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Both factually incorrect and irrelevant at the same time. My statement was about water levels not economic issues.
My statement was about water levels as well. At no point in 2018 was shipping completely stopped. Showing a measurement at a point along a 1230km just emphasises how stupid you are.
The current prime minister of Hungary disagrees with you.
The person who opposed Orban blames things on Orban? No shit sherlock. That doesn't mean that it's Orbans fault that a power plant that was desgned when Lazar was in power couldn't handle a water level outside of its design considerations back 30 years before Orban became prime minister. Are you really that stupid that you don't
Re: Yeah, pretty much this. (Score:5, Informative)
Germany is on the same latitude as as newfoundland idiot. 37C is NOT normal.
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That's not how climate works. Madrid is at the same latitude as New York City and New York has blizzards and regular snow. Madrid doesn't.
Re: Yeah, pretty much this. (Score:2)
Latitude is not the only factor. Geography and topology also matter. Although, understanding that requires a high school level of science literacy and as the other guy pointed out, this is a US website after all.
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You tried to be snarky and all you said was the exact same thing I did, just more verbosely.
Mother "Normal" Nature; All Natty, No Fatty. (Score:2)
Germany is on the same latitude as as newfoundland idiot. 37C is NOT normal.
Mother "Normal" Nature, stands at the ready to shove those goalposts right up the ass of humanity.
* a magnitude 4.2 rumbles from the ocean deep *
(That, was a fart. As a reminder.)
There are those who mitigate their weather risks, and those who land on American shores for a football match only to discover the modern mitigation marvel known as air conditioning.
Don't even know what more to say when an air-conditioned yellow school bus could trigger manic laughter followed by profuse rage-sweating among certa
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Around 37C in August is normal. Especially for a city like Karlsruhe.
The problem is: it does not cool down at night.
And the real problem is: the peak temperatures are 42 - 44 and that is damn hot, and that is not normal!
I lived in Karlsruhe for ages, now I am in Frankfurt, and as soon as possible I am back in Thailand.
Frankfurt "feels" a bit colder than Karlsruhe. Karlsruhe has the drawback that everything around it used to be swamps. And you still have the humidity from it. And the river is quite a bit aw
Re: Yeah, pretty much this. (Score:4, Funny)
Username checks out.
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We can handle comparisons to the USA just fine, but we do very much like pointing out that Americans seem to know fuck all about their own country, let alone any other.
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That's why it is so dangerous.
When ambient temperature equals of exceeds body temperature, your body can no longer radiate heat. The only way to shed it is via sweating, which risks dehydration. When it's also very humid, you can't even sweat it off, and you die.
That's assuming you are healthy, it's worse if you aren't.
It's also why in Europe you usually can't be made to work in an environment about around 32C, and even that is borderline.The laws vary but generally that is around the point where doing anyt
Its time to consider leaving the planet (Score:2)
as a long term plan for some of the population. This catastrophe won't go away in years, it will take decades even if we drastically curtail C02 emissions
O'neill cylinders should be part of the long term plan.
See the following for an animation of how the O'Neill cyclinders might operate and how they look inside.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2d_0l5ycRM
If course we're probably looking at 100 years from now to implement an O'neil cylinder set such as this.
And the bigger issue to solve is who stays and who
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as a long term plan for some of the population. This catastrophe won't go away in years, it will take decades even if we drastically curtail C02 emissions. O'neill cylinders should be part of the long term plan.
O'Neill settlements, of course, must be run with zero fossil fuels supplying energy, and with all manufacturing completely closed cycle: no atmosphere, rivers, or landfills to exhaust waste into. And the ecology likewise a closed system.
Once you have solved the problem of the closed-ecology of an orbital O'Neill settlement, you need only implement that approach on the Earth.
So, YES! Let's push forward with O'Neill space settlements! Because we need that technology for Earth.
Geostorm (Score:2)
This reminds me of the intro to Geostorm
You know what would fix this? (Score:2)
Pretty deep.... (Score:2)
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That's what I don't get. Americans always telling everyone they're the richest and best blah blah blah. But then cry like little girls because gas has gone up to $4.50 a gallon.
The price of gas fluctuates often in America. And when it does, it rather instantly (corruptly) affects every damn thing moved in America by gas. A 50-cent increase in our "cheap" gas can easily translate into a $200 increase in monthly costs when compounded across every affected industry.
Not sure if that ripple effect is quite as pronounced in other countries.
The real problem (Score:3)
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Massive drought and wildfires, leading to flooding when it does start raining this week and the ground can't absorb it.
We may have to start looking at desalination, like Middle Eastern countries. Certainly we need to get much better at storing water from the winter. The UK is particularly bad for that, because we sold off publicly owned water utilities and they didn't bother investing in storage, they just paid out massive dividends for shareholders. Decades later and we are being hit by climate change too.
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I'll bet that we're reading about crop failures and famines later this year.
If we're reading about famine it won't be about Europe. Much of the drought is currently affecting shipping not farmland because virtually all of Europe's wide spread food production are in places where the water flows to, not comes from. E.g. the world's second largest farming nation (behind the USA) and the world's largest farmers per capita (by an incredibly long shot) sits at the end of the Rhine delta - the Netherlands, and so far one single province has issued a stop irrigation warning and only for pa
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When the drought comes, the crop (grain) harvest is already over.
But of course it cuts into farmers profits that would like to plant salad or similar after the grain harvest.
Also, the drought is on the surface. Very bad for forests. Not only because of the simple fact of missing water, but fires an beetles living under the bark of trees.
However we have a good ground water plate, which gets replenished every autumn/winter. So pumping water for irrigation is nearly no where a problem.
I do not know about wine,
Heatwave kills 25K - dramatic video documentation (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/fjT5a-yVPZc?s... [youtu.be]
'An average month in 2026 was worse draught than t (Score:3)
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/08/10/when-the-rivers-stop-flowing-europes-drought-summer-measured/
This is Germany 1933, it's about to get a lot worse and we should all really vote for a non crazy government that will accelerate decarb. There's no alt.
Re: 'An average month in 2026 was worse draught th (Score:2)
title was too long, quoted from the article:
'An average month in 2026 was worse than the worst day of the previous seven years.'
And 2022 was news plastered draught..
ðYâðY'
seen from space (Score:2)
"So dire it can be seen from space." Give it a rest. License plates can be read from space since like the 70s.
Re: Which one is the real crisis? (Score:2)
Your point Mr. Strawman?
Cold weather deaths are normal in parts of Europe, the current numbers of heat-related deaths are not.
Re: Which one is the real crisis? (Score:2)
When the Atlantic Gyre quits, Wester Europe is going to have cold winters. Ever compare the latitude of the UK and Quebec?
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Why the fuck are you counting things like flu deaths as deaths from the cold. Compare those who freeze to death with those who die of heat stroke and similar. Way more people die directly from heat then die directly from cold.
Fucking statistics, you can twist anything around to what you want but it's still BS.
Re:What crisis? (Score:5, Insightful)
Approximately 50 million human lives are prematurely ended each year due to abortion. That's a World War II death toll, every two years.
Mortality rates became rather meaningless when humans stopped recognizing the single most destructive force against humanity for what it is.
We don't actually need more people.
Re:What crisis? (Score:4)
Approximately 50 million human lives are prematurely ended each year due to abortion.
So sad. Particularly since this can be easily prevented with birth control.Safe, legal and rare.
It was Clinton that said abortion should be "Safe, legal and rare."
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I believe PPH was referring to abortion; though first sentence is confusing, it is clarified in the second.
The point is that the best way to eliminate abortion is to make contraception easy, effective and cheap.
Re:What crisis? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Life begins at conception" is a purely religious doctrine.
Using the state to force religious doctrines on others is immoral.
Cellular life is still life according to science (Score:4, Insightful)
"Life begins at conception" is a purely religious doctrine.
Cellular life is still life according to science. What species of life it is is determined by genetics. What science does not address is at what point in the development of the new life does its rights compete with the life of its host. That’s a legal question, two individuals with competing rights, courts sort out those sort of things all the time. Legally, when still at an early cellular stage the law generally sees no rights, no personhood yet. Religions disagree on that. Its when development reaches a stage where the new life could survive outside the host that things get really really complicated, where personhood could plausibly be claimed, unlike when at the cellular level.
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Mod parent insightful or funny or something.
My own wording would focus on the meaning of the DNA. It's NOT a unique individual, which is the root of that particular flavor of insanity. It's more like a book of recipes that might produce a human being. But it's such a complicated process that quite often it just aborts spontaneously.
Or maybe go for the joke about building complicated human "devices" with unskilled labor?
Me? I favor a right to reproduce along with a right to genetic counseling. With current t
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Cellular life is still life according to science.
And people lose trillions of times more other cells than egg cells or fetuses.
A bunch of skin cells does not have the potential of a cluster of cells resulting from fertilization.
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"Life begins at conception" is a purely religious doctrine.
Using the state to force religious doctrines on others is immoral.
The Bible actually says that life (well maybe human life) starts with the 1st breath, when God breathes a soul into the new born.
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"Life begins at conception" is a purely religious doctrine.
Using the state to force religious doctrines on others is immoral.
The Bible actually says that life (well maybe human life) starts with the 1st breath, when God breathes a soul into the new born.
Oh, religious fanatics don't let small things such as the Bible get in the way of “deeply held religious beliefs”.
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So true.
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Note, I am not addressing the concept of life beginning at conception- though other address that below.
Re: What crisis? (Score:2)
It was a step in developing morality perhaps, now it's an impediment to developing it further
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What do you think should be done about the 'implantation crisis'?
Given the limited impact of failed implantation (approx. 10% of cases) within IVF that still accounts for a rounding error amount of overall births on the planet, I'd say what should be done is educate people on the definition of crisis in relation to the overall Birthing Big Picture.
RIF has a devastating impact on families wanting children, no doubt. But a personal challenge for some does not automatically amount to a collective crisis for all.
And if you don't know the term, maybe you should avoid accusing others of ignorance.
The only ignorance I found when educating myself on the issue,
Re:What crisis? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, it gets worse. Every time you wank, it prematurely prevents a life from happening, which makes you a serial killer of sorts. And there are millions of wankers like you.
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Oh, it gets worse. Every time you wank, it prematurely prevents a life from happening, which makes you a serial killer of sorts. And there are millions of wankers like you.
Every sperm is sacred. [youtube.com]
Every sperm is sacred ... (Score:3)
If the above confuses you, speak with someone educated on the classics.
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Oh, it gets worse. Every time you wank, it prematurely prevents a life from happening, which makes you a serial killer of sorts. And there are millions of wankers like you.
And so the answer to preventing pre-cog mass killing is...drain every water tower and purge every dam to re-fill it with..humanity?
And the glee-huggers thought they had recycling challenges before. Third time this week little Johnny was caught "composting" in the corner..
Re: What crisis? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those aren't "human lives" any more than the semen produced by all you incels when you masturbate to videos of violence against women.
Pussy coward won't log in to post.
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There is a strange movement in Europe against Air Conditioners. It is the reason why tens of thousands of people die from heat stroke most years in Europe.
Two things European football fans were absolutely fucking gobsmacked over in the Twenty-fucking-first Century after visiting America; the existence of yellow school buses, and air conditioning.
Which naturally left Americans wondering two things in retort: How big is the school train to Hogwarts, and does it have air conditioning?
Re:Air Conditioners save lives (Score:4, Informative)
Many Europeans live in apartments and the outside part of the AC tends to be loud and annoy the neighbours which is serious business. Window ACs are not really an option because Europeans have tilt and turn windows, not slide windows.
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Window ACs are not really an option because Europeans have tilt and turn windows, not slide windows.
You can make a portable work with most any sort of window that opens.
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For a very loose definition of "work". Tried those. They make a difference of maybe two or three degrees Celsius. Not worth the hassle.
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European windows don't work well for portable ACs. One, they don't usually come with screens which are typical in the US to keep bugs out. Two, they open from a hinge on the side. So, you basically need a way to cover the whole window space if you open it at all.
You can put a screen over the condenser exhaust hose. Granted with swinging windows you do need to block the entire frame (I guess you could use plexiglass if you were handy). Presumably if it is so hot you might otherwise want to keep the curtains/blinds closed anyway and blocking the sun is additionally helpful. This is simple DIY stuff, people here in Canada make them work with all sorts of windows too. Only you can decide if it is too hard, but the option is nonetheless there should you choose.
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You can make a portable work with most any sort of window that opens.
Yeah it's like when my neighbour was cold last window I told him to just go to the bank, empty his account preferably in $5 bills and just light the pile of them on fire in his living room.
Portable ACs are the worst and most inefficient idea on the planet. A decent ceiling fan would do a better job of making your living space comfortable. The only thing a portable AC is good for is emptying your wallet.
Bonus points that most of the people who are dying are precisely those vulnerable enough that they can't a
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There's also the landlord problem. Namely they won't let you put in air conditioning due to fears about the wiring. It's a big problem in my part of Canada.
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There's also the landlord problem. Namely they won't let you put in air conditioning due to fears about the wiring. It's a big problem in my part of Canada.
Sketchy landlords are a problem for renters everywhere. You can substantially cool a single room in a heat wave with ~1000 watts, which is less than a typical oven which are all 240V around here so I don't think load is an issue if wired correctly. I can see how landlords might be worried about tenants individual ability to not overload things, but air conditioners are exactly the same as space heaters in this regard, which is why if that is a concern they should do it themselves.
https://www.cbc.ca/ne [www.cbc.ca]
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Yes, most of your points are good though lots of houses use gas ranges (propane here) instead of electric ranges, my home could barely support a small air conditioner. Laws are changing as a link in your source shows, https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whato... [www.cbc.ca] it was New Westminster I was thinking of here.
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We are very much talking about a few weeks, which is why its trivial to cope with without AC. Your old vulnerable grandpa (the people who are actually dying) is not going to get off his mobility to modify his window for a week to install a portable AC, not without a lot of help from others, and those with help are largely not the vulnerable ones. This is a non-starter.
I listed this out in another post, much of Europe has a social and an education problem. At no point were people taught the importance of dri
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We are very much talking about a few weeks, which is why its trivial to cope with without AC.
Coping is what you do if you don't have the means to do better and unfortunately the most vulnerable take the brunt of it here too. So granted it is a few weeks right now, but at how many weeks will it no longer be trivial? Cause you know more is coming. At some point what worked during the Roman Empire will no longer work and you will have to step into the modern era. Will probably be easier to do it incrementally than all at once, so while the best time to start would have been years ago, the next bes
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You make it sound like Europeans are really dumb.
No, Americans are dumb because you instantly though that I was talking about intelligence rather than the aspect of widely adopted societal norms. Fun fact: most people don't know how to handle things they were not taught to handle growing up, nor rare events. You can see that with any disaster be they extreme hot, extreme cold, extreme wet or extreme dry. What is normal for one group is rare for another. The only thing dumb is calling someone dumb for understanding their norms rather than someone else's.
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No, Americans are dumb because you instantly though that I was talking about intelligence rather than the aspect of widely adopted societal norms.
I'm not American and if making assumptions is dumb you should stop.
You can see that with any disaster be they extreme hot, extreme cold, extreme wet or extreme dry. What is normal for one group is rare for another. The only thing dumb is calling someone dumb for understanding their norms rather than someone else's.
Disasters are pretty much by definition not norms. Critical thinking is a useful skill everywhere, and for more than just weather.
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If you can deliver the power. I'm on the west coast of Canada, somewhere that previously never needed air conditioning but does now. Many an apartment buildings wiring can't handle AC. These are 30+ year old buildings with really crappy air flow too. Europe has much older buildings. We're also dependent on hydro for power, which is working like crap with the droughts, Europe has nuclear that also works like crap due to drought though at least they have solar.
Re: Air Conditioners save lives (Score:2)
Portables are trash. Mini-splits don't cover a window, the connection between the inside and outside units goes through a fairly small hole, and they are much more efficient. Window units exist for stupid reasons to begin with, the solution is mini-splits.
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There is a strange movement in Europe against Air Conditioners.
Yes. But a large part of that is the difficulty in retrofitting it to their older buildings. In the USA, we have a large installed base of forced air heating. Which can be upgraded to a heat pump. Also, we (USA) have more stand alone single family dwellings. So remodeling or even piping in split systems is easier. And with a heat pump, you not only get more efficient heat, but A/C as well.
hate and refuse to promote air conditioners often use refrigerators and freezers in the same homes.
Completely different applications. Refrigerators/freezers are self contained and much smaller than an entire house. And
Re: Air Conditioners save lives (Score:3)
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1) Until recently = past 30 years. That is, the number of heat deaths has doubled over the past 30 years. So NO this is not a recent problem, it existed 30 years ago. Yes it has gotten worse. So what, when you have ten of thousands of deaths in 1990s, then you fix the problem so it does not reach hundreds of thousands.
2) Yes, Europe is to the north. So what. Montreal has air conditioners. NYC has air conditioners and it is the same latitude as Madrid, Naples and Istanbul.
In those cities new bui
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One warm summer and we all need to install AC? Last summer was rainy and miserable. Just deal with it. From all the summer days only one was pretty hard. Good news. We planted a few trees for shade, those did their job well. Still need to plant two on the west side and temperatures inside will drop again. I may install an evaporator in the ventilation unit. It consumes water but cools a bit. Maybe a small mobile AC for the worst days, but I am going to hold off on that one. Chances are
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Re: Air Conditioners save lives (Score:2)
This is the attitude that causes people to die. Americans deal with hotter temperatures every summer. Texas gets over 40 C in the summer every day. Install AC and be done with the problem. No one needs to die from overheating!
Ah, number three. "I am killing people with my anti-AC standpoint!". I excluded old people. I wonder how many AC installers die every year. (drop of ladder, inhaling coolant to get high)
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What you Americans don't seem to grasp is that "installing AC" for the average European home means demolishing it and building another one with air ducts..Does it never occur to you that if it were simple we would have already done it?!
No.
It occurred to us that there are many types of air conditioning solutions that do not involve excessive demolition.
Source? The A/C experts in the United States who also realized over half a century ago that you need more than a fucking leaf blowers worth of mains to feed an entire home. The European A/C problem, is unfortunately not limited to duct work.
Imagine for a second that Texas started having -15C Winters, and someone told you to just "install cavity wall insulation".
You sure you want to mess with Texas here? Installing cavity wall insulation, is called an "industry" there.
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You sure you want to mess with Texas here? Installing cavity wall insulation, is called an "industry" there.
Well, that industry must be utterly incompetent, because Texas has a well documented history [wikipedia.org] of losing its collective shit whenever the temperature drops below freezing. I think it would be better if Texas abstained from lecturing anyone on how to deal with extreme weather events.
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Re: Air Conditioners save lives (Score:2)
Re: Air Conditioners save lives (Score:2)
Climate change is not going to stop even if the world hits the most optimistic targets. It is going to keep getting hotter, a lot hotter. In 30 years, today's peak heats will happen on 5x as many days, and the new peaks will reach 10 degrees higher. Your "a couple of weeks out of the year" is going to turn into months, and the new peaks are going to be lethal. You need to start getting your houses and culture ready now.
I know. We have had 2 extreme summers in the last 15 years. So let's wait a bit more.
See... what is it with people pushing ACs? Doom is coming! Buy an AC and be safe! That is a classic sales tactic. I will wait. Thank you.
Re: Air Conditioners save lives (Score:2)
Imagine choosing death instead of accepting an american is right.
Here we go again. "If you do not buy an AC, you will die!" My God people! Plenty of humans live in hot climates without AC. All nuance is lost. A is a matter of survival. Bunch of snowflakes! Yeah yeah yeah, old people.
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I dont know man, I live in Argentina and my "tiny split unit", 3500W, is more than capable of keeping my bedroom cool.
Even my "large" 7000W unit for the shop was so big that ... i had to help a friend to help me lift it to the wall brackets. It's bolted to the brick wall with 4 10mm bolts.
Those "tiny split units" do just fine in Japan where they have even less space than you do.
Sounds to me you're just making excuses and, somehow, trying to blame "the americans"
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sounds more like you didn't read what I wrote. The only room where I can use a split unit is the living room but I need the cold in my bedroom, I cannot use a split unit in my bedroom. The rooms in a European apartment is built to contain heat, walls are 10-20cm thick made out of brick and there are no airducts between the rooms so even if I cool down my living room to below 0 my bedroom is still 40C (and so is every single other room). Cannot hang a window unit on the Window since our heavy windows (severa
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This has nothing to do with AC. You don't need AC, these temperatures aren't remotely extreme. People are dying in Germany in temperatures where people are out sunbathing and enjoying themselves in in France. Thinking this is a lack of AC is an incredibly ignorant take on the issue.
The fundamental issue is society is built around a temperature norm, and that norm is breaking. Not AC or not AC, but everything we do as a society. We need to change our approach to heat in general and we'll be fine.
Here's just
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We kept all our windows closed and while it was 36C outside today (and I guarantee 36C inside the neighbour's house) the indoor temperature never got above 30C, and with some small pedestal fans that was quite a pleasant temperature.
Yeah OK. I keep my house at 22C. All the time, year round every day whether it is +40 or -40 outside you can rely on it being 22C in here. I worked all my career specifically so I can be comfortable, and HVAC is one of the greatest inventions of the modern era. Putting up with the heat because it is only temporary makes as much sense to me as putting up with the cold because it is only temporary. Do you do that in the winter too? 10C with a couple of sweaters is quite a pleasant temperature too...
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This is my favorite response to these idiots. If you don't need air conditioning, then you don't need heating either. They talk about how amazing their houses are in the winter because they "retain heat" and whatever bullshit, but they actively heat it.
Turn the heating off, or shut the fuck up about AC.
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This has nothing to do with AC. You don't need AC, these temperatures aren't remotely extreme. People are dying in Germany in temperatures where people are out sunbathing and enjoying themselves in in France. Thinking this is a lack of AC is an incredibly ignorant take on the issue.
The fundamental issue is society is built around a temperature norm, and that norm is breaking. Not AC or not AC, but everything we do as a society. We need to change our approach to heat in general and we'll be fine.
We don't need air-conditioning, especially not for a few days a year, we need to be more intelligent as a society. It's not that hot, people just think it is because they don't know how to deal with it. And judging by the "we need AC" comments here, you don't know either.
Jesus...what gives with the anti-AC nonsense? Heard from a number of Europeans complaining about how they don't have AC over the last few months. What a really weird thing to be against.
Think of ACs as air sourced heat pumps.. a way to reduce natural gas usage in the fall that just happen to also do the same thing as an AC during the summer. Is this more aligned with your sensibilities? Are you ok now not to hyperventilate over AC?
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You have repeated the failed arguments of idiots that are killing tens of thousands of people. Everything you said has at least a kernel of truth, but smart people ignore those excuses and fix the problem.
Yes just giving them AC will not fix the problem they have to install it and use it and not go out in 90 F+ degree temperature. The cultural change is part of the fix.
YOU DEFINITELY NEED AC Fans, water, shade are not enough. The same house designs that keep the heat in during winter keep the air condi
Re: Air Conditioners save lives (Score:2)
My house has an external wall insulation and no AC. We keep everything closed when it's hot and air it at night. It's never risen above 25ÂC inside, whereas it was 35-40 outside.
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The differences between a refrigerator and and air conditioner are basically cosmetic and placement
No, the difference between a refrigerator and and air conditioner is two orders of magnitude in energy use. An AC tends to use more power than the rest of the house combined.
Thirty years ago, in the area where I live (.nl) there was basically no need for air conditioning: temperatures high enough that you can't function without AC were a once-a-decade occurrence, so installing it was seen as wasteful.
Today, there still is resistance to installing AC units, with the argument that they exacerbate the problem,
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Don't worry - when the Gulf Stream shuts down, Europe will cool off significantly. /j
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A monosplit unit of comparable price consumes 1KVA and consumes an esimated 1020 kWh per year for air conditioning. (Samsung Wind-Free Comfort Next Monosplit 12000
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There is a strange movement in Europe against Air Conditioners. It is the reason why tens of thousands of people die from heat stroke most years in Europe.
Typically the policy is to prioritize passive measures to prevent excessive heat buildup in the home or apartment, with active measures like AC coming second. This is because AC would cool the home or apartment inside, but at the expense of a lot of energy consumption plus a lot of heat being pushed outside, which would bring its own issues especially in an urban setting. Noise is also a concern as some residential areas can have very strict noise emission limits especially during quiet hours.
Pushing passiv
Re:The Ice Age ended, finally (Score:5, Insightful)
And the entirety of human history has risen during the inter-glacial. We've built a civilization well adapted to the climate as it currently is.
So, why would we went to change it?
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Indeed, the ice age ended finally... about 7000 years ago.
And the entirety of human history has risen during the inter-glacial. We've built a civilization well adapted to the climate as it currently is.
* Glances over at an air-conditioned planet full of introverts advised to stay indoors to avoid their human skin burned to the dumb degree from being exposed to a bit too much Reality on a planet practically burning with desire to kill meatsacks with climate alone *
Turn air-conditioning off, and tens of millions die every year. That's not adaptation. That's severe dependence on a tool now needed for survival on a planet holding zero fucks for humanity.
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An AC posted above about waiting for this inevitable type of comment posted by idiots and here it is!