9 ms·

I spent summer 2018 biking across Europe & everywhere I went, from Spain to Scotland, was much hotter than the climate data I looked up on Wikipedia prepared me

I spent summer 2018 biking across Europe & everywhere I went, from Spain to Scotland, was much hotter than the climate data I looked up on Wikipedia prepared me for. It definitely felt like the climate had tangibly changed— especially if the same thing seems to be repeating this year. I guess everyone in Europe will be moving towards installing air conditioners, and they'll need to add peaker plants to power them on hot summer afternoons. Hopefully solar & storage will be cheap enough that it isn't too bad for the climate.

jacquesm 7y ago
The cruel bit here is that installing air conditioners substantially increases the per-capita carbon footprint which in turn will lead to a further greenhouse effect. It's a positive feedback loop with many components.
- baq 7y ago
  one saving grace is that if you couple AC with photovoltaics, you provide at least some of that power at the point of use. not much and the upfront cost is still high, but at least it's an option.
- ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
  Maybe. If the average winter temperatures go up, the air conditioning will be at least partially offset by lower heating costs. Of course, there are also theories of global climate change where both the high and low extremes will increase, in which case there's a double-whammy effect.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Average winter temperatures could well go down and average summer temperatures could go up. There is no hard coupling between the two with some fixed delta, rather that extremes can get more extreme.
    - luckylion 7y ago
      You'd need extreme temperatures for both, though. Remember that much of Europe is close to the sea, that buffers both in winter and in summer. Continental climate doesn't really begin until you hit Eastern Europe. For the last few years, we've had pretty mild winters. This last one, I didn't use my radiators at all because the house is very well insulated and the temperatures didn't drop that low.
    - WanderPanda 7y ago
      Well but that would stand in conflict with the greenhouse-effect, or does the C02 go away in winters?
      - mark-r 7y ago
        The greenhouse effect requires sunlight to work. In the winters, the poles do not get any sunlight. The cold air from the poles will travel to make other places colder.
        gns24 7y ago
        The greenhouse effect does not require sunlight to work. What matters is how much of the energy radiated from the surface of the earth reaches space and how much is reflected back down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
        jacquesm 7y ago
        This is true, but what with sunlight being by far the largest factor in energy being radiated back from the surface of the earth you can safely conclude that in practice the greenhouse effect is to a large extent resulting in solar incident radiation being trapped. In other words: without sunlight nobody would be worrying about the greenhouse effect. In fact, without sunshine we'd love the greenhouse effect, reducing the albedo of the planet as a whole would be the only way to survive as a species (likely we'd fail).
      - 7y ago
- starbugs 7y ago
  Not only that. It also increases ambient temperatures, which adds to the local heat amplification already occurring in big cities due to dense concrete buildings and streets.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  I hope that Europe doesn't ever reach the same level of insanity with regards to air-conditioning that you see in, for example, Florida. The last time I visited (admittedly 20 years ago) I remember having to walk outside of shopping malls / supermarkets for a few minutes to warm up, having been subjected to the frigid level of AC inside.
  - kabwj 7y ago
    That’s something that can be solved by law.
  - wtdata 7y ago
    Been to Texas in summer last year (it was very hot outside) and I found it ridiculous how low the temperature inside was: most Europeans on the conference were complaining, we had to wear light jackets inside. Then, I went to India (also in the summer): it's even worst (even colder inside and in the taxis). These kind of things just to above my cultural sense of logic...
  - war1025 7y ago
    I think a big part of the "all kids do is play inside" thing people like to complain about has to do with everyone having their AC on all the time. If its hot inside and hot outside, you go play outside. If its hot outside and cool inside, you sit on your ass and look at a screen.
- qub1t 7y ago
  Heating a house is much more expensive than cooling down a house [1], so if avg temps rise total carbon footprint due to temperature control will most likely fall. A very small silver lining to a very shitty situation. [1] https://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-cost-more-to-heat-households-than-to-cool-them https://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-cost-more-to-heat-househol...
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
    If I recall correctly, global "warming" is an average and changes in temperature will increase both ways so might end up having to heat more for short period of times.
    - inetknght 7y ago
      Global warming is an average indeed, but moving that average for a localized area costs energy, usually in the form of carbon expenditure.
    - hedora 7y ago
      Yeah; we have our thermostat target a pretty large window. I looked at at the report for May, and it heated and cooled most days. That doesn’t seem normal (better data now, or more fluctuations?)
  - war1025 7y ago
    That article is just saying it's cheaper to move heat than to generate it from electrical resistance. You can buy heat pumps that work both directions, allowing you to heat in the winter and cool in the summer. My main complaint about AC and the reason we rarely use ours is that while you can heat a house very quickly, air conditioners are really only good for maintaining temperature. They have a hell of a time cooling adequately when "properly sized". So if I want to use the AC, then I have to give up on having open windows ever, which is not something I'm interested in.
    - jrockway 7y ago
      I don't think AC is that bad. I have a tiny window air conditioner in my apartment. When I get home from work it's more than 80 degrees in there. After the AC has been on for an hour or two, it gets down to a reasonable 76 or so. It's in my bedroom so when I close the door to go to sleep, it gets much colder (probably 68).
- _ph_ 7y ago
  Well, air-conditioning is the one electric consumption which can be perfectly driven by solar energy. Solar production capacity is expanded constantly and in Germany we are already at the level where during sunny days, solar can drive like 40% of the grid.
- oliwarner 7y ago
  Carbon is obviously a problem longer term but immediately, air conditioners generate heat. A city full of air conditioners is that much hotter. We're ploughing energy (even renewable) into the air and that's making summer that much hotter. We need to stop.
ableal 7y ago
> the climate data I looked up on Wikipedia For travel abroad, I got into the habit of checking https://weatherspark.com https://weatherspark.com. They have very well done charts that give a really good idea of how it's like "over there". (Just a satisfied user.)
- cr1895 7y ago
  Last summer was quite an outlier...Europe was extremely dry and hot. So much so that previously unknown archaeological sites became apparent when all the grass died.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
It would really be better if we promoted more passive solar design instead of more AC. We used to rely a lot more heavily on vernacular architecture. It is possible to design a space that needs little in the way of active heating or cooling to stay comfortable. I don't know why this isn't more widely promoted. I sometimes feel like I'm the only one who has thought of this obvious answer and I have no influence in the world, so I'm just howling into the void of the internet to occasionally comment on it on HN where it often then gets dismissed on some excuse or other.
- cr1895 7y ago
  But that doesn't solve the heat problem for everyone who's living in a house that's already been built, and I don't think you're suggesting to rebuild all the existing housing to have passive cooling. It would be great to see this type of preparation put into new builds.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    But that doesn't solve the heat problem for everyone who's living in a house that's already been built I have a serious medical condition. Years ago, while getting divorced and crammed into a single bedroom with my two teenaged sons fir nearly a year in Georgia, we discovered that getting rid of all cardboard boxes from food items stored in our room reliably and consistently dropped the temp 5 degrees Fahrenheit, lowered the humidity and stopped the invasion of roaches. I am routinely told I'm full of shit for telling that story. It's merely an anecdote. I've lived without upholstered furniture for years. I currently have no carpeting and no mattresses. We remain strict about removing cardboard and papers from our rental. I'm in a hundred year old building with no AC. When things get hot, other tenants open their window and door trying to get a cross breeze and are clearly miserable. We just open the window. Once in a great while, I will go run errands or spend time at the library to reduce the number of bodies in our cramped room from three to two to bring down the temperature in our room. I've lived this way more than a decade. I'm an environmental studies major who wanted to be an urban planner as my dream career. I get ignored, mocked, dismissed, attacked, treated like I'm stupid and crazy and have no idea whatsoever what the hell I'm talking about. The world treated me with potentially deadly callous disregard while I was deathly ill and homeless. Now its bullshit misogyny and classism is causing it to continue to turn a deaf ear to suggestions that actually work. While the world burns and wrings its hands I get on with making my life work. It's increasingly hard for me to believe people actually want to solve this. If they wanted to solve this, they would jump on such anecdotal evidence, do some research to confirm it and start spreading the word. I've been on HN nearly a decade. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board here. Men here routinely get told they must be smart if they have a lot of karma. I routinely get told I'm a fool obsessed with worthless internet points and shut up. You don't have to rebuild the entire world. Just make some lifestyle tweaks. But it won't happen because I'm a woman and everyone wants to explain to me why I shouldn't worry my silly little head about such things and I simply don't understand how anything works.
arethuza 7y ago
Last year was definitely exceptional in Scotland - it didn't rain for about two months - usually two weeks of sun without rain would be a 'heatwave'. Mind you - earlier this week it was 12C and raining here - so back to proper summer weather.

jacquesm 7y ago

The cruel bit here is that installing air conditioners substantially increases the per-capita carbon footprint which in turn will lead to a further greenhouse effect. It's a positive feedback loop with many components.

baq 7y ago
one saving grace is that if you couple AC with photovoltaics, you provide at least some of that power at the point of use. not much and the upfront cost is still high, but at least it's an option.
ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
Maybe. If the average winter temperatures go up, the air conditioning will be at least partially offset by lower heating costs. Of course, there are also theories of global climate change where both the high and low extremes will increase, in which case there's a double-whammy effect.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Average winter temperatures could well go down and average summer temperatures could go up. There is no hard coupling between the two with some fixed delta, rather that extremes can get more extreme.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    You'd need extreme temperatures for both, though. Remember that much of Europe is close to the sea, that buffers both in winter and in summer. Continental climate doesn't really begin until you hit Eastern Europe. For the last few years, we've had pretty mild winters. This last one, I didn't use my radiators at all because the house is very well insulated and the temperatures didn't drop that low.
  - WanderPanda 7y ago
    Well but that would stand in conflict with the greenhouse-effect, or does the C02 go away in winters?
    - mark-r 7y ago
      The greenhouse effect requires sunlight to work. In the winters, the poles do not get any sunlight. The cold air from the poles will travel to make other places colder.
      - gns24 7y ago
        The greenhouse effect does not require sunlight to work. What matters is how much of the energy radiated from the surface of the earth reaches space and how much is reflected back down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
        jacquesm 7y ago
        This is true, but what with sunlight being by far the largest factor in energy being radiated back from the surface of the earth you can safely conclude that in practice the greenhouse effect is to a large extent resulting in solar incident radiation being trapped. In other words: without sunlight nobody would be worrying about the greenhouse effect. In fact, without sunshine we'd love the greenhouse effect, reducing the albedo of the planet as a whole would be the only way to survive as a species (likely we'd fail).
    - 7y ago
starbugs 7y ago
Not only that. It also increases ambient temperatures, which adds to the local heat amplification already occurring in big cities due to dense concrete buildings and streets.
VBprogrammer 7y ago
I hope that Europe doesn't ever reach the same level of insanity with regards to air-conditioning that you see in, for example, Florida. The last time I visited (admittedly 20 years ago) I remember having to walk outside of shopping malls / supermarkets for a few minutes to warm up, having been subjected to the frigid level of AC inside.
- kabwj 7y ago
  That’s something that can be solved by law.
- wtdata 7y ago
  Been to Texas in summer last year (it was very hot outside) and I found it ridiculous how low the temperature inside was: most Europeans on the conference were complaining, we had to wear light jackets inside. Then, I went to India (also in the summer): it's even worst (even colder inside and in the taxis). These kind of things just to above my cultural sense of logic...
- war1025 7y ago
  I think a big part of the "all kids do is play inside" thing people like to complain about has to do with everyone having their AC on all the time. If its hot inside and hot outside, you go play outside. If its hot outside and cool inside, you sit on your ass and look at a screen.
qub1t 7y ago
Heating a house is much more expensive than cooling down a house [1], so if avg temps rise total carbon footprint due to temperature control will most likely fall. A very small silver lining to a very shitty situation. [1] https://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-cost-more-to-heat-households-than-to-cool-them https://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-cost-more-to-heat-househol...
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
  If I recall correctly, global "warming" is an average and changes in temperature will increase both ways so might end up having to heat more for short period of times.
  - inetknght 7y ago
    Global warming is an average indeed, but moving that average for a localized area costs energy, usually in the form of carbon expenditure.
  - hedora 7y ago
    Yeah; we have our thermostat target a pretty large window. I looked at at the report for May, and it heated and cooled most days. That doesn’t seem normal (better data now, or more fluctuations?)
- war1025 7y ago
  That article is just saying it's cheaper to move heat than to generate it from electrical resistance. You can buy heat pumps that work both directions, allowing you to heat in the winter and cool in the summer. My main complaint about AC and the reason we rarely use ours is that while you can heat a house very quickly, air conditioners are really only good for maintaining temperature. They have a hell of a time cooling adequately when "properly sized". So if I want to use the AC, then I have to give up on having open windows ever, which is not something I'm interested in.
  - jrockway 7y ago
    I don't think AC is that bad. I have a tiny window air conditioner in my apartment. When I get home from work it's more than 80 degrees in there. After the AC has been on for an hour or two, it gets down to a reasonable 76 or so. It's in my bedroom so when I close the door to go to sleep, it gets much colder (probably 68).
_ph_ 7y ago
Well, air-conditioning is the one electric consumption which can be perfectly driven by solar energy. Solar production capacity is expanded constantly and in Germany we are already at the level where during sunny days, solar can drive like 40% of the grid.
oliwarner 7y ago
Carbon is obviously a problem longer term but immediately, air conditioners generate heat. A city full of air conditioners is that much hotter. We're ploughing energy (even renewable) into the air and that's making summer that much hotter. We need to stop.

ableal 7y ago

> the climate data I looked up on Wikipedia For travel abroad, I got into the habit of checking https://weatherspark.com https://weatherspark.com. They have very well done charts that give a really good idea of how it's like "over there". (Just a satisfied user.)

cr1895 7y ago
Last summer was quite an outlier...Europe was extremely dry and hot. So much so that previously unknown archaeological sites became apparent when all the grass died.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

It would really be better if we promoted more passive solar design instead of more AC. We used to rely a lot more heavily on vernacular architecture. It is possible to design a space that needs little in the way of active heating or cooling to stay comfortable. I don't know why this isn't more widely promoted. I sometimes feel like I'm the only one who has thought of this obvious answer and I have no influence in the world, so I'm just howling into the void of the internet to occasionally comment on it on HN where it often then gets dismissed on some excuse or other.

cr1895 7y ago
But that doesn't solve the heat problem for everyone who's living in a house that's already been built, and I don't think you're suggesting to rebuild all the existing housing to have passive cooling. It would be great to see this type of preparation put into new builds.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  But that doesn't solve the heat problem for everyone who's living in a house that's already been built I have a serious medical condition. Years ago, while getting divorced and crammed into a single bedroom with my two teenaged sons fir nearly a year in Georgia, we discovered that getting rid of all cardboard boxes from food items stored in our room reliably and consistently dropped the temp 5 degrees Fahrenheit, lowered the humidity and stopped the invasion of roaches. I am routinely told I'm full of shit for telling that story. It's merely an anecdote. I've lived without upholstered furniture for years. I currently have no carpeting and no mattresses. We remain strict about removing cardboard and papers from our rental. I'm in a hundred year old building with no AC. When things get hot, other tenants open their window and door trying to get a cross breeze and are clearly miserable. We just open the window. Once in a great while, I will go run errands or spend time at the library to reduce the number of bodies in our cramped room from three to two to bring down the temperature in our room. I've lived this way more than a decade. I'm an environmental studies major who wanted to be an urban planner as my dream career. I get ignored, mocked, dismissed, attacked, treated like I'm stupid and crazy and have no idea whatsoever what the hell I'm talking about. The world treated me with potentially deadly callous disregard while I was deathly ill and homeless. Now its bullshit misogyny and classism is causing it to continue to turn a deaf ear to suggestions that actually work. While the world burns and wrings its hands I get on with making my life work. It's increasingly hard for me to believe people actually want to solve this. If they wanted to solve this, they would jump on such anecdotal evidence, do some research to confirm it and start spreading the word. I've been on HN nearly a decade. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board here. Men here routinely get told they must be smart if they have a lot of karma. I routinely get told I'm a fool obsessed with worthless internet points and shut up. You don't have to rebuild the entire world. Just make some lifestyle tweaks. But it won't happen because I'm a woman and everyone wants to explain to me why I shouldn't worry my silly little head about such things and I simply don't understand how anything works.

arethuza 7y ago

Last year was definitely exceptional in Scotland - it didn't rain for about two months - usually two weeks of sun without rain would be a 'heatwave'. Mind you - earlier this week it was 12C and raining here - so back to proper summer weather.