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Yes, OK, everyone, Fahrenheit, we get it, metric system, cut the smugness, Axios is a US-centric publication, discuss the issues. Such as: the feedback mechani

Yes, OK, everyone, Fahrenheit, we get it, metric system, cut the smugness, Axios is a US-centric publication, discuss the issues. Such as: the feedback mechanisms that may come into play here. Europe, broadly, hasn’t been big on AC. That may have to change, as 322 Kelvin is just not bearable. But that means more power use…which means more energy use…which probably comes from fossil fuels…which means more issues with climate change.

snemvalts 5y ago
Depends where you live. Germany has done an idiotic 180 away from nuclear, but France is heavily into it. https://www.electricitymap.org/ https://www.electricitymap.org/
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  But France isn't building any new, is it. A slow phase-out is what is aligned for near future, and almost entirely replacing it with fossil fuels
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    Europe is looking to mow down US forests for "climate friendly" "carbon neutral" power plants. https://mashable.com/article/europeans-burn-forests-bioenergy-climate https://mashable.com/article/europeans-burn-forests-bioenerg...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
merpnderp 5y ago
20 years ago we should have started moving to nuclear. 20 years from now we'll be saying the same thing.
sevagh 5y ago
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.
- abuehrle 5y ago
  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?
  - sevagh 5y ago
    >Temperature of 48.8C sets new record high in Italy and Europe https://weirditaly.com/2021/08/11/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.
    - falcolas 5y ago
      Sure, if you're in Italy. TFA is not. Of course, TFA lists the Celsius measurement in the first sentence, but who reads articles these days?
      - sevagh 5y ago
        "120 degrees" is completely meaningless. I pointed out that the title is shit. The first sentence explaining the shit title doesn't make the title less shit, right?
        falcolas 5y ago
        Meaningless, eh? An American news source puts up the title “Europe’s all-time heat record […] at nearly 120 degrees” What’s unclear about this? All of the context needed to properly interpret “120 degrees” comes right before it. It’s only, as you say, “shit”, if you don’t like that America uses Fahrenheit. Or if you’re looking for a reason to “shit” on American press for using the Fahrenheit scale.
rootusrootus 5y ago
> 322 Kelvin You know, I think this makes good sense. A degree can be celsius, or fahrenheit, but only a Kelvin is a Kelvin. So this could be unambiguously simplified in the future if we standardized on K.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Cool, what precisely is one degree K? What does it really mean? The answer is as about as arbitrary as basing it on human comfort levels - it's originally based on boiling and freezing a specific composition of water at a specific pressure, then adjusted so the zero point is at a universal constant. That last is really the only meaningful part about it. And practically speaking, the 0 to 100 C range is no longer even based on the actions of water - just as f is no longer based on human comfort.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    > Cool, what precisely is one degree K? What does it really mean? Well that's my point :). There are no degrees in K, there are just K. So at least we could remove that little bit of ambiguity. Otherwise... > about as arbitrary as basing it on human comfort levels I agree. All scales are arbitrary. I actually think F has one upside over both K and C -- more resolution means fractional degrees are rarely used. But that's just a nitpick.
EugeneOZ 5y ago
Finally, the boss has arrived and told us what everyone should do.
falcolas 5y ago
> Yes, OK, everyone, Fahrenheit, we get it, metric system, cut the smugness, Axios is a US-centric publication, discuss the issues. The Celcius reading is in the first sentence. Any gripes about this are on the headline alone.
alexose 5y ago
There could be a hidden benefit in the adoption of ductless heat pumps. Not only are they more efficient than the systems they replace, but they can also provide heating. This would reduce the amount of oil or natural gas being used to heat homes. Of course, this is also dependent on regional factors, and the ability to properly manage refrigerants... like everything in climate science, the feedback mechanisms are complex and may have unintuitive results :)
- aaronbrethorst 5y ago
  I bought a house in Seattle in March and immediately had the old, unmaintained fossil gas (aka 'natural gas') furnace ripped out and replaced with a heat pump. The heat pump worked better for warming my house from March - May than the furnace did, and has managed to make the unprecedented heat wave we experienced earlier in the summer bearable. It wasn't cheap, but a lot of HVAC companies are offering great financing deals (like 0% interest for 36 months) for the new systems.
  - alexose 5y ago
    I'm not 100% sure about Washington, but I know Oregon has a whole program to incentivize the switch. (I wish they paid even more, but something's better than nothing...) https://www.energytrust.org/ https://www.energytrust.org/
lhorie 5y ago
Might be more on topic to discuss the fact that the legitimacy of this reading is being disputed... With that said, I'm just waiting for articles coming out tomorrow about how mediterranean forest fires are being triggered by climate change and some shmuck objecting that fires have existed since forever. Meanwhile, Russia burns away with a fury of a million suns.
Blikkentrekker 5y ago
> Yes, OK, everyone, Fahrenheit, we get it, metric system, cut the smugness, Axios is a US-centric publication, discuss the issues. The entire article places Celcius first and Fahrenheit in brackets after it, but the title only gives Fahrenheit without saying that it is? It's quite obviously deliberate clickbait. Apart from that; it's quite hard to find on this website that it is “U.S.A centric”, which certainly does not appear from the title or the u.r.i., and going to “About Axios” we find: > We launched Axios in January 2017 based on this shared belief: The world needed smarter, more efficient coverage of the topics shaping the fast-changing world. We pledged to put our audience first, always. Clearly they profile themselves as news for the world, not for the U.S.A., and so they use their units, but only inside of the article text.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Wait does anyone actually use Kelvin anywhere other than lab environment?

snemvalts 5y ago

Depends where you live. Germany has done an idiotic 180 away from nuclear, but France is heavily into it. https://www.electricitymap.org/ https://www.electricitymap.org/

saiya-jin 5y ago
But France isn't building any new, is it. A slow phase-out is what is aligned for near future, and almost entirely replacing it with fossil fuels
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Europe is looking to mow down US forests for "climate friendly" "carbon neutral" power plants. https://mashable.com/article/europeans-burn-forests-bioenergy-climate https://mashable.com/article/europeans-burn-forests-bioenerg...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

merpnderp 5y ago

20 years ago we should have started moving to nuclear. 20 years from now we'll be saying the same thing.

sevagh 5y ago

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.

abuehrle 5y ago
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?
- sevagh 5y ago
  >Temperature of 48.8C sets new record high in Italy and Europe https://weirditaly.com/2021/08/11/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.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    Sure, if you're in Italy. TFA is not. Of course, TFA lists the Celsius measurement in the first sentence, but who reads articles these days?
    - sevagh 5y ago
      "120 degrees" is completely meaningless. I pointed out that the title is shit. The first sentence explaining the shit title doesn't make the title less shit, right?
      - falcolas 5y ago
        Meaningless, eh? An American news source puts up the title “Europe’s all-time heat record […] at nearly 120 degrees” What’s unclear about this? All of the context needed to properly interpret “120 degrees” comes right before it. It’s only, as you say, “shit”, if you don’t like that America uses Fahrenheit. Or if you’re looking for a reason to “shit” on American press for using the Fahrenheit scale.

rootusrootus 5y ago

> 322 Kelvin You know, I think this makes good sense. A degree can be celsius, or fahrenheit, but only a Kelvin is a Kelvin. So this could be unambiguously simplified in the future if we standardized on K.

falcolas 5y ago
Cool, what precisely is one degree K? What does it really mean? The answer is as about as arbitrary as basing it on human comfort levels - it's originally based on boiling and freezing a specific composition of water at a specific pressure, then adjusted so the zero point is at a universal constant. That last is really the only meaningful part about it. And practically speaking, the 0 to 100 C range is no longer even based on the actions of water - just as f is no longer based on human comfort.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > Cool, what precisely is one degree K? What does it really mean? Well that's my point :). There are no degrees in K, there are just K. So at least we could remove that little bit of ambiguity. Otherwise... > about as arbitrary as basing it on human comfort levels I agree. All scales are arbitrary. I actually think F has one upside over both K and C -- more resolution means fractional degrees are rarely used. But that's just a nitpick.

EugeneOZ 5y ago

Finally, the boss has arrived and told us what everyone should do.

falcolas 5y ago

> Yes, OK, everyone, Fahrenheit, we get it, metric system, cut the smugness, Axios is a US-centric publication, discuss the issues. The Celcius reading is in the first sentence. Any gripes about this are on the headline alone.

alexose 5y ago

There could be a hidden benefit in the adoption of ductless heat pumps. Not only are they more efficient than the systems they replace, but they can also provide heating. This would reduce the amount of oil or natural gas being used to heat homes. Of course, this is also dependent on regional factors, and the ability to properly manage refrigerants... like everything in climate science, the feedback mechanisms are complex and may have unintuitive results :)

aaronbrethorst 5y ago
I bought a house in Seattle in March and immediately had the old, unmaintained fossil gas (aka 'natural gas') furnace ripped out and replaced with a heat pump. The heat pump worked better for warming my house from March - May than the furnace did, and has managed to make the unprecedented heat wave we experienced earlier in the summer bearable. It wasn't cheap, but a lot of HVAC companies are offering great financing deals (like 0% interest for 36 months) for the new systems.
- alexose 5y ago
  I'm not 100% sure about Washington, but I know Oregon has a whole program to incentivize the switch. (I wish they paid even more, but something's better than nothing...) https://www.energytrust.org/ https://www.energytrust.org/

lhorie 5y ago

Might be more on topic to discuss the fact that the legitimacy of this reading is being disputed... With that said, I'm just waiting for articles coming out tomorrow about how mediterranean forest fires are being triggered by climate change and some shmuck objecting that fires have existed since forever. Meanwhile, Russia burns away with a fury of a million suns.

Blikkentrekker 5y ago

> Yes, OK, everyone, Fahrenheit, we get it, metric system, cut the smugness, Axios is a US-centric publication, discuss the issues. The entire article places Celcius first and Fahrenheit in brackets after it, but the title only gives Fahrenheit without saying that it is? It's quite obviously deliberate clickbait. Apart from that; it's quite hard to find on this website that it is “U.S.A centric”, which certainly does not appear from the title or the u.r.i., and going to “About Axios” we find: > We launched Axios in January 2017 based on this shared belief: The world needed smarter, more efficient coverage of the topics shaping the fast-changing world. We pledged to put our audience first, always. Clearly they profile themselves as news for the world, not for the U.S.A., and so they use their units, but only inside of the article text.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Wait does anyone actually use Kelvin anywhere other than lab environment?