The Strongest El Niño Ever

The problem with Europe is not El Niño. Our problem is that we are the worse region in the world in how fast the temperature is rising, as you can see in this image/page:

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/NMAPS/tmp_GHCNv4_ERSS...

We could live without A/C, and many thought that the increase would be bearable. But then we received a slap in the face, with +7ºC (+12ºF) in the western half, +4ºC (7ºF) in the eastern and north. Deaths by heat don't usually happen at someone's house without A/C: they primarily happen either to people in elderly homes without A/C and maybe even impaired to ask for help or to hydrate properly, or people working outside in sun hours. Putting A/C in every room of every home in Europe would do little if elderly homes, many of them public, are not properly adapted.

Statistics in France show that 75% of the heat related deaths happen in people 75 and older, over 90% in people 65 and older. As sad as is might sound, it is seen as a new "natural cause" of death. Hopefully those buildings will adapt.

In fact we go out of our way to experience these swings with saunas and cold plunges. I have put this up in the same category of "wet hair gives you pneumonia", but I am open to learning one way or another.

It also makes perfect sense that the country would put thermostat limits in place. In America we have "coldness wars" in public places where companies crank the thermostat down lower and lower until you have a situation where everyone's sitting around an office or mall wearing sweaters because it's so cold inside the buildings.

None of this is about "ideology" it's about preserving a particular culture. A culture that maybe is being killed by the climate crisis that is rendering the outside uninhabitable, but again the redirection from talking about global warming to talking about the Silly Frogs is quite intentional and in bad faith. And it's not just from OP it's a coordinated media campaign.

The prevention comes to play with massive restrictions around visibility of the units on facades in order to preserve character of apartment buildings and beauty. In some cases these can apply to private homes, too. Additionally you have the copropriété, where you need the majority of the building to grant you the right to install AC. The cities have rigid enforcement of all these and can mandate clawbacks and of course fines. And we didn't get into what you're even allowed to install - the things installed in the US won't cut it.

Offices and schools. Laws don't mandate AC, but they prevent it from being put too strong. 27C, I believe is as cold as you're going to get.

French people have a sort of cultural revulsion to AC - forget climate change and American influence, it'll make you sick and you'll hurting your health.

Just stating the facts, not defending the US. The US has a religious opposition to climate change actions as strong as the French religious opposition to AC.

And for older people, France sucks. For younger people, arguably the whole situation really sucks.

Except France very much does need AC. They may keep it off 99% of the time, but anyplace that experiences 38C+ temperatures should have AC systems installed for public safety. The cost benefit ratio is extremely in favor of having AC in France even if they don’t fully cool indoor temperatures to 22C, there’s a huge advantage to limiting temperatures to below 30C.

Paris has hit 42+C before, in places without AC those temperatures result in deaths.

You can see the same dolorism in the national media[2]. While using coal-powered AC is indeed polluting and not the only solution, it's not the case in France due to the nuclear and hydro share in the mix.

[1]: https://www.ademe.fr/presse/communique-national/avis-de-lade...

[2]: https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/le-18-20-un-...

I live in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. 15 years ago, typical summer daily highs made it into the 80s for a week or two, and in 10+ years of being here before that I never saw it hit 90°F. Now we're 90°F almost all summer and we hit 106°F last summer (the forecast says over 100°F by the end of this week). Overnight lows have seen a similar increase. I'm getting older and fans no longer keep me cool enough to function well. As a compromise, I installed evaporative cooling 5 years ago. In our climate (very dry air when it's hot) it works well and takes ~25% of the energy of AC to run (power is only consumed by a large fan motor and a small water pump). But it does consume water, increasing our total water usage in warm months by ~50%. We have plenty of water in our area, but that's been trending in the wrong direction as well, even in wetter years.

The inability to perceive that ones politics is destroying ones societies poorer members and thus in retaliation they destroy the societies structure is monstrous

The politicians they population elect are not deeply divided, and thus can be considered a single entity that refuses to even try to do something.

Which is hardly air-conditioning country above latitude 49 although obviously climate change may change that, but there was no point having air-conditioning that far north in the past for two weeks of possible hot weather, a resident living in the American southwest who will never have a white Christmas ever and air conditioning was always a must.

I only ask because when I moved from the US south to the high desert in NM (about 2KM) I had to learn how to time that transition.

Very few folks here run A/Cs, we generally have homes designed to stay warm and during the summer usually fans go on about bed time and off in the morning, and that's enough to keep things cool because of insulation.

It was not obvious to me how that worked and I spent one very sweaty summer before I got the timing correct.

Of course, if the nights are hot (which sometimes happens) then that doesn't work so well.

That's pretty nice actually!

I am in a brand new rooftop apartment, so pretty exposed to heat. I can keep 28-29C indoors when it's 38C outdoors. That's hot but workable with a ceiling fan.

At night we open all windows and have a ceiling fan above the bed. We've got about 24C indoor in the morning, with nightime outdoor temperature at about 21C.

Obviously I keep physical activity to early morning and late night.

Was 10C this morning when I went out to walk my dog, in a t-shirt and shorts!

We can update building regulations so that new building are better.

We can plant trees. It brings shade in summer but lets sun through in winter.

We can stop taking the plane.

I mean, there really are tons of things to do!

Edit: you can still use an AC or dehumidifier on top of it. You will consume less energy with shades.

Letting the sun in is like letting your heaters on. You would not turn on both heaters and aircon in summer, would you?

Insulate all piping properly, the outdoor part will freeze in winter, and the indoor part will drip in summer if you don't. The best products for this are foamed rubber based. Make the insulation seamless with the right glue or tape, every opening will drip.

Add manual or automatic valves to shut off the heating loops in summer, so you don't accidentally get cold water in there. Your cold water loop might also need an extra circulation pump, depending on how you run your piping, but that's hard to say without a lot more detail.

FCUs are available in the same form factors as indoor units for refrigerant-based systems, including a thermostat remote control, e.g. https://www.sinclair-solutions.com/files/user-manual-en/fan-... . But get one from the manufacturer of your outdoor unit, so the communication lines work, e.g. so the indoor unit can instruct the outdoor unit to start/stop/regulate.

Even then, there is a fair limit in cooling and efficiency you can get from them because of the lack of phase changes occurring.

If you have a balanced mechanical ventilation (both inlet and outlet) that would be one of the best options to condition the whole house without putting air conditioning units everywhere. Having said that, we turn on the air conditioning in the attic during hot days which removes the biggest heat and moisture from the house. Next up is installing more sun blinds to prevent the heat from entering in the first place.

Please bring some shade and save energy.

Edit: also, without wind there is a hot and humid bubble around our own body. Fans help a lot with that by bringing fresh dry air right onto the sweat so it can evaporate.

Have an AC if you need to. But please dont have only an AC. Shading and fans pay for themselve in energy savings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVlRompc1yE

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcxQZ8ub54Y

These are the conversations that get translated into policy. They are literally about directly satisfying people's emotions. No detours. Accuracy? I hope you're joking.

AND there's the problem that the policy the "pro-global-warming" camp wants will not even help. Global CO2 emission reduction is not realistic.

I'm working in AI and hoping that will help. If I had the realistic option (I have a family to support), I'd love to work in Chemistry to make it at least possible, maybe even easy, to do something about that (of course, even Chemistry products are being designed with AI, so ...). Achieving anything in policy seems to me beyond absurd. In fact I find it very hard to defend the viewpoint that even the policymakers pushing global warming action even want to help. Technological solutions at least might achieve something.

So that in ~6 years they will account for 1%, and still a fraction of the percent of the world total energy use?

Only if the current absolute present value is enough that the resulting trend matters.

It was only 2 weeks ago when someone posted an article claiming data centers worldwide use 24x less water than golf courses worldwide.

And I mean, you need somewhere to collate all that climate data? You need telecoms to let scientists communicate?

>Driven by AI use, the US economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminium, steel, cement and chemicals. In advanced economies more broadly, data centres are projected to drive more than 20% of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030, putting the power sector in those economies back on a growth footing after years of stagnating or declining demand in many of them.

If horse use trends continue at their current pace, London will be covered in 20 meters of horse manure by the end of the decade.

> In advanced economies more broadly, data centre's are projected to drive more than 20% of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030

20% of the growth isn't much overall either is it? That's likely assuming that the million and 1 spruiked projects actually get off the ground.

What is myopic is chasing social media "evil of the month" trends, instead of looking at the actual data.

The could, and should generate their own electricity as well. And perhaps even provide free power to the surrounding neighborhood to make up for the noise and inconvenience of having one nearby.

there's a sort of person who would look at these false predictions and willingly not update, but instead move the goal post.

here's the reality: there's small subset of unfortunate people who still cling on to this model despite being demolished by reality. they are not the consensus fortunately - each field has some strange people believing some wild ideas. what's interesting is what the public chooses to side with.

I just think the science is still being worked out.

But the world is getting hotter, and the scientists know it’s not good for us when the earth heats past a certain point.

But we’re still burning that fuel regardless.

>If you give any regularly-occurring event that varies in intensity enough time, it is guaranteed to break the records of its previous intensities.

I don't even have to add emphasis myself, you already did.

Someone then named a regularly-occurring event of varying intensity (summer is hot), and pointed out that the data shows the opposite of your explanation (i.e. this isn't random variance causing random spikes; this is a continuous increasing trend).

You then said, effectively, "not that regularly-occurring event of varying intensity!"

Kinda seems like you're moving the goalposts a bit.