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lbreakjai 5 hours ago [-]
The speed of change has been astoundingly fast. We went from temperatures above 30 degrees being newsworthy, to months on end with temperatures above 30 degrees in, what? Four years?
Everyone I know is in the process of getting A.C installed but installers can't cope with the level of demand. There's some ideological resistance, but understand the change happened as close to overnight as you'll get when talking about the climate.
dathinab 5 hours ago [-]
yep,
single >30C day was worth a full front-page on a large newspaper just idk. 15 years ago.
there are songs written about the temp. being 35C because it was that really special heat day you have at most once every few years (we had multiple days of that in a row and reaching basically 40C this year)
last summer we had >week with temperatures with 15-20C over the average temp. (of that month in the past)! And still >10C over the average of monthly maximal temperatures. Month where you normally are happy for 20C breaking full year/high of the summer heat records...
basically Germany went in one year from "yeah there are more really hot days in summer in average, it's a pain, but fine" to "oh, shit, we have a huge problem in a lot of areas due to the lack of AC"
most annoying many older, especially conservative, politicians still approach this with a "was fine for us will be fine for you/no AC for you" mentality. Especially when it comes to topics like spending money for thinks like making sure Hospital facilities for newborns have AC (that young children can't properly self regulate their body temperature, until idk. 9-12 moth of age).
perching_aix 4 hours ago [-]
> there are songs written about the temp. being 35C because it was that really special heat day
I live in the south of Spain and I have first-person experience with this - most of these deaths happened to old people who, despite their really good pensions, would rather die of heat stroke than install and turn on an air conditioner. Some really think they are going to be buried with their money.
You could cut these deaths to basically zero if the government installed the air conditioners and they didn’t have to pay for the electricity. Just to be clear I’m not advocating for this.
elmer2 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
throwaway473825 6 hours ago [-]
I'll give you credits for emphasizing electricity, because Europe isn't against air conditioning. Basically all cars sold in Europe, or made by European companies and sold elsewhere, have air conditioning - but they're powered by oil.
The EU ETS - Europe's flagship carbon market program - specifically exempts gas for heating and oil for transportation, but not power generation, which incentivizes oil and gas over electricity:
Unfortunately, air conditioning in buildings runs on electricity, and thus it's discouraged. But that's more due to a dislike of electricity than of air conditioning itself.
puttycat 6 hours ago [-]
> Europe isn't against air conditioning
Simply not true for certain countries, notably France and Germany. This is well documented.
dathinab 5 hours ago [-]
but this is not really caused by "some leftist politics" or similar but has other historic and complicated reasons. E.g. in Germany across all political spectrum there is a lot of people which think just being in a room with can make you sick (independent on how much it cools the room). In general there are many smaller reason they have against AC which in combination with it simply not really having been necessary (for homes etc.) until recently lead to a wider cross party "non-liking" of ACs.
This anyway isn't specific to one political direction, I mean yes some regulations affect the cooling liquid used, nothing of which is a major road block.
Also the huge majority of new supper market, shopping centers, cars etc. in both countries you named have AC
But also other other mentioned heat death in that statistic are mostly a combination with other health issues. Hence why there is some relation between countries having a lot of old people and countries having a lot of heat related death. But also hence why many people will not treat this death as heat death even if they happen to their family.
A big problem for changing the current state in Germany are also like so "old politicians being mentally stuck in the past". The kind of "we didn't need it so you don't either" mindset. (Which if we have to speak about political direction is more common on the right side of the political spectrum, maybe simple due to that side being also older in average).
perching_aix 5 hours ago [-]
Pretty much this, it simply genuinely hasn't been a part of the culture until recently. The energy use angle didn't help, nor did the cost of the units. In case GP forgot, the eastern half of Europe only got rid of Soviet occupation in the 90s, and has been playing quite the catchup. We bought fans and that was kinda it. Can't really comment on western Europe, but I'm sure he can. :)
GP's big leftist overregulation fantasy is adorable though, and definitely no stereotypes were hurt in the writing of his comment, but the reality is that mini split heat pump aircon installations in particular are booming here, usually paired with solar. So unless he's referring to something from the past millenium, which would be pretty weird to do without explicitly noting it, that's a swing and a miss.
The spooky statistics "difference" comes down to a difference in measurement methodology afaik. This exact talking point he's raising has been very popular in certain circles as of late, actually.
But I'm sure his position is entirely his own and actually way more informed than mine, he simply omitted his sources and rationale for brevity :)
vasco 6 hours ago [-]
Read their comment more closely please.
arghwhat 5 hours ago [-]
Doesn't change that it isn't accurate.
In Scandinavia, lack of air condition in homes vs. presence in cars has nothing to do with carbon programs.
What options become standard in cars, and what options are cheap to implement in cars (adding a bit more piping during assembly), follow an entirely different market dynamic than the retrofitting homes (most houses are either pre-WW2 or from a boom in the 50's to 70's) with air conditioning to handle what used to be very short bursts of heat.
Not only did weather not demand it, old brick houses have significant thermal mass and during sudden heat waves you'll often find the inside to already be noticably cooler.
It's being considered now both because weather got weird and our construction went so far in energy efficiency that while new construction barely require any energy to heat in the depths of winter, they become literal ovens in peak of summer.
yread 6 hours ago [-]
Even in the perfect land of the free people die from heat:
> we estimate that some 9,000 deaths each year in the country are impacted by heat
Heat deaths are almost entirely due to harvesting effect, i.e. comorbidity deaths.
Unless you are a psychopath and consider shooting another person intentionally a harvest death, they're not the same.
rmah 6 hours ago [-]
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Of course heat wave deaths and being shot is not the same.
perching_aix 3 hours ago [-]
That's the point. GP deceptively suggests that what the EU escapes in gun deaths, it makes back in spades in heat deaths, providing GP with great ideological schadenfreude. Except this doesn't actually follow, in part because these are fundamentally different mortality categories indeed (and in part because the counting methodologies involved are drastically different, etc).
netsharc 6 hours ago [-]
What do you call it when the only one believing the lie is the liar himself... Getting high of one's supply?
If Europeans want AC, they can buy one. The speed of climate change is such that the 50k dead probably have thought they didn't need one and can cope with the "few days" of heat. (or can't afford one, but that's not a uniquely European problem (1)). In 2026 it was more than a "few days".
Everyone I know is in the process of getting A.C installed but installers can't cope with the level of demand. There's some ideological resistance, but understand the change happened as close to overnight as you'll get when talking about the climate.
single >30C day was worth a full front-page on a large newspaper just idk. 15 years ago.
there are songs written about the temp. being 35C because it was that really special heat day you have at most once every few years (we had multiple days of that in a row and reaching basically 40C this year)
last summer we had >week with temperatures with 15-20C over the average temp. (of that month in the past)! And still >10C over the average of monthly maximal temperatures. Month where you normally are happy for 20C breaking full year/high of the summer heat records...
basically Germany went in one year from "yeah there are more really hot days in summer in average, it's a pain, but fine" to "oh, shit, we have a huge problem in a lot of areas due to the lack of AC"
most annoying many older, especially conservative, politicians still approach this with a "was fine for us will be fine for you/no AC for you" mentality. Especially when it comes to topics like spending money for thinks like making sure Hospital facilities for newborns have AC (that young children can't properly self regulate their body temperature, until idk. 9-12 moth of age).
Do you mean "28° in the shade" perhaps, a French song from 1978 by Jean-François Maurice? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpPnr0mCka4
Been a while I heard it, had to look it up. :) I also recalled mid-30s something, guess that was wrong. Or this is another case of the Mandela effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Blue
You could cut these deaths to basically zero if the government installed the air conditioners and they didn’t have to pay for the electricity. Just to be clear I’m not advocating for this.
The EU ETS - Europe's flagship carbon market program - specifically exempts gas for heating and oil for transportation, but not power generation, which incentivizes oil and gas over electricity:
https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/many-building-r...
Unfortunately, air conditioning in buildings runs on electricity, and thus it's discouraged. But that's more due to a dislike of electricity than of air conditioning itself.
Simply not true for certain countries, notably France and Germany. This is well documented.
This anyway isn't specific to one political direction, I mean yes some regulations affect the cooling liquid used, nothing of which is a major road block.
Also the huge majority of new supper market, shopping centers, cars etc. in both countries you named have AC
But also other other mentioned heat death in that statistic are mostly a combination with other health issues. Hence why there is some relation between countries having a lot of old people and countries having a lot of heat related death. But also hence why many people will not treat this death as heat death even if they happen to their family.
A big problem for changing the current state in Germany are also like so "old politicians being mentally stuck in the past". The kind of "we didn't need it so you don't either" mindset. (Which if we have to speak about political direction is more common on the right side of the political spectrum, maybe simple due to that side being also older in average).
GP's big leftist overregulation fantasy is adorable though, and definitely no stereotypes were hurt in the writing of his comment, but the reality is that mini split heat pump aircon installations in particular are booming here, usually paired with solar. So unless he's referring to something from the past millenium, which would be pretty weird to do without explicitly noting it, that's a swing and a miss.
The spooky statistics "difference" comes down to a difference in measurement methodology afaik. This exact talking point he's raising has been very popular in certain circles as of late, actually.
But I'm sure his position is entirely his own and actually way more informed than mine, he simply omitted his sources and rationale for brevity :)
In Scandinavia, lack of air condition in homes vs. presence in cars has nothing to do with carbon programs.
What options become standard in cars, and what options are cheap to implement in cars (adding a bit more piping during assembly), follow an entirely different market dynamic than the retrofitting homes (most houses are either pre-WW2 or from a boom in the 50's to 70's) with air conditioning to handle what used to be very short bursts of heat.
Not only did weather not demand it, old brick houses have significant thermal mass and during sudden heat waves you'll often find the inside to already be noticably cooler.
It's being considered now both because weather got weird and our construction went so far in energy efficiency that while new construction barely require any energy to heat in the depths of winter, they become literal ovens in peak of summer.
> we estimate that some 9,000 deaths each year in the country are impacted by heat
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/31/nx-s1-5724225/heat-wave-death...
Unless you are a psychopath and consider shooting another person intentionally a harvest death, they're not the same.
If Europeans want AC, they can buy one. The speed of climate change is such that the 50k dead probably have thought they didn't need one and can cope with the "few days" of heat. (or can't afford one, but that's not a uniquely European problem (1)). In 2026 it was more than a "few days".
(1) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/millions-struggle-to-pay...