‘I’ve never seen heat this bad. It’s not normal’: Italy struggles as temperature tops 40C 104F (48C 120F predicted)
*edited to correct conversion in title
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Comments468https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/15/italy-temperatures-48c-mediterranean-heatwave-hotter?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_OtherOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
This is fine, we just need to switch from plastic bugs and make caps attached to bottles and everything will be alright! Together we can fight at least 1% of the carbon emissions from top 100 corporations in the world :)
I really think this narrative is counterproductive. It's not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it's fun. They're doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
No corporation is going to choose more environmentally friendly practices out of the goodness of their own hearts unless those practices are cheaper. And given that that is very rarely the case, we have to look at things like carbon taxes to actually price in the externalities of climate damage. But that is going to increase the prices of some goods, and that requires a level of political will that has proven very difficult to come by. "Just make corporations pay" to fix things, whether that's a carbon tax or taxes on oil company executive pay or dividends or whatever else the proposal may be is always going to mean "increase prices to compensate for climate-related externalities".
That doesn't necessarily mean that all costs of addressing climate change must directly fall on consumers; government subsidies to reduce the costs of environmentally sustainable practices can also be extremely beneficial. But ultimately, this is a problem that we've all created, and we're all going to have to be part of solving it. Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn't actually get us any closer to solving things.
Yes and No. Yes, it’s not only corporations and we must act ourselves.
No, it’s the rules that set the game. Corporations play within the rules. Politics is owning and can change the rules. The society and corporations will follow accordingly. If we really want to change we can. Look what happened during Covid. In retrospect, some insane rules (eg Germany kids not allowed to enter playgrounds. Kids couldn’t play to save the elderly). However, society obeyed to those rules.
It’s not us, it’s the rules that must change. In my view this should be the priority.
At least here in Australia parents were using the kids at the playground to socialise (standing right up in each other's space, holding empty coffee cups to justify no mask), and so there were multiple vectors of infection. That and multigenerational households are more common in some parts of the world, so if the kid brings it home, whole family gets sick, hospital system overloads.
It wasn't specifically kids suffer so oldies don't die, but the continuation is that if the oldies are healthy, if anyone needs the hospital, there'll be staff to look after them.
TL;DR people are taking the piss and making the jobs of HCWs harder... Not like that's anything new 🙄
yeah it was obviously the same on any playground so the above comment saying it was "to safe elderly" is just very short sighted. Additionaly implying that this was the case in whole of Germany is again wrong. Each federal state had it's own health regulations in place but yeah some of those were kind of mediated by the ministry of health. Anyway it was a lot more complex than what this comment suggests
Sure it was more complex. Not going to write a Phd here.
My point is, the society accepts rules even tough rules if it’s for everyone. If it’s fair. So, at Covid times younger people, who are less likely to get serious sickness were accepting being „caged“ for two years (exaggerating a bit. If you are 5 years old. 2 years is half of your life!)
I strongly miss this generational fairness when it comes to climate change. Not seeing any step back in terms of carbon consumption/ consumption at all from the older people.
Don’t know about your country. The bigger goal in Europe was to keep hospitals working. Goal was not to Triage people cos hospitals were crowed. That happened in the beginning in Northern Italy. At Triage you look at who has biggest chances of survival, who is worth to invest your effort. Guess if it’s the elderly or the younger.
Just to make it clear. It’s fine for me how it worked out in Germany. China is the blue print how it worked bad. But want to make my argument that all that rules were on the shoulders of the younger generation to safe the elderly.
Right now in Germany, we have an insane political discussion about carbon reduction. It’s about actions. Being active. So, your heaters need to be replaced from oil and gas to renewables. Yes, it will cost some money. Do you think people are following that goal to safe the younger generations? I‘m pretty pissed about my and the older generation. And concerned about the reality for my kids.
and guess who lobbies a ridiculous amount to either keep the rules the same or bias it further towards their interests
yep, corporations once again
Indeed. Go out at the street and show you want change. Politics fear many people on streets fighting for their rights. Look at France, Israel. When was last time you fight for your rights?
We did but we're paying for it now with the rise of "-isms" whose values are built on stifling change. 2-3 years of rapid change might have helped redefine an era of politics for the contrary. TBD I guess.
Blaming the public over corporations is the #1 reason why we are in this mess in the first place. For decades, the narrative has been "it's your fault and you need to change your habits". It is a pointless and useless narrative because nobody is going to actively change anything like that until they are forced to. Even when we make moderate, easy efforts to do stuff like recycling, the recycling companies bitch and moan about how they can't ship this shit off to China to let them do the work, and then throw away most of it, anyway. We PAY recycling companies to recycle this shit and they can't be bothered to figure out how to recycle it. We PAY THEM to take away materials to use in new products, not the other way around.
In every aspect of people's lives, you will find that corporations use up 90% of the resources that the general public use because corporations deal in economies-of-scale far bigger than anything a person or even a country can do. Corporations have been pushing the "blame the public" narrative to shift focus away from the decades of abuse they will continue to inflict on the planet. Corporation shit all over everything, and they will continue to do so in the name of profit. That is exactly what they are designed to do.
It takes governmental effort and regulations against the corporations to stop this sort of thing. They do it for clean water, and CFCs, and automotive design, and architecture, and many many other things. Why? Because a minority group of people who are struggling to make a living is never going to have enough power and clout as a large corporation or a government.
I think we can agree on that corporations are aimed at cheapest way to produce most popular goods at the biggest scale they can achieve for, in the end, produce the biggest possible profit. Thats what corporations are made for: money.
In the end, rich guy gets a yacht, bunker for apocalypse and private residence with AC, private kitchen stuff and anything they want so he will be fine even if its 60C outside. If it will get unbearable, they'll move to something like Norway and will be fine.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people who live in hot countries will die and millions will be climate refugees.
All that, because producing iphone with coal electricity (simplification, albeit I feel like its close to truth) is 10$ cheaper.
Swapping to paper bags will not help either. There are only two options to solve the issue:
1 is impossible because gov will never cut the feeding hand and 2 is just a matter of time until we will get couple hundred millions migrants from Aftica, India, Pakistan etc.
1 is still possible. But, we're at a tipping point between ending up in some Cyberpunk corporate-ran dystopia and one where the general public actually has the upper-hand and can fend off governmental corruption.
Choose wisely. Vote every year, twice a year.
but the thing about voting is that basically every politician is either:
so we could vote for John StopClimateChange, and then find out that every single thing that Mr. StopClimateChange said about his crusade to stopping climate change was not at all true or was so utterly miniscule in the long run as to be meaningless
then what?
This is a defeatist and authoritarian position that the rich and powerful want you to have. They want to feel like you can't win, so that they vote behind you while you sit at home. Until eventually, they just dismantle democracy altogether and we go back to fiefdoms.
There is clearly one party that is more in line with the goals of fighting climate change than the other. Vote for that group. Vote for that group twice a year.
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I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
You mean this is a problem that the boomers and gen x created. THEY are the generations that controlled the corporations whose only concern was profit. THEY are the generations that pushed consumerism with no regard to the natural world. THEY are the generations that elected the politicians that allowed this all to happen. So here come the millennials and zoomers to clean up their mess, just like everything else they fucked up for the rest of us.
Yeah, don’t put the blame on us. In all my 29 years of life climate change has always been a big topic no one has done anything about.
We’re living in this ridiculous gerontocracy where old lizards bought by corporations are making decisions to benefit said corporations for the next couple of months, all the while the coming generations suffer.
At this point it’s too late. It’s time to owe up, apologise for being so greedy that you used up the world, leaving nothing for coming generations.
What an awkward speech.
Sure people spending all day on TikTok and playing with cryptocurrencies are actually solving problems created by people who worked in the mines and watched TV.
The truth is, across all generations, everyone is doing anything to live the most confortable life possible according to their convictions, and YouTubers today are not better promoting their shitty gamer drinks or VPN services than a 1980s vendor trying to sell as much diesel engines as possible. It’s even more true when it comes to corporate, or you’ll have to tell me what’s is Zuckerberg doing for the planet that Bill Gates is not.
At any given time there were people willing to change the world, trying to make it more fair. We’re just never enough. And being a millennial I can assure you it’s not changing anytime soon, even tho things are getting shittier and shittier.
Playing with cryptocurrency (monopoly money/disney dollars) is an incredibly energy intense process. Extremely wasteful and damaging just to play with some made up money.
although it's very common for the earlier generation to blame the later generation for the world sucking (or what they percieve as "sucking"), in this case it doesn't work because not every boomer and gen-x-er is a CEO or past CEO
like they're wrong to blame the later generations for this, but that's because it's not mainly a generational thing
Looking at the voting results for younger generations, this isn't even close to this simple. Yes, there is a slight shift towards more environmental policies/parties, but it is far from a majority even in the youngest age bracket that is allowed to vote (looking at voting results from the last general election in Germany).
They produce like double of what we need, it's not only what we need and buy, capitalism is extremely inefficient in the usage of resources, which brought us into this mess.
Yeah. Anything that isn’t consumed is destroyed. Case in point, dumpster diving at grocery stores is illegal. Fast fashion companies destroy clothes that don’t sell.
The entire system is fucked.
Have you seen how much CEOs get paid?
Corporations can switch to greener alternatives AND pay workers a living wage AND make a profit, without having the consumers pay the price.
All it takes is the willingness of politicians to force them to. Corporations raise prices because they're allowed to, and they'll take any excuse they can get to get more money out of people.
Gas prices have skyrocketed. First it was covid's fault. Then it was the war in Ukraine. All the while gas corporations have been seeing record-breaking profits. It's all just greed.
I think as someone who did "the things", and that's how I live now, it's hard to look around and see basically no perceptible difference. The incentive is slim for the individual. The bulk of the population is never going to make those changes.
That's why change needs to come from the corporate level through regulation.
People generally just want food, shelter, health, and comfort. And most people in the world are struggling to maintain food and shelter.
Their evironmental footprint doesn't even register as an afterthought.
That's what I was going to suggest but then I always feel this is a complicated problem and it's not just one thing. It's a lot of efforts on in different areas, but regulation is certainly one. It shouldn't be that hard to do considering it's one of the main responsibilities of government.
And there are portions of people in our society that will pay for those minimal prices either because they can't afford anything else, or strictly because it's convenient for them to spend that little so that they have more money left over to do more stuff in their life elsewhere.
But there are also people that are willing to sacrifice and make changes to their lifestyles and spending practices to accommodate the impacts of their actions.
The same is true with corporations. Some large corpos in the world are actively trying to move towards sustainable, circular economies. I'm doing a lot of research right now into the textile industry, and two of the biggest corporations in that space that I've seen are doing decent work on the two fronts I previously mentioned are Lenzing (TENCEL™) and Aquafil (ECONYL®).
Lenzing uses wood of various species from places in Europe, all managed well and FSC/PEFC controlled, to draw out fibers and filaments that are just as fine and useful as polyester fibers/filaments, yet with the added bonus of biodegradability. They also recycle cotton clothing from collection centers in Spain and some larger textile service companies in southern Europe and mix that in with their wood-based feedstock to produce the same rayon fibers.
Aquafil runs on a similar model to Lenzing, except they base theirs on nylon instead of rayon. Aquafil collects ghost nets from around Europe and South America, along with other corporations' scrap nylon (pre-consumer waste) and post-consumer waste from a number of brands (e.g. sunglasses, jackets, etc.) to regenerate nylon back into the same quality as you would find in virgin materials. Now, I don't think that plastic is sufficient anymore thanks to the non-degradable waste associated with it, but it's better than nothing.
Are there flaws with those 2 companies: of course. Their chemical processes might not be 100% closed loop and their claims might be overexaggerated in ways, but it's better than nothing.
Anyways, what this examples shows is that there are corporations and even people on the ground that are willing to make more sustainable choices because they legitimately see the benefit of doing so compared to convention. Someone else might describe this as a form of an adoption life cycle, where you have those more willing to change and those less willing to change as practices and habits shift over time.
Could government help with that? I believe so. I think that's just one lever of change though. If you've been following solar PV growth over the last decade and a half, then you know about the "contagion" phenomenon: some early adopters pick up solar, only for considerers and even late adopters to do the same as word of mouth and other social drivers influence decision making at a people level.
Could the same happen with other sustainable choices in the economy? I fall more into the early adopter camp, so I would say yes. I think corporations spend a lot of time and marketing convincing their customers that said corporations are the best and only options and that no other alternative exists out there: when there absolutely is or might be. Perhaps all it takes is demonstrating to people, doing, not talking, walking the walk, to change their minds. I think the same tactics could be used, in addition to government intervention.
Bottom-up + top-down is the strategy I've heard described by many proponents of sustainability, most notably Al Gore, and I'm all for it too. Luckily humans, at least in some countries around the world, live in free societies and can divide and conquer to work on both of these fronts to affect change.
Yes! If we're expecting corporations to grow a conscience and "Do the right thing^TM^" then we're doomed.
Though I do think the corporations are somewhat responsible for the narrative that everyone is powerless except for them. People pushing the "but the corporations!" while being unwilling to make any changes themselves are actually just carrying water for them. Promoting malaise and doomerism is just letting them have their way.
At any rate trying to appeal to the corporations to do the right thing is a complete waste of time. We need to make more effort ourselves. Which means making an effort to reduce our own carbon emissions as individuals. While also participating in the political process to create regulations that force the corporations to do the right thing. Because they sure as hell won't do it on their own no matter how much people whine about it on the internet.
I didn't get past you contradicting yourself in the first three sentences. Sorry.
You get that nuance out of here, young man/woman! We won't have that kind of thing round these parts!
Can we please leave these canned responses on reddit
Can we leave simplistic, reductionist arguments on reddit?
Also if you only eat meat in the weekends then the rich peoples private jets will suddenly have no environmental impact
Is there a bracelet I can wear to show my solidarity with the people dying of heat stroke, or perhaps an instagram filter.
These two things have no relation. One is about climate change, the other one about (micro)plastics in the environment and our food chain.
Apparently there are still loads of people who don't understand this simple fact and think everything that is done to make the world a better place is for climate change.
I mean, they both show a callous disregard for the fragility of life on this planet, and a keen disinterest in anything but short term convenience and comfort? Oh and profit, can't forget about MONEY
This argument keeps coming up as an excuse to do nothing.
Pure defeatism neglecting even any bit of responsibility.
Yet people who say this will put another child on the planet, buy yet another product from Apple on release, love fast fashion, buy the cheapest goods possible, toss their meal as soon as they're full, vote egoistically, take the cheapest trip to wherever, drive a car, toss cigarette butts on the ground, and so much more.
It's always easier to blame others. Yes, corporations are shit, but remember, they are made up of people like you and I.
WE work there.
WE buy their crap.
WE vote for the same politicians over and over again (or don't vote at all).
WE put another child on this planet to go through this shit.
WE as humans are the problem.
See, that's your point of view. My point of view is that people who are all doom online are the problem.
you can count the owners of the entities that produce the most greenhouse gases within 3 digits; it's not "everybody"
I feel the need to remind people that the concept of the ecological footprint was invented by BP to direct the focus of climate fears away from large corporations and onto individuals.
I wish our choices had a 1% impact.... That seems extremely generous.
For example...
Go look at your local Walmart and it's bazillion products. They expect to sell almost everything in that store multiple times within a month. All that generates enormous waste on a scale that's literally impossible for the earth to sustain for another 100 years without total ecological collapse.
We're living in the single most polluting decade in human history, every decade, since all of us were born. Even if the entire Lemmy user base become subsistence farming monks, the factories would just keep churning out poison unphased.
I'm not saying it's bad for people to try and consume more responsibly. I'm just saying it doesn't make a difference over any meaningful time period until there's a radical change in how our global economy functions.
Environmental catastrophe will continue until we literally cannot ignore it, only then will we do anything substantial about it. Unfortunately that's just how our society works.
I don't agree with you. Many individuals changing their behavior is what it takes for an economic shift in our society. By thinking that we don't have an impact we loose motivation to change our behavior. So if you say you are annoyed by big supermarkets filling our planet with waste that's fine, I agree. But this needs to lead to a change in behavior, first of yourself, then for those who notice you haven't died from eating mostly vegan products and buying from local farmers markets and then hopefully for most people in our society.
Companies produce as long as people consume their products. If commnsumers switch to sustainable products (quite different from products advertised as sustainable) companies will have to follow
I'm not saying your personal choices are bad, I'm saying if you live as sustainably as possible, you're only delaying the inevitable by a millisecond at best. Change needs to be forced, globally, or we're still in the same situation, just by 2051 with a massive "green movement" instead of 2050.
But this talk we're having, it's all too late.
We're entering an era of climate induced super weather that will force the hand of leaders across the globe.
It's gotten to the point where it's becoming cheaper and more strategically significant to do something about climate change, than it is to ignore it. That's when the change happens under our system.
What has that to do with anything? Reducing single use plastics is environmental protection which is not the same as fighting climate change. No one who fights against plastics does so for climate change. Stop spreading such nonsense. Not even your linked article claims something like that.
Why would that be orthogonal? Most plastics are created using crude oil and natural gas feedstocks - the creation of these single use plastics directly impacts climate change.
Energv wise plastics are often super cheap to produce especially compared to their reusable and non plastic alternatives. IIRC the CO2 footprint is drastically lower for items like bags and straws made of plastic.
we have the 80% solution and it's nuclear power, but whatever y'all keep wailing and gnashing teeth and denying the obvious. I'm just gonna keep on living I guess and hope my house survives the shitty weather.
We have what, 10 years to try stop the planet to get over 1,5ºC? 20 over 2ºC?, that's pretty much the time it takes to build a new nuclear power plant from 0.
We are too late.
We had that 10 years ago, now it’s too late to prevent a cascade of collapsing systems. It’s already beginning with insect deaths
I always thought Lemmy (at least this instance) had stricter rules than Reddit. Seeing a comment here that outright wishes for billionaires to be culled is a huge culture shock.
Because we aren't worried about offending advertisers. This is what real people think without being forced to be advertiser friendly.
Unfortunately, now the comment just says Removed
The comment itself is still there, just hidden. You can see it in the modlog, page source, or some apps.
It’s also a VERY popular sentiment the world over
But also Reddit admins are total deadshits, I was permanently banned and then harassed on other platforms for pointing out that Pitbulls are banned in Australia and that we euthanise them, and any other violent animals(just said that was a law here, nothing else). Crazy dog fuckers wouldn’t leave me alone.
I got banned from Reddit, then when I sent an appeal, got permabanned on the alt account too for "repeated violations".
Damned if they say you did, damned-er if you say you did not.
At least Lemmy has a modlog for everyone to see (until some instance decides to scrub that... but I wouldn't like to stay on one of those).
It would do absolutely nothing at all. For every billionaire that is running some seedy enterprise that you don't like, there are dozens if not hundreds of well paid people that are supporting that enterprise and would keep it going going forever.
Send them all to a for-profit prison I say!
Yeah, the vast majority of human kind would gladly own a multi billion dollar company even if that company were causing climate change.
I would gladly own one, I would also gladly pivot it towards not causing climate change.
Only problem is owning one in the first place; most are "publicly owned" by a bunch of investors who themselves are investment funds owned by some other bunch of investors like those putting their money in 401k plans.
It's a nice tangle of cross-ownerships that ends up hurting the actual owners without them having any power to change anything.
You know what the French nobility did when the people started to, quite rightfully, remove their heads? It sure wasn’t move in to the newly vacant palace…
Start at the top and keep going down the list until emissions fall far enough.
dang my comment was quadruple removed, no ragrets
you are a naughty boy.
pretty stupid reason to remove the comment.
If only somebody warned us 50 or 100 years ago. Oh wait, they did.
More like over 200 years ago. There was a french female scientist that discovered the greenhouse effect before John Tyndall but I forgot her name and I'm at work rn, can't search for it.
Are you thinking of Joseph Fourier? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science
It was an American named Eunice Foote that detailed the mechanics of the greenhouse effect, but, give or take, it was also around the same time that many scientists came to the same or similar conclusions about this subject. So yes, we've been warned for over 200 years and have done exactly nothing to solve the problem. Why? $.
Eunice Newton Foote
That's it!
Yeah they were predicting an ice age. And technically we're still in an ice age, so the planet has to get warmer to reach it's natural balance point. But it could also get cooler, because we're in an interglacial period. If we don't want continental glaciation maybe we should be thankful that the planet's warming and not cooling.
That's a myth perpetuated by oil companies to discredit climate science. There was a single paper about it that was widely rejected as a crackpot theory by the larger scientific community. The consensus then was the same as it is now.
Yes, we are in an ice age, seeing as there are frozen poles. But we are changing that, soon there will be no frozen pole caps and with that, the ice age will have ended. We are creating our own hot period.
Btw. it can only be an interglacial period if the glaciers return after. It's a descriptive term, not a prescriptive, and there is no reason why the current warm period should be seen as interglacial.
Because climate doesn't just change without a cause, it needs a driving force. Earlier hot periods were caused by volcanic CO2 and the change happened slowly, over millions of years. Earlier cold periods had a number of different reasons, from nuclear winters after asteroid impact, ultra-high plant growth with not enough O2 consumers or global darkening due to the ash of a supervolcano or even the changing tilt of earths axis.
There is no natural reason for the current warm period to turn into continental glaciation, let alone end so early and so fast, let alone the entire ice age, that has created temperatures that humans are comfortable with, just melting away around us. We have likely ended the ice age entirely, as much heat as we trapped in the atmosphere.
Climate changes more rapidly right now than it ever did before bar the impact of ecocidal asteroids and the consequences are dire. We are heating up the planet and there is no force cooling it. If we want to stay even a little bit comfortable, we should drastically reduce the amount of energy trapped in our atmosphere.
New normal, folks. So begins the era of climate migration.
A reminder that this is why we should never tolerate selfishness. We're now largely screwed because we, as a species, valued our individual comfort over expert research.
We knew what we needed to do - but no, profits. Such a dumb way to die.
Climate and Healthcare migration. I can't afford to retire here in the states. It's coming.
you will probably not be entirled tobhealthcare in Europe either then.
Usually the idea is that you pay as a worker into the healthcare system. If you never paid in here you will probably have to fo dor private insurance and you'll be faced with similiar rates like in the US because the age of entry is crucial for the rates of private health insurance
Some European countries do provide healthcare if you get permanent residence or citizenship, despite not paying throughout your life.
Some countries have "universal healthcare" for all citizens, you only pay as a worker to get a retirement fund.
So you can end up penniless and homeless, but they will keep you alive (...sometimes to suffer for as long as possible, but that's a different matter).
Detroit ftw.
This has been the mildest summer in my 5 years living in the area, I'm loving it
Tornado watches are becoming more frequent tho
Same here in montreal, my grass has never been this green in the middle of july. Kinda weird that we had all those forest fires when the summer's been pretty damn mild for now
Mild in Montreal, maybe, but check out the Canadian Drought Monitor as the rest of Canada is in drought. Like, the entire rest of Canada. https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/agricultural-production/weather/canadian-drought-monitor/current-drought-conditions
Over here in the west it's never been so dry. Pastures are brown, hay and crops aren't just stunted but are dying before maturity. Trees are yellowing and dropping leaves. Plague of grasshoppers eating everything that was still green. Every day is hot and the air is full of smoke, it feels like the end of the world over here.
That isn't "just" climate change though, it's also urbanisation and the way you guys over there use ground water. It's a combination of a lot of things, climate change is only one puzzle piece in the whole scheme of things.
Also, the drought thing is easily combatable with desalination, which has a few other benefits. The main caveat is, it's expensive. But, it's a lot cheaper than having to deal with various other things due to the droughts.
Guessing you've never been to Western Canada. We only have a couple major cities, and we don't use that much groundwater both as it tends to be saline and because we have plenty of surface water to use due to snowmelt runoff. Also we don't have anything to desalinate, unless we're talking about that low-quality groundwater, which is a very expensive proposition as you say to get any significant volume.
We're not concerned about water for drinking, city usage etc. Most cities are on major rivers that are running near normally. Hydro dams have tons of storage to run until next winter's snow. On my farm I have dugouts that capture runoff, they are full. I have shallow wells on GUDI aquifers where the water is near the top of the casing! I'm irrigating my garden and my orchard like mad out of my yard dugout and that usage isn't even noticeable compared to evaporation losses.
We're concerned that our crops are dying, our livestock are starving (sold mine already) and almost none of our land is irrigated. In BC the trees are dying and burning for lack of rain and there is no way to irrigate them of course. This part of the country has long relied on a steady cycle of June and July thunderstorms for moisture - but the thunderstorms have dried up.
It just won't rain, that's all.
No, I have never been to Western Canada (it's very high on my bucket list, though) and I was broadly talking about North America. Sorry for the generalization. This year being also an El Nino year may have contributed...while some people will say otherwise, Europe has been uncharacteristically moist. We got a lot of places that already have reached 90% of their yearly average precipitation...
Yeah for sure. I knew my region was kind of a standout, but that map is even more damning than I thought, thanks for the link. If I'm reading the article correctly, the issues started long before the summer, the spring was really dry. At least the atlantic got some pretty heavy rain in June, though I'd be curious to see the july report when it comes out
Same in Vancouver, though the deep heat usually comes in August. It is however extremely dry. I can't remember the last time it actually rained. Looks like 2-4 rain events since May 1.
You can look up your area here:
Newly-minted Albertan here, extreme thunderstorms are a weekly occurrance. Haven't lived here long enough to know if that's normal, but in Grand Forks, BC a thunderstorm was a rarity.
Welcome to Alberta, thunderstorms are the dominant weather in the summer. Make sure your shingles are tacked down around the edges of the roof, even if it isn't "proper" because updrafts will tear them off. If your neighbourhood codes allow it, switch to metal roofing when the hail trashes the shingles you have now and save the hassle of replacing shingles non stop.
I moved from AB to SK 8 years ago and we had a similar storm cycle then, but it's been dead for almost 5 years now. Just hot dry sun. Thunderstorms are the main source of summer rain as we haven't seen a real multi-day "soaker" in many years now, so we're in big trouble.
It's so much worse than the new normal. It's going to keep changing just as fast, or faster. "Normal" isn't going to exist much longer.
Honestly I will never forgive people who STILL continue to deny climate change is happening and refuse to legilslate on it.
We fucked around, now we're going to start finding out.
Captain Planet tried to tell us
So did Al Gore.
He's a hero
If only we took pollution down to zero...
At this point it'd make things worse due to what climate researchers call the Faustian Bargain
You know, when I was a kid, I kind of had this thought that maybe nobody was doing anything because there was nothing to be done. I was wrong on that, and it would still be unequivocally better the sooner we do this. But I wasn't entirely wrong, and here we are. If we stopped yesterday, this shit would last into the next millennium!?
If nothing else, at least it made me very conscious of enjoying everything I had.
Ahh, I see. Interesting read/study. I wouldn't say they call it the Faustian bargain, but an example of a Faustian bargain. I suppose they could call it the Faustian bargain of GHG reduction, so that it doesn't usurp the term entirely, haha.
(Also I was referencing lyrics from the captain planet theme :P)
"we"
Yes, we. While some are of the impression, that climate change is only because of a select few, it's because every single one of us consumers is to blame as well.
We have the option to buy climate friendly stuff, lots of times it's just more expensive or maybe a little bit inconvenient. Also, why does one need the next new iPhone after owning the last one for just over a year? Why do we have to eat Avocados in some cases a few times a day, that are shipped around the world and need heaps of water to grow? Same as Bananas or Strawberries in Winter...the list is very long. Same as plastic free vegetables - "the cucumber has a brown spot? Nope, not getting that, I demand it's spotless!" So companies wrap them in plastic.
If there's demand, companies will fulfill that demand, if there's no demand, companies stop doing that shit, because it doesn't make any money. Every single one of us is responsible in some way or another, even if the percentage is very miniscule.
I just wanted to say, this is a very good comment.
When people say it's not "we" and it's just a few people, or just companies, it always seems to me that they are - consciously or subconsciously - just making excuses for not having to actually do anything and hoping someone else will solve the problem for them. They want the problem to be solved, while not having to do anything or change their lifestyle.
There are some very obvious and clear examples of this; here's two of them:
Studies have shown most people are in favour of carbon taxes. But with carbon taxes, companies would just shift the extra cost onto the consumers by increasing prices. One thing affected by carbon tax, would be the price of gas itself. And when prices (especially gas prices) increase, that usually results in a lot of anger and protests. So why would any democratically elected politician ever implement a carbon tax? If they did, they would be voted out, and the next one to come in would just undo it.
Another obvious example, is meat. We know one of the major protagonists in CO2 emissions is animal farming. Red meat especially is responsible for a huge source of those emissions. And yet most people don't even wanna think about eating less meat, and they will still crack jokes about vegans and look at them sideways. And as for regulations regarding meat, the example from before still applies.
As you seem to be implying, what really needs to happen is a whole cultural shift. Trying to shift blame onto to a few people and hope they get the guillotine, won't change anything as long as people keep demanding all the same things because then someone else will come in to fulfil that demand. Whether we like it or not, we have to accept that it's the sum of all our actions that will determine the future, and our actions can influence other people's actions; therefore, one way or another, we are all responsible.
Sorry for typing some much at you since you're basically making the same point already, but I just felt like adding on.
To add to this, a simple example: Carbon Taxes are unavoidable. However, i wish people would stop arguing about what's better (EVs or Synthetic Fuels), because in the end, both have their use cases. It's a bit like iOS or Android. iOS and Android are very different, but also quite similar. I'm a HUGE petrol head and fossile fuels have to die as soon as possible and most governments around the world go about it completely wrong - i want to pay 2,50 Euro per Liter for 100% carbon neutral fuel, but i can't because no country around the world actually does this properly (except maybe Sweden with HVO Diesel)
Meat has to get simply more expensive and the market will regulate that - which is also going to happen with carbon taxes, but it's relatively slow.
Most of the "we" who fucked around, are either already dead or dying of old age. They won't find out a thing.
The "we" who believed and trusted them... along those who didn't... yeah, those "we" will find out.
I wouldn't just put this on those generations, Exxon and the oil industry and their government dogs and very wealthy and powerful people and their minions are who deserves the most of the blame, the rest of us were powerless to stop it or brainwashed by the propaganda and disinformation being produced by the oil industry and their many allies, like Kenneth Hamm and the Young Earth Creationist movement, the American GOP, the British Tory's, Putin's Ruzzia, The Gulf states, the auto industry, and so many more.
Do you mind posting something meaningful instead of a tired and boring aphorism?
"Hey! Stop goofing off on the internet!"
Don't screw around. You screw around too much!
Serious business only
It's not about being goofy. It's about repeating the same damn thing for the millionth time. It gets annoying and adds no value to the conversation.
That's what I really disliked about what reddit had become. A post with 500+ comments and having to scroll through the same fucking comment over and over again because everyone thinks they're so fucking clever but didn't bother to read any of the comments and see that a dozen other schmucks have made the exact same comment.
It's not like posting anything meaningful here will change anything. The fuckheads that put the world in this situation laugh at our faces and of anyone who tries to undo their shit. They have money, what are we going to do? Sue them? They'll buy every lawyer everywhere. Ask for political reforms? Yeah, maybe in 2050 something might pass. Picket outside the companies? Gee, that worked so well with Occupy Wall Street, didn't it?
You realize there's only two ways this is going to be dealt with, right? One, we have to murder the rich assholes who invested in fossil fuel production. Two, everyone needs to be able to migrate everywhere; climate migration is going to have to be embraced, even if it means a bunch of selfish bastard conservatives don't like the economic fallout. But no, that's not good enough for any of you to look at and say "okay, we have a chance to make the most of this".
My childhood in the late 90s and early 00s was STOLEN from me by government cronies who literally ripped me away from my family for several years. I lived in BC, Canada. I was BORN here in Canada and my dad and grandfather were as well. There's no reason I alone shouldn't have gotten to enjoy that period, playing Pokemon and Neopets in my parent's home.
But no. Thanks a lot to all you fuckers, the economic golden age that has existed since the 50s is gone forever and I'll never live to see anything remotely as optimistic. I hate all of you and if this whole damn planet doesn't choke on you not giving up just a bit of comfort so people less fortunate than you don't have to struggle just to make ends meet, I will literally start setting oil refineries on fire. GO FUCKING DIE, EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU.
You might be about to get it in the coming years, too. Temperature increases have been tentatively linked to violence.
Practice my aim I guess
I was so hoping that crap like this, FAFO, and the other weak sauce bullshit wouldn't make it over here. I was stupid for even hoping that.
That's literally impossible when you're on the internet, you just hope to see less of it.
It's slacktivism. If we keep saying the meme words something is bound to come from it
To what end? You think a user comment on Lemmy is going to change emissions policies? Direct your ire somewhere it might actually make a single bit of difference instead of just perpetuating the infighting that gets nothing done. If you're going to waste your time on the subject, spend your thumb-taps on an email to your congressman instead.
We're way past that.
Don't worry guys, everything is fine. We just need to [redacted] and this will all go back to normal in no time.
Yeah, my dad says fux news did it’s just a cycle. So, no worries bro.
Hello my name is [redacted] I work for [redacted], all we need to do is [redacted].
Don’t you worry about [redacted], let me worry about blank!
Awesome. Awesome to the max.
The EU needs to wake up and go hard on companies and industries. No mercy, no half-assing, just legislate the absolute shit out of them for once so that maybe our children can survive and live in not so terrible conditions, because not so terrible is the best we can hope for at this point.
The rest of the world too obviously, but the EU seems the most likely to do so.
and people say global warming/climate change is not real
It wasn't normal.
Nowadays it is.
Hurray for new normals!
I'm Italian myself. The issue with this heat is that it's humid too, I live in the riviera and we've had constant 35-37°C weather with high humidity for a week now
Let's be honest, this will end up with only the ultra-rich surviving in the last few strips of livable surface of the planet - and them elated to have finally "culled the undeserving" as they have been hoping for for millennia.
Look at previous violent revolutions and see who died and who lived. I wouldn't bet on the ultra-rich, there are simple more of the rest but a new elite will rule, just like the old one.
There is one massive difference between former violent revolutions and the current ones - the ultra-rich of last century still had to rely on appeasing the military to do their bidding, but the ultra-rich of today now have access to automated weapons of mass destruction at the reach of their fingertips. If they feel like it, they can nuke the planet as a last-resort measure, while they're sipping their champagne in a self-sustainable complex in the middle of nowhere.
well yeah, if a self-sustainable complex was even remotely achievable.
As if they can produce champagne and other stuff out of nowhere. They may have a nuclear fallout bunker somewhere hidden in a desert but they can only rely on existing food / materials they can accumulate now. Most likely cans of food. Their champagne bottle will run dry unless they’re hiding in a massive Amazon underground warehouse that no one can access it. After all we have seen the riots in Paris, riots in Hongkong, if the law enforcement is not strong enough, people will automatically go riot mode, and if there is really a large conflict, there will be no one protecting the wealthy ones property and everyone is going for themselves
They don't. WMDs are far from automated, they require multiple human steps to get deployed, and each one of those can say "no" at any time (then possibly get court martialed, but the WMD stays undeployed).
What's more threatening, is having those ultra-rich promise everyone in the chain of command (and their families) a place at their self-sustainable complex.
Then the ultra rich will perish because they don't know how to survive cause they don't have the "plebs" to do any of the underling work.
"What do I do when my motor makes this sound?!"
That's why the concept of artificial intelligence is so appealing to them - having a compilation of all human knowledge, without actually having to deal with humans claiming "nonsense" like human rights and a livable wage.
that's funny, because if they rely on AI to serve them, they will the first ones to be screwed. the most replaceable human class in the History is not plebs, but tyrants. they are the least prepared, the least talented, the least creative, the least reliable, the least resourceful, and finally, the least willing to contribute something to any compilation. so let them have fun while they can.
Then "what to do, when the motor makes this sound" becomes "what to do when the LLM tells me to eat my children and water the plants with gettorade because it got electrolytes"
You do whatever the LLM tells you, electrolytes is what plants crave...
Nah, the rich will be eaten. Since their power completely relies on society. Taliban in the Mountains of Afghanistan will be fine and will be fighting off a alien occupation in 1000 years.
The fucking irony and probable truth if that is hilarious and frustrating
If you look at the Bronze Age collapse, its the nomadic mountain people that survive.
Funny you say that considering anyone earning more than 40k USD yearly is part of the 2.6 percentile of the richest population GLOBALLY.
Seeing as 90% of us in south America earn even less than half of that, I'd suggest y'all prepare to be eaten by the starving poor masses of the global south
it's a snake eating its tail, there'll always be someone at the bottom of the list who needs to be 'culled'.
Nah, history is your best teacher here. They will try that, get murdered, and be replaced by a crude junta while the rest of us starve
Not quite. Once global economies collapse, being wealthy won't mean jack shit.
You'll likely have the best chance of survival if you know survival skills such as hunting, foraging, and how to build a shelter.
It can end in many ways. Some of them more terrifying that your version, others not.
Why is every comment on here: fuck the rich
Yet, social medias are filled with people saying that they saw this every day when they were younger and the millenials are just weak and should stop complaining.
Literally my father moment
This is Charles Dickens syndrome (a term I just made up) but basically Dickens grew up 1810's which was uncharacteristicly cold for Britain. Specifically, a lot more snowy than it had been for centuries. When he came to put the season into his stories, it was those seminal years that he wrote about. This then imprinted on our culture and the stories that came after it followed the theme. Anyone who lives in Britain can tell you, while we get some years that have a decent amount of snow, we get just as many that are wet and miserable.
People who believe 'It was that hot when they were young' likely remember one pivotal day or feeling warm but I doubt had any real concept of the actual temperature as a kid. What we're seeing now is more regularity in the extremes. Yes, that day they remember may be imprinted on their minds for being extra hot, but then that becomes 'It was this hot when we were young'.
Also, since the 60s life expectancy has got way longer. We're living decades more than someone of that era, we're extending the lifespans of the critically ill, and access to things like affordable housing have tanked making people live in less than ideal situations or a part of a much larger unhoused population than we've had for many years. All of these add up to extreme weather having an oversized impact.
It really annoys me when folks like that make blanket statements without realising we live in a very different world today. (Of course, there are some positives that advancements in technology and material science can bring to mitigate some of this).
Genuine old person here I call bullshit on whoever said that. I don’t remember it ever being this bad. Ever.
I was working outside this week (Southern US) and it was an absolutely miserable week. After a half an hour I was drenched in sweat, and it was rolling off my hard hat, getting in my eyes, and I was forced to pace myself and work much slower than I would otherwise be able to do because the heat was that intense.
I was able to drink some of my coconut water reserve because it has the things plants crave.
It's definitely the worst summer heat I've felt since ever.
For the longest time, measures against climate change were decried for potentially impacting "the economy". Well now we're going to see the impact to "the economy" with climate change getting worse. I assume it'll be a bigger impact than if we had invested in more sustainability earlier. Slower work pace outside just being a small taste of the impact.
Wait until next summer!
Why was your hard hat sweating? I wear a hard hat at work and I don't think I've ever had sweat rolling off it. That doesn't seem physically possible.
This one has a cloth like padding at the forehead, it collects the sweat but gets saturated and beads up on the front and rolls off.
It's nice to have if it isn't a lot of sweat, but when your entire face is drenched, it does that.
Ohhh ok, I have a similar hard hat. I wear a chill-its cap under mine, it's more comfortable and has a sweat band built in
i imagine it was the humidity from the ambient air and not from his head.
Meanwhile big polluters like Shell and others help pumping emissions and try to keep carbon based economy for short term profit 🙄
While funding messaging like "if you didn't use your air conditioner when it was 118f it would certainly help"
whatever could we have done to stop this!!!
Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
The planet will be fine. Humans I'm not sure about...
Humans and most other creatures
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry: "we're just trying to find the guy who did this!"
I dunno what I could have done, everything I try to have an impact on is always a pittance compared to the size of the problem, but I know what I can do going forward.
I'm quitting. I'm having zero children. Good luck, have fun the rest of you.
Everything is fine, the earth simply won't be habitable for humans. The Earth will spin on without us when we inevitably allow industry to destroy humanity by making earth uninhabitable by human life.
It's what we deserve for being so stupid as to see this happening and doing nothing about it to stop it or slow it down. There's plenty of climate change advocates which are almost always drowned out by the chorus of companies and climate deniers who believe propaganda over science.
Where I stay these temperatures can be quite normal in summer. I'm now just worried that a hot summer's day here will now go from 45 to 55. I've felt 50 before. It's not fun. But besides that, I think of the implications for the agricultural sector. Good luck my European friends. I'll report back in our summer.
I think climate change is happening far sooner than scientists could have predicted. We focus on increased global average temperatures but I think that we are going to have insanely hot summers sooner. We're fucked.
Simple way to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit in your head:
40 * 2 = 80
80 - 8 = 72
72 + 32 = 104
40 C = 104 F
This is still hot but a far cry from 118F
That was a typo by OP. The temp in Italy is 48C/118F
I guess the op added it to the title, but on the article the conversion is from 48°C to 118F
Thanks for the formula! Never knew how to do this.
This is what I do. My full mental list:
It provides enough buckets to be conversational.
yeah, 104 a spring day in bakersfield California. But we have AC and stuff. if they’re not used to those temps they might not be prepared for it
We usually do not have AC here (for example in Germany). Not even in hospitals, schools, elderly care, etc. The solution of our government, after many people already died because of heat, is to make shelter rooms somewhere in the city where you can go when it's getting too hot. That's how "prepared" we are.
Also, the majority of people here do not own a home but instead are dependable on their landlord to do something against the heat. Which is obviously not happening. So instead those people who have the money for it start buying free standing AC units. Which need a pipe to hang out of the window and are highly inefficient.
Yeah, that’s what I figured. I’d heard that a lot of europe lacks warm weather infrastructure and most homes lack the basic air conditioning that is ubiquitous here in the US. I don’t see a lot of fixes for that.
The solution is the for the rich landowners to spend their fucking money and retrofit building with central air.
The solution is as simple as always: the rich must spend money.
I agree but they will just shift the costs onto the renters. That's how we do gentrification
Sure if you never plan to leave the house this is fine. The energy for all those ac have to come from somewhere so let's burn some more CO2, I'm sure that won't make it worse.
Use an evaporative cooler! All you do is chuck ice in it. Cheaper to run, easier to recycle and arguably more effective for small home/apartment living.
Source: Australia
Thank you! I've never heard of these before. Households here usually do not have ice, but I see it also works with cold packs
Cold packs are FAR superior, I just can’t fit enough in my freezer while still having room to make ice cubes
Here in Canada we just double it and add 30, because it's close enough generally.
I actually appreciate the simple guide on how to convert celsius to freedom units. I guess to convert F to C, we'd do the opposite (subtract 32, add 10%, then halve.)
That's my normal summer to cool summer.
40c is 104f. The article mentions possibly peaking at 48c, which is 118f. In case anyone thought something was a little off
As of the article it had only reached 38c, which is a mere 100.4 f. Everything else is just projection at this point. Weather forecast are always sensationally overhyped, especially around here, and especially when it plays into the political agenda.
Dude, what the fuck?
It would not be the first time heat in southern Italy got this bad. I think that's a reason why people trust the prediction. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/11/sicily-logs-488c-temperature-possibly-highest-ever-recorded-for-europe
40C is not 118F
Get ready for this headline every year.
We already have it. Every year, we hit a new record in "hottest day of the year".
Eventually they'll start reporting deaths instead of temps
Covid showed that humanity doesn't really gives a shit about deaths either
Tbf, they could have done something about covid. Not really a point in humanity's favor. But there's extremely little, really, that the average person can do about environmental collapse. I think it's natural that they just become accustomed to seeing the big numbers and gradually tune them out. Could be assholery. Could be helplessness transmuted into despairing apathy. But they're eventually going to stop reporting the deaths too.
That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? We had widespread lockdowns and other big measures. If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t have had those
We also had millions of people throwing the most embarrassing tantrums over covering their disgusting faces with a piece of cloth for a while. And those big measures weren't big enough it turned out. As a whole, I rate the humanity's response to a pandemic as "meh".
Already happening:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/extreme-temperatures-kill-5-million-people-a-year-with-heat-related-deaths-rising-study-finds
Most people simply aren't or won't pay attention.
Hottest summer - so far
Or, put another way, this is the coldest summer in the entire remainder of your life.
Long term, yes
Short term probably not, as it fluctuates year to year
In North Carolina, we had a "winter that wasn't" and now we have a summer of "surface of the sun" heat. Triple digit heat index every day last week. Good luck getting the locals to admit that climate change is real though. At this point I think some of them are actually starting to see the truth, but it just pisses them off and they dig in to denial even harder, because if there's one thing they can't do it's admit they were wrong.
‘It’s not normal’
It is now.
Who could have predicted this!?!?? Why weren't we warned?
Does Italy have air conditioned cooling centers like California does?
Climate control technology never reached Europe. Every building is a sweltering hellhole, unless youre in the first floor of a concrete building.
I buckled and bought a stand-AC a few years ago when I literally couldn’t sleep for days during an insanely hot summer here in Germany. I really try not to use it much but on those days when it’s unbearable it’s literally a lifesaver.
AC never was popular because it used to be that you never needed it here. You’d have maybe one or two days above 30 a year where I live and that wouldn’t be enough to heat up the concrete walls, so your living space still stayed cool. And at night the temperature would drop and you could simply air out your flat. Now it’s different though and it’s seriously a shame that people still doubt climate change is happening.
Same thing on my part of Canada. Might have to get an AC for the bedroom.
Pair it with solar panels, then it doesn't contribute to climate change and you can run it as much as you want when the sun shines.
Believe me, I would if I could, but my building doesn’t allow us to hang stuff from our balconies. Can’t go about being more energy efficient if it might look too ugly! (/s)
California offers the public to visit certain public buildings and community centers to cool off for free during heatwaves. It saves lives. It would be great if the Italian government could offer something similar. I know they have some very old buildings, but they have some that could facilitate this. Or they should build more pantheons like in Rome if they reject air conditioners.
I read something in the news about inviting people to churches. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself for several hours there, also the seats are pretty uncomfortable. But better than a heatstroke I guess.
“And I know I’ve finally accepted that air conditioning is a privilege, not a right.”
-Ted Lasso
You forget how much further north Europe is. You didn't need ac in many parts.
If the AMOC gets disrupted you really won't need AC
RIP India.
You lucky bastard.
How much dat rent be, though? 😬
I don't know what people are smoking, maybe it's too much heat, but air conditioning is very common and normal here in Italy too.
I don't know what a cooling center is, but there is AC everywhere, and when there isn't it's a choice of the owner to avoid installing it.
Also it's not the first time we reach similar temperatures sadly. We get around 40°C basically every year. The south of Italy is clearly on a very high and uncommon peak, tho.
The situation is different in other countries like Germany, northern France or England. Until a few years ago they never needed AC at all so most homes don't have it and it's not even that easy and immediate to have it installed
A cooling center is a building with AC open to the public, so people without AC can cool off.
https://www.qualenergia.it/articoli/meta-famiglie-italiane-ha-condizionatore-ecco-come-usa/
Data supporting this. About 50% of italian private households have AC, with obvious differences between regions and local climates.
I don't know where people in this thread are retrieving data to support their statements but they definitely sound absurd. Source: am Italian
No, air conditioning is rare in Europe. Pretty much only hotels have it, and by far not all hotels. About 5% of private residences have A/C, even in southern regions of France, Spain and Italy.
Source: Wikipedia, and my kid that went to Italy and Greece and Germany for the previous few summers worth of heat waves.
Edit: Formal, government supplied cooling centers are a CA thing. Informal ones like shopping centers are more widespread in the U.S., but don't really exist in Europe.
It doesn't even matter all that much. A couple years ago in the PNW when it hit 43°c/115°f, I had my central air absolutely kicking out the jams and it was still 90°f in my house. I got really annoyed before coming to the realization that it was 25° cooler inside which is honestly a pretty decent effort on behalf of my AC. There's no reason it should be this hot anywhere, but especially Cascadia. Of course my AC couldn't handle it because it wasn't designed to. Even a decade ago you'd think someone was nuts if they installed an AC capable of dealing with this anywhere except say Arizona or Florida
AC doesn't just help with temperature though, it also helps with humidity if it is a humid heat outside. Makes it much more bearable even if the temperature difference might not be huge.
5% lol you're way off. If you're that far off for Spain, I have to wonder if your arse was also the source for the figures for the other countries.
https://www.idealista.com/news/inmobiliario/vivienda/2021/07/15/791442-el-36-de-las-casas-en-espana-tiene-aire-acondicionado
My understanding is that it is more common in offices, though, than in residences.
Yeah its pretty standard to have in offices and shops, but not in apartments or houses. I've seen couple of ceiling fans in Spain, but here in France some people don't even use regular floor fans for some reason lol
To be honest, we only get 2 hot months in a year (usually, though its starting to change and now its more like 3 hot months where 2 are extra hot)
I used to specifically not want A/C in my cars back in the 90s living in Denver. It was never hot enough to need it. In the past years I've spent quite a few days sitting in stopped traffic in my open Jeep with the thermometer reading 104-107F. Once was behind an uncovered manure truck. Good times, good times.
Where I live now (further north from CO) there's a massive junk yard with thousands of snowmobiles. Apparently my current area used to be a mecca for snowmobiling in the 70s and 80s, with 1500 miles of snowmobile trails. It snows maybe 3 times a year now, average of 10 inches total per season. Neighbors all around me have every kind of motor toy imaginable, but I have not seen a single snowmobile. My snowblower hasn't been seen use in over 4 years, and the city routinely forgets how to plow or sand streets.
Weather definitely got hotter year round over 3-4 decades. I'll fight fellow Gen-X and boomers over this.
It really shouldn't even be a fight... we've had accurate thermometers for a long time now, and weather stations all over the world at airports at the very least. Taking an average of the temperatures around the world isn't really some crazy advanced science.
Here in Germany not even offices have them. Well, most of them. AC is a luxury that no one needed like 5 years ago. 5 years in the future this will have changed, obviously.
Are you installing A/C? Or, at least a portable unit? I hope you guys can stay cool. It took me quite a while to become acclimated to no ac after I moved there for a number of years.
I've thought about it in recent years but so far, at least where I live, it is still manageable without. Days where it doesn't cool down enough during the night to survive the next day (opening/shutting windows and blinds) are still rare and don't last more than a few days at a time and it takes a bit for the house to really heat up.
If/when that changes and heat waves with still hot/humid nights get more common or longer, I'll have to get a solution for at least a room or two.
I bought a portable unit last year and used it for the hottest days, as I was working from home in a small room which heats up quickly.
I also bought it for safety reasons, we are for people in our household and in case a long lasting heat wave comes we at least have the means to cool down one room for the night where we all can sleep.
Are you installing A/C? Or, at least a portable unit? I hope you guys can stay cool. It took me quite a while to become acclimated to no ac after I moved there for a number of years.
Offices are ideal because it is hotter in the daytime than at night.
I'm Italian, lived both in big cities and in small villages, both in the north and the south of the country: basically every office has AC, never saw an hotel with no AC and I'd say at least 50% of private residences have it.
AC in private residences has become much more common in the last years due to the climate crisis but 5% would've been way off even 20 years ago. Your data is definitely incorrect
Edit: https://www.qualenergia.it/articoli/meta-famiglie-italiane-ha-condizionatore-ecco-come-usa/ some data. About 50% of private italian households have AC, with obvious differences between regions and local climates.
You'd have to search A LOT to find a hotel without AC in Greece, except maybe in very mountainous areas. It is probably in 90%+ of the homes on cities and it becomes more and more widespread even in villages and towns where you would never need it a few years ago. The; have been popular for more than 30 years in Greece
Central aircon is pretty standard for most large buildings but individual aircon systems for private housing is rare, mainly because it is only very hot for a short period of time.
It is becoming more common in northern Europe, which sounds counterintuitive, because heating during winter is a far bigger issue here than cooling during summer.
However, many private houses get 'heat pumps', which gives you more heating pr kW than pure old-fashion electric heating would have given. Basically it is a backwards airconditioner.
These heat pumps can also be run backwards, and then they function as aircondition.
Sadly this is the new normal...
I honestly get dizzy by just looking at those numbers...😵💫
Holy fuck
What suprises me the most when watching news on this. You will see people in Rome getting interviewed in the middle of a plaza in the burning sun. And there are many walking outside. I would crawl into a cool cellar and only come out at night.
40-45C happens in our summers on a semi regular basis (thank f*** last summer we only had a handful of days like that). Inner Oz can reach close to 50C in some areas.....
Hows the humidity when it gets that hot?
I've done low humidity 45° days/38° nights and it was pretty toasty, but 35° with high humidity kicks my arse. The last couple of weeks here in Catalunya we've had 30-35° with high humidity and I'm just exhausted.
40-45C happens every summer in Sevilla. When I went to roma over a decade ago there were some 40ºC days.
Not 48°C though, which is definitely not normal
In Italy too, but 48°C is exceptional
Like when whole countries begin to go green and EVs are being more realistic and tangible, and to top off no seemingly push back from big oil, you know shit needs to change
From my understanding, we see less pushback from big oil because now big oil is properly invested into the alternative energy sector. For example Koch industries has been investing in alternatives since at least the 90s.
They will simply profit off of the solution(s)/alternatives to the problems they created.
It's normal now.
Aircon plus solar panels for the win? Other than the initial manufacturing cost, it's a fairly good solution.
For those with a limited budget in a dry heat area, a large portable Swamp box and a single panel may be enough. Needs access to water though...
Can't tell if you're thinking this is anything more than an emergency stopgap for people that can't bear living in their home, but.... All A/C does is spend energy to move the heat back outside, and also produce some more heat on the side. So it isn't a sustainable solution or fix, even if your energy generation is somehow perfect.
And swamp boxes are basically just a fan with extra steps that puts a miniscule amount of heat into the water. They feel a tiny bit better, but they're not really fixing anything either. That warm water still needs to go somewhere etc.
I disagree on the efficacy of evaporative coolers. When I lived in Bourke, they were excellent. Typically roof mounted models such as these. Very low power usage for whole house cooling, but the massive caveat is they don't work well in humid places.
A simple portable one like the Convair Classic will only really help whoever's near it, but at under 80 watts of power it'll run off even the cheapest inverter and car battery in an emergency.
Solar panels make the cost of using a split system practically nothing during daylight hours, with little net additional heat created in the process.
My point is these are just making you feel better at best. Even a perfectly efficient split system running off a perfectly efficient power source which was manufactured out of thin air without having any effect on climate change is still moving heat around. None of these address the core problem with the climate. Even at perfect efficiency they're just building you a small bubble to feel better in.
500 years later, Europe finds out their Industrial Revolution has consequences, for everyone. Yay!
200 years later. 500 years ago Europeans were discovering islands and continents.
"Discovering"... this land is your land, this land is my land 🎵
I already knew that we're fucked. But scientist said more around 2050 or something. The way things are progressing right now the next 10 to 20 years are going to be dicey.
"Things are about to get dicey!"
I really don't like seeing these temperatures and I also don't like that governments have not educated the public effectively on what to do to limit climate change. It's a tragedy to see people making irrational and ineffective descisions out of fear.
"No one could have prevented this."
It's normal in a silly mustache disguise!
We are so fucked....
And yet we're still forces to work
Well it's normal NOW...
Needs more car races
Climate change is real but it's not as drastic as this. A lot of people refer to this phenomena as "El Nino" and "La Nina" and they describe a changing pattern in ocean surface temperature and winds that drastically shift the average temperature.
Climate change is just increasing the average temperature of the range over time. But to say that this "118F temperature is entirely because of climate change" is kinda disingenuous. The warming effect of climate change has been observed to be about ~1F per 30 years or so. So if we went back 60 years, this "118F" summer in Italy would be about "116F" and would be almost equally absurd.
Oh well, summer in the Northern Europe is cold as it has always been. Not denying global warming, just wish for warmer weather.
Europe moment
When talking with a past university professor, he told us a big part of the global warming problem was actually a natural cycle the earth goes through every certain period of time.
There is a natural cycle, yes. But if you look at the graphs, we’ve given that natural cycle a rocket boost to Let’s get fucked town and it’s happening a whole lot quicker than it should.
A rocket boost? C'mon bro. Al Gore said parts of Florida would be underwater yet he and other companies were buying beach real estate in the early 2000s