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Comment by mnm1 | Hacker News Reader

"San Francisco summers typically mean coats, space heaters and high heating bills. Air conditioning in city homes, well, it’s not even a thing."

Author used the wrong tense here. He should have used the past tense. Air conditioning is an absolute must these days though so are coats and high heating bills (mainly in old buildings with bad windows/insulation). Same thing in the northwest (except the coats). I don't see many new places being built without AC in either location. This heat has been the norm for years and it's not going to go away. It's global warming anyone can feel and experience. Only idiots still cling on to their climate change denial bullshit at the expense of the rest of society.

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It's been hotter than hell up here in Portland. Over the last five years, at least three summers have seemed hotter than any summer I can remember. This August was the hottest on record:

http://www.wweek.com/news/2017/09/01/this-past-august-was-po...

And I believe it! It's gotten to the point that a forecast of ~80 is a huge relief. Used to be I thought 80 was hot. The worst of it has been the nights when it doesn't even cool down much -- it's hard to sleep without AC. I'm planning to get AC set up this year. I don't think I can stand another summer without it.

I have A/C in the Portland area but the upstairs of my house never cools well. I added an ecobee thermostat with the room sensors and that's helped immensely. Now my bedroom upstairs can actually cool to 75 even though it might be 67 downstairs where the thermostat is. It hasn't saved me any money, but it has made this summer bearable at least.

I've lived in the bay area for 26 years. We have a couple/few at most weeks of hot weather in the spring and fall, the rest of the summer the fog is sucked off the ocean by inland hot weather, and winters get pretty chilly. The idea that you need ac in SF is wrong IMO. East bay is a whole different climate and story....

When I moved to a building in SOMA (1045 Mission), I thought it was odd that the unit had air conditioning. Turns out the damn unit needed it most spring/summer days to keep the interior temp in the 70/80s. It probably had something to do with my unit being one of the live/work units on Minna that had all 6 walls made of either concrete or glass.

Air conditioning is a 'must' partly because people have just come to demand it. 98 is hot- but even 88 is warm when you're used to 72, 24/7/365.

Source, all the people around town running their air conditioning on cool 75 degree summer nights.

I don't have air conditioning at all and I'm not used to it, but I don't consider 75 degrees to be a cool night. "Cool" doesn't enter the conversation until you're under 70.

"Cool" doesn't enter the conversation until you're under 70.

Same. I have trouble sleeping if it's above about 70 or so. My AC went out for a couple of nights about a month ago and it about drove me batshit crazy.

It's funny how perspectives vary though. I was a consultant a few jobs back, and so traveled all around the country for a few years. And early on I made assumptions, like, "all hotels will have AC". And then I get sent to a northern city (I think this was Milwaukee, if memory serves correctly) in winter-time. I get there and it's way too hot in my room for me to fall asleep. I turn the thermostat down and nothing happens. After a while I call the front desk and they're like "Oh, we turn the A/C off this time of year". Uuuuurgggh... they finally had to send maintenance around to undo the window locks so I could crack the window to let some cold air in (thankfully it was freezing ass cold outside, so it didn't take much to cool the room down).

depending on who's counting, the deviation is currently like +0.21 degrees C since 1980. although it is a meaningful amount you probably could not actually "feel and experience" it

I don't know... since you bring up the Northwest, Seattle has had what feels like a lovely and temperate summer. Not sure what the stats say.

Yea, we freak out (read: sun-flu) when it's over 35°C.

Except for those few weeks of BC haze.

> I don't see many new places being built without AC

SF building code has an airflow requirement, and an AC system will satisfy this requirement, so all new buildings are just putting in AC units.

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