Germany records hottest June temperature | Hacker News Reader

Germany records hottest June temperature

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It's all of Europe that's crazy hot now.

It's a strange kind of heat too, even without the sun beating down on you, the air is so hot and thick, it's like wearing a blanket while breathing soup.

However, in Eastern Europe most people installed split AC units in their apartments to counter this but in Western Europe that's not allowed in apartments so if you're at home or working ouside, instead of an air conditioned office, you're gonna cook.

Later EDIT: To clarify, you ARE allowed to have AC but due to regulations it's very difficult to get permission for city apartments as it has to be a centralized unit for the whole building with planning to certify that it won't affect the aesthetic of the building or be too loud or hot for the neighbors. If you want a split unit just for your apartment you'll never get permission, so basically, you're not allowed to have one. In EE regulations are lax or don't exist or are not enforced so everyone and their mums has AC.

I never knew air conditioners were not allowed in some parts of europe, I don't know of any regulations here in Italy.

In Switzerland it's just not allowed to install central AC with some exceptions AFAIK. But most people rent, so those window installed units aren't really an option either (can't just drill a huge hole for airflow next to a window). Many offices do that nowadays however, work impediment is just too big otherwise.

Any reasoning behind central AC not being allowed? Just energy efficiency?

Until a couple of years ago it was IMO not necessary, especially for modern buildings with good isolation. Hot summer was maybe 2-3 weeks. But now I wouldn't say that anymore, but Paris agreement / trying to protect the climate as hard as possible is still more important than this. I do think however that we need to take measures to protect the oldest and youngest inhabitants.

You can't install AC units on the outside of your building in Rome to maintain the architecture, which is the same as saying you can't have any at all.

I recently traveled to Rome and in both places we stayed there were AC units mounted below the windows. We also saw some split systems that had the condenser unit either in a foyer/lobby (hooked up to a vent) or on the roof.

Maybe that's not typical.

Protecting the architecture is understandable, but there are plenty of indoor and portable units.

You can vent AC’s heat out through a chimney. Window units are cheap and reasonably efficient, but not the only option.

You can run an AC inside the building, you just need to exhaust the heat out, which can be done through a window. Do an image search for "portable air conditioner window vent" and you'll see some examples.

I think you're just talking about the historic portion of town?

Lots of AC units on display here: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8816316,12.4546184,3a,75y,23...

Of course it's not in every single building. Where I grew up we had AC, but where my grandpa lived for example you couldn't. Just saying that the root comment isn't completely wrong, it happens.

What do you mean the AC units are not allowed in Western Europe? I lived in Germany and never heard of this. In my experience, it's mostly cultural. The French for instance expect a "canicule" once or twice a year and that's generally survivable, although I think they are realizing that their frequency and power are increasing, so we might see uptake in air conditioning.

Edit: Or perhaps you meant regulations? If so, then yeah those exist, such as permits for the building and so on.

And of course blasting A/C uses more energy that further contributes to the climate crisis. The positive-feedback cycles at play here are really terrifying.

The good news is, if you limit running the AC during daytime, it is easy to power them with solar energy, as the need for AC implies a lot of sun shine. These days the German grid is powered between 30-40% by solar only. And one would expect this percentage to raise quickly in the next years. Of course, if you are a home owner, you could run your AC directly by your solar, completely removing any network impact (and consequently any additional carbon output).

Not sure why you're downvoted. This is true. Here in Boston my electric bill is a factor of three higher during the peak heat months.

Pretty sure Germany runs on wind solar and nuclear.

So no feedback loop

Germany is phasing out of nuclear, only 7 plants left. They use solar and wind energy, combined with coal.

They can't produce enough with solar and wind so they have to keep burning coal which produces even more CO2.

> Pretty sure Germany runs on wind solar and nuclear.

Nuclear is pretty much dead. Unfortunately, nuclear was considered much worse than coal couple of years ago (and is still) so shutting down nuclear had and has priority.

As for wind, solar and water: Most of the time, it is utilized 100%. Every extra consumer of power means more coal or gas has to be burned.

Why would you say that's not allowed?

I have the rare luck of renting an apartment close to Frankfurt/Germany that has an Split A/C built in.

It's obviously legal, it's just uncommon, but that is in a large part an artifact of the high ratio of renters.

Landlords don't see an A/C as an particularly value adding addition to their investment, and tennants don't really get to pick and choose. The A/C in my apartment was installed by the previous tennant, out of his own cash and simply left it installed when he moved out.

The owner doesn't want to have anything to do with it and when it breaks i'll either have to replace it, or leave it there broken...

No, it’s not all of Europe. In Northern Finland we’we had even snow in the last few days and typical day temperatures hang around ten degrees Celcius (EDIT: which is actually typical).

What do you think are the odds that you are correctly describing the situation in the entirety of freaking Western Europe (your edit included)?

I live in Eastern Europe (Romania) and it's crazy how most of Western Europe doesn't practically allow residential AC units for esthetic purposes only. That explains why what I regard as normal summer-time temperatures (there have been 36 degrees today in my city) are seen as basically a new apocalypse in places like Germany or Northern France (it surprised me that a news item from a couple of days ago wanted to mention that there were 34 degrees in Paris, like that would have been an abnormally high temperature). Maybe it's time for the city authorities from Western Europe to put the health and well-being of their citizens above a so-called esthetic sense.

To be fair, all-time-record-breaking temperatures are (the start of) "basically a new apocalypse." The fact that Western Europe's temperatures are commonplace in other places on earth does not diminish the fact that these temperatures are abnormal and dangerous to the populations experiencing them, and are a harbinger of things to come. Summers will on average only get hotter from this, and not just for Europe.

Not a European, but I regularly live in 39°C, 102°F with very high humidity. Get a portable, floor standing unit in the 1500 watt range so you plug it in anywhere. It will have a fist sized duct to exhaust hot air, stick that out a window. Now reduce your living space to something it can cool. Close off rooms. Worst case, use sheets to erect a tent around your bed and just make it comfortable. Something like 400EU should do it. Don’t sweat the power use, it will use no more than 5EU/day, but you won’t use it many days. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific about specifications, my country uses made up units for cooling and you wouldn’t understand.

Edit: about condensate… half of the comfort comes from getting water out of the air so your mammal body works. Some units will require a gravity drain or for you to empty a bucket a couple times a day. Others will have a tricky design to move the water into the hot exhaust duct and evaporate it. I like these.

> Get a portable, floor standing unit in the 1500 watt range so you plug it in anywhere. It will have a fist sized duct to exhaust hot air, stick that out a window. Now reduce your living space to something it can cool.

Try to get the two-duct ones, they are dramatically more efficient. This is reflected in the newer U.S. DoE capacity ratings, which take into account the various ways that single-duct portable air conditioners are not so great.

> Others will have a tricky design to move the water into the hot exhaust duct and evaporate it. I like these.

That seems really convenient, can anyone comment on the effect that has on efficiency? It seems like if the hot side is hot enough, re-evaporating the condensate on the hot side should improve efficiency.

Are the two-duct portable air conditioners even available on the European market? They certainly don't appear to be a thing here in the UK as far as I can tell.

The omission is shocking, I can't seem to find any on UK or German Amazon.

Though on amazon.de I see at least one alternative to the Zweikanal-Klimaanlage or whatever you'd call it; a small split system with two condensers for just four-hundred euro. Though it seems like it'd likely warrant professional installation, and therefore €€€. https://amazon.de/dp/B06XTQKLXM/

Perhaps it is a Russian conspiracy to keep you all burning that sweet sweet gazprom oil (except the UK, congratulations!). ;- )

There's plenty of split units in the UK too, but those require professional installation and quite possibly also planning permission with a full professional noise assessment. No dual-hose portables though. I'm not sure why; we don't seem to have banned them like Australia accidentally managed to do (they imposed efficiency requirements on dual-hose units that portable aircon couldn't meet whilst exempting the single-hose variety).

> they imposed efficiency requirements on dual-hose units that portable aircon couldn't meet whilst exempting the single-hose variety

Unintended consequences hall of fame. Have they reversed that, or is it just sorta sitting there, like a festering wound?

Meanwhile in Guadalajara, Mexico (usually a 23 Celsius city) has hailstorms.

This image ( https://i.redd.it/11x7w5vo3m731.jpg ) shows it very well. And they say global climate change is no a thing...

Is this unusual? There are plenty of places that are known to get hail storms, particularly on very hot and humid days. It looks like Guadalajara has the heat and humidity requirements for most of the year, so if it's unusual it must be the local weather/geography.

In Switzerland we are getting our first reprieve from the same heat wave now: super-intense thunderstorm cells have formed and are releasing rain across the country.

Could not come a moment too soon. The heat was incapacitating, and I write this as someone who grew up in Tornado Alley. If this kind of thing returns with greater frequency or duration, the results will be catastrophic. Dwellings, energy, etc. are not designed here for such extremes.

Climate change:

More frequent/extreme heat waves.

More frequent/extreme cold fronts.

More frequent/extreme drought.

More frequent/extreme heavy rain.

More frequent/extreme storms.

This is basically why "climate change" is coming into fashion to replace "global warming." Warming is the problem, but it manifests in different ways. The same warming that makes worse heat waves also weakens the jet stream and lets the polar vortex move further south.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23...

Germany is closing nuclear for solar and wind energy. They even generated less energy with more solar panels and turbines for wind energy. They had to use more coal due to closed nuclear plants.

France, on the other hand, has more nuclear plants and cleaner and also cheaper energy.

Sorry for the spam, but this link is interesting too. There are many TEDx talks on youtube for nuclear energy that analyze this topic.

https://www.politico.eu/article/germanys-green-dreams-run-in...

https://www.energy-charts.de/ren_share.htm?year=all&source=r...

So much confirmation bias. I haven't looked into Germany, but the French heatwave -- which is mentioned in the article -- has almost the same record temperatures as were recorded in 1930, 1870, 1773 and 1718, when, presumably, there was much less CO2. [1]

The other day's record-setting France temperature of 115F was recorded in Toulouse, where the temperature rose for one hour above the record set in 1923. Hardly conclusive proof of anything. [2]

In Paris, the heatwave's hottest day was 96F. Paris has had 164 days since the year 1900 hotter than that, including seven days over 100F.

These extremes are hardly new. Weather is not climate. Stop giving power and money to scaremongering media and politicians.

[1] https://realclimatescience.com/2019/06/50c-in-france/ [2] https://realclimatescience.com/2019/06/the-footprint-of-glob...

The site you're linking to is junk. Your comments about records ignores the fact that the hottest record setting days are not distributed randomly, but are in fact clustered around the turn of the 21st century. On top of that, the overall science is not solely based on temperature records, but on a number of different phenomena which you completely ignore.

TL;DR, the polar ice caps are melting, as predicted by scientists; the intensity of tropical storms is increasing, as predicted by scientists; the average mean temperature has been rising steadly, as also predicted. You fail to account for these things with any alternative theory that fits the facts, and your claim that it is all "scaremongering" is dubious at best. Especially since the world's largest companies are all petrochemical and have an invested interest in creating as much FUD about climate change as possible.

Global temperature averages over the past 100+ years: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ContentWOC/images/decadalt...

Looking further back, here is reconstructed temperature estimates of the past few thousand years. This additional context shows the dramatic change that is occurring:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past...

The evidence really seems as plain as day at this point...

In Greece on the other hand this was one of the coolest months I remember in the last couple of decades. We even had rains for multiple days.

I speak as a trained environmentalist. These rare extreme weather events are emotive publicity for climate change but they are mainly only just that and are not actually science.

It's the meteorological equivalent of a horrific serial killer being used as evidence that crime rates are going up.

You sure about that? It seems like most of the hottest European summers on record are all very recent. [0]

Interestingly, your chosen example does share some correlation with the rise in temperature. [1]

[0]https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/europ...

[1]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247781234_Heat_and_...

This is somewhat true (though the analogy is not), in that it is an event which correlates in frequency with the measure of interest, but where individual occurrences cannot be unambiguously tied to it.

The problem is that they aren't as rare as they used to be, and they are pushing the overall average up. If you look at other natural phenomena, like the tide coming in, it comes in waves and each wave is higher than before. You still have moments between each wave, when it seems like it was before, but the change does happen.

Went to Germany/Switzerland/France last summer, no AC anywhere - what a misery.

Last year was a walk in the park compared to this year, especially the recent week. The worst day wasn't even the highest one in temperature. Humidity, wind, air pollution§, and no reprieve during night, the combination makes it incapacitating in much more ways than merely "hot" is. It's like cooking slowly, with hardly a way to ever cool down.

§ breathing is a very effective active cooling system.

Tbh getting more than 30 degrees in these countries is a 10days/year thing. We just suck it up, ac is expensive and consume huge amount of energy. Most big building have passive climate control that gets the temp 5-7 degrees less than outside and it's more than enough.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/29/frances-new-hottest-r...

"But they don’t mention that where it was recorded was next to a concrete drain, and a steel chain mesh fence close to a bitumen (asphalt) highway. So much for only using correctly placed instruments in a Stevenson Screen in a open space away from unnatural heat source. "

And this is very far from being an exception.

Want to make a difference on climate change as a technologist? Feel free to join these communities actively looking for support and with ongoing projects (that are alive): - https://climateaction.tech/

- https://techimpactmakers.com/

- https://www.tmrow.com/

I'm sure these projects have their heart in the right place, but this crisis needs urgent action at the level of national policy. Unless you're able to develop commercial nuclear fusion in the next 5-10 years, the most effective thing you can do is demand action from your political leaders.

Individual actions cannot make a dent on a problem of this scale: https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-when-the-hero-is-the-probl...

On average, June was about 4 degrees Celsius too warm in Germany.

Wow! I was think it is India which is particularly receiving climate wrath.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/at-50c-plus-its-ta...

For those who are more familiar with Farenheight, 50C is 122F.

Or Guadalajara, Mexico, which received 6 feet of ice in a hailstorm: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexico-hail-storm-up-to-6-feet-...

One thing I've learned so far is that even though it is scorching hot outside, that won't stop the Germans from enjoying the sun.

Just got done reading about how that freak storm dumped five FEET of hail on Guadalajara, and now this...our planet is in distress

Earth has a fever: "A fever is a temporary increase in your body temperature, often due to an illness. Having a fever is a sign that something out of the ordinary is going on in your body."

One thing to note is that climate change is now generally used as synonymous for anthropocentric climate change. I have a hard time debating the issue as there are dissents in the scientific communinity about the anthropocentric climate change and I'm just not qualified to evaluate the matter properly.

But I do think it's important to point out that there are issues with this whole "all scientists agree" argument.

anyone worried about crops and yields ?

I was just in Berlin a couple weeks ago. It was brutal. No AC in hotels and 95 degree weather sucks.

Too much traveling. Too much consumption. Not enough minimalism. Not enough contentment. Government promises, minimal actions. I'm not bitter, I'm being realistic. 2018 3rd highest annual mean growth rate in CO2 of all time. https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html

We need to urgently implement solutions now. They are controversial but necessary to protect humanity and keep the planet culpable for future generations. We know we need less people and birth control, less consumption, and a goal of carbon neutrality. How do we get there?

Do we really need fewer people and less consumption if we have carbon neutrality?

In the end, it'll sort itself out.

We kind of need fewer consumption if we want to get anywhere near carbon neutrality. We don't have time to invent the future technology that will enable us to replace petrol everywhere. Hell, if that technology was invented already, we don't have enough time to replace our cars anyway. And even if we did, it would emit too much greenhouse gas just to manufacture all the new electric cars. So yeah, in my humble opinion the only solution in the time that we have is, less cars, planes, boats...

Actually yes - climate breakdown is just one of literally thousands of causes of ecosystem collapse. It's the most dramatic, and in many cases (eg. the Great Barrier Reef) it's the coup de grace, but it's 'economic growth' per se that is incompatible with the continued existence of planetary life. Theoretically if human technology could approach the level of sophistication of complex evolved systems (biomimicry) we might achieve a truly circular economy, but that's a long way off. For now, economic growth just physically is the dismantling of ecosystems, and these systems are reaching the limits of their capacity to absorb insults.

So, yes, some combination of reduced consumption and/or population will be necessary even if this one issue of climate change is successfully tackled in time (distinctly doubtful at this stage).

You definitely need less people once you realize that most of Earth's population lives in developing or underdeveloped countries. Which means that as they progress consumption will skyrocket. India alone has more citizens than Europe and US combined.

Less people is pretty much a non-starter for most people. What we really need is a lot more nuclear power..

Edit: I'd love to hear why someone is against nuclear power instead of just getting downvotes.

It's not a non-starter (indeed most demographic projections are that populations will decrease after a late 21st century peak). But it's too slow to be relevant to the climate collapse issue.

I hate to sound defeatist, but we're screwed. Most economic incentives drive people to pollute more because oil based energy sources are still quite cheap compared to alternatives. It would take a herculean effort by all the major governments of the world to actually stop this from happening. Humans will still survive, as we always have, but the world will be a much more hostile place to live for all its future residents.

https://rebellion.earth/ or this just keeps getting worse.

It keeps getting worse regardless. It's only a matter now of how much worse, and how quickly. Many of the leading lights involved with XR are very clear on this, and indeed are working in parallel on 'deep adaptation' (ie. how to manage through the collapse).

You think that's going to stop it from getting worse? It won't.

Political action is the only thing thing that can address climate change.

Since none of us are elected politicians, mass protest (general strike) is our only way of putting pressure on government + industry.

"Stop" is too strong a word. It's too late to stop something that's already happened.

So far, we haven't even moved the second derivative in the right direction.

Of course, every comment suggesting mass political action on HN gets downvoted in favour of more bloviating about pipe-dream fusion or scifi geo-engineering scenarios.

Moving the second derivative... yeah, that might actually be a realistic goal.

What is their position on nuclear? I don't see anywhere were there's a plan to replace Oil + Gas + Coal (renewables atm will not come close!).

James Hansen has the carbon dividend / tax.[0] This is the only thing that will work imo.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend

XR's main goal is just that politicians be honest with people about how desperate the crisis is, and treat the problem with the seriousness it deserves. They aren't scientists and they're not trying to pre-determine what action should be taken: https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/faqs/

> What does XR think about 5g, Veganism, Nuclear power, smart meters and so on?

> Many people within XR will have strong views on all of the above and we want to welcome a variety of views, rather than adopting positions on controversial topics. We believe a social movement is best built as a “broad church” and that respectful discussions should take place within the movement on a variety of topics (honouring our principle and value of no blaming and shaming). XR does not take a position on solutions to the ecological crisis- our third demand is for a Citizens Assembly to come up with a way to deal with the crisis focussing on climate and ecological justice based on being presented with facts from a variety of experts. We focus on the issues that have a clear body of mainstream science with a large consensus of opinion – for example, biodiversity loss and climate change.

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