Europe’s Cities Weren’t Built for This Kind of Heat | Hacker News Reader

Europe’s Cities Weren’t Built for This Kind of Heat

citylab.com

73 pointspseudolus112 comments

I grew up in South Spain, in a European city that goes beyond 40° celsius for 1-2 months in a row during summer and we never had an aircon. How we did it? Just white painted house, with thick walls. Open the windows during the night and keep them closed during the day. It works perfectly.

One of the big problems is paper thin walls of modern buildings and using materials and colors that absorb and retain heat. We have the technical solutions since centuries but there is no willing to do things properly in this crazy captalistic society that we live now.

If you want to build a house properly, you can buy some land and get someone to build it for you, I'm sure there are lots of people willing to build a well constructed house. In general, people just seem to prefer cheaply constructed larger homes over well constructed smaller ones, don't really see what capitalism has to do with it other than giving them the freedom to make that choice.

I think the parent's point is that this has produced many spectacularly bad outcomes.

Even with curtain walls, as long as the windows are made with low-E glass and are well insulated, then they will provide a lot of protection from heat and allow AC to work efficiently.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you lived in the south of Spain it means you had cool air currents from the sea always blowing and generating ventilation when you opened the windows.

In central Europe, we have no sea, no coast and no winds to bring cool air in summer.

I'm in Austria, and due to the lack of wind, at night the temperature doesn't drop much and even with all the doors and windows of my apartment wide open the air is literally sitting still and we're boiling.

In my experience, in towns like Merida or Córdoba, some 400km away for the nearest coastal site, there’s not much of a sea breeze whatsoever. Also, most of that part of Spain is in a Mesa well over 2k ft. ASL. Finally, 1st. hand experience as of last summer, temperatures don’t drop at all at night, staying in the low thirties (Celsius) for the night. This year seems nicer surprisingly.

The south of Spain is quite big. I grew up in the interior, so no sea winds

This strategy works well in arid climates where the dew point (and low temperatures) are in the 10s C. In humid climates where it doesn't drop below 25C at night, it simply never gets cold enough.

Northern Italy is like that, and we survive using exactly the same strategy.

Every year there are one or two weeks between the second half of June and the end of July where lows are 24-28C and highs are 32-36C. It's now midnight and temperature is 30C with 65% humidity. It sucks, but here it isn't a particularly hot summer and still there's no AC in most houses.

There's one additional factor: high ceilings.

I used to spend a good chunk of the year in Bologna, where me and my SO rented an apartment with a 3.5m ceiling, thick walls and no AC.

Summer was pretty brutal, but manageable - I was able to maintain a temperature 10C lower than outside during the day.

Our bed was on a mezzanine, which I didn't use during the summer because there was simply a noticeable temperature difference.

>One of the big problems is paper thin walls of modern buildings and using materials and colors that absorb and retain heat. We have the technical solutions since centuries but there is no willing to do things properly in this crazy captalistic society that we live now.

The r-value of 16 inches of concrete is around 1.75. The r-value of 1 inch of top end insulating foam is 7.20. R-value is how resistive something is to transmitting heat.

Or in other words, the reason we don't have thick walls is because modern insulating material is well over an order of magnitude better at insulating than concrete/brick/etc.

edit: And they used dark materials because in most of Europe you used to be much more concerned about heating in winter versus cooling in summer. That's, obviously, changing now but acting as if it made no sense is just silly.

You're right of course, but thermal mass is important too.

But only if, as I understand it, the temperature varies significantly throughout the day and night. Which is not really the case in much of central Europe as others have pointed out.

The classic Andalusian hacienda has two levels, top for winter living and lower for summer, it has an inside patio (some with a fountain) covered with a canopy or canvas.

But yes white and thick walls, thick roofs with ceramic tiles help a lot.

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

This would never work where I stay, because of mosquitoes. You do not open your windows unless you have nets, and of recent the air blown are also hot, and so air-conditioning is the only saving grace you have provided there is stable power supply except you are ready to utilize generators which contributes to making the whole climate situation unbearable.

I just come from Mexico (Monterrey) where it was regularly 35+ degrees. And now I'm in Belgium in this heat (40+ today) and it's unimaginable how bad it is here.

Usually in Belgium things turn horrible when it's just 30+ because we have no decent installation to deal with this heat. Almost no places have airco so the best you can hope for is a fan. And that just doesn't help that much. Really hard to concentrate on work in this heat. Plus biking to work (largely uphill) makes me sweat more in a day than usually in a week. Not that pleasant to arrive at work like that either.

At least in our home in Mexico there is airco in each room and most places you visit have airco as well.

(Though we have the opposite problem in winter. No good heating in our home in Mexico but great heating in Belgium).

EDIT: And tomorrow I have to use public transportation. Imagine that, a bus without airco full of people sweating. Just want to rant about this, because for all the promoting they do for public transportation, you'd at least except to not melt.

I don't know how to fix the worlds problems, but I do know that everyone in Europe getting AC isn't going to be the answer to rising temperatures.

In tropical places we deal with heat by having open houses that allow breeze. But I don't know that will work in a place with winter. I offer no solutions but increasing energy consumption across Europe isn't one.

Breeze? What is breeze? Air is humid and still until 1 or 2am (last June there was also a heat wave but the nights were nice at least). :-(

Why not? Is the solution that everyone boils? We have technology to tame the hot interior of buildings. To many people, it’s like Jehovah’s Witnesses and blood transfusions though — irrational religious opposition to a modern tech that solves a problem. Just suffering through the heat is becoming a martyr for no good reason.

It’s hot. Get air conditioning. Build some nuclear plants to make more clean electricity. Problem solved.

> Build some nuclear plants to make more clean electricity. Problem solved.

It doesn't work that way. Aircons dump unusable waste heat into the environment. On a large enought scale, it creates global warming on it's own.

Same with solar panels, they change the albedo of the earth surface, and this will be a huge problem in the future.

> On a large enought scale, it creates global warming on it's own.

Any amount of energy we can ever generate from nuclear is trivial compared to the insolation. Average daily insolation on Earth is 6 kWh/m^2. Earth area is 5.1e+14 m^2. This means we get 3e+15 kWh daily from sun, or 1.1e+18 kWh annually. On the other hand, we produce 2e+11 kWh electricity annually. This means that solar insolation is 7 orders of magnitude larger than our electricity production.

Which is why I mentioned that it will be a problem in the future, not today. Imagine all of India airconed. And it's also why I mentioned albedo. That will drastically increase the sun insolation effect, today a lot of the suns energy is reflected back into space. This will change, especially with solar panels.

No, it won't ever become a problem. 7 orders of magnitude means we get 10 million times more energy from sun than we generate in electricity. Bringing rest of the world energy use to US/Europe standard will at worst result in 100 times more waste heat generation than now (and almost surely much less than that), which is still far cry from 10 million.

You assume that it's obvious that we can't consume 7 orders of magnitude more energy than now.

We already grew our energy consumption 4 orders of magnitude in 300 years.

http://bwp.io/blog/2014/thermodynamic-limits-of-human-energy...

Yes, it's obvious. There's no way a single person will consume as much energy as the whole country does today. These days, the energy use per capita goes down in developed countries, so the current energy consumption growth is mostly due to poorer places catching up.

You seem very sure about how humanity will look like in 500 years and how much energy it would use.

Obviously you consider the concept of Type II and Type III civilizations impossible and ridiculous, since they would use more than 20 orders of magnitude more energy than we do.

I consider talking about Type II and Type III civilizations ridiculous in the context of discussing potential increase in the use of air conditioning in India.

I see. So when you said "No, it won't ever(x) become a problem", it was like one of those ads "Unlimited(x) data", with the fine print "(x) unlimited is meant to be understood as less than 10 GB per month", or in your case "(x) ever means at most 200 years from now"

Note, that when I said "all of India being airconned" I literally meant all of India, as in the whole subcontinent being a single giant city with 100 billion people living in it. And on that scale you need energy not only for airconn, but food/water/waste disposal/... But I guess you exclude that possibility too. It's understandable through why you would just imagine that I was talking about making India into something like present day Europe. In general people find it really hard to imagine anything radically different than the status quo.

Just to add to the other comment, I suggest you look up what the temperatures of the nighttime side of Mercury are (which receives max solar radiation intensity about 10x of Earth at ~14.4 kW/m^2 vs our max of ~1.4 kW/m^2 outside of atmosphere and ~1 kW/m^2 at the surface). Now reflect on the relative importance of absolute energy input vs retention.

You cannot cool down a building without making the exterior even warmer -- this is the second law of thermodynamics. The Problem is not "solved" by producing even more energy and thus generating entropy (unusable heat).

Certain institutions need air conditioning though -- hospitals, elder care, etc. so I wouldn't forbid it outright -- but using AC everywhere seems excessive (written at 33°C at 20:23 in Germany).

Geez, 33 degrees at 20:23? That’s absolutely brutal. I hope you and yours are doing okay.

Thanks, I am fine, had a hard time concentrating at work today, but except for that I am doing well. I worry about the people with heart or circulatory conditions though -- not everyone is equipped to handle these temperatures.

"For a 2014 paper, Francisco Salamanca and colleagues at Arizona State University modeled the effects of air conditioning on surface air temps in Phoenix. They found a nighttime increase of about 2°F (and nothing much during the day)" [0].

That doesn't sound like a big issue to me.

[0]: https://www.popsci.com/ask-us-anything-does-using-ac-make-it...

>You cannot cool down a building without making the exterior even warmer -- this is the second law of thermodynamics. The Problem is not "solved" by producing even more energy and thus generating entropy (unusable heat).

I don't understand why this particular total misunderstanding of physics comes up in so many contexts (a lot of anti-evolution types claimed it too in the past). The 2nd Law states that total entropy cannot decrease in a closed system. Yet a bit of reflection should reveal that somehow we manage to decrease local entropy all the time. In turn one may, once or twice, notice an enormous sphere of thermonuclear fusion in the sky that provides most of Earth's primary energy input. And at other times you may have noticed an enormous inky void into which energy can radiate away from Earth. Which should reveal that we in fact live in a locally open system, not a closed one. What controls the local general temperature is the equilibrium between energy input and what is radiated away. That's what greenhouse gasses change.

So no, you're completely and utterly off, AC does not in any way cause any trouble when it comes to the problem of global warming. The energy after all would have been transformed to entropy regardless. What matters is the greenhouse gasses that exist in the atmosphere.

> Build some nuclear plants to make more clean electricity. Problem solved.

Funny thing - the nuclear power plant in Grohnde, Lower-Saxony will be shut down for at least the next two days, because the river ("Weser"), which is used for cooling, is too hot.

source: https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/niedersachsen-we... (only german articles, sorry)

A curious thing that people have no problem dumping endless kilowatts (and gas btu's) into their heaters all winter but a few watts of AC when its warm is environmental heresy and a sign of personal weakness. This despite the fact that heat-pump AC's use far less power.

All I can figure is people have been heating themselves for 10's of thousands of years and AC is a distinctly modern phenomenon. From Mother Earth's perspective it would be far better for humanity to live in the tropics with AC than nearer the poles with heaters.

Indeed, but you can also use an AC to heat a space, but the efficiency will go down as the outside temperature drops. Heat pumps work both ways.

Might I add that some countries are especially known for liking their internal temperatures more in the tropical range even when outside temperatures are around 10C/15C and just natural heat from people would be enough to make it comfortable.

AC is not a waste of electricity, quite the contrary, if it can be inverted (that is, pumping hot air in instead of out) then it's more efficient than electric heating.

AC powered by fossil fuels*. AC powered by renewables and nuclear isn't too bad. And heck, it might mean more people staying in their homes, consuming less resources than if they felt the need to go out to escape the heat.

I don't suggest getting AC. It'd be crazy to spend so much money for those 2 weeks it actually gets warm. I don't, however, blame people for wanting AC in places where it's actually warm year-round.

You can use it in spring too as a heat pump, especially if you don't stay at home during the day so you only need to heat and cool the living room.

Really the main issue in Northern Europe is that houses do not even have blinds. In Italy or Greece it's not too common to have AC either, but people live just fine by shutting the blinds during the day.

Every house I know has blinds in Belgium. Are you perhaps talking more modern like Sweden?

I've almost always seen indoor blinds, which are useless in keeping heat outside the windows. In Southern Europe blinds are outdoor and keep solar radiation outside the glass, and there are separate curtains inside for privacy when the blinds are open.

Compare Antwerpen[0] or Brussels[1] with Milan[2] or Crete[3] or Barcelona[4]

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.219842,4.4006387,3a,75y,64.8...

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8398344,4.3562283,3a,75y,90....

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4558029,9.1837501,3a,75y,29....

[3] https://www.google.com/maps/@35.3266049,25.1255372,3a,75y,34...

[4] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3880801,2.1358851,3a,75y,256...

I was talking about indoor blinds, my bad!

Every house I can see in my street has no blinds, here in Antwerp.

Coming from France it seems weird to me, and obviously blinds would come very handy right now, but there are obviously a lot of houses with no blinds in Belgium, I can see them from where I stand.

Unless you're talking about curtains or other things that sit inside the house, which are basically useless against heat.

I was indeed talking about the wrong, sorry! ;-)

Everyone getting AC allowed the southwest US to populate

Interesting. Can you say more about that? People have lived in hot environments like Arabia for centuries.

99% Invisible made the argument that it also changed the US electoral map.

"And the ubiquity of AC has had a serious impact on how and maybe most profoundly where we live. Hot places like Arizona and Florida saw huge influxes of residents. A mass migration to the so-called “Sunbelt” changed the political map, too, as electoral college seats moved with citizens. And since a lot of these new southward migrants were conservative retirees, they voted Republican, forming a key target demographic in Reagan’s election in 1980."

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-delight/

In the Netherlands we are moving from gas powered heating to heat pumps that, with adequate design of the rest of the house (so only for new buildings) can keep a house cool for the fraction of the electricity of AC. It's honestly one of the reasons we are considering buying a new home (which are massively overpriced). I think the climate will only become more extreme.

Traditional AC is heat pumps, they're the same thing and no efficiency difference.

I spent some of my life in Hawaii and open breezy houses work great until they don't. The times where it get really hot and there is no breeze it's absolutely miserable. I survived it fine but with how hot and still the summer is where I live in the Midwest I'm glad I have AC now.

This is why I chuckle when Europeans lament Americans and their air conditioning. In Texas, this is called “summer.” I am in Rome right now and it’s pretty hot, but luckily there is air conditioning in most places.

The bike-to-work crowd suggests that everywhere should use bikes instead of cars, however, what you experience in Belgium now — imagine that everyday in traditionally hot climate. It can be nice to bike to work in most California cities, but in the midst of a hot summer in hot and humid climates, it’s unnecessarily third-world to do that when we have cars with air conditioning.

Absolutely, biking to work is great in Belgium because the weather is 'okay'. Texas gets pretty warm but you don't notice it that much to be honest. Don't think I've been to a restaurant there that didn't have airco. Likewise my in-laws (San Antonio) have airco at home so it's pretty great.

I don't blame anyone for using air conditioning with that climate :)

Where I am gets quite hot in the summer (at least for me!). This can be offset by having shower facilities at work. Gets rid of the sweat, and turn it colder to lower your body temperature back to normal.

Absolutely! Most places I have worked offered showers but it's not always the best experience. (Busy, not comfortable with lenses, ..)

Yeah, not sure why you're downvoted. Hitting 100 F in July is a pretty regular occurrence here, and in the suburb I grew up in (west of Chicago), the average is usually high 80s, not mid 70s as the article says about London.

> Almost no places have airco so the best you can hope for is a fan.

I am wondering if there is 'windchill' is there also 'windroast'? After all if the body cools down by air streaming along it evaporating the sweat then the evaporation process will speed up but the dry skin will then be exposed to air that is hotter than the skin itself.

So if 10 below + windchill can make it feel like -20 below is it possible for 40 + windroast to make it feel like 50?

There absolutely is. A friend in Arizona has this problem, that cycling down a hill makes you hotter, not cooler.

And of course that's why your oven has a fan.

My experience in Nevada and Arizona has been that when it's 40/43 or more, the wind doesn't make it any worse in terms of how hot it feels. At least in regards to normal activity. Wind is a bit annoying - disappointing - when it's that hot, you expect the wind to feel cooling and it's not.

Today when biking downhill the warm wind against my eyes was much more annoying / irritating than 'cool wind'. Can't say if it also made me feel warmer, but definitely annoyed my eyes more.

> windroast

I've been roasted by the Loo winds [0] quite regularly. Not a pleasant experience.

Also see: Heat Index [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loo_(wind)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index

Up to some absurd temperature (i.e this probably isn't true if you're standing in a bunch of exhaust from a jet engine or a metal casting operation) increased airflow will make sweating more efficient enabling you to shed heat faster than the difference between static and moving air heats you up. Even before air conditioning fans were (and still are) popular in the tropics for this reason.

Feel free to go up in your attic or some other 100+deg (freedom degrees, obviously with a box fan if you don't believe me. I assure you it will be more pleasant with the box fan.

At 36 degrees Celsius of wet-bulb temperature, your body is not able to cool itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

The maximal temperature when you can still cool down depends on humidity and is exactly 36 degrees Celsius with 100% humidity.

> Really hard to concentrate on work in this heat.

This reminds me of Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, who said,

“Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics.

Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency.” [1]

1. vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew-air-conditioning

Homes here in the Netherlands rarely have airco and many friends have no airco at work either. (Luckily I have at work but not at home) Today for the first time measured we had temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius.

Last summer we had a drought that made all grass fields look yellow and many trees losing branches and bark. They say with changing climate the current types of trees won’t survive. We are again low on water as farmers cannot use water from the canals.

This is becoming the new normal...

This is becoming the new normal...

It won't stay normal for long...

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/publ...

Time to buy some air conditioning stocks

Or start a HVAC company that specialized in AC unit installation/maintenance.

Heatpumps are better.

Depends on the cost of electricity vs natural gas in your area.

I'm curious what you mean by this.

A typical AC in the US is a compressor based heat-pump, though the term "heat pump" is colloquially used to describe a compressor based heat-pump used to heat, rather than cool, a building.

Lastly the term HVAC is a catchall that includes heat pumps.

Here it means it can cool and heat, typical AC would only cool.

I don't live in the US and we don't use the term HVAC here.

I'm aware of the difference between the colloquial use of the word 'heat-pump' and the technical one, on the off chance that you really did not understand me I meant the ones where you use an in-ground heat source or sink to cool or heat a building by the movement of a working fluid.

The basic idea is that such a device can save you money because it does not need the same amount of energy that you would be using in a more traditional heating and cooling setup.

> I'm aware of the difference between the colloquial use of the word 'heat-pump' and the technical one, on the off chance that you really did not understand me I meant the ones where you use an in-ground heat source or sink to cool or heat a building by the movement of a working fluid.

I really did not understand you, thanks for clarifying. I've heard of below-ground heat-pumps but have yet to see one in real life. A friend of mine who lives in a less temperate part of the US investigated it, but it was too long of a payback time due to the much increased installation costs.

Here in NL we heat homes typically by burning natural gas. The natural gas reserves are not nearly depleted but the reservoirs are collapsing causing earth quakes that damage houses built on/near the gas fields. This has led to a huge push for alternative ways to heat homes, and one of the few feasible ones for many reasons is heat pumps. So there are quite a few of them deployed and there is talk of subsidies or subsidized loans for people that want to install one.

The goal is to stop building new houses connected to the gas infrastructure soon.

My friend is not connected to the natural gas infrastructure (too remote), so it was going to be either electric or liquefied petroleum gas with an on-site tank that was periodically refilled.

On the time frame he was considering, a heat pump was chaper, the propane was more reliable (when the electricity goes out, it's often winter), and the below ground heat-pump was so expensive to install that it made no sense. Not sure what winters are like in NL, but average low where he is would be -8C in January with anything below about -15C being unusually cold.

An AC (and a Fridge) are all heatpumps (in the broad sense)

The issue is that most ACs (for hot weather places) are built to not allow the reverse cycle. But several models do allow cooling (pumping heat out) and also heating (pumping heat in)

Perhaps from a utility's perspective, but as a consumer I hate mine.

Same in Germany - we have an intern from Tunesia, and he told us that it's quite usual for every home there to have an AC. He says he usually switches it on at 19°C.

Also, regarding the drought: If I remember correct, the soil hasn't yet recovered from the 2018 drought, at least here in Germany.

> I have at work but not at home

same here, I think I'll sleep over at work today

I was in Paris earlier this month when it was very hot and it was really amazing just how unprepared everyone is.

No Screens on the windows

No fans

No AC except in the museums

No insulation in any of the places we stayed (France, Germany, Switzerland)

Stuff like Gatorade, Electrolyte drinks, etc.. mostly missing in action

Everyone drinking lots of alcohol in the heat (dehydrating)

The lack of fans & screens was more surprising than the lack of A/C, which I understood as not really needed since they are very far north. Lack of insulation was really weird too since historically those areas get really cold.

I'm from the Boston area we have had temps near 100F/38C since I was a kid, basically every summer.

The weather in Paris was not particularly hot based on growing up in New England, and it was less humid. But it was relentless since there was no way to be prepared for it.

We noticed an awful lot of people seemed to be in denial about wearing appropriate clothes in the heat too.. pants, long sleeve shirts, jackets, etc.. when it was 90F/32C.

Not sure what insulation you were expecting, but I've been around Germany and I've always found the insulation good. I.e. no drafts, thick walls, double-pane windows and both the windows and outside doors close properly. Fans were all over though. I'm not sure what you mean by screens.

I mean insect screens. If you've got biting/disease-spreading insects you can't open your windows when it's hot if you have no AC.

There were very few biting insects that I saw in France/Germany/Switzerland but with climate change they will probably arrive and compound the heat problems.

I have been told northern Europe (Scandinavia) has plenty of biting insects like the US.

The walls were thick everywhere I saw but they just looked like concrete walls, not walls with modern insulation. Someone mentioned above modern insulation is significantly more effective than concrete.

So have we started to do the easiest most obvious things to save energy? Commercial building rooftops that are black in Winter and white in Summer--this would require little more than a special tarp. Food stores that do Not have wide open refrigerator aisles. Hot water piping insulation--both on domestic HW and heating lines. Use of shades to difuse or block sunlight in Summer and alow it in during Winter. The answer is Nope we have Not... so until we get serious and consider the easy things that will add up to a huge cumulative gain--how can we hope to convince Joe 6 pack that he should plan his trips out to the store for beer in an economical fashion?

I known everyone is swinging for the fences here in terms of getting off fossil fuels--but hey lots of times a single is what is needed to win the game. Just sayin.

We require state level (think of war) mobilization to properly combat all aspects of climate change. Streets in city centers should be lined with trees, research is required to find a suitable alternative to asphalt -- or perhaps a way to simply make our streets less black. I'd even support research into ways to artificially construct wind tunnels using tall buildings.

In my city they cut down 10 meters of gardens around blocks of flats to make room for parking cars. Nobody bats an eye because parking is a bigger problem for them.

Good thread on how railroads in the northern latitudes were designed & built under different climate assumptions, and are now failing in this unprecedented heat

https://twitter.com/alexwlchan/status/1154122791958040581

Never thought I would be so enthralled with railway construction.

same here - that guy is excellent!

Live in an old 19th century cottage in the UK... usually the thick stone walls work well - keep the heat in during the winter months and keep it cool during summer.

It’s bloody boiling in here today!

My cousin lives up in East Anglia in a house built in the mid 1300s. They have bought box fans for every room otherwise they cannot even sleep. No aircon, obviously. The local council will not allow the house to be retrofitted since it's historical.

There are mobile aircons, no drilling holes required.

Please make sure your wiring and electric box can support an air conditioner (mobile or not). You don't want to cause a blow out or fire...

A separate circuit for the A/C (window unit, mobile or central) is ideal, if possible.

Peace

A mobile AC draws hardly any amps. I tested mine that is rated for 700sqft to pull 6 amps at 110v.

Passive house owner here. Outside we had 38 degree today. Inside it’s still 25 degree without air conditioning. The house has blinds outside, massive concrete walls and ~25cm of thermal insulation.

Sitting on a bus right now in London, trying to get home. The trains are just completely f*ed and I'm melting.

> Not only are temperatures exceeding pretty much everywhere in the United States right now

This is a bit misleading. Our big heat wave was last week, temperatures about the same as in this article (and the heat index around 10 F higher).

Thank the Lord it's just a matter of buying air conditioners.

I'm sure next year we'll read the same news: "people are boiling!". Okay, why didn't you buy an air conditioner last year, eh?

Is it smart to buy property in Scotland/Sweden? Yeah I know "real smart thing would be fighting climate change together" bla-bla-bla.

If the Gulf stream stops, Europe will freeze.

That's just a hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circu...

Which is why I said "if" not "when".

No, those places are quite socialized, they're not far off from nationalizing private real estate when it suites them.

I am afraid that characterization is simply not accurate. Scandinavian model countries are not regularly nationalizing individuals property.

Furthermore, they regularly have the highest international rankings in happiness, education, and health.

Welfare != socialism

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-49108576 30C in Edinburgh today, also a record. We are at least above worries about sea level. But even here the "geopolitical risk" is rising.

If you are betting on climate change, siberia real estate is the best bet... of course, if you can elbow Russian oligarchs who are already doing it.

Siberia is not very attractive from weather perspective. It's extremely cold in winter, but still super hot in summer. Climate change won't make it any more attractive: it will be even hotter in summer, but only slightly less freezing in winter.

Funny because one of the current trending topics on Russian twitter is forest fires in Siberia, how it's impossible to breathe in Siberian cities and how nobody seems to care (with Russian TV Channels ignoring this topic).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com