Britain has declared a national emergency because of the heat | Hacker News Reader

Britain has declared a national emergency because of the heat

nytimes.com

38 points1sembiyan54 comments

At long last people are realizing Southern Europeans are not lazy. UK has 40C for one day and hospitals are shutting down. Down here in Spain it's just Monday.

I don't understand why Europeans are so averse to AC. You don't have to run it all year (obviously) and it plugs into the wall so it is compatible with renewables, much in the same way as are EVs.

You can even put one in your bedroom and only run it at night for £500.

In the UK, most offices, shops, cars, and (intercity) public transport already have AC but it just doesn't get hot enough for long enough to justify installing it most homes.

Portable AC units are relatively new to the market, but I can see them becoming more popular in the coming years.

Agreed, I think the market is ripe for a nice affordable portable one. Doesn't even need to be energy efficient either considering it will only be run for about 20 days a year.

Hopefully 20 days, could be 40 days if global warming continues. I think newly installed A/C should use inverter, or at least it's not a unit with a duct hose.

In the process of buying a house in the UK.

Both my office and the bedrooms are getting proper AC (haven't ruled out doing the entire house).

It isn't going to get any colder over the next decade or two.

Have you considered using a heat pump for cooling?

That's what AC is.

You are basically right. What I meant is using a geothermal heat pump to cool using the underfloor heating system. (I lack the proper English vocabulary for this domain, I hope you get what I mean).

In the UK, ground source heat pumps are fairly common.

I'm leaning more towards PV panels on the roof to offset the AC.

It's the UK, I'd actually need to use the AC maybe 20-30 days a year for a few hours and maybe an hour a day in the summer just to get the temp down before bed.

PV panels would easily offset that.

Self-flagellation fetish

Masochism

I understand why you're getting the downvotes...but you're kinda right.

I don't really get the defeatist/martyr attitude of Euroland people when it comes to all sorts of issues like this. They seem encounter an economic (or other) problem and immediately think it means they should forfeit quality of life vs. fighting or working hard. Maybe it is more common for those people to see the world as zero-sum?

As an American, I find this "lay down and die" attitude quite confusing and repulsive.

Or another way to look at it is that American cultural value of "Individuality" has been corrupted to lean towards more and more selfishness because of consumerism ... so much that some Americans now think it is normal to have a selfish attitude and are wired (by constant consumerist marketing) to place their needs above all, without bothering to think about how their decisions and actions impact others. What you see as indecisiveness or lack of action may actually be genuine contemplation ...

> Or another way to look at it is that American cultural value of "Individuality" has been corrupted to lean towards more and more selfishness because of consumerism

Wanting everyone's life to be better is progress, not selfishness.

Wanting everyone to suffer because of some "original sin" is an abhorrent viewpoint that only results in more misery.

Painting "progress" as "selfishness" is a trick played by those too lazy to do the hard work to improve their own lives, and in general move civilization forward. In the end, they are primarily harming themselves with this disempowering belief.

> What you see as indecisiveness or lack of action may actually be genuine contemplation

I'm sorry but this is laughable. How long do you reckon you'll need to think about this?

The solution is simple, but not easy: ADD MORE AC UNITS AS TEMPERATURES WARM.

AC is becoming more common in hot areas (from experience in the South of France you can kow see some homes with AC whereas it was unheard of before) but the UK is hardly a hot area. These are 2 days of 'proper' heat and there are many ways to cope.

> 'proper' heat

In what world is 40C "proper" heat?

In british english parlance, sometimes "proper" is used like that as emphasis, not a discussion of whether it is correct or right or the expected situation.

There hasn't been much history for heat waves in northern Europe, but we used to have very long and cold winters. As such people invested heavily in heaters and insulation, and simply opened the window during the warmest few days during the summer. An AC unit and installation is quite a large cost in order to just make a few days better once every few years.

Now days the winter is much milder and the summer warmer. Modern ACs that can run in reverse is also much cheaper and can reduce the need for more expensive heating solutions, so we are seeing a uptick in number of homes with AC installed.

I think they were suggesting a window unit air conditioner based on the price quoted. They can be installed without any modification to your home and you can take them out in the winter and put them in storage.

In terms of running them in reverse, there are already window unit heat pumps which tend to be a bit more expensive. Personally I'm waiting for the Gradient window unit heat pump to come out since I like the idea of the saddle-bag design and I want the heat pump capabilities, but I'm going to wait for reviews first since afaik this is their first product.

I don’t like it because the difference of temperature when I go outside makes me to feel sick. AC is not environmental friendly, consumes lot of energy and makes the street where I live much hotter. I prefer the old school fan.

In the US I couldn’t stand the cold temperatures indoors because the AC. Horrible.

How does it make you feel sick? I don't understand how that could work physiologically.

Same mechanism why you get more sick in the winter. Periodic thermal shocks and therefore periodic capillaries expansions and retractions in you airways, sinuses. People are quite susceptible to it here in central EU, me included. US people seem to be kinda conditioned to the constant thermal shocks.

Here many only have and use AC in their cars and only in peak summer and I remember there used to be warnings in TV news that you should turn off or start gradually decreasing AC intensity before arriving to your destination a getting of your car. (It was usually as a part of some interview with some GPs, discussing why are people getting more sick in peak summer.)

That's not what causes people to get sick in the winter. Warnings about AC use is car are nonsense. Why would you believe that?

You are aware that you can control the temperature that the AC targets? I live in the US and so have AC and I set it around 29C under normal conditions (if it is unusually humid I find I have to set it a bit lower to be comfortable.)

It's not an "aversion" it has been up to this point an unnecessary luxury expense (before all of a sudden the temperatures started inching up).

I'm sure there's been a huge run on AC units in the UK and in years following I'm sure the shops will be stocking them quite a bit more.

It's the same story as Portland/Seattle/Vancouver area where previously it only got genuinely hot for like two weeks and AC wasn't really that required, but then we had that absolutely nutso heat dome last year, and that changed everyone's thinking. People have bought AC units and now we're seeing that AC is standard in new apartments in Vancouver.

America is a richer nation (higher salaries, GDP per capita) and housing is way bigger (in terms of square footage)

Even with summer weather like it is this year I still not convinced that A/C at home is essential in England. Nights are still cold - today's early morning temp was about 23°C and tomorrow 17°C is expected. If you live in a brick house you can vent it throughout the night and it would keep more or less livable temperature at daytime (31°C was the daily maximum inside my dwelling while outside was 38°C). Also while England on average is a humid place during heat waves humidity is low which make it easier to endure them.

I suffer much more during winter - more than tree months at about 18° (and heating bill is high even with the temperature way below my comfort zone).

This heatwave is nothing like that of 1976: https://mobile.twitter.com/scribblerlex/status/1548592171133...

Tangent: in my experience in a rather hot humid country, until about 2014 or so the AC of European cars here were lousy.

Japanese, Korean, and American cars had noticeably better cooling. The AC of VW, Skoda, Mercedes-Benz, BMW etc were not upto the mark when it comes to cooling.

Could that have been because the country of origin of those cars were generally cold places?

The problem seems to be fixed in newer cars, though some still seem to have issues.

Same deal with windshield wiper speeds; over here it rains heavy during the monsoons (which is a relief from the heat), but the European cars' wipers never go as fast as it ideally should.

I saw people discussing how English homes are insulated to keep them hot in the winter, and this is hurting them in the summer.

Either I am completely retarded or the internet has basically let the lowest common denominator have a voice.

Insulation only works till the building is heat soaked then it makes it slower for the building to cool down and our houses are typically brick which holds heat well, uk houses have low airflow because it’s cold and wet much of the time so in summer the issue is that heat gets trapped in the day and we can’t get it out at night.

It’s currently about 6 degrees warmer in my bedroom than outside but with no wind I struggle to get the heat from inside to outside.

The discussions I've seen have been more about how the buildings are meant to keep the heat in vs letting it go, either by building with less thermal mass or with airflow. Once stone or concrete buildings heat up, they tend to stay hot or vice-versa.

I wonder how long before wearables that actively cool you become a thing i.e. a top that you put on and acts as a heat pump to take the heat away from you.

In winter I wear a heated top often rather than switch the heater on and the wife has a heated blanket. Seems like a much more efficient way of keeping warm / cool than changing the room temp.

Something like the Sony Reon Pocket? https://www.sony.com.hk/reonpocket/en/

Thank you. I will take a further look at it.

It seems to be a tiny battery operated, small fan cooled peltier device. Don't expect much from it.

In fact, it might work better if you remove the peltier device and battery and just direct the fan to blow across the nape of your neck.

We have those in the USA. They are called cars. They are incredibly popular.

This isn't just a pedantic joke. My point is there will be little demand for such a thing in the USA, since the USA, unlike much of the world, supports a culture in which it is, for better or worse, already easy to avoid going outside for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

Heated clothing might make sense. But for cooling unless we are talking about something evaporative or absorbing there just isn't feasible technology. There is Peltier effect, but that is horribly inefficient and cooling the hot side is bit of a pain...

https://archive.ph/UyiGV

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