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Comment by zarzavat | Hacker News Reader

It's nothing new. In 2003 there was a huge heatwave and thousands of people died:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heatwave

The reason is simple to understand. For the majority of the time the AC would sit idle. Some years AC is not required at all because the summer is mild. It's hard to get people to spend money on things that they don't need most of the time, it's like buying insurance.

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There were 2-3 days a year above 30C in London from 1995 to 2015. Since then it's been about 6 days a year, and this year has already broken that

Ok but you can use AC in the winter as well, you've an use it only to dry the air in your apartment. So this is not a real argument to me once you know what it can do and how it does it, there is no reason not to have one. Outside it is 25°C but I still run my AC at 22°C and it is super efficient as this is the case where AC excels at efficiency when the diff is small. It is a heat pump, sometimes I would run it when outside is colder and inside is veru warm as it moves heat faster than opening the window and waiting.

I know not AC are/were heat pumps but I don't know of any that are not anymore

You can still buy a cooling-only unit no problem. Slightly cheaper than a heat pump.

Yes but still, I don't think it is worth it when you can heqt with it more efficiently than burning gas or coal.

At least in the UK, there's a massive move to heat pumps. The problem is that it's only for heating, through the usual central heating systems - so it just replaces the boiler. It's almost unheard of to have one for air conditioning. Usually people with air-con get a portable one that's only for cooling.

Unfortunately those portable units are scams aimed at people who don't understand how air conditioning works or what an air conditioner is supposed to look like.

I don't think they're scams. They are certainly not as good as a split heat-pump AC, but they work to make a small to medium room go down from 35℃ to 25 or so, which is more than enough to go from roasting to being comfortable.

>Ok but you can use AC in the winter as well

You can, but they already had a solution for winter.

Outside of some specific areas with very humid climates, needing a dehumidifier is even more rare than needing an air conditioner.

Especially so in the winter, which is dryer than summer in many places.

> nothing new. In 2003 there was a huge heatwave and thousands of people died

It's completely new both in absolute temperatures, frequency and length of the heat waves

or (to put it in an IT context) backup and DR services/hardware.

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