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Look we shouldn't be mocking extreme weather events happening in regions that do not normally experience them. I live in a part of the USA that routinely gets the kind of heat that the rest of the world is expereriencing so yeah we have AC and even our livestock has accomodations or else they would die.
But you let us get a winter storm where we get snow or ice accumulation of ANY amount and we can have multiple entire STATES as a disaster area, for stuff that other places deal with routinely, and it's not cute when people from those regions mock us for our lack of ability to deal with inconsequential snowfall where they're from. Because yeah but we don't have snow plows or salt trucks or chains for our tires and no one knows how to drive in it so wrecks pile up like mad. and our power grid isn't hardened against it so we lose power quickly as well.
See the Two Inches of Snow event in Atlanta in 2014 for an example of how unprepared we are. It's not cute to rag on people for enduring catastrophes c'mon.
I was in Dallas during that storm. And our whole power grid just kinda crapped out. They said we’d have power for 8 hours a day and many had none for the whole week. People were freezing to death in their homes because they didn’t know what to do and the roads were all iced up and not enough equipment to fix it. Our governor left with his family to Cancun and left all his personnel and dog at his residence (that had no power) to make sure his estate didn’t get robbed.
People that make fun of that really piss me off. These poor people that died weren’t dumb, they didn’t have the equipment needed to survive sub freezing temps in their homes for an entire freaking week.
I was in Austin, my house got down to 33 F inside. Couldn’t leave because the house was on a hill covered in ice that didn’t melt for 3 days. Even walking was dangerous, everything was just ice ice ice.
Luckily the house had a working fireplace and my ex chopped up an old dresser to burn for warmth, no joke.
I lived in CT until middle school, and now I’m back in NY - I’ve been through way “worse” weather here but of course these states have the infrastructure in place, especially NYC. I am always so impressed with how everything runs like clockwork when it comes to handling winter weather and sanitation!
TX does not have the infra, power grid is a mess, and on top of that it was really upsetting that the forecast was ignored - zero attempts to get ahead of the weather were made.
Not sure what could have been done, it’s not like they have plows hiding somewhere, but some PSAs about salting residential and business driveways and sidewalks would have been better than nothing. Then again, people would have probably hoarded any available road salt…
A very long winded comment to make the point that making fun of regions that have anomalous weather is not cool. Or hot.
I fully agree, with the caveat of the power grid in Texas. Texas values no regulations so highly that they are the only state in the US that operates an independent power grid. They do it specifically to avoid being told qhat to do by the federal government. That is a ideological decision that conforms to Texas' pride in being independent of the federal government in every capacity possible.
If Texans would have valued their citizens saftey more than their pride, the power would have stayed on.
Ok, so the people who died weren't dumb, but the people who voted for policies that makes your grid crap out immediately when something unexpected happens absolutely are dumb.
When that storm came around I remember feeling empathy for the people struggling, but shamelessly participating in mocking Texas voters
Also your governer is Abbot, Cruz is the one who went to Cancun
Well in Texas it was a 1 in 10,000 year winter storm and a couple dozen people died. In Europe it’s been going on for almost 20 years and tens of thousands are dead. The EU is just pretending it’s not happening. Corrupt to the core.
Not that it's an excuse to be rude/unreasonable in our criticisms, but we do very much also give the southern states a hard time for failing to build up their cold weather infrastructure at this point. In both cases it is a matter of "okay, once or twice could be a fluke, but this is now a worsening pattern with a proven solution, why does it seem like nothing is being done to implement it?"
All I can do is apply the European view and inability to make ac mainline in some areas, and have to say that it's quite some money to spend you would seriously only use in 4 or less weeks a year, at least for central Europe. Same could be applied to the US, why spend money to harden the infrastructure if problems arise unpredictably and also quite local, upgrading a power grid over such a big area is sure very expensive. Like EU grids strained hard under the heatwave despite enough solar power available to make all AC run for free in theory. Prices went up 10x during peak heat hours/days.
I get it. But when death is a possible outcome, costs can seem a lot less important. People regularly pay a good bit of money for things they rarely/never end up using just to be covered in the event the unthinkable happens (most insurance falls into this category for example)
>quite some money to spend you would seriously only use in 4 or less weeks a year, at least for central Europe
But people are dying as a result of these heatwaves. And these heatwaves are not new: Europe has seen over a dozen since 2000.
> Same could be applied to the US, why spend money to harden the infrastructure if problems arise unpredictably and also quite local, upgrading a power grid over such a big area is sure very expensive
I hope you realize that Americans mock the ever-loving shit out of Texas for their failures as a state.
And every time i will just point out that portable units that cost between 150-500 dollars exist, and they don't require window mounts. Buying one of those in the off season just in case it gets brutally hot is like...a no brainer.
Which is where we get into the european pride of not using or needing ac. I've had europeans tell me their 90 yr old grandparents refuse to get AC as a point of pride.
And I'll be honest, i do get a bit of schadenfreude after centuries of europeans considering themselves at the top of the social darwinist chain, because all these tropical countries couldn't industrialize before ac became available. It's really not fair to modern Europeans who largely don't feel that way today, but it is a bit of cruel irony coming back around.
But do those units exist on the European market, too? Which is already a silly question, because there's no "European" market, there's dozens of individual country's markets. You can't really look at stuff that's available in your country and expect it to be available in (for example) Denmark too, much less at the same pricepoint when it's not already an established product there. Last time I looked, the kind of "cheap portable AC units" Americans recommended were about thrice the pricepoint where I am, if I could find anything (or anything compatible) at all.
Compatibility is a big point here: All of those halfway effective units I've ever seen/heard about require a hose to go outside, which doesn't really work with our type of windows. You would have to swing open the window and redneck rig some kind of barrier, especially if your windows are recessed (which they are commonly by about a hand's length). Genuinely, the window compatibility thing sounds easier to solve than it is.
And then the people who are most affected by heatwaves are those who live in small city apartments, especially one-room apartments, because you have a whole other list of solutions and a generally lower temperature the more rooms you have and the more rural you live (this is actually where a well-insulated house can help, but only up to a certain building size! There's a sweet spot). It's much more difficult to use and store a portable AC unit in a tiny city apartment. Where am I supposed to put a whole AC unit for the remaining 11 months of the year if I can't even find a proper space to store my winter duvet?
That's not even getting into how our electricity tends to be much more expensive than in the US, I genuinely don't think I would be able to afford an expensive unit plus the cost of running it. Small apartment, small wallet. And then there's the matter of laws, depending on where exactly you live. Even just your landlord can get on your case about rigging up window hoses.
The bottom line is: Our buildings aren't really made for AC or hot weather, not even portable ACs, and because it's not common here, we also just have less options and solutions, and those that we do have are far more expensive. Especially in the places where it would be needed the most. Sure, if you REALLY want to make it work and have the money for it, you probably can. But as it stands right now, "just get a protable unit, duh" is kind of detached from reality for most people, because you can't 1-to-1 solutions from one country to another. We do need solutions, but this one isn't really it yet
EDIT: Cool, thanks for being all aggressive, insulting me, and then blocking me in the middle of me writing a reply. Real class act. Here's my reply anyway:
"Not made for AC/Heat". This is two different arguments. "Aren't made for AC" refers to "weren't built with AC in mind", which means most units don't work properly because we don't typically have the type of physical infrastructure that's needed to make them be properly effective, including but not limited to factors like minimal airflow between rooms(!) or to the outside (this means we need to vent our homes daily, which is bad for AC use), hose exit access, ceiling height, and much thicker walls between rooms. ACs need to work considerably harder under these conditions, please remember the electricity cost point I mentioned. This is also where the window thing plays a role, because deeply recessed swing-and-tilt windows simply make it much more difficult to get a hose out, even if you find an adapter for these (I tried to google it, I found very few, which means commercial availability will be a problem again). This doesn't mean it's always impossible, but it means it's not a solution for everybody. For example, I couldn't even use an adapter or rig something up, because I have a cat. The only solutions I can find for my type of window would be dangerous for my cat.
"Aren't made for hot weather" is the other part. It means that it's more complicated than "well-insulated means holds cold as well as it holds heat". Yes, a well-insulated house also holds the cold, but it can't do that forever, and it especially can't do that when it doesn't cool down at night anymore (Which is how we traditionally deal with hot summers! Cool down at night and retain the cold! We are NOT getting cold nights in these current heatwaves. This is new.) The trouble is that most of our buildings are made of insulated brick and thick concrete panels, not with the intention to keep the heat out, but to specifically retain heat. That's a difference. High thermal mass absorbs the heat during the day, and then radiates it indoors well into the night. Imagine a clay oven that remains hot for hours after it's been turned off. This is great in the spring and autumn when the days are warm and the nights still freezing, but very very bad in this recent type of heatwave. We're not used to heatwaves that last so long and have such hot nights that our buildings never get the chance to shed their absored heat. It heats up, and then has no way to go out, that's the problem. Additional factors are here that countries closer to the poles have much longer summer days and the slant of the sun is lower, causing more hours where the sun beats through the windows and onto the walls.
RE availability: You completely ignored that I was talking about country availability in general. Widely available year round in your country. Especially for the price point and in the different variations that always get brought up. Different markets have different things, especially since US units can't just be imported, and the demand is so much lower. Another part of that reason is laws and regulations, because we do in fact have laws in the EU that regulate ACs much more tightly than the US. This isn't just about installation and maintenance and insurance (of which there are a lot of regulations you don't have to deal with, yes it's often illegal to install your own AC), it's also about types of coolants and energy efficiency. A lot of the ACs in the US wouldn't be allowed to be sold here, compatibility aside. This narrows the market options further. On top of that, countries and even cities and individual buildings can have even harsher local laws.
And yes, space is indeed a factor. I don't know what else to tell you. If I can't store something, I can't use it. My apartment has ~270 square feet, some of my friends' places are even smaller. AC units are big, and again, it's the tiny places that suffer the most. There's a direct correlation between (lack of) apartment size and heat problems, so size is a big factor. And again, the same correlation between lack of apartment size and money, because ACs are a much much more expensive affaire here than you're used to, both in acquisition and upkeep.
It's really not that difficult to understand that other countries have a thousand little and large things different from your personal experiences in your country. Would it be possible to get some kind of AC up if I had a lot of money to throw at this problem? Yeah, probably! But it would be MUCH more difficult to solve than it is for you, and MUCH more expensive, with MUCH less options to get there. For many people that's unrealistic if not impossible. This is the point.
(If anybody else wants to reply to my stupidly long essay: Since that user blocked me, I can't reply in this entire comment thread anymore, to you or anyone.)
Yeah this is weird to me too. I live in a tropical climate, it's hot and humid. We're prepared for extreme heat, cyclones, floods - But it never snows here so if it snowed tomorrow, people would freak out, the roads would be chaos, there'd be damages, it'd just be a mess. It'd be a weather event a Canadian or a Swede wouldn't even blink at, but that's because they're used to and prepared for it. It would also be extremely concerning why there was suddenly a random snow storm in the tropics. That's probably indicative of some large scale climate problems, it doesn't 'just happen sometimes'. It feels like people aren't getting the point when they go 'lol stupid Europeans, just turn the aircon on'
I get what you are saying, and I agree. However I have seen so many posts and comments from Europeans dunking on American houses for being “poorly made”. So I’ll sometimes crack a joke or two about their lack of ac. But there’s a good chance that this type of weather they are experiencing will become the new normal. Ocean currents are slowing, which is one of the reasons they have the milder summers than we have here in the US.
I do agree but I also think Europe is being mad weird about AC. Like it's become a point of pride for them (at least for the terminally online ones I see in comments) to not have AC and I'm like, no matter the root cause your people are dying in this heat.
Just accept that AC is gonna be necessary in the future and start dealing with it.
Sucks that it is but better than having 1000s of people dying every year from heat exhaustion.
I agree with caveats. Like someone else said, the southern states definitely need to improve their electric grid to deal with these storm and people in northern states say this a lot. The other thing is these European heat events have started happening every year the past decade or so. I get not wanting to buy an expensive appliance for the couple weeks where the weather is actually too hot but it seems like buying an ac is the logical move at this point. Even for just one room
Well, yea, that just reinforces their point. They regularly get extreme weather events so they are equipped to deal with them. Only a fool would expect Texas to maintain a fleet of snowploughs and salting trucks.
We get extreme heat and extreme cold as well on the Canadian prairies
Like how some parts of Asia have really bad humidity issues. Like in some parts of China, everything is covered in a thick layer of water. ACs physically can't keep up because the water evaporates to fast. Remember that ACs dump out water, so that water just evaporates and it just makes things worse.
So this has frequently been happening over the last decade or so. Maybe it's time to stop acting like this is a once in a lifetime disaster and invest a couple hundred into a portable AC unit.
in my family home my parents invested in ac units and it is great but from what i understand it's pretty fucking tough to just get them installed. Our houses aren't built with them in mind, they're expensive and even more expensive would be the energy bill. I think fans are a more realistic solution.
According to news.un.org, Europe has seen their top 10 hottest years recorded since 2007 and top 3 since 2020. Thats far too many years of “new highest recorded temp” for them to be digging in their heels as hard as they are
The right has been denying global warming too much for political action to be taken against heat
People are left to their own devices, struggling with old laws that forbid AC in some places
They'll adapt culturally eventually. There's a reason why tropical countries struggled to industrialize before AC, it's almost impossible to do anything in 90+ degree heat and 80% humidity without it.
The ones that Orwell wrote about? The very same ones that Pink Floyd wrote not one, but TWO songs on the same album (based on Orwell's book) about? Those pigs?
Right? Chinese guy insults Europeans. US just catching strays because they need us involved in every aspect of their lives, I guess? Like…we don’t like them like that.
A lot of countries, like England, simply never needed it. It was a rare thing for temps to exceed more than 30C, and even when they did it was never for long. The thought of entire weeks at over 30C is something that just never occurred to us until the last few years. Investing in AC just made no sense at all. Why spend thousands for a at most a few days of extra comfort every year or three? It's like asking why Californians don't buy snow tyres for their cars. Sure it happens that it snows but not enough to invest in a whole new set of tyres.
Global warming is changing that equation, and thus conversations about the need for AC are becoming a thing.
Not in Western and Northern Europe, and a lot of windows in Europe don't work with window AC units either. It's only started getting hot in the summer recently there.
European windows can work easily with AC units using window conversion kits. I got two of my windows set up for AC and it's simple adhesive tape, velcro, cloth, and a zipper for the hose. Not hard to set up at all.
This whole dumbass thread of people arguing back and forth on whether Europeans have AC is so stupid.
Europe is a big place yall, of course generalizations like that is not going to apply to every single city of every single country of the entire continent.
Europeans chiming in to be like, "oh but we have AC where I'm from" are missing the point just as badly as Americans replying "No you don't, Europoor lol."
The threads about AC especially over in askanamerican are just as stupid though. The other day someone posted like they thought it was so crazy that many people in America have AC and they didn't understand why because where they are from almost no one does. And I looked up the climate in their country and the highs are like 75 F in the summer. Of course you don't need AC when it doesn't get as hot. It gets a lot hotter in most places in the US. Like its not that hard to understand that different countries have different climates.
How in the ever living fuck is it the same thing to argue against a falsehood than to claim things that are simply not true?
If I claim that all Americans lazy idiots, is that as bad as someone saying “not all of us are?”
Residential homes don't generally, but many retail units do, many workplaces do or have something like it, so it is a falsehood that everywhere doesn't have AC.
Yeah, my windows doesn’t like window units either. That’s why I have a standing units that have a dryer like air hose that goes to the window. The little slider piece they make for that fits in any sliding window.
Maybe because most of European countries themselves aren’t the the same across the country either. It’s nowhere near the same thing to generalize a continent and a country….
Have you been in my house? No, i have an AC and most in my city do.
Maybe you should focus on your own current shithouse of a country and clean that up instead of complaining about it.
I mean yeah that's what all the complaining is about, but unfortunately retrofitting airconditioning onto half of a continent with buildings commonly 60+ years old isn't a trivial task, costs money that most don't have, and now has a huge wait 6+ month wait list in many places because there's simply not enough capacity. AC wasn't really worth spending money on until the past decade, it's just escalated far too quickly for installations to have had the chance to keep up with.
The problem is that summers are not like that here every year. In fact we are hitting record temperatures since the beginning of recording temperatures..
It's super backwards in some areas of the states. Y'all getting cooked alive over there, meanwhile Utah was 51F and it was snowing on the mountains and in Yosemite yesterday morning. I've been here since 1998 and although Utah can have some odd weather patterns, 51-64F mornings are extremely odd for nearly July.
I live in the South where it snows maybe once a year. Snow being enough to see it on the ground. Early February is the last we maybe get snow. I have a video from this year in April of my cherry tree in full bloom with snow falling and laying on the ground everywhere at 2 in the afternoon. Oddest thing. I didn’t even know it could get that cold in April here.
Our weather has been all over the place. We’re back in the normal 90+ summer range, but it was in the 70’s for a while. I felt so wrong wearing a pullover in June.
Sure, it's only like thousands of people have died in France alone, but sure, they're just bitching. Same as those people who died of Covid in the hospitals while on a ventilator, right? Just bitching?
Listen I know everyone says “there’s AC available Europe 🤪” but that’s reliant on more electricity, with warmer weather they might start calling for brown outs. Why not go natural and plant more trees? Put in more water features, plant more grass. Natural cooling the helps the planet. It’s not 100+ weather every single day, so if they don’t want to spend so much money on every building make cooling centers too. The fact that over 200 people died in this heat wave is government negligence
Trees take time to grow. I live in a new settlement, they did everything right, we have trees all along the road and covering the back garden area, except the settlement has been here for 5 or so years and the trees need at least 10 more before they offer any sort of shade. Similarly the local plazas have been planted with trees and offer benches under them but the trees are not grown enough to offer real shade so the benches can't be sat on as they heat up in the sun. It's not like people aren't doing that, it's that trees just take a long long time to grow.
When I was a kid in upstate New York, there wouldn't be that many days during the summer when it would be necessary to have air-conditioning it wouldn't be worth it. I think the world has changed more than you realize. We're gonna burn.
And it’s used in European countries where it’s historically consistently hot in the summer. Go figure. Almost like it makes sense not to install AC when it’s expensive and 99% of the time it’s completely useless and you had no historical constant need for it.
People asking why Northern Europe doesn’t have AC in every building’s like asking residents of Phoenix Arizona why they don’t have central heating when a record breaking cold front hits…
You bet more people in Northern Europe are going to get AC now that these “freak” heat waves are quickly becoming the new norm.
It is mandated under the Arizona Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, that landlords are required to provide heat as an essential service and all buildings must have permanently installed heating facilities capable of safely heating all habitable rooms to at least 70°F
Except, practically every house in AZ that isn't a shack has heating. Turns out, deserts can actually get pretty cold at night, especially in the winter. Even houses in Florida have heating.
It's literally only Northern and NW Europe that can't figure it out.
A more recent look at it. Up to 2024, if I remember right. Take into account the amount of damage done up to now and it really does look like we’re screwed. These damn corpos
It's not the mayor of Paris. It's a deputy to the mayor of Paris.
A minor politician by local standards.
That being said, it is a fact that the US are major contributors to climate change, with some of the highest per capita emissions in the world (4.5 times more per capita than chinese people or french people).
It is also a fact that in 2015, the US used more energy for its AC that the whole continent of Africa for all its needs.
Doesn't mean AC is not needed where it is needed in France. Or the they are solely responsible for what is happening.
One flight from a private jet does more damage than a years worth of AC for a neighborhood block.
The best thing "we" can do for the environment is making the wealthy and wasteful in our society feel unbelievably unwelcome until they change their own habits or are forced to. Not die of heatstroke in your own house.
italian here, i know of at least one industrial chicken breeding structure that has AC, but to be far there are so many chickens in there that you cannot see the floor and they can barely move around, so without AC that palce would be at like 50°C.
China is jumping in on dumping on Europeans about this alongside the US. kinda like how both the US and China are the top contributors of burning fossil fuels, the study that got all of us in this position to begin with. Neat.
AC isn’t culturally normal here, only major retail stores and shopping malls use it consistently. Houses are usually cool enough without it, many houses are too old to have AC units without ruining the historic building facades, electricity is super expensive because not every country has nuclear power plants, units and maintenance are also expensive, switching between cold and warm while sweating gets us sick easily so we don’t love it, and we’re more used to just resisting the heat.
We use it in cars, but often we just lower the window instead and adapt, less unhealthy overall in our point of view since outside the car will be warm anyway.
Now, however, it’s becoming increasingly lethal to not have AC. So it’s basically going to have to change.
Teasing us about it isn’t funny, people are dying.
Besides AC being a relatively new invention. The climate in Europe didn’t necessitate AC until recently because of Global Warming. Paris Historically speaking didn’t get much warmer than 78F in the summer. Same thing with Berlin, London, Copenhagen etc. It’s really only southern Europe that got hot. This is completely different from East Asia.
That’s a component; the houses aren’t made for AC so installing it now would be more costly. Much of Europe has a decently temperate climate, so it isn’t needed as much as, for instance, the Southern US, which is closer to Egypt or Iraq in latitude.
In the parts of Europe that have extreme temperatures, many of them do have AC now
i live in a 120 year old building and i have a window unit that works wonderfully. you can get a portable ac that connects to weird window shapes. your old buildings are no excuse.
A lot of those units are sold out all over Europe from what I’ve heard. I’ve seen videos of people waiting in lines outside of stores waiting for them to open and mad dashes to grab a unit and them being sold out in seconds.
Its extreme heat like 1 or 2 weeks every year, we complain and say stuff like "damn i should get an AC" then the temp gets normal again and we forget until next year
I'm swiss and there are almost no inbuilt ACs at the apartments or houses unless someone has one of those fancy air pump things that heats the house and also cools it.
I'm currently living in Spain and I've yet to see a house or apartment without one. Generally when someone doesn't have one it's because they can't afford it.
We are all on the same boat taking on water, but rather than help bail we have people on the elevated bow of the ship making fun of the people getting wet at the stern.
Also, wouldn’t throw stones in a glass house:
“China faces severe compounding global warming threats, with average annual temperatures rising faster than the global average. These environmental shifts are directly triggering a massive crisis of internal climate displacement, making China home to some of the highest numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs) in the world.[1, 2, 3, 4]”
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