By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Crank up the cooling.” (WSJ, below)
It is adaptation time. Mitigation has failed, and no policy change, however radical, can affect global or regional climate for decades, if ever. As stated in a recent article in the New York Times:
Climate change means that the issue is most likely here to stay. Across Europe, “we think the summers are hot now,” said Joan Ballester Claramunt, a research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health who focuses on climate change and health. “The future that we’re seeing, it could be much worse.”
So why didn’t the alarmist community push for A/C and other appliances to cool the air during the summer peak? They warned about ‘hothouse Earth’ but did nothing about it.
Did climate mitigation policy work against adaptation directly and indirectly? Yes and yes. That is a major problem. In the name of social justice, climate campaigners are invited to replace wasteful, losing climate mitigation policies with here-and-now adaptation for the summer peak. For basic human needs. And now.
Alex Epstein has identified “climate mastery” as a feature of the modern energy sector (dense energies, only two centuries old). The EU/UK can do today what was done by, for example, Houstonians a century ago: adapt and thrive.
A Wall Street Journal editorial, “The Economic Case for European AC,” was noteworthy.
[Europe’s] green disavowal of air conditioning comes at an economic cost. As the mercury rises, business productivity suffers along with the workforce.
Europe was a set-up for heat waves:
Many European offices and apartment buildings were designed to retain heat, and air-conditioning penetration averages 19%, compared with some 90% in the U.S., according to a report this year by Allianz Research, an arm of the insurance company. One result: Even “indoor workers are not insulated” from the misery.
Policy implications?
Europe will face economic costs related to warming“even if ambitious climate mitigation goals are met,” says a report last year from Assessing Climate Change Risk in Europe, a European Union-funded research effort. But the continent can reduce the harm by better adapting. That study found broader AC adoption could have annual economic benefits of €40 to €60 billion ($46 billion to $69 billion) by 2050. An“important co-benefit” would be fewer heat-related fatalities. Crank up the cooling.
The U.K., and others are pushing refrigeration for heating in the form of heat pumps, but oppose refrigeration in the forms of cooling, both being powered by electricity. There seems to be some lack of logic?
Not to mention HVAC engineering. if you have a heat pump installed, you have an air conditioner. its just a question of moving some baffles and valves. All of the heat pump installations I have seen in the US go both ways.
I haven’t spent much time in Europe, but I suspect that part of the problem might be pragmatic rather than ideological. Much North American housing and business space is amenable to forced air heating and cooling. It’s relatively cheap and easy to add air conditioning. I think much of the European housing and business space is older and designed to be heated by steam (via radiators) or even fireplaces. Adding air conditioning is not so easy. Also, In areas where really hot days are uncommon (which is to say not in Texas or Arizona) window air conditioners make a lot more sense than trying to add central climate control to a building not designed for it. But window air conditioners are almost all designed for double hung windows. You can’t put them into the windows in a lot of older buildings. I’ve managed to install some low BTU units in the casement windows in our house in Vermont. But not without some surgery on the window frames.
Well, hot water rather than steam, Don, but you’ve got the idea. Most systems run at between 60 and 80 degrees C. The water is treated to resist corrosion and formation of sediment and re-circulates in a closed system. All heat provided by gas at a fraction of the cost of electricity.
Designing a vertically oriented window AC or heat pump is not impossible. Those have been available for horizontal sliding windows in the US for many years. It shouldn’t be difficult to design an adjustable mounting system for swing out windows.Depending on how much of an angle the window can open to, it could take some creating shaping of the unit and versions for left and right windows.
Alternatively, there’s the portable mini split. It has separate indoor and outdoor units connected by hoses. Takes a bit of creativity to block off a gap left by a not quite fully closed door or window where the hoses pass through. IIRC as yet only one company makes one model like this, so there’s plenty of room for innovation.
An insulated seal and security passthrough insert for casement windows would be a good thing for someone to start on inventing.
Another one for casement and other difficult windows is the dual hose portable AC. But few of those come with *insulated* hoses. Sucking in hot air from outside, shoving more heat into that air then blowing it back outside – while the two 4 to 6 inch diameter tubes are radiating heat into the space you want to cool. Swap the tubes with insulated flexible duct.
A single hose portable AC can be modified to dual hose by use of coroplast, duct tape, and a second hose. Construct a plenum over the condenser intake grille and connect the hose so it pulls in outside air instead of room air the AC has just cooled off.
I find this absurdity mildly amusing: Essentially ALL new passenger vehicles in the EU and the UK come with air conditioning as a standard feature. EV’s included.
So there has been intentional engineering progress in support of affordable comfort in your car, but somehow it’s too hard to figure out how to make the interior of your old buildings a bit cooler in hot weather.
Got it.
That is all for now.
Mini-split heat pumps are proliferating around the US. This seems a logical way of adapting some of the old buildings in Europe with heat pumps. The only connections between the outside part and the inside part is electrical wires and coolant lines.
Bingo.
“We think the summers are hot now . . .
The future that we’re seeing, it could be much worse.”
What hogwash.
From the earliest written records we know people have had to contend with adverse weather conditions. I do not know of a book that speaks more of these than the Bible, and especially the Old Testament. There we read of severe floods and long droughts but how people adapted to survive. The descendants of Abraham moved to Egypt because of the drought in the land of Canaan, with the intention of moving back when conditions improved. People dug or built cisterns that provided water for drinking and irrigation. They knew to store grain during the good years anticipating the dry years. They carefully observed weather patterns and planted accordingly to make the best use of low rainfall. They survived droughts and storms, famines and ravenous locust swarms.
Human ingenuity and the ability to adapt have helped people live in the harshest conditions. Emotional alarmism depresses and distresses people instead of promoting a determination to find ways to adapt.
Yes, but back in the olden days they had Seers to predict what the weather conditions were going to be many days into the future.
https://mythicalencyclopedia.com/seers/
All we have now are models.
https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/models.html
And yet none of the climate fanatics complaining about how hot it is can tell you that, according to their own measurements, the average temperature is only about 1 °C warmer than 175 years ago. That’s it. Their fevered imaginations are frying their brains. And for heaven’s sake get air conditioning.
The problem is that the average summer temperature does not require air conditioning in places like the UK, however the occasional heat wave does. Spending 1000s of pounds to install something that might be used only for a week or so doesn’t make much sense.
First of all, the WSJ has bought into the nonsense that we now need AC because “the planet is heating up”, and that “it will only get worse”. Yes, areas which have become urbanized over time do suffer from the effects of UHI, but that isn’t “global heating”. Oh, but “heat waves have gotten worse”, they claim. Nope. So, what is going on? Well, here in the US, people are perhaps more rational than elsewhere, adopting AC because we prefer being comfortable rather than being hot and sweaty. So sue us. Oh, but “AC is only making the problem worse, due to its addition of CO2.” Wrong again. They can’t even show that man’s CO2 itself, let alone CO2 from AC is warming the planet.
We’re left with the spectacle of the Climate Caterwaulers in Europe being willing to sacrifice their own comfort, as well as financial well-being for the “good of the planet”. It is climate virtue signaling plain and simple, and it is sheer idiocy.
My understanding of the editorial in the WSJ is that more air conditioning in Europe would be good — all based on reports from there. What the WSJ writers think about “the planet is heating up”, and that “it will only get worse” is not clear from this particular short statement.
Yes, their tells are the use of the words “heating up”, and “getting worse”. No climate realist would use those words.
Bruce – I think it’s mainly a cultural thing. The parts of Europe that have always been cooler than the USA have never felt the need for AC. The parts that are as warm or warmer (eg Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal etc.) have largely taken a “not invented here; don’t want to know” attitude, though it’s fair to say also that they have tackled the heat problem over the centuries in their own way, principally through the design of their buildings which. as a result, are very different from those in N. America.
Something I don’t think is being discussed is how cool does it get by sunrise. In my neck of the woods we have had 30 days 90 degrees or over. My recollection is that most early mornings were down in the 60s. Nighttime/early morning temperatures in the 60s is plenty cool enough to cool your house down without AC.
In Australia, we open or close windows to adjust the level of comfort within our houses.
And, just an aside, what is it about the Mediterranean or Florida, or the Queensland Sunshine Coast that attracts wealthy retirees?
All those old stone and brick buildings constructed ages ago in pre industrial and early industrial times, during a period when climates were at times very cool. The buildings retained heat from wood and coal heating in winter and also moderated heat coming in from outside during the milder summers.
But as climates have continued their climb out of the maunder minimum / little ice age period, that heat retention works the wrong way.
Time to carve holes through the stone walls to install heat pump / air conditioners.
The Fat Electrician’s video, Air conditioning is the greatest invention of the 20th century, 100% truth. It’s fun to watch various European YouTubers reacting to it. Can tell they all learn something from it.