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Why is Europe still not ready for extreme heat?
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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The "beef" is that most people don't need any air conditioning as they live in actual insulated houses build of stone, brick and concrete that keep temperature stable very well. It needs basically more than a week of extreme heat here for room temperatures to accumulate to the point that it's crossing the mid-20s... and only if it's also not cooling down at night. And I'm living in a relatively badly insulated apartment in an old building. And those whole weeks with scorching temperatures did simply not happen in the past, and barely happen now.
The other aspect is that those with air conditioning seem to somehow all develop the same brain damage firmly believing that they have one, so it needs to run on full power all the time. Which for example simply means I won't visit the one local super market with air conditioning when it's hot outside as I don't need the shock of going from 35°C down to 15°C when entering and then runnign against a wall of heat 15 minutes later when leaving.
Would air conditioning be useful in some cases, like hospitals or retirement homes where people are actually sensitive to heat (if used sensibly that is)? Sure. Go for it! But then in reality they will be the last ones to get air conditioning because if it wasn't about saving money like crazy they could have actually build those properly in the first place to not heat up like an oven in no time...
That hasn't been my experience. Extreme heat will do it in a couple of days, fewer if the extreme heat follows a period of normal summer heat. And that's true for well-insulated single family homes with blinders that are on the outside of windows, most of the apartment buildings I've lived in didn't have any blinders and would heat up on the first day of all-day summer sun that's followed by a mild night.
Even well-insulated homes rely on cool nights to maintain temperatures in the mid-20s for any stretch of time, and pretty much by definition, heat waves don't have cool nights.