Of my building in England was 87 degrees when I got home from work the other day. Not sure where I was supposed to go- the pub I work in was hotter.
The only places with air conditioning in England are offices and supermarkets/ shops. Maybe the library, I don’t know, it’s from the 1600s. My local corner shop has a/c. Sure, I’ll hang out there all day. They’ll love that.
I was in France during the heatwave, in Lourdes. The cathedral, where pilgrims visit, was packed with tourists and had no a/c.
Where the hell should we have gone? Even the Carrefour shop I went to for groceries didn’t have a/c. My hotel didn’t either.
And we’re due more heat next week. This is very unusual.

I spent many years in England so......I do.

I wonder if any DUers know if our additional deaths will be counted and recorded?

Particularly in the UK- they are utterly unprepared for the future

Won’t they freeze?

But yes, then we’ll be under an ice sheet. Problem solved for air conditioning

Limbaugh and other climate change deniers offered that as 'proof' that climate change was a hoax. These days, the deniers don't even have that bit of 'evidence' on their side.

When you shoot yourself in the foot with Brexit and have 7 PMs in a decade!

it's as relevant as having a climate change-denying party in charge of the entire American government

solutions are not a priority during chaos

It’s absolutely relevant.

The graph illustrates that a small shift to the right in the average shifts the whole bell curve to the right, and, in this illustration makes hot weather (orange) much more common and extreme hot weather (red) from almost zero probability to considerable probability

If for example, the average daily high in July in some locale is 85 degrees with a 6 degree standard deviation, and normally distributed: [1]

then the number of July days when the high is 103 or above (3 standard deviations above the mean) is 0.1350% of July days.

In Excel, the formula for finding the area under the normal distribution from 103 to infinity with an average of 85 and standard deviation of 6 is:
=1-NORM.DIST(103,85,6,TRUE)
which gives an answer of 0.001350 which is 0.1350% [2]

OK, so no biggie. So what?

Now let's say that due to climate change so far, the average July daily high temperature has shifted by just 2% to the right, from 85 to 86.7

then the number of July days when the high is 103 or above changes to 0.3297% of July days.

That's a 2.44 fold increase (144% increase) in the number of 103+ degree July days for just a 2% increase in the average.

Shift the average 4% to the right, from 85 to 88.434, and you get 0.7598% of July days, a 5.63 fold increase (463% increase) in the number of 103+ degree July days.

=====================================

Repeating the above exercise, but with a less extreme example, finding the number of days with a high of 97 or above (2 standard deviations above the mean)

with an average July daily high of 85 degrees, the number of July days when the high is 97 degrees or above is 2.275% of July days.

Now lets say that due to climate change so far, the average July daily high temperature has shifted by just 2% to the right, from 85 to 86.7 degrees

then the number of July days when the high is 97 or above changes to 4.302% of July days.

That's a 1.89 fold increase (89% increase) in the number of 97+ degree July days for just a 2% increase in the average.

Shift the average 4% to the right, from 85 to 88.434, and you get 7.669% of July days, a 3.37 fold increase (237% increase) in the number of 97+ July degree days.

=====================================

I have another example of an always hot (in summer) place, Phoenix (with a 105 degree average daily high in July), at https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127174632#post3

The same principle applies to other climate change events, e.g. the severity of storms or what have you -- a small shift in the average results in a huge increase in the number of extreme events.


======= FOOTNOTES ===========

[1] Google searches indicate that yes, temperatures are normally distributed.

Picking New York City for example (with an 84 degree average daily high in July)
https://weatherspark.com/m/23912/7/Average-Weather-in-July-in-New-York-City-New-York-United-States

The 10 and 90 percentile bands are shown on the graph, and they are (reading from the graph and using the peak July date) are 77 to 92, which is a band width of 15.

That occurs when X is -1.281552 to +1.281552 standard deviations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation
See the big table about 2/3 of the way down the article that has this row:
1.281552sigma   80%   20%

Meaning that between minus and plus 1.281552sigma, 80% are within that confidence interval and 20% are outside of it.
(The greek symbol sigma is the symbol for standard deviation. DU replaces it with a "?" so I show "sigma" in the above)

So for a 10 to 90 bandwidth of 15, the standard deviation is 5.85228
(15/2 = 7.5,   7.5/1.281552 = 5.85228)

So, rounding, I used 6 as my standard deviation in the above example.

[2] The TRUE means its the cumulative normal distribution as opposed to the probability density function
The area under the normal distribution curve from minus infinity to 103 (and having an average of 85 and standard deviation of 6) is NORM.DIST(103,85,6,TRUE)
The area from 103 to infinity is
1-NORM.DIST(103,85,6,TRUE)

======================================================

Why your air conditioning bill is about to soar - the energy required rises with the SQUARE of the temperature difference
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127174891

Last edited Mon Jun 29, 2026, 03:36 AM - Edit history (1)

And why air conditioning load and costs are increasing and going to increase substantially (on top of what's being caused by data centers)

I'm not concerned about just today.

And I doubt that these stats mean nothing to most of the humans in danger now. Or to the people who may not be in danger right now, but care about those who are. Just like the reasons behind climate change are not meaningless to most people, it's only the blatantly anti-science MAGAT types and a few others, sigh, who don't care about the science behind it.

Anyway, my post above was not directed at those in danger now. It's very unlikely they are reading DU if their survival is in doubt.

That is, eliminating air con? Wouldn't the climate cool off if the world forgot that AC ever existed?

We can do it!

That's a conundrum. I grew up in 60s, New Orleans, subtropical. We didn't have AC.. not in home, school, auto. We also didn't hv Asian Tiger mosquito, imported in 1980. Things change. Last time was w/o power was Hurricane Ida, almost a week. My house is slab and hv ceramic tile kitchen floor. I slept on that floor for that week, just to stay cool enough to survive. As an older person, heat/humidity is mighty debilitating. I go out at 6am, dawn, with an ice cap, to mow grass. And thank the AC when I get back inside, dripping wet with sweat. Our body has natural cooling-- sweat is supposed to evaporate, thus cooling. However when humidity is 95 &abv, that doesn't happen. So, I get your point, in a perfect world, yes, we shouldn't need that devil AC. I wish I didn't.

Europe’s Come-to-AC Moment, The Atlantic, 6/26/26
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/06/europe-air-conditioning/687711/
https://archive.ph/plDti

European summers are getting brutally hot. So why is air conditioning so rare?, CNN, 6/23/26
https://www.cnn.com/climate/europe-heat-air-conditioning

Reminds me of Twilight Zone episode, Midnight Sun. Lois Nettleton suffering fm heat. People freaking out. Then the twist ending. Just like Idiocracy, now Twilight Zone is our reality. "This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. " TS Eliot

We have hundreds of autographs.

https://graveyardsofomaha.com/tz2002.html

https://graveyardsofomaha.com/tz2004.html

OMG, Beverly Garland. An actual Holiday Inn. How amazing. What a trip you had. Hv Decoy photos, don't know how to post here

Your photo needs to be on the net already. Put your cursor over the photo and right click. Select copy image link. Then come to the DU and left click. You're done. Let me know IF you need more help.

OS

Warm but overall pleasant.