Shared this article with friends living in Europe; here are their insights and comments:
"While I agree that Europe should have more AC these days, the article unfortunately doesn‘t mention the biggest reason why there are so few ACs in Europe: it just didn‘t used to be necessary, with temperatures not reaching these heights before, and buildings often being built in Massivbau, as opposed to North American wood houses.
If you live in a house like “Jane‘s”, that‘s basically older than the Unites States , you still don‘t need AC, even with heat domes and 41 degrees outside. It stays cool inside. Newly built houses like ours (still using stone/brick or the like) are the exact opposite, trying to keep the heat inside to lower energy costs in the winter, ends up causing us to boil inside in these new type of summers…
Also, very big difference between northern and southern Europe. As far as I know AC is much more common in Spain and Italy, since they‘ve always had more hot periods and higher temperatures than let‘s say Germany or the Netherlands.
Anyway, very interesting topic to see cultural differences. The article also misses out on the typical German „an AC will give me a cold / stiff neck / ear infection“, that‘s the one where I always start rolling my eyes."
Buildings themselves can be designed so that thermal mass attenuates the load before supplemental cooling is necessary. Similarly, radiant systems (thermally active surfaces) can be reversed to remove energy gains as the sun hits surfaces across the day, not necessarily cooling for current standards of human comfort but reducing the work that a cooling system needs to do to get there. Radiant systems can be calibrated in relation to relative humidity to avoid unwanted condensation. Finally, geothermal systems, heat pumps, and other cooling technologies can replace the supplemental cooling systems that currently dominate the market. With water having a volumetric heat capacity that is about 3,300 times greater than air, they are much more efficient than forced air systems. And where forced air systems are necessary, heat transfer is an option.
But we need a government that supports transformations in the market, otherwise these technologies will remain unaffordable because the upfront cost is prohibitive even though the long term benefits would offset it. Shifting our mentality about housing, where houses are conceived as technology that supports living rather than a financial instrument would go a long way as well.
Texas is *not* "far and away the country’s leader in renewable energy." This is simply wrong, and wrong for a very simple reason.
Texas builds (barely) more renewables than any other state but it also consumes far more electricity than any other state (you know, air conditioning, but electricity-demanding industry). California, to take one example, still leads Texas by a mile in terms of demand met with renewables, and blows Texas away when it comes to using battery storage.
So Texas produces more renewables-based electricity than California. So what? Are Californians supposed to open their windows and doors and blast the a/c outside to make up for the gap they have in demand?
Texas is going great on renewables and I applaud their efforts. But my state of California still leads them on the renewables+batteries front.
Heat Waves in former times were not so heated and there are many ways to cool homes. AC ok but what about Data Centers that consume massive amounts of energy and heat up the Earth at the same time?
Thank you Catherine. This is something I already know, I spent two years in Germany. They had a hard time understanding until, I told them in the German language how to say air conditioning in America and myself in German they taught me. I told them how to install it.
Ah yes, 2012, thanks! There had been another storm in 2010 that was very isolated to my neighborhood - a downburst that took out half the trees on the block. That’s why we only lost power for a couple of days in 2012 - most of the vulnerable trees in the vicinity were already gone.
I live in Florida. Two men -- John Gorrie and Willis Carrier -- are responsible for that fact that Florida has a population of more than about 150. Between the two of them, the modern version of air condition came to be. There's a lot of info on the Web (some of it contradictory), but interesting. Without Gorrie and Carrier, Florida would probably be what Hernan de Soto called it: "an uninhabitable sandspit." Especially now, with the heat rising all the time.
"Here’s how the data-center buildout could spark a third wave of inflation."
Apple just had to increase the price of their laptops and iPads by hundreds of dollars because of increased memory costs. Ask anyone who's tried to build their own PC in the last year about inflation increases in CPUs, GPU, and RAM. Some of these have doubled in price.
The data centers buy chips in mass and some chip manufacturers reserve their entire yearly production for the AI companies, leaving basically nothing for the home computing sector. What little is left over is at an exorbitant price.
Data centers are already sparking more inflation.
Then this:
"enables other industries to produce food and electronics."
There's a video out about the Mars candy company changing the food dyes for M&Ms to natural from synthetic colors. They found that differences in water from factories from one city to another have a huge impact, and the process is critically sensitive to temperature changes. This is just one example of how important indoor climate control is in food production.
I was station in West Germany from 1/76 - 1/79. A/C was not an issue, summers were cool to the point were in August while in the field, I wore long underwear at night because it would get that cold. For years you DIDN'T get a/c for your car because you didn't need it. It's climate change, baby.
Can't some enterprising clean energy entrepreneurs go to Trump, with tears in their eyes, and say "sir, sir, we want to build a series of big, beautiful gold towers off-shore, with your name on it, that your boaters can sail past. It will power golf courses, McDonald's, and other places too. The libs will hate getting clean energy from you!'
I grew up in a tiny town south of Chicago, where summers would bring the dreaded 90/90: 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity. We didn't have air conditioning because my folks were working class and couldn't afford the monthly electric bill. I remember many nights soaking my sheets and mattress with drowning levels of sweat as mom and dad cheerfully said, Think cool thoughts, you'll be fine! I get it--what you cannot afford you cannot afford--but I vowed then and there I'd never go without AC. From the day I went to college till now, writing this at age 70, I have never gone without.
I feel for the misery of the modern heat-dome world that's dying or suffering from the lack of AC, and agree with Catherine that the notion of heat being essential but cooling being a sin is eye-blinkingly weird.
Line of the things that has me frustrated is that there is a lot going on to undermine any environmental projects, kill any green energy and basically hurt Americans in the process. If this is you too check out the substacks:
We must stop reporting on climate and science in U.S. customary units only. Please use dual units. AP et al. admirably lead the way. This is why metric literacy in our country remains staggeringly high.
Body temperature is 37° C. "Triple digits" Fahrenheit effectively means 40° C or higher (e.g., Phoenix and Mumbai are typically 40° C). Literacy matters. Learning to use and understand SI units is not "unbearably onerous." Just ask 🇮🇳🇳🇿🇦🇺🇨🇦🇬🇧 and so very many others. I presume most of us here will agree that 🇺🇸 would do well to show 🌏 greater social and global empathy. A fifth of the planet has shifted to using English as a lingua franca (ELF), and more are coming. ✌🏼❤️🌐
Importantly (and necessarily) the government shifted entirely to the metric system in this century, without bothering to tell the American people. We had wars to lose, madmen to elect twice, and so on. We were busy. And as we know from our Commonwealth friends, some will resist and some will revolt against metrication. It's emotional. So our politicians have left us hanging. Eventually more and more people will figure out it has already effectively happened.
Another emotion is the joy of learning something new, opening new doors, and making new friends. On the other side of Trump, our country is going to need a lot of help from our friends.
Great analysis. I see a future in which there are large Cool-Houses powered by solar electricity where people can seek refuge from extreme heat.
Shared this article with friends living in Europe; here are their insights and comments:
"While I agree that Europe should have more AC these days, the article unfortunately doesn‘t mention the biggest reason why there are so few ACs in Europe: it just didn‘t used to be necessary, with temperatures not reaching these heights before, and buildings often being built in Massivbau, as opposed to North American wood houses.
If you live in a house like “Jane‘s”, that‘s basically older than the Unites States , you still don‘t need AC, even with heat domes and 41 degrees outside. It stays cool inside. Newly built houses like ours (still using stone/brick or the like) are the exact opposite, trying to keep the heat inside to lower energy costs in the winter, ends up causing us to boil inside in these new type of summers…
Also, very big difference between northern and southern Europe. As far as I know AC is much more common in Spain and Italy, since they‘ve always had more hot periods and higher temperatures than let‘s say Germany or the Netherlands.
Anyway, very interesting topic to see cultural differences. The article also misses out on the typical German „an AC will give me a cold / stiff neck / ear infection“, that‘s the one where I always start rolling my eyes."
Buildings themselves can be designed so that thermal mass attenuates the load before supplemental cooling is necessary. Similarly, radiant systems (thermally active surfaces) can be reversed to remove energy gains as the sun hits surfaces across the day, not necessarily cooling for current standards of human comfort but reducing the work that a cooling system needs to do to get there. Radiant systems can be calibrated in relation to relative humidity to avoid unwanted condensation. Finally, geothermal systems, heat pumps, and other cooling technologies can replace the supplemental cooling systems that currently dominate the market. With water having a volumetric heat capacity that is about 3,300 times greater than air, they are much more efficient than forced air systems. And where forced air systems are necessary, heat transfer is an option.
But we need a government that supports transformations in the market, otherwise these technologies will remain unaffordable because the upfront cost is prohibitive even though the long term benefits would offset it. Shifting our mentality about housing, where houses are conceived as technology that supports living rather than a financial instrument would go a long way as well.
Texas is *not* "far and away the country’s leader in renewable energy." This is simply wrong, and wrong for a very simple reason.
Texas builds (barely) more renewables than any other state but it also consumes far more electricity than any other state (you know, air conditioning, but electricity-demanding industry). California, to take one example, still leads Texas by a mile in terms of demand met with renewables, and blows Texas away when it comes to using battery storage.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/03/how-blue-california-and-red-texas-became-green-powerhouses/
So Texas produces more renewables-based electricity than California. So what? Are Californians supposed to open their windows and doors and blast the a/c outside to make up for the gap they have in demand?
Texas is going great on renewables and I applaud their efforts. But my state of California still leads them on the renewables+batteries front.
Receipts has been one banger after another!!
Heat Waves in former times were not so heated and there are many ways to cool homes. AC ok but what about Data Centers that consume massive amounts of energy and heat up the Earth at the same time?
Such a sad world of affairs regarding "natural" forms of energy vs fossil fuels! But we have to keep on trying to do better. Thank you Catherine!
Thank you Catherine. This is something I already know, I spent two years in Germany. They had a hard time understanding until, I told them in the German language how to say air conditioning in America and myself in German they taught me. I told them how to install it.
Ah yes, 2012, thanks! There had been another storm in 2010 that was very isolated to my neighborhood - a downburst that took out half the trees on the block. That’s why we only lost power for a couple of days in 2012 - most of the vulnerable trees in the vicinity were already gone.
I live in Florida. Two men -- John Gorrie and Willis Carrier -- are responsible for that fact that Florida has a population of more than about 150. Between the two of them, the modern version of air condition came to be. There's a lot of info on the Web (some of it contradictory), but interesting. Without Gorrie and Carrier, Florida would probably be what Hernan de Soto called it: "an uninhabitable sandspit." Especially now, with the heat rising all the time.
"Here’s how the data-center buildout could spark a third wave of inflation."
Apple just had to increase the price of their laptops and iPads by hundreds of dollars because of increased memory costs. Ask anyone who's tried to build their own PC in the last year about inflation increases in CPUs, GPU, and RAM. Some of these have doubled in price.
The data centers buy chips in mass and some chip manufacturers reserve their entire yearly production for the AI companies, leaving basically nothing for the home computing sector. What little is left over is at an exorbitant price.
Data centers are already sparking more inflation.
Then this:
"enables other industries to produce food and electronics."
There's a video out about the Mars candy company changing the food dyes for M&Ms to natural from synthetic colors. They found that differences in water from factories from one city to another have a huge impact, and the process is critically sensitive to temperature changes. This is just one example of how important indoor climate control is in food production.
I was station in West Germany from 1/76 - 1/79. A/C was not an issue, summers were cool to the point were in August while in the field, I wore long underwear at night because it would get that cold. For years you DIDN'T get a/c for your car because you didn't need it. It's climate change, baby.
Can't some enterprising clean energy entrepreneurs go to Trump, with tears in their eyes, and say "sir, sir, we want to build a series of big, beautiful gold towers off-shore, with your name on it, that your boaters can sail past. It will power golf courses, McDonald's, and other places too. The libs will hate getting clean energy from you!'
Either that or bribe him.
I grew up in a tiny town south of Chicago, where summers would bring the dreaded 90/90: 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity. We didn't have air conditioning because my folks were working class and couldn't afford the monthly electric bill. I remember many nights soaking my sheets and mattress with drowning levels of sweat as mom and dad cheerfully said, Think cool thoughts, you'll be fine! I get it--what you cannot afford you cannot afford--but I vowed then and there I'd never go without AC. From the day I went to college till now, writing this at age 70, I have never gone without.
I feel for the misery of the modern heat-dome world that's dying or suffering from the lack of AC, and agree with Catherine that the notion of heat being essential but cooling being a sin is eye-blinkingly weird.
Line of the things that has me frustrated is that there is a lot going on to undermine any environmental projects, kill any green energy and basically hurt Americans in the process. If this is you too check out the substacks:
More than Just Parks.
We must stop reporting on climate and science in U.S. customary units only. Please use dual units. AP et al. admirably lead the way. This is why metric literacy in our country remains staggeringly high.
Body temperature is 37° C. "Triple digits" Fahrenheit effectively means 40° C or higher (e.g., Phoenix and Mumbai are typically 40° C). Literacy matters. Learning to use and understand SI units is not "unbearably onerous." Just ask 🇮🇳🇳🇿🇦🇺🇨🇦🇬🇧 and so very many others. I presume most of us here will agree that 🇺🇸 would do well to show 🌏 greater social and global empathy. A fifth of the planet has shifted to using English as a lingua franca (ELF), and more are coming. ✌🏼❤️🌐
I know the US system because Canada was on it too until the 70s or so. I still prefer it.
I think Carter suggested going metric by was met with complete rejection.
Metrication in the United States is a long tale.
Importantly (and necessarily) the government shifted entirely to the metric system in this century, without bothering to tell the American people. We had wars to lose, madmen to elect twice, and so on. We were busy. And as we know from our Commonwealth friends, some will resist and some will revolt against metrication. It's emotional. So our politicians have left us hanging. Eventually more and more people will figure out it has already effectively happened.
Another emotion is the joy of learning something new, opening new doors, and making new friends. On the other side of Trump, our country is going to need a lot of help from our friends.