Large parts of the UK, including most of England, are experiencing an extreme heatwave at the moment, with temperatures heading towards 40 degrees (104f) in places, which has never happened in the UK before.
But conditions in parts of Europe are far worse, huge areas are on fire and temperatures have gone over 47 degrees (116), and French experts are warning of a 'heat apocalypse'.
Here in the UK lots of people my age or older remember the heatwave of 1976, when temperatures got to 36 degrees (96f), which was unheard of then, but isn't even in the top-ten of record temparatures any more. The biggest problem that year wasn't the heat but the long drought, it didn't rain anywhere for months and reservoirs ran dry, leaving people with no water and stand-pipes in the streets. This time, there's plenty of water, but these temperatures have never been reached before.
The other difference is that in 76, the UK was the only place this side of the world experiencing that heatwave, the rest of Europe was at its normal temperatures. Not so this time.
It's actually too hot to do mud shoots. Anyone trying to play on the mudbanks in these temperatures would suffer sunstroke and heat exhaustion. The unrelenting sun has also baked the top of the banks to a texture like solid concrete.
I'm wearing one of my kilts. It allows a cooling breeze whilst simultaneously makes ignorant bigots overheat. I don't bother correcting them now, out of fun.
But yeah, stay hydrated and don't underestimate the sun out there folks. People will die from this.
Silver_sea said: /Yorkshire accent "I were alive in '76, didn't do me no 'arm. I was being born mind, but still..."
Silver_sea said: Also, climate change deniers in 3..2..1..
Well, given I know someone who genuinely believes the Earth is flat and gravity isn't real, I'm not fussed about deniers. The overwhelming majority of the world's scientists tell us it's happening, and common sense and basic knowlege tells you that more CO2 means more heat - that after all is partly how greenhouses work. Way back when climate change was first being investigated 30+ years ago, one of the terms used then was "the greenhouse effect".
Denialists are no longer the problem, the problem now is politicians who either don't believe how serious the scientists say the issue is, or who do, but then just talk about solutions while not actually doing anything significant to tackle it.
According to Extinction Rebellion, we have until 2030 at the latest to act, otherwise we'll tip the climate into runaway self-accelerating change that will end up making most of the Earth uninhabitable to humans within this century. Billions will die, and civilisation will collapse. Now OK, XR being a pressure group may be overstating their cause a little. But when you see the explosion in wildfires globally when so far we've only warmed the climate by 1.1 degree on pre-industrial levels, and then realise that current predictions are that it'll warm by 2.4 degrees if every single pledge countries made that the various IPCC meetings are met, and at least 4 degrees if they aren't...
With a climate roughly analogous to the UK, we have seen the same thing up in Seattle. Last year saw a record 103 F day. People die because they are too stubborn to install AC, claiming "it's only necessary a few week out of the year" which is complete bullshit. Every year "summer" gets longer and hotter. Also, nobody installs just AC anymore. All AC units are heat pumps. If you add a reversing valve they become heating AND cooling. With both full splits and mini-splits, you only need to drill a 2" hole in an exterior wall (for the copper pipes) and add a power outlet. Heat pumps cost about 1/3 as much to operate as conventional fossil fuel or electric heating sources.
I've had whole house HVAC for a decade and a half so I'm in no danger of cooking to death. My data center uses multiple mini-splits for redundancy. I just replaced an old one that still worked but was not as efficient as it could be anymore. It was a self-install and cost about $750. It was around 80 F that day so I took a lot of breaks and still knocked it out in 4 hours. I have my own vacuum pump and gauges (how did we ever survive without cheap crap from Harbor Freight? ) but even someone without those tools can have a local installer do most of the work for a couple hundred.
Of course every structure in Las Vegas has AC. 104 F is just a balmy spring day down there. It's 114 there this week and will likely hit 120 in August. That 5% humidity makes all the difference.
Well I have been making use of the last 3 hot evenings by having a cold shower in clothes and then drip-drying. It's a great feeling and then I sleep very comfortably after even though the place is still hot.
This evening I took a walk in the park at 8pm when it was still around 30C - it was most unusual. It even rained a bit, which was a lovely feeling being in a sleeveless crop top - Anyway, certainly no climate change-contrarian either,
*looks at Australia* huh, not much change down here.
i'm a climate pragmatist who sees both extreme sides as the problem. the flat-earther style deniers dont look at the way way way back knowledge that has been long uncovered that, yes, the climate does change every so often (often being relative to a 4.5 billion year old planet). on the other side, the very extreme climate cultists for a few decades have done themselves no favors with their repeated claims of total doom and death of humanity at various points which turned out like Y2K: a whole load of horse hockey, as well as their unwillingness to consider any option outside wind or solar.
the world could have realistically already well down the path of real emissions reduction for about 2 decades if certain decisions had been made (or made differently) but werent because then, and now, a lot of the climate debate is controlled by the extremes thus calm, sensible discussion and consideration of ALL options is practically impossible.
the slide can be arrested, without plummeting most countries into years of economic pain and extremely high prices, if hard realistic decisions are made after ALL options are considered. though the world would need the fortitude to really pressure the gross top level emitters.
to all the Europeans, from an Aussie with much experience of extreme heat, stay cool, stay hydrated and stay inside if you can. look at the silver lining: it's a good opportunity for cooling wetlook in the shower or bath (or pool if you're lucky enough to have an indoor one.)
And here's the latest - yesterday as temperatures peaked at 40.3 degrees C - the hottest it's ever been in the UK at any point in recorded history - spontaneous wildfires ignited all over the country and at least a dozen families have lost their homes. Ok, small-scale compared to the utter devastation there's been in California and Australia in recent years, but not anything that's happened here before.
I have previously wondered just how much of the country needs to be actually on fire before the authorities take seriously the need for massive and immediate reductions in carbon emissions, I guess now we start to find out.
I have previously wondered just how much of the country needs to be actually on fire before the authorities take seriously the need for massive and immediate reductions in carbon emissions, I guess now we start to find out. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62232654
Make any day that is over 35C a mandatory paid day off. Then lets see the companies reduce their emissions to keep the workers in.
I think Fox Trot made some good points. I think there is an element of truth in it but the debate has been stifled by the fact that this topic attracts cranks and the extremist political fringe.
Ironically, me, who is sceptical on this actually leads quite a green lifestyle. I don't have a car (can't afford one) so I travel by pedal bike and public transport. I don't have a passport so never fly and have a very low carbon footprint, I also rarely buy stuff and don't consume a great deal. XR would probably approve, but I think they're a bunch of pricks
DungeonMasterOne said: Here in the UK lots of people my age or older remember the heatwave of 1976, when temperatures got to 36 degrees (96f), which was unheard of then,
I remember the UK heatwave in 1976 very well, because that was the year I bought my first house in South London. The entire city of London sits on a basin of clay and when the temps rose in 1976 many homes in the London, including mine, had cracks in their foundations due to the heatwave. I had my foundations repaired and sold it 5 years later for 30,000 Pounds, and I thought I had done well because I only paid 16,000 Pounds for it. Boy....was I a dummy. I should have held onto that house because today it is valued at over 600,000 Pounds.
The other thing I remember about the London heatwave in 1976 is that it was an absolute bonanza for seeing wetlook scenes, because I worked in the Strand near Trafalgar Square and every lunch time I would walk to T Square and see dozens of office girls playing in the fountains each day. T Square fountains were great in the 1970's and open for all to play in them. Sadly they shut them all down after the poll tax riots in 1990 and today the wardens wil not let you play in them (unless we ever win The World Cup Again....which might happen in another 50+ years).
DungeonMasterOne said: Here in the UK lots of people my age or older remember the heatwave of 1976, when temperatures got to 36 degrees (96f), which was unheard of then,
I remember the UK heatwave in 1976 very well, because that was the year I bought my first house in South London. The entire city of London sits on a basin of clay and when the temps rose in 1976 many homes in the London, including mine, had cracks in their foundations due to the heatwave. I had my foundations repaired and sold it 5 years later for 30,000 Pounds, and I thought I had done well because I only paid 16,000 Pounds for it. Boy....was I a dummy. I should have held onto that house because today it is valued at over 600,000 Pounds.
The other thing I remember about the London heatwave in 1976 is that it was an absolute bonanza for seeing wetlook scenes, because I worked in the Strand near Trafalgar Square and every lunch time I would walk to T Square and see dozens of office girls playing in the fountains each day. T Square fountains were great in the 1970's and open for all to play in them. Sadly they shut them all down after the poll tax riots in 1990 and today the wardens wil not let you play in them (unless we ever win The World Cup Again....which might happen in another 50+ years).
Well England nearly won the Euro's last year (bloody penalties yet again!!), the ladies are doing well in their own Euro's right now and the World Cup is happening at the end of the year so England might finally win something in football/soccer soon (and not another 50 years!! LOL)
mrangry said: Ironically, me, who is sceptical on this actually leads quite a green lifestyle. I don't have a car (can't afford one) so I travel by pedal bike and public transport. I don't have a passport so never fly and have a very low carbon footprint, I also rarely buy stuff and don't consume a great deal. XR would probably approve, but I think they're a bunch of pricks
It's good for anyone who can to live a low-emissions lifestyle, but XR weren't really trying to get individuals to change anything, the objective was to make the government realise that climate change and the possible climate collapse if drastic action isn't taken are major and important issues which should be far higher up the political agenda than they are.
Unfortunately the UK government's response was to pass a bunch of laws that effectively outlaw all forms of effective protest, rather than doing anything about the actual problem. And meanwhile in the US, their Supreme Court has stripped their Environmental Protection Agency of any ability to regulate carbon emissions - so more and more CO2 will be emitted, the climate will continue to warn, until eventually it reaches the tipping point for runaway warming. After which there isn't much point worrying because civilisation will collapse and the vast majority of humans will be wiped out, along with most other current animal species.
Game over. The next great civilisation on Earth, in about a million years time, will probably evolve from cockroaches. I wonder if any of them will be into WAM at all?
Sploshman said: Well England nearly won the Euro's last year (bloody penalties yet again!!), the ladies are doing well in their own Euro's right now and the World Cup is happening at the end of the year so England might finally win something in football/soccer soon (and not another 50 years!! LOL)
It would be nice to see before we are all pushing up daisies. I am probably one of only a handful of Englishmen who are on this forum who was alive in 1966 and saw their last World Cup win on tv. Most Englishmen on this forum are too young to have seen it. Mind you I am not old enough to have seen the last time we won a men's single title at Wimbledon, which was in 1936.
mrangry said: I was alive in 1966 but was only 6 and I didn't get into football until the early 70s so I have no recollection of it
I was only 11 but I remember it because we had just rented a black and white tv set in order to watch it. In 1966 we all watched the game on a grainy monochrome 19 inch monitior, so we were mostly unaware about the controversy over Geoff Hurst's 3rd "goal". In 1966 the BBC did not have "action replays" so you only saw it once in low quality with no action replay or slow motion, so we just assumed that the referee and linesmen had made the right decision. It was not until some 40+ years later that a high definition color film was released and you could clearly see that the ball never crossed the line and the referee had made a mistake. A lot of Germans were rightly upset and felt that the wrongly called goal changed the game. But on that day lady luck was on our side and the ref called it in our favour and the Germans were unlucky that they were the victims of a bad call ...
Wamstuff said: I for one would like them to bring in a max temp in the workplace limit (UK)
46 deg in my workshop last week. No windows, no airflow, a few standing fans just firing hot air at you. Metal building with a tin/metal roof. Horrible to work in, especially when it's physical work (not to mention my work colleague doesn't understand basic human hygiene).
Yes, clearly the world is falling apart. Climate is clearly shifting.
But, we won't fix the problem because that isn't the way the world works. The UK is 'kinda' pushing the point, but nowhere near enough and the government (all of them are liars) is just a joke these days anyway (lets not start on that).
I bought an electric car last month because I commute 2 hrs a day and the diesel is killing me. 45k for an EV and not ONE benefit for doing so. No help with a home charger or with purchasing an electric car.
As soon as enough people go electric, the free car tax will be scrapped.
New housing going EVERYWHERE on green land. So they need water, power, gas and create heat + waste.
Hospitals are basically pointless now unless you are so badly injured you don't notice the 13hr wait in the back of an ambulance (Thank God for Bupa).
Russia invading is a great excuse to fire up the coal plants (although, not sure what the alternative is).
And I read we have too much imported Gas and nowhere to store it, so we are selling it to Europe in the summer at cheap rate and will buy it back in the winter at the higher rate. Brilliant business plan there.
In the last 2/3 years, the world has fallen apart at the seams
Oops... I only meant to mention the hot whether #Pentupanger
Literally sounds like we work in the same building tin building but add to that seagulls that attack you leaving and entering
We took in some summer temps and my boss put female health items in the toilet and I asked if we put deodorant in the men's would they use it ! She said she did so I guess the answer was a no because the smell of body odour is terrible.
Typical British summer here 3 days of scorching unbearable weather and now back to rain !
Gawd! I remember the days of giant fans. Of course the small apartment where I grew up had small window units. God forbid if my brothers and I turned the motor around to blow the sweat off of us.