595
If Europe has started experiencing over 40°C heatwaves frequently, then this planet really is fucked
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
595 points (98.7% liked)
memes
21999 readers
2670 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yep, and Americans answering with "we're ok because we have AC" is a Don't Look Up moment
I sure hope their electricity grid can handle it when everyone turns on the AC and data centers also start pulling extra because it's so hot.
Even in the U.S., we use a lot more energy heating homes than cooling homes. Around 43% of our total in-home energy usage is on heating, and about 8% is on cooling.
Heat waves don't cause nearly as big of a strain on our grid as winter storms, because AC doesn't consume as much energy as even our efficient heat pumps in the winter.
That's because a heat pump that can lower the temperature by 10°-15°C is really all you need in the hottest part of the summer, whereas in the winter raising the temperature 25°C isn't uncommon.
Really? This is wild. I'm in a hot part of the US and it's 95F/35C and humid daily here. I'm honestly really surprised with how much AC blasts here that heating still takes up the majority of nationwide energy consumption.
Just think about it in terms of the number of people and number of days per year where they need to raise the indoor temperature by a certain amount, compared to the number of people and days needing to lower the temperature.
If you're looking at a place where it's 95°F during the day and 85°F at night, and you like to set the temperature to 75°F, you're only cooling it 10-20°F by time of day.
But if you're looking at a place where it's 35°F during the day and 15°F at night, and you want to heat things up to 65°F, you've gotta change the temperature by 30-50°F throughout the day.
Even when you're comparing absurdly hot weather to absurdly cold weather, you're still comparing something like 110°F to 0°F. You're still looking at a 70°F swing versus a 35°F swing towards comfort.
Throw in the fact that combustion of fuels (fossil fuels like heating oil or natural gas, or other fuels like wood in a fireplace) is usually only about 1/3 or 1/4 as energy efficient than the equivalent temperature change by heat pump, and you can see how much more energy intensive the typical indoor heating setup is compared to the typical indoor cooling setup.
Some of it is obscured by the fact that fossil fuels are much cheaper per unit energy than electricity from the grid, so that heating bills aren't as expensive in the same ratio, but in terms of actual energy used, it's a big difference.