Baloghdarogue

Is this actually a news story or is this some "fun" article written by a comedian?
This article is so full of assumption and faults that I can't believe any professor would be so dumb as to write it.
It lacks any scientific foundation and the assumption are just plain silly.

European cities are virtually devoid of air conditioning, in large part because they have never needed it.
The last heat wave was in 76 thats 27 years ago.
Most modern buildings (build in the last 10 years) do have airconditioning or it is availlable as an option.
So if you want it you can get it easy.
All retirement homes build in the last decade have air conditioning, the same goes for hospitals, public buildings and offices.
When you own an air conditioner you do not have to use it all the time. You use it only when you need it and that is once every 27 years.
Believe me when I say that the extra cost for the energy does not play a part when you need to use it.
Then youre just glad you have it and dont care about the 10 euro extra on youre monthly bill.

If the tax on energy is the reason why Europeans do not have air conditioning, why then start making it readely available and implement it on a large scale after these higher taxes are imposed and not before?
Simple we never needed it.

Ever thought about making the applications more energie efficient?
Depending of the application a large part of the energy is lost due to inefficiency. Sometimes this can be up to 95% of the energy used. Find a way to not waste energy and you have solved most of the problems.
And yes the price off energy plays a part in this.
Say you have the choice between 2 airconditioners, both preforming the same.
Only difference is that one uses 50% less energy.
You're gonne choose the one that uses less energy.
Unless energy is free then you dont care.
In short Cost of ownership playes a huge part in the decision making proces.

It took us 100 years to get to this lvl off pollution.
What makes anyone think that it can be resolved in the forseeable future?
Even if we implement the most stringeant measures it would take over 2 centuries to repair the damage all mankind has done. That is no reason to do nothing about it.

Interesting enough no link to air conditioning is made here.
Based on this I can also make an assumption.

"The reason why americans have stopped dying is because they have had time to adapt to the higher temperatures over a period of time. This is generally known as evolution.
The reason why europeans have died is the sudden rise in temperature to which they are not adapted."

Haloface

Christ sake people.
Buy a fucking fan.

sontos2244

People can't afford the energy to run a fan since energy taxes are so high.

ViBeSJoKeR

Can you tell me please the tax rate on Energy in Europe cause I really have no clue...

trimlock

one MILLION dollars

ThePerfectFlaw

Uh, Dr. Evil...

mirdorr

We had an entire discussion in which, I believe, both of us posted articles on this - more specifically, on the energy tax rates in your country.

Crist0

You know, when Pinatubo/Hudson erupted in 1991, there was a 50% depletion of ozone over the antarctic, and 15-20% ozone loss at high altitudes worldwide. Pinatubo alone released more sulfur dioxide(the main greenhouse gas released by coal burning facilites) than the entire US releases in 2 years. It seems to me that if just those two eruptions did that much damage, and how many eruptions there have been in history(eruptions on the scale of pinatubo happen every 100 years or so)...there's a little too much stock put into humanity's effect on the climate, and "global warming".


Quite a few people think the earth is cooling instead of warming. The NOAA(national oceanic and atmospheric administration) for example showed a half a degree decrease in ground temperatures from 1945 to 1968(surely if the global warming theory was correct, it would have increased due to large jumps in greenhouse gases from explosive industrialization..no?). Oddly enough the warming for the last century occured primarily between 1910 and 1940, when the global co2 levels increased from 293ppm to 300ppm...and the temperature remained steady from 1940 to 1980 while the co2 levels increased from 300ppm to 335ppm.

Another item to factor in is that manmade aerosols do not remain in the atmosphere long at all, most fall out in rain or by themselves rather quickly. From 1940 to 1980 while the northern hemisphere's average temperatures remained the same the southern hemisphere's temperatures rose, despite the fact that the northern hemisphere is where the vast majority of manmade aerosols are released(keep in mind they do not remain in the atmosphere long).

What I'm getting at is that Europe's high energy taxation is quite possibly based on hasty, incorrect assumptions about a contested theory on global climate that quite a bit of hard data goes against.

Of course, some references:


1. Halpert, M.S. and G.D. Bell, 1997: Climate assessment for 1996. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 78, 1-49.

2. Houghton, J.T., L.G. Meira Filho, B.A. Callander, N. Harris, A. Kattenberg and K. Maskell, 1996: Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change.Contribution from the Working Group I to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Cambridge Univ. Press) 572pp.

3. Schimel, D. et al. 1996. Radiative forcing of climate change. In (2) Houghton et al. 1996, 65 -131.

4. Braswell, B.H., D.S. Schimel, E. Linder and B. Moore, 1887: The response of global terrestrial ecosystems to interannual temperature variability. Science, 278, 870-872.

5. Weir, A. 1996. IPCC second assessment. Climate Change Newsletter (Aust. Dept Primary Industries & Energy), 1-4.

6. Hengeveld, H. and P. Kertland 1995. An assessment of new developments relevant to the science of climate change. Climate Change Newsletter (Australian Bureau of Resource Sciences, Canberra), 7, August, 24p.

7. Etheridge, D.M., L.P. Steele, R.J. Francey, and R.L. Langenfelds, 1998. Atmospheric methane between 1000 A.D. and present: evidence of anthropogenic emissions and climatic variability. J. Geophys. Res., 103, 15979 - 93.

8. Keeling R. et al. 1996. Nature, 381 , 218.

kinu

PM me on board L2. EWboard.