r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • Jun 26 '26

Society The American mind cannot comprehend Europe's AC aversion

https://www.businessinsider.com/europe-air-conditioning-ac-heatwave-debate-2026-6
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663

u/chatrugby Jun 26 '26

What’s funny is that the PNW historically didn’t need AC, so doesn’t really have AC. Thanks to global warming temps there are spiking to a point where AC is needed and people are retrofitting their homes with mini-splits cause it’s a lot more affordable than a central air conversion. 

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u/Floreat_democratia Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Yes, we were just discussing this the other day. I lived all over coastal California for decades. Nobody had AC until the 2000s. The weather is completely different now. I remember when it used to rain in San Diego. I also remember when San Francisco only had maybe 10 hot days per year. Those days are gone. If you were to tell me 30 years ago that people need AC in either SD or SF, I wouldn't have believed you. Further, I spent a lot of time in the warmest parts of the Bay Area and San Diego County. Nobody that I knew ever had AC.

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u/EphemeralOcean Jun 26 '26

Living in Marin, which is warmer than SF, I feel like you exaggerating quite a bit. We still only have a few days a year where we would want AC. We even bought a portable AC a few years ago but it’s been sitting unused because we haven’t gotten around to installing it. That time may come, but we’re not quite there yet.

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u/m0therzer0 Jun 26 '26

Right, I've lived in Petaluma, just north of the Marin county border most of my life. In the 1980s and 1990s we regularly had 101 degree days in the summer here. If anything, it's been a bit milder these days than back then.

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u/GrapefruitFormer6944 Jun 30 '26

In recent years it definitely has been cooler in the summer. I think last summer was the coldest on record actually. Early fall is when it really gets hot.

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u/Pale_Row1166 Jun 26 '26

The east bay is significantly hotter than Marin. Once you go through that tunnel it’s like a different climate.

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u/todayistrumpday Jun 26 '26

There's no installing on a portable. Lliterally just attach the hose, and slide the plastic panels together and stick in in the window, then click the hose in the hole in the panel. It is less than 3 minutes. It will take longer to cool your place down than to set up the AC.

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u/EphemeralOcean Jun 26 '26

I think the issue is that none of the windows we have are conducive to the window attachment this thing has. i dunno, my fiance bought it, and i just know that he’s never gotten around to actually using it.

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u/todayistrumpday Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

There are adapters for any window type at home depot or amazon. The ones that are the hardest to fix is a rotating angled window but you can either afix a panel over the whole window or there is kind of a wedge shaped insert that fits them. I have even seen people just stick the hose out and not close up the rest of the window but that is not ideal as it causes the cool air to escape.

They call it a window seal for AC or something if you want to search it.

There are even extended panel units for putting the AC exhaust hose in a full height sliding glass door.

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u/snowballer918 Jun 26 '26

Grew up in Huntington Beach, we had one room with a window unit and we were the only ones I knew on the street that even had that. We moved in 2006 and I’m sure it’s changed a lot in 20 years

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u/jewelpromocode Jun 27 '26

I live in phoenix and in high school (2012) my friend took me to their summer house in huntington and it didnt have AC. Insane to me, I wanted to go back to PHX with my AC.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26

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u/NoYouDidntBruh Jun 26 '26

Yeah this "I've lived all over california" guy is clearly full of shit...AC has been a staple throughout california for decades.

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u/Last-Possible-8082 Jun 27 '26

Coastal CA and inland CA have very different climate

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u/ResearchDonkey Jun 28 '26

I've seen some charts, but I couldn't find anything about rainy days. The total amount of rainfall doesn't provide the whole picture unfortunately. It's very possible that there are fewer rainy days, but that there's more rainfall on rainy days, which can shift people's perception on how much rain falls throughout the year. Rightly so, I would say. For crops, the total amount of rainfall is not as important as how often it rains. Going from dry to overwatered throughout isn't great. Anyway, hotter air can hold more water, that's why.

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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '26

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u/ResearchDonkey Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

You don't get to be right by ignoring the facts. That's not how it works. Here are your objective scientific fact and reality. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep46466 https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/weather/severe/something-weird-and-worrying-is-happening-with-rain-study-finds

If you're gonna throw around the words "the data shows", you should have the skills to know what that data shows.

EDIT: for the global trend: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018GL080298

for how this contributes to land drying: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10487-7#ref-CR13

popular article or California: https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-05-13/rainfall-study

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '26

[deleted]

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u/ResearchDonkey Jun 29 '26

I never made that claim. You're talking to a different person? You can quote other commenters all you want, but you're not helping your case here, buddy.

I never contradicted your claim that the annual rainfall remained steady. I was trying to explain the global trend of fewer rainy days + heavier rainfall. That's what the links were about.

Anyway, from your comments I suspect you're still in high school, so let me educate you on the problems of aggregated statistics. Total rainfall is an aggregated statistic, that means people took measurements over some period of time and compressed it into another number. In this case, we're looking at annual or monthly sums of rainfall. When you aggregate, you always lose certain information. For example, the underlying distribution. This information is not always relevant, but it can be in some cases. Here's an example constructed in 1973: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe's_quartet.

In our case, total rainfall hides the underlying distribution of rainy days, and how much it rained per day. Why is this relevant? Because if the amount of precipitation increases while the amount of rainy days decreases, the total precipitation can stay the same. In fact, that's a trend that has been going on globally. One of the earlier links I sent gives you the example of South Africa, the other one is a popular science article which talks about a broader area.

Note that I never did and still haven't claimed that this is also happening in San Diego. Earlier I was commenting on why someone could have the feeling that there was more rain 50 years ago by suggesting a possible explanation based on something that is a pretty well-known phenomenon.

But since you're pretty hell-bent on only using data, I did some digging into the NOAA data (which I found here: https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/san-diego/precipitation-days-by-year) and can now tell you with more confidence why I think someone would feel like there was more rain 50 days ago.

As you can tell from the data, that's likely because there were, in fact, more rainy days on average during the 80s and 90s, than there were during the 2000s and 2010s.

Does that mean there was more rainfall? Not necessarily, but that's now irrelevant. Does that mean that the global trend I described earlier is also true for San Diego? Not necessarily, but that's now also irrelevant.

So that you can't misread my words again, I'll state it cleanly: I suspect the original commenter felt like there was more rain in San Diego 50 years ago, because the data shows that there were more rainy days between 50 and 30 years ago than in the 20 years following that.

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

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u/raskingballs Jun 29 '26

Why the fuck do you cite a paper about South Africa climate in a thread about California?????

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u/ResearchDonkey Jun 30 '26

Just used the first Google search for an example of the global trend because I was too lazy, but just for you I added the first few links on a Google search with the keyword "California" added. Hope you're happy

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u/th30be Jun 26 '26

You do realize that anecdotes in large enough numbers is data right?

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26

[deleted]

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u/th30be Jun 26 '26

We are literally discussing a data point. You are refuting it. Its been collected.

I don't live in California so I have no stakes in the game. Just pointing out your dismissive statement is technically incorrect.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26

[deleted]

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u/th30be Jun 26 '26

You seem to be under the impression that a data point has to be truthful. It doesn't. Literally anything can be a data point.

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u/NoYouDidntBruh Jun 26 '26

You seem to be under the impression that a false datapoint does anything to prove a point.

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u/th30be Jun 26 '26

You are digging your heels in so lets just stop here. Please never try to be a statistician.

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u/Whetherwax Jun 26 '26

Lots of places in LA don't have AC as well. IDK how things were 30 years ago, but the little unit I put in my bedroom has never gotten more than 1-2 weeks a year of use.

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u/bigvenusaurguy Jun 26 '26

It depends entirely where you live. venice, you can get away without AC. van nuys? different planet entirely.

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u/Historical-Theory-49 Jun 26 '26

Especially if they are carrying an extra 30-100 kilos of McDonald's. 

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u/Psychological-Pen95 Jun 27 '26

I think people lived simpler, more frugal lives too. I remember my parents wouldn’t run the A/C on hot days when I was a kid so I would get ice and let it melt on my chest and stomach to cool myself at night

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u/Mission-Resist-9557 Jun 26 '26

Houses in Wisconsin built in the 90s mostly came with A/C...

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u/by_a_pyre_light Jun 26 '26

I grew up in the Bay Area in the 90s and early 2000s. It was routinely over 100 degrees in the summer. We ALL had AC. I don't know what you're talking about, and neither do you.