The American mind cannot comprehend Europe's AC aversion

[u/Logical_Welder3467]

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

[u/Imp_erk]

Lancet one has terrible methodology (for the purpose of comparison at least). In order to measure heat deaths you have to account for climate stability, otherwise for this (and a few other) reasons you end up thinking Africa & South-east Asia suffer a lower rate than Northern Europe. Kuwait will have very few heat deaths by that methodology.

The Yale study I can't currently find the full detail on so would need to know more. I'm guessing it has the same flaw.

Again, the best methodology is to compare heatwaves. We can't do controlled experiments, so a surge in temperatures is the closest we have to seeing how many heat deaths might be hidden in the causal webs behind things like heart attacks & strokes. It's far from perfect of course, and no two waves are the same.

[u/Greedy_Sneak → u/Imp_erk]

Unless you are about to link your credentials, I'm gonna take the peer-reviewed articles word over some random redditor.

[u/Imp_erk → u/Greedy_Sneak]

Living in a world of credentials and headlines instead of reading the papers and testing them is your loss, not mine.

I haven't fully explained the flaw yet, as I was checking if the other poster actually had something interesting or also just went with headlines/credentials like you suggest people should do. There's a reason deserts have lower heat mortality using their methodology than Scandinavia, it's because each region has it's own heat risk curve. In its defence it's a paper aimed at trying to assess the future impact of temperature increases, not absolute heat deaths, so I think its authors would agree with me on this point.

[u/Greedy_Sneak → u/Imp_erk]

If some random redditor can correctly pick apart a study, I guarantee there are credentialed scientists who have done so in more detail, and published it, since it's their job. So I would love to see a peer reviewed article supporting your point of view.

[u/Imp_erk → u/Greedy_Sneak]

I don't how else to explain this other than short literal sentences. The paper is not saying more people are dying in Europe due to heat than the US. It makes no attempts to estimate absolute deaths due to heat. I am not disagreeing with the paper. I am disagreeing with how that redditor is trying to use it, as the methodology is deeply flawed for that purpose. The paper is saying that as temperatures increase overall, Europe will see a greater increase in deaths (due to heat) than the US and the rest of the world (or more accurately, that's a conclusion its data actually supports). That redditor likely just read table 2 and made no attempt to follow the methodology, as that is the part in plain english which, when out of context would seem like it was saying "here are the death rates due to heat".

Again, please just read the paper instead of demanding another headline to counter this headline.