Europe's summer heat wave killed more han 50k people in urban areas

47 pointsposted 2 days ago
by rbanffy
(science.org)

31 Comments

lbreakjai

2 days ago

The speed of change has been astoundingly fast. We went from temperatures above 30 degrees being newsworthy, to months on end with temperatures above 30 degrees in, what? Four years?

Everyone I know is in the process of getting A.C installed but installers can't cope with the level of demand. There's some ideological resistance, but understand the change happened as close to overnight as you'll get when talking about the climate.

dathinab

2 days ago

yep,

single >30C day was worth a full front-page on a large newspaper just idk. 15 years ago.

there are songs written about the temp. being 35C because it was that really special heat day you have at most once every few years (we had multiple days of that in a row and reaching basically 40C this year)

last summer we had >week with temperatures with 15-20C over the average temp. (of that month in the past)! And still >10C over the average of monthly maximal temperatures. Month where you normally are happy for 20C breaking full year/high of the summer heat records...

basically Germany went in one year from "yeah there are more really hot days in summer in average, it's a pain, but fine" to "oh, shit, we have a huge problem in a lot of areas due to the lack of AC"

most annoying many older, especially conservative, politicians still approach this with a "was fine for us will be fine for you/no AC for you" mentality. Especially when it comes to topics like spending money for thinks like making sure Hospital facilities for newborns have AC (that young children can't properly self regulate their body temperature, until idk. 9-12 moth of age).

sznio

a day ago

>Especially when it comes to topics like spending money for thinks like making sure Hospital facilities for newborns have AC (that young children can't properly self regulate their body temperature, until idk. 9-12 moth of age).

well, old people will certainly get AC in hospitals. children, who cares...

dathinab

a day ago

oh no they get that neither

except if they payed for private insurance and pay extra for a single room and get into one of the fancy mostly private only hospitals

but I don't think the people in question think about this as "I'm fine who care what happens to you" terms but more in "we didn't had this in the past we don't need it now" manner in a way not just crule to other _but also to them self_.

perching_aix

2 days ago

> there are songs written about the temp. being 35C because it was that really special heat day

Do you mean "28° in the shade" perhaps, a French song from 1978 by Jean-François Maurice? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpPnr0mCka4

Been a while I heard it, had to look it up. :) I also recalled mid-30s something, guess that was wrong. Or this is another case of the Mandela effect.

euroderf

a day ago

Siouxsie and the Banshees – 92°

"Did you know that more murders are committed at ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit than any other temperature?"

( 33 1/3 °C ]

nbajka

2 days ago

I live in the south of Spain and I have first-person experience with this - most of these deaths happened to old people who, despite their really good pensions, would rather die of heat stroke than install and turn on an air conditioner. Some really think they are going to be buried with their money.

You could cut these deaths to basically zero if the government installed the air conditioners and they didn’t have to pay for the electricity. Just to be clear I’m not advocating for this.

moi2388

a day ago

Isn’t most of it old people who forget to drink though?

Perhaps nursing homes should nurse, and ensure people drink enough?

holsta

a day ago

Is that how you'd like someone to respond if one of yours passed away from preventable situations?

Most nursing homes are barely staffed to handle basic hygiene. They don't have the resources to manage days of an entire building crossing a healthy temperature range.

coldtea

a day ago

>Is that how you'd like someone to respond if one of yours passed away from preventable situations?

Yes. I'd like for them to identify what the actual problem is, and suggest people paid to help with it do their job.

>Most nursing homes are barely staffed to handle basic hygiene. They don't have the resources to manage days of an entire building crossing a healthy temperature range.

Is that how you'd like someone to respond if one of yours passed away from preventable situations?

I'm repeating your comment, because you basically add to the same argument the parent made, even though you scolded them for it.

moi2388

a day ago

I would very much like the nursing home to ensure my family member drank enough every day.

In fact, it’s the bare minimum I’d expect.

elmer2

2 days ago

[flagged]

throwaway473825

2 days ago

I'll give you credits for emphasizing electricity, because Europe isn't against air conditioning. Basically all cars sold in Europe, or made by European companies and sold elsewhere, have air conditioning - but they're powered by oil.

The EU ETS - Europe's flagship carbon market program - specifically exempts gas for heating and oil for transportation, but not power generation, which incentivizes oil and gas over electricity:

https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/many-building-r...

Unfortunately, air conditioning in buildings runs on electricity, and thus it's discouraged. But that's more due to a dislike of electricity than of air conditioning itself.

puttycat

2 days ago

> Europe isn't against air conditioning

Simply not true for certain countries, notably France and Germany. This is well documented.

dathinab

2 days ago

but this is not really caused by "some leftist politics" or similar but has other historic and complicated reasons. E.g. in Germany across all political spectrum there is a lot of people which think just being in a room with can make you sick (independent on how much it cools the room). In general there are many smaller reason they have against AC which in combination with it simply not really having been necessary (for homes etc.) until recently lead to a wider cross party "non-liking" of ACs.

This anyway isn't specific to one political direction, I mean yes some regulations affect the cooling liquid used, nothing of which is a major road block.

Also the huge majority of new supper market, shopping centers, cars etc. in both countries you named have AC

But also other other mentioned heat death in that statistic are mostly a combination with other health issues. Hence why there is some relation between countries having a lot of old people and countries having a lot of heat related death. But also hence why many people will not treat this death as heat death even if they happen to their family.

A big problem for changing the current state in Germany are also like so "old politicians being mentally stuck in the past". The kind of "we didn't need it so you don't either" mindset. (Which if we have to speak about political direction is more common on the right side of the political spectrum, maybe simple due to that side being also older in average).

perching_aix

2 days ago

Pretty much this, it simply genuinely hasn't been a part of the culture until recently. The energy use angle didn't help, nor did the cost of the units. In case GP forgot, the eastern half of Europe only got rid of Soviet occupation in the 90s, and has been playing quite the catchup. We bought fans and that was kinda it. Can't really comment on western Europe, but I'm sure he can. :)

GP's big leftist overregulation fantasy is adorable though, and definitely no stereotypes were hurt in the writing of his comment, but the reality is that mini split heat pump aircon installations in particular are booming here, usually paired with solar. So unless he's referring to something from the past millenium, which would be pretty weird to do without explicitly noting it, that's a swing and a miss.

The spooky statistics "difference" comes down to a difference in measurement methodology afaik. This exact talking point he's raising has been very popular in certain circles as of late, actually.

But I'm sure his position is entirely his own and actually way more informed than mine, he simply omitted his sources and rationale for brevity :)

vasco

2 days ago

Read their comment more closely please.

arghwhat

2 days ago

Doesn't change that it isn't accurate.

In Scandinavia, lack of air condition in homes vs. presence in cars has nothing to do with carbon programs.

What options become standard in cars, and what options are cheap to implement in cars (adding a bit more piping during assembly), follow an entirely different market dynamic than the retrofitting homes (most houses are either pre-WW2 or from a boom in the 50's to 70's) with air conditioning to handle what used to be very short bursts of heat.

Not only did weather not demand it, old brick houses have significant thermal mass and during sudden heat waves you'll often find the inside to already be noticably cooler.

It's being considered now both because weather got weird and our construction went so far in energy efficiency that while new construction barely require any energy to heat in the depths of winter, they become literal ovens in peak of summer.

quickthrowman

a day ago

You can get natural gas powered chillers that compress the working fluid by burning gas instead of using electricity.

netsharc

2 days ago

What do you call it when the only one believing the lie is the liar himself... Getting high of one's supply?

If Europeans want AC, they can buy one. The speed of climate change is such that the 50k dead probably have thought they didn't need one and can cope with the "few days" of heat. (or can't afford one, but that's not a uniquely European problem (1)). In 2026 it was more than a "few days".

(1) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/millions-struggle-to-pay...

ThrowawayTestr

2 days ago

The first time I heard this fact I laughed for way too long.

cromka

2 days ago

Heat deaths are almost entirely due to harvesting effect, i.e. comorbidity deaths.

Unless you are a psychopath and consider shooting another person intentionally a harvest death, they're not the same.

rmah

2 days ago

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Of course heat wave deaths and being shot is not the same.

perching_aix

2 days ago

That's the point. GP deceptively suggests that what the EU escapes in gun deaths, it makes back in spades in heat deaths, providing GP with great ideological schadenfreude. Except this doesn't actually follow, in part because these are fundamentally different mortality categories indeed (and in part because the counting methodologies involved are drastically different, etc).

Hikikomori

2 days ago

I'll take fox news headlines for 200.

afry1

2 days ago

Yeesh, such whataboutism.

saddat

a day ago

This data is the deviation from average, a mere correlation . Heat death is not simple to diagnose