5th Heat Dome Expands Across Europe: 40°C+ Target Western and Central Europe

The complicit parties of climate change are so wide you would probably have to try thousands and thousands of people across most of the developed world. The cohort is probably so large that it’s more a reflection of society generally than the malicious acts of a few.

Would opposing nuclear energy qualify as such action? The emission difference was well known and fully scientifically provable at time.

We should start with all the people on HN who told us we didn’t need nuclear power.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=nuclear+climate+change

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Start 11 years ago and go backwards

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1439337600&dateRange=custom&...

Satoshi would be first in line?

On the topic of thousands needlessly dead, look at the UN's suggestions:

Useless yapping about opening windows at night, protecting the vulnerable, limiting global warming to 1.5C, and not drinking caffeine.

Is any of this "Call to Action" actually actionable?

Obviously not; and it is pathetic.

What should be actioned:

- remove regulatory hurdles to AC installation

- mandate such installation in residences that otherwise reach unbearable temperatures

- make funds available to subsidize the installation or train more workers for AC installation

That would 'protect the vulnerable'.

Talking about opening windows at night or climate change does nothing, and is performative only.

I think we should start charging the worst emitters with manslaughter now. We shouldn't wait for the crisis to be halted; the law should be part of how we force firms to recognize part of the harm.

This is not an argument for global warming, but do bear in mind that cold kills far more and on balance global warming has saved lives here. The issue is going to cause worse problems than heat deaths though. However, a big wet bulb event could completely reverse that count.

Or Europe should just get air-conditioning and enjoy the beautiful weather. Can’t make it through the winter without heat. Why would you want to make it through the summer without air-conditioning?

That being said fuck pollution and the ruining of our environment.

While it is true that reversing combustion would require more energy than was released burning it, I don't think anyone reasonable is proposing it. The proposal is to redirect future energy production away from fossil extraction and into cleaner sources (solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal) which is a completely different thermodynamic problem. The constraints are things like grid storage capacity, permitting timelines, and critical mineral supply chains - not physics.

If we overcome these very real contraints, we reduce the rate of new additions to atmospheric CO2. We will still need to do the thermodynamically hard work of removing CO2 at gigaton scale, but deferring that until removal tech is more mature is the right sequencing.

Of course, this assumes that we are actually working towards the CO2 output reductions right now and really committed to CO2 removal in the near future.

Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question, but I legitimately don't know: does the thermodynamic argument hold up? (Broadly, I agree that humanity needs a healthier relationship with industrialism before fixing this is possible).

A few ways I can imagine it doesn't:

- We can reduce warming by other means, like changing the Earth's albedo.

- A lot more energy falls to Earth every day from the sun than we use via petroleum; a good amount of solar/wind would let us climb back up the hill via sequestration.

- We don't need to sequester CO2/methane into high-energy-density hydrocarbons; could an efficient sequestration process yield eventually net positive energy per unit greenhouse gas from the burn -> sequester process?

You are right, except: "solutionism will fail. Magic technology will not come to save us."

You just can't know this. It might be true. But it might not. That's the thing about the future, it is fundamentally alien.

All we have to do is plant trees. Millions of trees, and reduce beef farming.

> Your gender equality is made of petroleum.

That is the weirdest and wokest comment I read this year on the internet. Could you please explain?

I do not think a collapse is inevitable, see:

https://climatetippingpoints.info/2026/05/06/news-explainer-...

Any good books on the subject you'd recommend?

The Po River is drying up as well...

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/environment/2026/08/10/climate-...

Not to mention the cost of premature deaths of children and the elderly who don't deal with heat as well

That's the value of a single third-tier AI startup.

The thing is, we could survive with a lot less food production. We just don't want to, since animal flesh is so tasty.

This is a two week forecast, one month ago. There is no good two week forecast.

There is a heat wave right now, again.

The soil is quite dry already.

Not if Count Binface wins the elections.

First the UK, then leadership of Europe via behind-closed-doors politics, then a gentle colonization of both the east and the west using our amazing cheese, bread that is baked rather than synthesized from fossil fuels, and 30 days of paid vacations per year. The path forward is clear.

Erasing any datacenter ever built (and planned) would do almost nothing to stop climate change.

What we need is (global) electrification of transport and heating, CO2 free electricity and CO2 neutral concrete and steel.

Very effective ways to make this happen would be high prices on emissions, enforced on every local industry and all imports.

But too many people love their cheap fossil-based transport too much and are unwilling to make even small sacrifices to keep the climate stable; sad reality.

If only Al Gore warned us about AI as well! /s

Thinking these are at their current level relevant to climate change, is a level of ignorance that I'd almost put on a tin-foil hat to discuss how the fossil industry is feeding an anti-AI campaign of ignorance.

If you can't run one fifth of your nuclear plants, because the water levels are to low or the water temperatures too high in the rivers used to cool them, you may want to reconsider whether that is truly the best choice here¹

In the meantime my fathers solar roof allows him free AC cooling, because as it turns out AC generally needs most energy when the sun shines the most.

I am not arguing nuclear plants do not have benefits, I just argue that solar with storage may be a much better fit for powering ACs.

¹: https://www.euronews.com/2026/08/12/heatwave-and-jellyfish-a...

When I lived in a rather hot area of Spain for a year, I was shocked to find out that many apartments don't have an air conditioner. In a place where a similar heat wave happens every year, for months. A friend of mine moved there from Germany and being somewhat frugal, rented a place without and aircon. Let me just say that he didn't enjoy the summer nights one bit.

I myself had one, but I could probably rent a car for the cost of running it.

I will say this - air conditioning costs to establish room temperature are inversely proportional to the degree the building is insulated. If your whole country is comprised of uninsulated or barely insulated housing stock, you have a MUCH larger project than simply buying some small window units for a few hundred euro per person and then paying a few hundred euros extra per year in energy costs.

>Europeans are negligent in not protecting themselves however they can.

Well, if the people in charge say or think global warming isn't real, that's what you get: not "other" solutions to the "unacceptable propositions" the Green parties suggest, but no proposition at all, as there is no problem.

The current situation is a direct consequence of pure negationism from conservative parties, not a disagreement on how to deal with climate change between the Right and the Left. The Left proposed solutions you may not agree with, but the Right has been completely rejecting the reality of climate change.

BTW, how do you propose Europe protect not only people from the heat, but also forests from burning, rivers from drying up, fields from being unfit for cows and sheep, lakes from blooming with algae, nuclear plants from being shut down due to river water being too hot and seawater being full of jellyfish, etc, etc, etc? In the end, there are so many things to "adapt" that it would cost less to try to organize a global effort to lower CO2.

People live longer in many parts of Europe than the USA. Does that mean the USA is somehow negligent?

Excess deaths due to heat are primarily the in the elderly. The excess numbers we are seeing now are because the proportion of elderly people in France, Germany and Spain are higher than in the USA.

If the population pyramid in the EU was more similar to that of the USA the number of excess deaths would be lower. I'm not sure negligent is the correct word to use. Climate change will reduce quality of life. Because of these changes people will not live as long.

That's how excess deaths work.