The impact of this story is blunted when you look up what 29 degrees Celsius* means in real numbers, alas.
84 degrees and change, if you were both wondering and lazy. Mind you, when reading the article it says that Europe is worried about it getting to 104 degrees, which is hot by anybody’s standards (including the Southwest’s) and something that they’ll need to keep an eye on. And yet… we invented the air conditioner over a hundred years ago. This is solved technology.
And, not to bring up the unfortunate past, but: in that intervening time Europe set itself on fire. Twice. Virtually every city on the continent was fought over, some multiple times. Why didn’t they just insist on HVAC being standard when they rebuilt?
Moe Lane
PS: It’s over 90 where I am. Why? Because it’s freaking Maryland in late June, that’s why. Nobody’s seeing death masks in my area’s temperature readings…
*Assuming I’m interpreting the map correctly, of course.
This is Europe, a place where daily showers are an unaffordable extravagance.
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A place where gasoline is sold (approximately) in quarts. And at ruinous prices, at that.
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A place that decommissioned a good percentage of their badly-needed electricity generation because it might somehow hurt a ball of rock. (Or more likely, allow the peasants upward mobility.)
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Our ancestors left for a reason.
To be fair, France lost 15,000 senior citizens in August 2003 the last time thing got hot (It didn’t help that their physicians had all gone on vacation and refused to come back when it became obvious that things were getting bad). But like you said, the air conditioner is solved technology and they’ve had 16 years since then to get their act together. @_@
Based on a Wikipedia article for a French city in the region, 29C is pretty typical for this time of year, and 40+C is not at all unprecedented.
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So, summer heatwave plus a bit of pareidolia, and you’ve got yourself a news story!