Kees van der Leun22h ago
I'm afraid that many here in the Netherlands don't fully understand yet how hot the coming days will be. We're heading for 4 consecutive days like this (map for Wednesday). 35°C really feels different than 30°C!
The weirdest part is that this already happens in June.
(It's climate change at work)
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Show threadKees van der Leun22h ago
Four consecutive very hot days mean that homes gradually get hotter. Around 75% of our homes doesn't have a cooling system, despite the rapid growth of air conditioning since 2019. We never needed one before climate change hit hard.
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Show threadKees van der Leun22h ago
Meteorological institute @knmi now predicts that the nights will get very hot too. For the night from Thursday to Friday, they expect a low temperature of 24°C. That'd beat the previous record from July 2018 by 1.5°C!
Night ventilation won't cool our homes to a comfortable level in such a night.
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Show threadKees van der Leun21h ago
This coming Friday will be the 9th day of our national heatwave (consecutive days above 25°C with at least three above 30°C). We've never seen such a long heatwave before July (8 days in 1936 and 1976), and it won't be over yet on Friday.
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Show threadKees van der Leun21h ago
Five or six 'tropical days' (above 30°C) in June is very rare for the center of the country (De Bilt). I don't have the stats at hand (I bet @Datagraver does), but it's more typical for the summer as a whole, with most occurring in July and August.
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Show threadKees van der Leun21h ago
The absolute high temperatures that we'll experience in the coming days are extreme, too. For 75 years, we knew that the highest temperature ever recorded was 38.6°C in Warnsveld (1944). Then came July 2019, and we crashed forward to 40.7°C (Gilze Rijen, 25 July).
Now, 39-40°C is already possible again.
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Show threadKees van der Leun21h ago
In short, this is a weirdly extreme event, only possible due to climate change. As @tinuspulles.bsky.social pointed out, explanations like 'heat dome' and 'jet stream' are about mechanisms. The driving force behind all of this is global warming, largely due to burning fossil fuels.
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Show threadDr. Jürgen Knödlseder12h ago
@Sustainable2050 The driving force is not that we burn fossil fuels. The driving force is that we burn so much fossil fuels. And this points towards capitalism as the root cause. #ClimateChange #Degrowth
Show thread⠠⠵ avuko

@jknodlseder @Sustainable2050 fossil fuels seemed like a great idea at the time. They were. For a tiny moment in time. The waste products (including heat) will be with us for millions of years.

Also, to all you people out there now clamouring for nuclear power:
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2026/06/24/heatwave-in-france-spells-uncertainty-for-several-edf-nuclear-reactors-but-rte-says-the-overall-grid-is-secure_6754812_19.html
[non-paywall link: https://archive.is/YBHHH]

TLDR: nuclear needs cooling. Things die downstream if you dump 28+ °C water. Also, the power output decreases or plants have to be shut down when the water going in is too warm. See https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/cooling-power-plants for details.

And to those who hope AI will rescue us:
https://infosec.exchange/@avuko/116799446090120614

TLDR: normal data centers, which don’t run as hot as AI ones, need cooling. You can’t cool with warm water (assuming there is still water left).

#ClimateChange #genAI #ai #nuclear #Degrowth

7:13amWeb
Show threadSvante9h ago

@avuko @jknodlseder @Sustainable2050 Oh noes! Cooling! Why has no one thought of that?!

/s

To be clear: the water-temperature-related reduction of yearly output of France's nuclear fleet is less than half a percent even in the hottest years. This is not a real problem.

In the future, we will probably see more cooling towers, or even dry cooling towers.

Because we didn't all decarbonize our grids like France did 40 years ago.

Show threadSvante9h ago

@avuko @jknodlseder @Sustainable2050

Just to be clear: the »AI« »industry« has to die.