Germans are good at infrastructure, engineering, and modeling.
If this can happen to the one of better managed landscapes in a wealthy industrialized nation, I shudder for the future of the country I live in, which did not make the hard decisions to keep its infrastructure in good working order.
OMG!!!1! FLOODS ARE KILLING WHITE PEOPLE!!!1
Frustrating! Also Frustrating for me is what seems like unquestioning acceptance of “the market.” Like health care, energy doesn’t have to be handled by the private sector.
Solar might be good for consumers on top of helping save the world, but that’s not as appealing for predatory investors so we have no alternative but to let the planet burn instead.
33°C is an extreme weather warning? What happens when it hits 49.6°C?
In England? People die because the country isn’t set up to handle those kind of temperatures. I don’t know why you’d sneer at 33 degrees like that, as if nobody was suffering from it.
Back in the 1980’s, I worked with a construction crew that specialized in converting homes in London to central heat, because that wasn’t a thing in the country historically, for the reason you mention. I don’t know how many homes still don’t have a furnace or boiler or heat pump there, but I’m sure there are still many homes that have a built-in gas heater in the front room fireplace and maybe one or two other rooms and that’s it.
Not sneering. I’m only too aware that last year 1700 people died of the heat. It’s a tragedy, yes. But what happens if it gets 15°C hotter. What happened in Lytton, Alberta was that the roads melted and then everything burst into flames. I have a feeling the famous British stiff upper lip will do the same.
Lytton is in British Columbia not Alberta. Or was…it’s incredibly sad what happened to it. But I don’t want to downplay what is happening now for being just the start. To the contrary, I think understanding how awful it is and that it’s going to get worse is key for getting people to finally do something.