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As Europe Sweats, Some Politicians Talk of Air-Conditioning, Not Climate Action (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 1 month ago by [M] to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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Heat-related deaths and disruptions to daily life are forcing politicians to reckon, in different ways, with a rapidly warming planet.

Unfortunately, adaptation on its on isn't doable. It takes ending the use of fossil fuels, which are the main cause of the warming, to make adaptation affordable.

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[–] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

That's how geothermal heat pumps work. It is possible to have geothermal heat pumps that only extract heat, but then you need much deeper wells.

Last place I lived replaced our oil furnaces with geothermal heat pumps back when oil furnaces were banned back in 2020, but the in-apartment bit was old radiators, which aren't suitable for absorbing heat, so we had to get some energy wells that were a few hundred meters deep.

… and still swelter in summer :|

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    I've been looking into it, but the wells alone will cost me ~10-20k EUR to have someone come and do them. 7k for the pump, minimum 2k for the pump to be fitted and probably a bunch of work on the current central heating system which is old and fully reliant on gravity, no circulation pump or anything. Probably 30k all in and get 7k rebate from government if lucky, but I have to apply for that ahead of time and I don't even have the 30k yet to start planning lol.

    They do geothermal heat pumps with horizontal collectors too, but my yard isn't big enough compared to the house. Soviet era stuff, you got allocated a tiny plot and you were happy about it because at least you got to build a house. Grandparents decided to build a fairly big house on this particular small plot. And the horizontal version wouldn't really store any heat for the winter.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago*

    Not really the same thing, they are heat pumps rather than thermal batteries. Still cool stuff though. They don't have to be deep to only supply heat either, but they do need to be deep if you want to skip the heat pump part of it.

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