alt Hacker News> The south and mid atlantic was always a huge share of the population.
The population share of the South and West regions of the US have grown while the population share of the Northeast and Midwest have shrunk.
https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=gr...
What are the fastest growing metro areas in the US these days? DFW, Austin, Houston, Phoenix, Orlando, Atlanta, Raleigh, Tampa, Nashville. Which ones are in the cooler parts of the country?
I agree overall its not like half the population moved to the Sun Belt, but a pretty large amount of the population growth in the US has been focused on the hotter parts of the country.
You're pointing to days over 85 as days you need AC. To me that's pretty warm, but not unbearable. Days where it never goes below 80F for a week or more at a time, or places with extreme humidity mixed with such high temperatures, now that's a place where you need AC.
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To your point about high humidity exacerbating heat, I think it’s relevant to consider wet bulb globe temperatures (WBGT) instead of air temperature. It’s more objective than heat index or the ad hoc “feels like” metrics. Above 30-35C WBGT, humans start dying without intervention.
In the United States at least, days with high WBGT have increased and more places experience them. I hear the same is true also in Europe.
> Which ones are in the cooler parts of the country
There are very few “cooler parts of the country.” Europe’s “no AC” culture was because, until the 2000s, almost everywhere had less than 15 days a year over 30C (85F). There’s only a handful of cities like that in the U.S., such as San Francisco and Seattle. Even in the northern latitudes the U.S. gets really hot. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, averaged about 50 85F+ days a year in the 1970s. Boston and Minneapolis were in the 30-60 range during that decade.
To put that into context, Germany over the last decade is seeing 15-20 30C+ days a year. It hit 30-31 only in two years recently, 2018 and 2019. Those years had 7,000-8,000 deaths each year. Germany’s epic heatwaves killing thousands of people was a mild summer in Cedar Rapids or Boston or Minneapolis even in 1970.
The U.S. is just a very hot country, even in the northeast and upper midwest. AC is a huge, lifesaving standard of living improvement almost everywhere in the country. And we shouldn’t take for granted the developments that enabled 88% of the country to have access to that technology.