With the energy crisis in Europe this winter, I'm sure most people will trade a shorter ski season for higher average temperatures. Maybe Switzerland does not import much gas and would be the exception to this?
I think Switzerland has, in general, not suffered the energy price increases of other countries, but it varies from canton to canton depending on their energy supplies, I think some cantons won't do so well.
My canton uses nearly all renewables, but price increases are still predicted, mine are far less than other cantons, but it still goes up because of grid costs
Who are you referring to? I live within a couple of kilometers from the Mediterranean and I don't remember the temperature ever reaching 40°C. I don't think summers are much hotter compared to when I was a kid, I still use the AC from early June to early September. Winters did get warmer, and I don't see how that's a bad thing.
Sorry I got my memories mixed up. The 46°C record was in 2019 (near Nîmes, south of France, where I go regularly on holiday). This year we’ve had the usual 40°C, just in 3 waves from mid-June to mid-August instead of the usual August hot week. The water was at 30°C, though, which was unheard of. We’ve also had a lot of wildfires, even more so than usual, although they were less catastrophic than those near the Atlantic.
They did break records on the Atlantic side, with 43°C near Bordeaux and 40°C in Brittany (!)
> Winters did get warmer, and I don't see how that's a bad thing.
It is terrible for several reasons, for example:
- the plant’s cycles are out of whack, with flowers in January that are then destroyed by frost in March
- pests and parasites are not killed by the frost in the winter, which leads to a whole bunch of them in both spring and summer. Look at what this is doing to forests in California.
And that’s considering only local effects. Ecosystems are getting destroyed in real time in the mountains and in the Arctic, where the ground is not permanently frozen anymore, leading to all sorts of fun things (landslides, methane release, wildfires).
There are absolutely no upsides near the Mediterranean, where it never was particularly cold in the first place.
My canton uses nearly all renewables, but price increases are still predicted, mine are far less than other cantons, but it still goes up because of grid costs