Our efforts to cope with extreme temperatures are making them worse

When temperatures turn extreme, we rush to adjust our heating or cooling systems in an attempt to remain comfortable. With severe weather events becoming ever more frequent due to climate change, so too does our fiddling with the thermostat, which in turn is causing spikes in daily carbon emissions, leading to yet more climate change. Failing to break this vicious cycle will mean the problem only gets worse.

Zhu Liu at Tsinghua University, China, and his colleagues have been tracking global daily CO2 emissions since January 2019 to examine…