It's the Frenchies. What else do you expect? The Wall Street Journal reported:
Rising summer temperatures have softened Europe’s resistance to air conditioning and touched off a new political fight about the wisdom of installing the technology everywhere, U.S.-style. A heat wave that hit Western Europe in June and July spurred a run on air conditioners in appliance stores across the region. The scorching temperatures came unusually early, before many Europeans had a chance to decamp to the beach for summer vacation, exposing vulnerabilities in the cities where most people live. More than 1,000 French schools closed partially or completely because they lacked air conditioning. Criticism quickly arose from politicians on the right who said authorities have left the continent woefully under-air conditioned. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally party, proposed a major campaign to install air conditioning in schools, hospitals and other institutions. In the U.K., the Conservatives urged London’s Labour Party mayor to eliminate rules that restrict how air conditioning can be included in new housing. In Spain, the far-right Vox party has been highlighting air-conditioning breakdowns to criticize the country’s establishment parties....
French authorities pushed back. Energy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said large-scale air conditioning would heat up streets with the machines’ exhaust, making heat waves worse. “It’s a bad solution,” she told reporters during the last heat wave, flanked by the perspiring prime minister, François Bayrou. “We should air-condition for vulnerable people to give them a break, but on the other hand we shouldn’t do it everywhere.”... The prospect of U.S.-style air conditioning sends shivers through some Europeans. In France, media outlets often warn that cooling a room to more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit below the outside temperature can cause something called “thermal shock,” resulting in nausea, loss of consciousness and even respiratory arrest. That would be news to Americans who expect indoor temperatures to be cooled to around 75 degrees even when it is near 100 outside. Others fear respiratory infections that might result from spending long periods in air-conditioned rooms. Europeans who are particularly concerned about climate change want to avoid using electricity for air conditioning that would generate additional greenhouse-gas emissions. Still, the requirement to stay cool is overcoming such skepticism.... Article
Kingfish note: I can see it now. "Have you suffered thermal shock? Call Morgan & Morgan...."
35 comments:
Hopefully the French adversion to deodorant usage has changed.
Those French lefties need to chill out.
When I was in grade school in South Mississippi, there was no airconditioning. My dorm room at Ole Miss was unairconditioned.
When I was in grade school I had to walk barefoot uphill both ways in the snow. Y’all young whippersnappers are so spoiled with your avocado toast and Starbucks. Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and pay back your student loans (I ain’t paying my PPP back) and have more kids. I know houses and child care are unaffordable but do it anyway, you’ll figure it out (but if you don’t, don’t ask the gov for any help). Yall are destroying this country I’ve been mooching off for the last 5 decades!
@ 8:25 - I guess that's when you wish for a cool day in he-double hockey sticks.
I never had A/C in any school my entire life....until MSU where some of the classrooms had it.
Ditch the Morgan & Morgan comment. Shop local! One Call That's All.
I've been "inconvenienced" in various places. South Florida residences often lack adequate heating systems for the occasional cold weather. The west coast rarely has adequate air conditioning and tries to rely on swamp coolers and fans. As a Mississippi girl, I like my house to be so cold I could hang meat in it to cure. We frequently vacation in the Yucatan in winter and rent condos or houses for up to 3 weeks at a time. Having A/C is crucial to my deciding where to rent. People can yammer on about ocean breezes and that the temperature cools down at night but I refuse to unnecessarily sweat and get eaten up by mosquitoes.
Just by way of information, the vast majority of Europe except for the lower half of Spain and some southern parts of Italy and Greece all exist at a latitude further north than New York City. The entirety of the United Kingdom is further north thant the entire continental United States.
Lots of B.O. in France. No wonder.
Advisory from French Climate Priests: French women with underarm beards are self cooling as any breeze reaching their moist hairy pits can (voila) bring them relief from French heat.
"The west coast rarely has adequate air conditioning and tries to rely on swamp coolers and fans. " Wrong, except maybe in a ghetto home in East LA.
Rome is hot and sticky in July. The Alps are the place to be in the European Summer. Mediterranean beaches are sweaty experiences. But if everyone is damp and smelly, it's just "doing as Rome does when in Rome".
People are soft these days. The herd will get thinned quickly if really hard times occur.
It's an expensive proposition when you don't need it 11 months out of the year.
Not sure what your point is regarding latitude. The vast majority of Europe would be virtually uninhabitable were it not for the Gulf Stream - a warm ocean current which regulates the climate as it passes the continent.
9:28 - Blah. I know two people who have very nice homes in San Diego and there's no HVAC in those homes. They didn't need it for the longest time up until the last decade.
ITT ignorant literal boomers who dont realize that NOAA/NASA/UN/Etc have kept track of global average temps and summers are 5c higher now than when you were kids.
Since most of you can't translate Celsius to Fahrenheit, I will do the hard work for your feeble brains. Summers were 81F on average when you boomers were young and now it is 91f on average
Some people have never been on a Navy ship from India or Bangladesh in the South Pacific and it shows.
"It's my ac and I want it now!"
How does that "global warming" kool-aid taste? Keep spreading the fake news, Zoomer. It's a $22 billion/year scam.
Let me help you:
All you need to know is that for over a century science has known there have been at least five ice ages in Earth's history, separated by intervening "Interglacial" warm periods, during which the Earth has become ice free, to understand this is a recurring geological cycle.
These periods are measured in geologic time, think 10,000-20,000 years. Not 10 or 100 years; that wouldn't be noticed.
To the Earth, man isn't even an itch. Mankind has zero affect whatsoever in the geologic climate of this body, with a circumference exceeding 24,000 miles! We are less than an ant on an elephant, with even less impact.
Global warming is not an emergency; it is normal. Man did not start it, and can't affect it. We just need to adapt to it. Time will come when global cooling will arrive (remember the ice age fears if the 70s?). It, too is normal. Only we don't live long enough to notice the transitions.
Morgan & Morgan employs multitudes more people in Mississippi than Schwartz. Largest PI firm employer in the state by a wide margin.
If France elects a woman in menopause there will be AC everywhere.
I notice the duplicity main stream media. Conservatives are always referred to as "far right" but liberals are never referred to as "far left."
10:48 Thanks, but you went completely flat-earth when you said
"...man cannot affect it" Modern man has the capacity to affect it very much. Hopefully we won't be so selfish and stupid to use our military and industrial capacity without regard to the possible future consequences on the ecosystem and climate which might result. Or maybe like you say, it don't really matter.
My summer jobs in college and graduate school in the late 70s-early 80s were all outside with no shade. My work hours were 5:30 am to 8:30 pm. I remember a two week stretch when the high each day was over 100 F. We haven't seen a stretch that hot since then.
Of course Barak Obama told us that "the science is settled" on climate change and that seaside real estate would be under water soon. Then Obama left office and purchase $20M+ beachfront homes on the Atlantic Ocean at Martha's Vineyard and on the Pacific Ocean in Hawaii.
I loved the CNN headline last November, "Climate Change Experts alarmed at Coldest Northeast Temps in Months."
I'm not 10:48 but the Mt. Pinitubo volcano eruption spewed more C02 into the atmosphere than man has cumulatively since before the Industrial Revolution.
Me thinks you protest too much.
We have been coming out of the last Ice Age for thousands of years. Rising oceans? Florida was previously under water, evidenced by my former inland home that had 1,000s of sea shells on the property.
Y'all can bash the French, but the folks in the country are great. Parisians are a-holes, and the country folks will be the first to tell you.
10:24am - 1.8C =F-32. Solve for whichever degrees you want, if you can do algebra. They taught that in jr. high when I was there, but like you said, I’m old.
Hey I Sense Another Unique Monetary Opportunity Shaping Up...All I Need Is An Old Mini Van & Some Used Window Units...How Much Is A Ticket To France Anyway???
3:15 PM, The hills of Vicksburg were once under water. Take a look behind the waterfall at the National Park and you will see millions of sea shells embedded in the walls.
Have you ever been around a woman going without her God-given right to a/c? Hell hath no fury like a woman with no a/c. How was Mississippi ever settled? Men — it’s those lyin’-ass men again with their lyin’-ass lies — had to have told women “Come go with me. You’re going to love Mississippi. It’s cool all the time.”
My point is a bunch of Mississippians making climate comparisons of what they have experienced in the South to Europe is apples and oranges, and we should think of this the same as we do when New Yorkers squawk about it being hot at 80 degrees in the summer.
Post a Comment