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EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on

politico.eu

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Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on

#91

Post by redserk »

mancerayder wrote: post #84
Oras wrote: post #4

> The heat wave has prompted a renewed discussion about the lack of air-conditioning systems in homes and offices across much of Europe Discussion, common sense requires discussion. All you need to know about them in one sentence.

Well the Greens in Europe handed Russia leverage thanks to relying on natural gas instead of nuclear, which it opposed (thanks German Greens). In France these ideologues oppose A/C becauase it's evil: it makes us comfortable when we should be uncomfortable - if we are comfortable in an era of climate change, we'll only make it worse. And it's all America's fault anyway because of their emissions. When do we vote out…

This nuclear argument is getting quite stale. Germany seems to be investing quite a bit in other energies just fine.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min...

120GW of nameplate solar capacity is nothing to sneeze at even with the latitude challenge. That's more solar than almost all of California's energy generation combined, or most of the eastern United States.

Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on

#92

Post by ars »

amarant wrote: post #87
ricardobayes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's up with the knee-jerk hate on EU lately?

The US is going to shit, and the Americans want to pretend everywhere is equally bad and it's not just them.. It is, of course, just them.

Thousands of people died in the EU over this heat, and you think it's American that isn't doing well?

"more than 1300 excess deaths have been recorded since 21 June linked to the extreme heat in Europe"

"There were approximately 489,000 heat-related deaths annually between 2000 and 2019, according to modeled estimates."

https://wmo.int/media/news/record-breaking-heat-spreads-thro...

Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on

#93

Post by Arnt »

slillibri wrote: post #38
rappatic wrote: post #3

> Due to extreme weather conditions, forced shut down of air cooling system from floor 1 to 7 for the rest of the day It's like satire. What is AC for if not extreme heat?

When there is not enough AC, people sweat. It’s better for half to sweat to death so the other half can remain frosty.

FWIW this happened on Friday afternoon and the AC was back in working order on Monday morning.

Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on

#94

Post by gwbas1c »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #51
dranudin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The A/C cannot keep up the load, due to the exteme heat. So they decided to just not cool one part of the building, to be able to keep cooling the other part .. It is now interesting who was in which part ;)

If that's the case then the building's system was very badly designed...

It was designed for historical, pre-climate-change weather. (Or at least when those were in the know about climate change thought we'd solve it.)

Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on

#95

Post by mytailorisrich »

wongarsu wrote: post #75
mytailorisrich wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. Temperature above 30C are the norm in summer in Southern Europe (which means quite higher in the Sun and in a heat trap location). Now, yes 40C isn't. But I am unconvinced that AC manufacturers have different "sizing"... An AC unit is for hot places and the outdoor unit may be in a very hot spots with ambient easily above 40C. Edit: Yes, AC systems for a whole building are different but still the sys…

Brussels is however not in Southern Europe By sizing I simply mean the number and capacity of roof units. Cooling an office building down by 8C is a lot easier than cooling it by 18C. I doubt half the roof units are shut down. Maybe some are, but most will have their output redirected to cooling the top half of the building

In which case it would be just plain bad design if you can't have the whole building on AC when you actually need it...

Edit: it'd be interesting to know how many buildings in Belgium have had the same issue.

Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on

#96

Post by black3r »

hparadiz wrote: post #52
black3r wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that expensive. There are other reasons why people can't install one in Europe than money. Mostly for people living in apartments. In an apartment building you need the approval of other apartment owners to "modify the building facade". And some people have terrible neighbors. Another thing that happens in Europe is that if the building is 100+ years old, it's facade may be protected as a "historic building"…

People on here will literally write walls of text over the most mundane nonsense. Get a free standing unit like this: https://i.imgur.com/giewYeK.png Shove the plastic tube outlet out of a window. End of installation. You're welcome. Seriously why is this so difficult and what is this learned helplessness? You would rather be miserable than do literally anything?

I have one like that and so do my parents. But they're much less effective than classic split AC with an outside unit. A regular split can cool a bigger room to 24 even when it's 38 outside and is basically completely quiet. A portable AC cools down smaller rooms to ~27 when it's 38 outside and is noisy (50-60 dB).

Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on

#97

Post by gwbas1c »

cbarnes99 wrote: post #5

Why the fuck does extreme heat require turning off the AC?

Because a lot of electric grids are too old to handle the increased load.

To translate: When it's hot, air conditioners use more electricity. This is because they use more electricity because they have to work harder to keep a cool temperature.

The reason why electric grids are too old to handle the load is because:

Electric grids were built for smaller populations with the assumption that we'll build more as we make more babies; AND; electric grids weren't built to handle the temperature rise from climate change.

Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on

#98

Post by basisword »

christkv wrote: post #18
basisword wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most ordinary working people can't afford the cost of installing a system. Even a portable one. Edit: Downvoted because HN users don't understand living paycheque to paycheque. Talk about an echo chamber.

What are you on about. They are not expensive at all. What they can't afford is to pay the electrical bill of running one.

I got a 7000BTU one last week. One of cheapest I could find (I suspect some price gouging given the timing of my purchase). Very small, works in one small room. It was about £400. None of my family or friends have £400 sitting around that they can spend on a whim to save them a few weeks of suffering. A huge number of people live paycheque to paycheque and have no savings or credit lines available to them.

Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on

#99

Post by mytailorisrich »

gwbas1c wrote: post #94
mytailorisrich wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case then the building's system was very badly designed...

It was designed for historical, pre-climate-change weather. (Or at least when those were in the know about climate change thought we'd solve it.)

There's probably a "Belgian joke" to be made if their AC is only designed to work when it isn't hot...
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