Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

politico.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 168 posts

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

#101

Post by pseudo0 »

delecti wrote: post #90
quantummagic wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the discussion going online, has asserted that heat related deaths in Europe exceed gun related deaths in the USA by some margin. If true, it has been ignored as a problem for too long.

Yeah, annual heat deaths in Europe (about 70k) exceed annual gun deaths in the US (about 44k) in absolute numbers. They're slightly under US gun deaths if you adjust for population (about 13 per 100k gun deaths in the US, and 12 heat deaths per 100k in Europe). In comparison, fewer than 2k people die annually of heat in the US, well under 1 per 100k. And for symmetry, there are about 7k gun deaths annually in the EU,…

The WHO claims it's over 170k heat-related deaths per year, not 70k.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152766

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

#103

Post by janalsncm »

delecti wrote: post #90
quantummagic wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the discussion going online, has asserted that heat related deaths in Europe exceed gun related deaths in the USA by some margin. If true, it has been ignored as a problem for too long.

Yeah, annual heat deaths in Europe (about 70k) exceed annual gun deaths in the US (about 44k) in absolute numbers. They're slightly under US gun deaths if you adjust for population (about 13 per 100k gun deaths in the US, and 12 heat deaths per 100k in Europe). In comparison, fewer than 2k people die annually of heat in the US, well under 1 per 100k. And for symmetry, there are about 7k gun deaths annually in the EU,…

So in summary, the chance of a person dying from heat or guns is roughly equal in the EU and the US.

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

#104

Post by mytailorisrich »

rapsey wrote: post #49
wnevets wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something is very wrong with the EU if ordinary Europeans can't afford a $150 window unit.

It's not the money. In many places you need to go through permitting to get it and they do not want to give it to you. Often you also need a signed approval from every person in the building.

This is true. In many places you can't install the outdoor unit on the street-facing side of the building without approval, and you won't get it in most cases, and this is indeed in addition to getting approval from your building's residents association if you live in a flat.

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

#105

Post by 6510 »

cineticdaffodil wrote: post #44
cassepipe wrote: post #33

The first image is telling: A glass building in front of a white hard-floor plaza with just one small tree for shade Nothing specific to the European commission though, we just don't hate mainstream architects enough

It would burn less, if not all these abstract architects would sit in old art nouveau buildings near a park, with the AC tastefully hidden in the backyard - and there they sit on the MAC, shitting out these etched waver under the ERM buildings and cities for the rest of us to be miserable in.

It once struck me that so called school chairs are actually far more fascinating than one would think. To me, they are the ultimate symbol of something one would never buy to use yourself.

https://www.google.com/search?num=10&sa=X&sca_esv=9e14c54052...

Look at those torture devices! They don't even look like chairs.

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

#106

Post by gambiting »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #95
wongarsu wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can leave it on when you actually need it - meaning all summer long, in the conditions that are typical for that location.

It's like saying what's the point of having a house if you aren't safe in it during a tornado. It's an exceptional event. The problem is that these truly exceptional events which only happened once every 10 days for a day or two, are now becoming a norm. My own 12k BTU minisplit could cool my house down every summer, no problem, even down to 18C if I wanted it to. But in the recent heatwave it just can't keep up, there is more heat coming into the house than the system can remove.

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

#107

Post by tavavex »

ars wrote: post #92
amarant wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

What? Did the EU cause the heat wave? This thread is clearly about politics, and the parent claims that Americans complain about the EU and its politics because their own have gone completely off the rails. Disparaging the EU over a crazy heat wave is like criticizing a country because it has had a major natural disaster recently.

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

#109

Post by rapsey »

wnevets wrote: post #66
rapsey wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the money. In many places you need to go through permitting to get it and they do not want to give it to you. Often you also need a signed approval from every person in the building.

There is something very wrong in the EU if installing a life saving window air conditioner requires a permit or signed approval from every person in the building.

They literally built a new hospital in germany without AC. 28C/82F degrees in surgery.

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

#110

Post by invictati »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #42
invictati wrote: post #34

The whole conversation about upper and lower floors is absurd. Obviously the upper floors are absorbing more sunlight and need more cooling. Ground level and basement floors have been known as the coolest places in skyscrapers for centuries.

Any building with modern (last 100 years) insulation is going to have relatively equal distribution of heat between the floors. Except the bottom floor, where people enter/exit and mix in outside air.

[dead]
Post reply on HN