Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not exactly the Council of Elrond. It's appropriate for the design to be closer to Barad-dûr than Rivendell.
What's up with the knee-jerk hate on EU lately?
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EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on
161–168 of 168 posts
Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand the push back and all of the excuses about this. Europe's heat waves are deadlier than American gun violence [1] [1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/europe-heat-wave...
Well, yes. How does it make window units feasible though? I used to rent an old house in California, it had central air but also wrapped wooden windows with single pane glass. I ran A/C whole day in the summer and could only get 10F (80F inside with 90F outside), which was a relief but far from ideal. A window unit with an open window, covered in cloth is not going to save you from heat IMHO.
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Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on
#163Why 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…
>Because a lot of electric grids are too old to handle the increased load.
Well maybe we can cool ourselves with gas/oil burning air conditioners like in winter.
>with the assumption that we'll build more as we make more babies
Babies don't build infrastructure. And EU cities had more migration instead of babies and yet they still didn't build more infrastructure to keep up with the migration population growth. Why is that?
> electric grids weren't built to handle the temperature rise from climate change.
But somehow they're built to handle running all the new heat pumps we want to have in winter?
Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The EU caused the deaths, not the heat. People have been dying from heat in the EU for decades now, and the EU has done ........ nothing (well other than declare superiority to the US). More people die from heat each year in the EU than from guns in the US. Which topic gets more attention?
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Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on
#165The 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
Oh, we definitely hate them A LOT in Belgium, for what they did to the historic district. The revamped EU district is an ugly, inefficient, traffic-heavy abomination. It’s crazy that we destroyed all the Art Deco and Art Nouveau townhouses to make space for the EU’s steel-and-glass nonsense.
Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know the average temps have gone up and there have been more extremes, but it's not like it moved 20˚F. They really don't have that level of tolerance in these systems? USA and other countries have been dealing with global warming too, the A/C still works. https://www.wunderground.com/history/monthly/be/brussels/EBB ... shows lately it was 97˚ in Brussels. In 2005 it was 93˚ around the same time.
The affected building was last renovated in the early 1990s, where average max temperature was around 18 degrees. But even now "normal" average max temperature is only 21.7 degrees[1] and on the 23 of June temperatures reached 36.6 degrees, which is indeed over 20 deg F hotter than the normal maximum temperature for June. [1]: https://opendata.meteo.be/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#... see INS 21004
I get what you mean with the normal max temp being 21.7C, but would expect the AC to be able to handle the peaks, and 33.5C wasn't unheard of ~20 years ago. Not sure what the situation was in the early 1990s, but they had 30 years to figure it out.
Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on
#167> 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.
Its true everywhere: Lots of homes in New Jersey don't have AC: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/05/heatwave-dea...
Re: EU commissioners shut down air conditioning for employees, leave theirs on
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I know, a heat pump and an AC unit are essentially identical. Although some heat pumps can be reversed, and act as heaters in the winter. But one isn't more efficient than the other, they employ the exact same physical refrigeration cycle.
That’s true however moving heat in the winter is much better than burning things. Gas furnaces are 80%-98% efficient, heat pumps are 300-400%.
Does that take into account the efficiency of transforming the gas to electricity first? Ah, well we have other power sources as well. But if you were to use gas, it doesn't seem to make much difference (if the gas power plant doesn't utilize the extra heat for district heating etc.).