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Wasn’t so long ago that you were rather down on the American alternative: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43167215
It’s a different type of hell.
Europe's resistance to AC is driving it insane
71–80 of 92 posts
Re: Europe's resistance to AC is driving it insane
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no "altar" of degrowth in Europe. it's interesting that Americans take such an "I told you so" attitude towards disasters they had such a disproportionate hand in creating.
> There is no "altar" of degrowth in Europe. Are you sure? It's about the only place in the world where the philosophy of degrowth ever managed to get a toehold (Amsterdam, Grenoble, Copenhagen, Barcelona and some other bits of Spain). > it's interesting that Americans take such an "I told you so" attitude towards disasters they had such a disproportionate hand in creating. I think you're attributing smugness and "I…
>Are you sure? It's about the only place in the world where the philosophy of degrowth ever managed to get a toehold
Yes, I'm sure. I think you might be confusing something some obscure academics have discussed and something the politicians with actual power in Europe have acted upon.
Re: Europe's resistance to AC is driving it insane
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Europeans (and oftentimes Americans themselves) tend to underestimate American diversity. Even on this AC issue where I would admit that there is less national variance compared to the EU. Yet still, about 90% of the US has AC but there are places like San Francisco where only 50% of buildings have AC. In Berkeley California only 20% of buildings have AC. Again, on this AC issue I admit has less variance than Europe…
You're right, the USA is huge and highly diverse as well. Yet, I'd still say it's more of a unit than the EU is, in many ways, and especially more so than "Europe". That's what I meant with "Europe is not a unit like the USA is"; not that the USA has absolute unity and Europe has none. But I may be wrong about the USA's cohesion on a deeper level, I've never been there and only see it through an outsider's lens.
Determining whether Europe or the US is more diverse is like asking the question: “are there more doors or wheels in the world?” To answer such a question, you need to over qualify your definition to the point where the final answer is meaningless and thus doesn’t act as a useful premise for any argument. Maybe there exists a perfect definition of diversity that would be useful, but still in this unlikely case, the question would require so much non-existent data that answering it would be exorbitantly expensive.
Respectively, anyone who claims to know if the US or Europe is more diverse is making as fallacious of an argument as someone saying that they know if there exists more doors or wheels in the world. In both examples, they likely over-qualify their definitions. If they somehow aren’t overqualifying their definitions, they certainly do not have the necessary data to back up their claims.
Re: Europe's resistance to AC is driving it insane
#74[flagged]
Europe is not a country. Given how many times we must have this conversation, I wonder if you guys are even taught geography in school?
Europeans are very proud of the fact that they're a bunch of different countries, but besides the language thing, Europe is only somewhat more culturally diverse than the US. The differences in philosophy, social norms, and general life outlook between Hawaiians, Northern Californians, and New Yorkers and Georgians is only marginally less wide than the differences between the French, English, Germans, and Italians. In my experience, the former Soviet block countries are pretty significantly different from those on our side of the Iron Curtain, but when an American says Europe they're probably not referring to anything east of Germany anyway.
Re: Europe's resistance to AC is driving it insane
#75I don't understand this article. Europe is usually not this hot, hence lack of AC in many places. Floods and earthquakes are also uncommon, hence the buildings in most places are not up to code against, say, Japanese standards.
ACs are uncommon, yet red tape is plentiful.
Re: Europe's resistance to AC is driving it insane
#76Solar panels + cooling + heating heat pump is the most logical combination as we are past the point of no return on global warming. And there's no need to be like the Americans that cool down to 18°C when the outside is > 35°C: simply decreasing the indoor temperature to saner numbers like 26°C is enough, it's summer after all. Less energy usage and it is enough for the body to be happy.
Americans aren't cooling their homes to 64F in the summer, I have no idea where you get that idea. Generally people will cool their homes to somewhere around 72-78F, which is 22.22-25.56C.
I do at night, just for the bedroom. Need it to sleep well. I Keep it around 75-78 in the house in the daytime, on hot days, and just dress for it, no problem then.
I've lived in a house with no AC and even slept outside on a hammock on the hottest days (luckily that was a house built in the 19-teens so it could cope with AC-less heat better than modern houses, but still, on nights when your nighttime lows were still in the high 70s and the air wasn't moving, outdoors was cooler than indoors) and I didn't acclimate, I just only got like 3 hours of sleep a night when it was hot, every single time it was hot.
Need the cold for sleep. I'd have to move farther north for my own sanity if not for AC (and I'm already far enough north I only need AC to achieve low-60s nighttime temps for 60-70 nights per year). I could lay off it a little if work didn't still expect me to function when it's hot, but they do.
Re: Europe's resistance to AC is driving it insane
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Europe is not a country. Given how many times we must have this conversation, I wonder if you guys are even taught geography in school?
Europeans are very proud of the fact that they're a bunch of different countries, but besides the language thing, Europe is only somewhat more culturally diverse than the US. The differences in philosophy, social norms, and general life outlook between Hawaiians, Northern Californians, and New Yorkers and Georgians is only marginally less wide than the differences between the French, English, Germans, and Italians. I…
Hawaiians, Northern Californians, and New Yorkers and Georgians speak the same language, go to the same schools and watch the same TV shows. And even just Western Europe is larger than Germany, France, Italy, England. European countries have distinct histories that span thousands of years. Did you know that Arabs ruled over part of the Spanish peninsula for 3 times as long than US has even existed?
The ignorance at this point is frankly insulting. Somehow, of all people in the world, it is just Americans seeing everything as an imitation of their own country.
Re: Europe's resistance to AC is driving it insane
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are massive distributed solar deployments (eg. people putting cheap solar panels on their roofs, often backed by batteries) happening right now, those should help offset AC demands quite nicely.
The problem with solar (at least in Texas) is that the buildings store heat long enough that the peak of the HVAC demand curve coincides with when solar begins to taper off really hard. 5-6pm is when maximum HVAC demand occurs around here.
I would guess once there's enough solar generation installed, it would push prices low enough to make it worth decreasing stored heat by precooling
Re: Europe's resistance to AC is driving it insane
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone has also seen daily footage coming out of the region of the horrible events. Are you surprised that people have an opinion on that? Moreover, political, financial and military ties between NL and Israel have been well-documented. So it's a bit silly to just discredit it all by saying it's not on the same continent (and therefore irrelevant?). It's also not that far and the country has been trying hard to ali…
A party that has ~20% vote share (amongst educated) is legitimately considering degrowth. https://www.wetenschappelijkbureaugroenlinks.nl/artikelen/gr... They also advice Post Growth which is degrowth-lite, read the document yourself. > In fact, the degrowth movement, which is rapidly gaining popularity among activists and scientists, advocates the deliberate scaling back of overproduction and overconsumption to brin…
High on the political agenda of degrowthers is radical redistribution of wealth. Consuming less should be especially true for the 10 percent richest in the world, because they are responsible for half of CO2 emissions
Why not sabotage the world to fix the issue? Create some new diseases because that is definitely degrowth: diseases to kill the rich like gout ;)
Perhaps say yes to war with the US?
Re: Europe's resistance to AC is driving it insane
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with solar (at least in Texas) is that the buildings store heat long enough that the peak of the HVAC demand curve coincides with when solar begins to taper off really hard. 5-6pm is when maximum HVAC demand occurs around here.
I would guess once there's enough solar generation installed, it would push prices low enough to make it worth decreasing stored heat by precooling
Variable electricity rates are the best way to encourage the user base to actually do this. I was on Griddy for 2 years and had a system where I'd run my AC hard up until 4pm and then I'd set it to 78F until the rates came back down.
Unfortunately these schemes were made illegal for the consumer segment in Texas because most people are complete dumbasses and need to be pandered to politically when anything unexpected happens to them (2021 winter power crisis).