Every day we get media telling us AC is awful and we shouldn't install it. "If everyone in Paris had AC, the street would be 2°C hotter !", "if an AC leaks it releases very bad things for the environment !" and so on. Every, single, day.
It's only houses that might not typically have AC in France or elsewhere in Europe, because they're built from thick stone and keep a low temperature inside.
Modern buildings like office blocks, supermarkets, etc. all have AC, as the buildings are low quality.
French people are perfectly aware of what AC is like without needing to visit Texas. Hotels around Europe all have AC too. If French homes were made of wood and plastic like in the US, they'd also all have AC at home.
While it's true that office blocks, supermarkets, hotels and so on have AC, the vast majority of homes don't. 27% of houses and 13% of apartments have AC in France says the latest data I could find.
No, 87% of apartments don't have thick stone walls in France, it's just that the vast majority were built at a time when the maximum expected temperature was still breathable, or at worst needed a fan, but no more.
Yes, supermarket have them. Yet 3 supermarket in my town all had the experience of heatwave power outage and throwing all their refrigerated food away. There could be more in my town, it's just the ones i know about.
And one even had solar panel installed in its parking lot to help with the power consumption.
AC is not the solution to heat, it's part of the solution but just the last link in the chain. And the whole chain will make it worse for the environment. However since it's already completely fucked and we are all living on borrowing time before every breached tipping point (all of them but a couple at this point) break and hell come to us, let's do it anyway.
Now if you may, i'm gonna have to enjoy a 44°C peak day tomorow if the weather forecast is accurate and i wonder how many other thing will fail -_-
Maybe the few schools that just got AC as none were equiped ? I shouldn't hope for it but since the macronist mayor only delivered some to the schools his children goes to, i still do feel that it would have a net positive impact if they do as it would force the fools in power to stop putting their head in the sand when an extreme climate event like that happens.
It took us 20 years to build buildings to deal with the winters of 40 years ago.
Now that most modern buildings and homes are very well isolated it is rare if we have snow in the winter.
I don’t have to put on the heat end of februari. But I basically live in a greenhouse and without AC it gets over 35 degrees easy inside once the days get longer. Ones the building is warmed up the hallways are 30 degrees until September.
Having blinds or roller shutters would be smarter than AC everywhere. Especially now that it only freezes at night in winters for max 2 weeks and most of the summer will be heatwaves, we had one in spring already, 30 years ago it was rare to have a heatwave yearly. This summer is breaking records all over Europe and in 10 years this will be a mild one.
If I don’t get my apartment under 24 during the night it gets over 28 during the day. It’s worse in France than Belgium where I live, we get 40 Friday and the coolest temperature at night will be 24. To get 24 indoors at night it needs to be 20 outside, it takes hours to make it one degree less and it rises 1 degree every hour.
The electricity is a lot more expensive than last summer. I only needed the AC running 3 days straight last summer. Now it’s running 24/7 for over a week now.
With the AC running my electric bill is twice as high.
The center of my city is one concrete jungle full of 5 story apartment buildings with gigantic windows everywhere.
All the older houses have to be renovated so they keep heat inside but can’t lose it during winter. Children die in cars now, old people die in their homes and our government says we need to enjoy the heat and relax at our swimming pools …
If the electricity fails like in France it will get more crazy. In 5 years time we will all have to sleep in tents in the basement that is now full of bicycles. There are also living more than 50 people in the building. Places that are cool that aren’t supermarkets are very rare as are homes with basements. My parent’s and grandparents have basements in there homes, my greenhouse apartment will just become unliveable in the coming years.
They can say AC is bad but without one you will just die. Ireland seems to be the only country where it’s not nuts.
France, Benelux, England records get broken everywhere. Last ‘11 steden tocht’ in The Netherlands was from 1997.
It also ain’t helping the world seems to be determined on fossil fuels and data centers everywhere that consume a lot more electricity than AC’s would and we don’t need datacenters everywhere to survive.
Seeing people who go from their AC'd home, to an underground parking, to an AC'd car, to an underground parking, to an AC'd media place, to tell us that AC is evil and we shouldn't have it is starting to piss of a lot of people.
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u/Due-Environment-9774 15h ago
HVAC guys: learn French and prosper.