too effing hot

Whoops, was reading the thread from the bottom up. BIG mistake. Primitive jackasses.

It's true that American AC use is excessive but compared to most of Asia it's moderate in terms of extent and magnitude (ie how cold inside). In Shanghai it was maybe 35 degrees out, and I was walking on a big shopping arcade there, the shops had their doors wide open and AC blasting to the extent you could feel the cool air outside five-ten meters away from the doorway.

I've also noticed that the hotter the climate on average, the colder people seem to like their AC. Buses in the tropics always feel like refrigerators for some reason.

Of course getting back to America, the real waste compared to Europe/Asia is how spacious our homes are. McMansions contain a big volume of air to keep cool.

a lot of mcmansions still have these vestigial shutters that are either nonfunctional or fixed in an open position, essentially decorative trim. my dream is that one day houses will have decorative AC units sticking out of windows, no machinery inside, but there because the building facade doesn't look right without them

love that

The current flat I've lived in for six months in has AC. It's the first place I have lived that has AC in 49 years in Australia. I've lived in Sydney and Newcastle without - both places go up to 100F in the summer, usually with high humidity. I have also dried my laundry on an outdoor line my entire life - use a clothes dryer maybe a dozen times each winter. It's actually not hard at all - although I agree that older and unwell people absolutely need cooling in summer. I just think way too many people get used to being able to specify temperature to the degree and don't give a shit about the energy use.

Spending some time/money to upgrade insulation and energy efficiency makes a huge difference in terms of A/C/heat use. The power companies used to (still?) even offer their consultation services for free, or for a modest fee, incl. free upgrades to LED bulbs etc. and tests to determine and fix airflow for better efficiency. Our old house was an old house, with all the cracks and drafts and whatnot, but making the changes recommended (which followed a test where they sealed up the house, ran a giant fan and so on to gather information) made a noticeable difference in heating/cooling and power consumption (and costs). Our new home is a, well, new home, and the materials, insulation and so on are so good and so efficient our heating and cooling needs have dropped considerably, since the house better retains so much more of the heat/cool we run.

As a resident of a state which wouldn't exist in its modern form without A/C and won't exist in forty years because of dwindling resources/political capital to mitigate the impact of sea level rise, I've become wary of the thing. I set my thermostat at 79, which drives visitors bonkers (I adjust for their comfort). I'm used to visiting homes whose owners set it at 68 to go to bed -- to me an act of madness. On the other hand I've got older friends who've never had central A/C in their lives and whose home doesn't feel warmer than the 68-degree ones, so perception matters.

I have noticed that I'm more sensitive to cooler A/C after losing weight in the last two years.

What a weekend for my car ac compressor to stop working

Yeah, my building is only three years old, and is built to very high energy standards (despite, or maybe because of, being public housing). The walls and windows are thick and multilayered, and there's grass and solar panels on the roof (all new French buildings must have one or the other). We kept the windows & blinds (we don't have shutters) closed all week, didn't cook, and line dried the clothes. Despite it being 33C+ & sunny every day this week (& add the heat sink effect of the dense city around us), the temp inside our flat maxed at 26. That's not ideal, but it poses no danger to human life.

As I type I sit at my dining table with every blind closed. I feel like a character in The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

It's better than being under that summer lawn.

We keep our thermostat at 78 most of the summer. Insane to me to have it much lower than 76, and that's usually a shock treatment to bring the heat down. Which of course usually means humidity, which is the real problem.

i don't have children, i don't own a car and i don't use uber but i will have my fucking a/c. that said, i don't set it below 75 and pay extra to get my electricity from renewable sources, so i feel okay about it

just as well i'm cis-het because otherwise i'd be all like couldn't y'all have rioted at a more temperate time of year? maybe the second week of october?

Someone recently asked the bus driver to turn the A/C down, and my god, I thought he was going to drive us off a bridge.

Passengers up front lightly teasing him for having to use the wipers to wipe off the condensation.

We've been dealing with AC probs lately, leading up to a Sunday service call today. I assume that'll get deep into my wallet.

it's not even hot today and some of these idiots are losing their fucking minds. earlier some little shit threatening to slap me from the safety of his upstairs flat, well come and slap me then i replied and he came running down the stairs and then backed up them again, trying to save face all the way. What a fucking depressing mutation of civil society a council estate can be in even moderately warm weather in the uk!

This is completely ignorant of (a.)the history of human development and (b.) the way climate has changed over time. Also, AC has helped reduced the death rate in many places.

lol lookit Dee thinking she knows stuff

hey dee it was a bad joke that I take full ownership of (I was mostly just imagining all the white supremacists that showed up in cosplay military gear to Charlottesville). Also I had assumed we were leaving out the elderly, people with health issues out of this discussion because it wasn't needed to point them out.

I got to France today and am adjusting to a difference in 35C from where I came from. I wish people used fans more here.

Air conditioning dates back to Biblical times, but the Romans secretly destroyed all records of the technology

When i drove a bus you would have to crank up the ac because the driver's area never stays cool because of opening the door all the time and from sitting almost on top of a big windshield.

this is the entire range of home air conditioners available to buy at the UK equivalent of home depot

https://www.diy.com/departments/heating-plumbing-cooling/air-treatment/air-conditioners/DIY1652323.cat#icamp=SRD_air_conditioner

alarming

despite climate change and some miserable heat waves I've avoided succumbing to the temptation to buy an A/C in Seattle, mainly because windows here don't (easily) accommodate window units, and the freestanding ones are significantly less efficient

I've always secretly laughed at that little tiny metal rotary fan that sits at about two o'clock from the bus driver.

(xxp) That's 3 too many for the UK tbh.

This is confusing surviving with living perfectly comfortably 24/7/365. People lived in hot climates for thousands of years before AC...it's just a silly thing to say people can't survive in that heat w/o it.

it's true that only since the advent of AC have entire regions of countries been filled with buildings that simply aren't workable without it. office doors used to have transoms on them. they don't anymore. "shutters" existed. indoor shopping malls didn't. etc.

it won't be simple or quick to replace or modify all these buildings so that they can work without AC. but it has to be a goal surely?

I thought the same thing last week and typed out a reply and then deleted it cos I thought, maybe I just don't need to have an opinion about this? but clearly I was being ridiculous.

Anyway yeah I was gonna guess that places that have historically been very hot also have specialized architecture, traditions, social mores, cuisine, blah blah to help mitigate the discomfort and even danger--although not for everyone, like dee said. We don't build our houses out of stone or clay into the sides of hills anymore, we don't siesta in the hottest part of the day, we do all or the majority of our cooking indoors unless we're "grilling," which is a separate class of stunt-cooking that is mostly engaged in as a recreational activity, our buildings are all built to let in the maximum amt of sunlight and are hermetically sealed for climate control systems, we've deforested pretty much everywhere, we don't have a night-market or after-dark social culture (or we have so narrowly defined it as "partying" that we've restricted it to a small class of ppl who participate), and so on I'm sure.

We *could* do better in hot temps, but not under current conditions.

Anyway yeah I was gonna guess that places that have historically been very hot also have specialized architecture, traditions, social mores, cuisine, blah blah to help mitigate the discomfort and even danger--

Yes. One of the problems in US "Sun Belt" is the amount of people who moved from totally diff climates who put little to no thought or effort into altering a lifestyle and design philosophy that makes no sense there. Def making progress wrt tho. I remember driving around wealthy neighborhoods in Phoenix at end of last century and nearly every home had a ridiculous green lawn with sprinklers going nearly non-stop. Now those are the exception.

OH YEAH, definitely a pox on lawns.

88 degrees and 70% humidity in my apartment right now.

Every fan I own is now in operation.

I biked 20 km today in the middle of the day. It was very hot and I was over it after 4km. My sweat made a white salt Rorschach on the back of my blue trousers.

I am done with biking for another 5 years.

It was ugly in the city earlier but now I’m in Brittany and it is a relief

I'm in Beaune and it's too much sun for me.

Nice! Lovely little town.

Have only driven through (by?) Beaune, never visited.

I’m on the coast of Finistère in a small village, 20 degrees all week, before going back to the boiling capital for ordinary life again. I have to go to Prague in August and I am dreading the heat.

I still have never been to Bretagne. We biked on the bike road from Beaune to Santenay to Chagny. It was pretty.

pretty hot.

There's a place in Volnay past Pommard called Le cellier volnaysien that makes a mean coq au vin, if you're into that kind of thing. The setting is gorgeously rural and feels like a (very slight) respite from Beaune's bougier leanings. You could easily bike there, but you'd have to be in the mood for a few spells of uphill pedalling.

Yeah there was a lot of uphill pedaling that made me feel how out of shape I am. We went through all the grand cru villages in cote du beaune but didn't really stop except to get a glass of wine in meursault.

ok I gave in. Well, my thermostat did. Have it set to 82 and AC finally came on. Hottest day so far though at 103/39.5.

We (my daughter and I) just watched "Do the Right Thing," and the debilitating, apocalyptic heat wave in that movie is I think 94 or 95 degrees, and we thought, how quaint. It's at least that right here right now!

'this is fine'

I just saw DTRT again and i don't think a temperature is ever mentioned.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/07/16/heat-wave-could-cause-power-outages-new-york-city-chicago-d-c/1749257001/

Everything here is so damp.

It was 82º when I got home yesterday, but it felt like 106.

Low of 80 degrees for the rest of week.

xpost I take it back, when Mister Señor Love Daddy gives his Jheri curl alert, he says it's going to be over 100. I must have been thinking of something I heard/read about the real life weather of 1988, when Spike was writing the movie. Just looked it up and summer of '88 in NYC there was a 23 day July streak of streak of temps in the 90s.

Records in Toronto today--supposedly, in weatherese, going to "feel like" it's 47. ("You're going to have a great day tomorrow, and it'll feel like you're happy.")

I don't understand the heat index or wind chill. Well, I sorta of do. It has something to do with how well your body does or does not deal with sweat and moisture, right? Like, it'll be 95, but your body will have trouble sweating efficiently (or something) so it will "feel" like it's 110? Or, it's 20, but it will feel like 0, because the wind will wick away moisture faster?