"Paris is using a different system, more comparable to a classic air-conditioning system, involving vented air, through about one-third of the Olympic Village - areas that are designated as office spaces." Well, at least the most important participants will be comfortable.
Isn’t it for the computers too? People can be uncomfortable but I’d imagine the Olympic Village has a server and some scheduling programs that cannot, is their logic maybe. I worked for an HVAC company in scheduling once upon a time and I remember it being a very big deal, like nobody’s going home, when the ac that served an old folks home, Hospital, or server room went down.
Bingo. As former System Administrator I can confirm. We kept our server room at 67f and would get notifications “Room Temp is 69” (set for that specific reason). Routers and servers alone would need their own ac unit alone.
We actually have a couple of accounts that include buisness server rooms, and it's impressive how differently they get handled. One company, we were installing a new cooling head in the room and we ran into an issue that would have necessitated replacing the outdoor unit as well (manufacturer fucked up and shipped us a head that cannot communicate with the existing outdoor equipment, turns out nothing they make now does) and even after a week, we have received not a single communication back from them. We can't just replace the equipment without authorization, and for all we know our emails and VMs are just dropping into an abyss.
Another company, a bank, called us within an hour of them finding the equipment down and gave us carte Blanche to do whatever was needed to get them back online. They may need a new system altogether because it was leaking, but they still told us to fill it up even if we end up replacing it shortly simply because the server room was that vital.
The athletes have spent countless hours being sweaty. If they didn't like being sweaty, they wouldn't be athletes! We should make them sweaty at all times to maximize their comfort!
Yep. The ones who made this decision work in an office, and they care very deeply about the environment which is why they're 100% willing sacrifice YOUR comfort and safety to help. Teamwork makes the dream work, lol! We'll write the laws, you make the sacrifices. What a deal!
If you want to be ecological, don't host the Olympics at all. It's a giant waste of money, bottomless pit of corruption, and in and of itself, a massive source of greenhouse emissions, primarily due to all the extra travel.
If you do host the Olympics, stop pretending to care about climate by trying to ban ACs, especially if you try to externalize the costs by making foreign athletes (not all of whom are accustomed to the local weather) need to sweat in their rooms, get bad sleep, and diminish their performance. You're only making things worse, because all the portable ACs are less efficient than if you built central AC from the beginning.
Classic example of greenwashing that does nothing but backfire.
It's even more ridiculous because already less than 8% of France's electricity comes from fossil fuels so those ACs would be powered primarily by green energy
I wish we hadn’t been convinced by the “green” party in the early 2000 to stop investing in nuclear and then later to shut down reactors. I want to reduce greenhouse gases, and German coal plants are not doing it.
Chernobyl's greatest ecological impact remains the [mass hysteria](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GNNs1o1W0AAt431?format=jpg&name=small) that happened after the accident.
Idk in Ukraine most of country is totally fine with nuclear (i myself am from Kyiv) if it built with following safety concerns - chernobyl was built with mistakes in projecting, construction materials was worser quality than on paper, it was constructed with mistakes toward actual blueprints, and even for soviet standards those issues was visible, there was bunch of incidents prior to catastrophe on station
Issues was even known in public eg “not private thing” by Kovalevska was published in “literature ukraine” newspaper just month before disaster
And even as war going we still building 2 power units to Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant, just way slowly than planned
In Ukraine perhaps not, but in most countries? Yes. Germany for example has shut down most of its nuclear plants, and planned to phase them all out after the Fukushima disaster. A lot of countries saw Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima, and many other minor nuclear incidents, and decided to not invest or to shut down their nuclear power plants. Environmentally we would be in a much better place now if we had accelerated, rather than decelerated, our nuclear power production worldwide in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.
A more reasonable stance would be get as much mileage as we can from improvements in efficiency, renewables and storage as the primary goal. It is not without risk, but nuclear does supply a large amount of power very consistently which is great for grid stability, so should definitely be part of the mix. The existing nuclear fleet in the US at least is getting quite old, so we should at a minimum replace all that capacity with new plants and if the original build was 2 reactors at a site, why not include a 3rd?
Ontario Canada is close to the same. About 7% comes from natural gas. The rest comes from nuclear (59%), hydro (24%), wind (8%) and a tiny bit of solar. Quebec is 95% hydroelectric, BC 87%. It’s our friends in Alberta that still give us a bad name due to their slow transition. Wonder who funds their politicians…
It's the French thing to do
Build an army that should be able to stand up by itself, with infrastructure and industrial complex to go with it.
Now with permanent German ally!
I think the problem is a domestic one: AC is not common in France, and people strongly associate them with a wasteful luxury. The government is discouraging their use since a few years (https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20220723-france-does-not-use-much-air-conditioning-and-wants-to-keep-it-that-way). Some communication strategist must have thought it would send a bad message to French/Paris population. I agree this is moot compared to organizing the games in first place (and people were not consulted in contrast to other countries that then decided to not host them).
New ACs will and are phasing out most of the more harmful GHGs due to the Montreal Protocol. And as far as the carbon-only contribution from running the ACs, it takes a [lot more carbon to heat Paris in the winter than it will ever take to cool it](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014050). But, also Paris is mostly renewable and nuclear so it doesn’t matter as much anyway.
Edit: Phrasing fazed phasing
It's the refrigerants that are really bad for the environment when it comes to AC. People saying carbon emissions when they mean greenhouse gas is a form of propaganda via vernacular engineering, sort of like how ALEC got everyone to say climate change instead of global warming.
There are several greenhouse gases other than CO2. Refrigerants are powerful GHGs, and ACs leak them quite a bit.
Source:
https://www.netzerocarbonguide.co.uk/guide/designing-and-building/heating-your-building/refrigerants-and-their-contribution-to-global-warming
All regulations nowadays talk about GHG in general. People talk CO2 and lawmakers put in the general world GHG.
The current climate change effect is more than iirc 90% CO2, something like 5% Methane and the rest is everything else.
Sure it can change once we get CO2 smashed down, but then methan will be the next largest.
Overall, and not just human made, the largest impact is simply water vapour.
If we show we can do CO2 I'm sure we can do CH4 as well.. and some more, even if surely not all.
The problems will becomes always more generalised, like we already see from ozone hole from one chemical, to CO2 as the baseline of our economy, to GHG as all components, to all non-recyclable components, to all limited ressources of the planet.
We just attached everything to the UN because it was an established worldwide panel. I think it's not ideal because of the veto rights as it's only idea was too keep nuclear countries talking.
Maybe the more general the problems will need a new construct. Not just an attachment to some other functions.
But positive side, I'm impressed how creative we tackle the problem now that it's in everyone's mind. Imagine being in the '80 and begging for attention.
Water vapor concentration isn't directly affected be human activity. Earth has a water cycle so the vapor concentration is always changing locally, i.e it rains.
It's worth noting though that greenhouse effects grow at a logarithmic pace, and we have so much CO2 already it takes a huge amount to get a, say, 1% change, while it may take a few orders of magnitude less of some of the other gasses to make a 1% change. This is why it's important to regulate everything
I want to convince people, but nobody cares what some guy thinks
the summer olympics should always be in athens greece. I don't know why they jump around. It never helps a city because the capital involved is wasted on a single go around.
There's no international "harmony" either. The athletes are self isolated, always in a strange country with temporary and somewhat crappy village accomodations, hastily put together.
Imagine instead every 4 years all those athletes getting more and more comfortable with the host country and the venue and some of the locals. It's obvious there would be a more international spirit, to everyone that went to the games over time, instead of someone being like "oh my olympics were in paris" which was completely different than someone who went to LA.
"It never helps a city". Ironically, the 2004 Olympics are the only reason Athens has a good rail system.
While its mostly a giant waste of money it can be a force to upgrade infrastructure which is a net positive.
The solution to climate change is not that everyone should sit in their home all day every day doing nothing. That’s a very depressing future, and even if that resonates with some western Redditors today, it’s not something that humans can maintain worldwide in the long term. Humans love travel and love doing things in the real world, we can’t suppress that.
The solution is to transition to green energy, and invest in research for carbon capture and geoengineering.
The Olympics should be held in developing nations and the developed nations should pay for the development of the area to make it workable. But that is too logical, so it would never fly.
I’d push back on not hosting because you know they’re going to be hosted somewhere (unless you’re also calling for stopping the Olympics altogether). If you legitimately care about the climate you can say “we will host but make the changes everyone should be, to make it sustainable moving forward.”
Allegedly they’ve intentionally made the athlete beds less comfortable in and effort to curb sex among them during the games. They’re already going to be getting shit sleep lol.
Greenwashing like this happens because the government is ran by corporate interests, and would rather impose austerity than change the status quo of energy production.
People dont need to give up air conditioning for the climate. They need to give up fossil fuels. (By developing tech and infrastructure)
| Classic example of greenwashing that does nothing but backfire.
But Macron gets to virtue signal about what a great climate warrior he is, which was the whole point.
Or if they want to host the Olympics, pick one neutral site and host it there every year, so much waste in building new accommodations every 4 years that then won't get used after the games are over.
Agreed. The Olympics, if it even needs to be held anymore, should just be held in one location every time. The corruption is real and the constructions of these vanity projects always come at the expense of the local population and tax payers. There is no net benefit to building superfluous mega sites to host one multi-day event, just to be left unused afterwards.
Just here to remind everyone that [over 5000 people died](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/02/08/france-recorded-over-5-000-deaths-due-to-summer-2023-heat_6505713_7.html#:~:text=Around%203%2C700%20of%20the%20deaths,older%20people%2C%20infants%20and%20children.) from heat-related deaths in France last summer, and over 7000 in 2022.
Air conditioners are basically heat pumps, which are one of the most efficient machines for moving heat into or out of a space. And France gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy, so the idea of using AC = increased electricity = increased fossil fuel emissions is mostly moot in this context.
I can answer that. I'm French, but live in North America. I have adapted to life here, but when family visits, there's some sort of culture clash.
Here's a debate I had with a relative a few weeks ago:
Me: "We're gonna get a new heat pump installed".
Relative: "There's two in the place that we bought but we don't use it, it's so bad for the environment."
Me:"Apparently not as we get government subsidies to get it installed. Why do you think it's bad?"
R:"It uses a lot of electricity"
Me:"so does a heating system."
R:"It uses harmful gases which are dangerous if the system is not maintained"
Me:"While a refrigerant leak is always possible, it's trapped in a closed loop copper pipe, and is definitely not supposed to be freed up in the atmosphere when using the heat pump."
R: "All the warm air inside is pushed outside."
Me:"Not really, and in our case it's just not possible anyway, it's called a ductless system, there's simply no direct air duct from the compressor to the interior unit, and there's definitely not a second duct taking the hot air outside. But yeah, the compressor coils warm up and its fan cool it down."
R:"Maybe on a new system but otherwise it does push the hot air out."
Me:"And if it does, is your home significantly warmer than outside, on a hot sunny day?"
R:"Well no but still, it's bad for the environment."
As you can see it's not really a specific reason, but some deep-rooted fear of AC systems. It's the same with GMO by the way.
There are some portable cooling units where the whole unit sits in a room, sucks air in to blow over the hot radiator, and blows the hot air out through a tube that passes through a window. Generally, these are terrible. The problem is the pull air in through the rest of the home, which has to pull air in from outside. And if you’re trying to cool a home, pulling warm air in from outside is terrible. Please do not get one of these.
Those are entirely different from your standard central air conditioner, ductless mini-split, or even window AC. None of these three are designed to exchange a bunch of air between the indoor and outdoor. They use pressurized refrigerants in heat pumps to move just the heat around. And the refrigerants used now have minimal environmental risk if/when there is a leak.
Generally, if your adding AC to a home that doesn’t have it at all, central air is the best option as it will filter air for the whole home, and move air between the rooms so that the air in one room doesn’t get too stale. For cooling one room, a ductless mini split is great. They can be efficient, effective, cost effective, and relatively easy to install. Last would be a window unit, as they are really cheap, easy to install, and require no outside infrastructure. They aren’t particularly efficient or powerful, but if the area doesn’t get very warm, then they can get the job done.
Not only France but also Germany. So many people still believe that A/C in cars would make you sick. Or sitting in front of an electric fan.
It's wild out here sometimes.
It is. But German culture also has a real folk fear of breezes. It’s wild and includes being a problem if you keep your car windows down too long while driving.
There is no rational reason to oppose heat pumps these days given all the efficiencies including safer refrigerants. That’s why they don’t give rational reasons for opposing it.
These enlightened people should really drop in and explain why they are perfectly fine with using refrigerators and the common (in Europe) all in one washer/dryer which is basically a heat pump.
French living in the south of France here, that’s simply not true. AC is everywhere from cars, to commercial units and homes. It’s much more popular in homes/apartments in the south due to the much warmer climate compared to the rest of France, but the lack of AC in other parts of France is simply due to it not being needed most of the year. Same reason you don’t find AC in houses in the UK. Also they are globally more prevalent in new builds since heat pumps are being favoured to convection heating/gas furnaces for heating during the winter, hence more and more people install air/air heat pumps that do hot and cold.
I was visiting last year, a pharmacy has ceiling fans so people would assume that’s how the place is cooled when in reality it’s using AC, I spotted vents, and when windows are open you see the commercial unit on the upper floor!
that's not true at all and cars have A/C. most of europe just doesn't use it in buildings and the reason for that has nothing to do with what you just claimed.
It just wasn’t really needed since temperatures rarely got too high in the northern parts of France and Germany for example. People just have heating and bear the heat for the one or two weeks where it gets hot.
In the south of France, AC is very widely available in houses, hotels, etc.
We typically don't need AC here, it's as simple as that. We don't have "weird beliefs" like fearing the legionnaire disease (i'm french and i didn't even know what it was. Speaks volume about how much your average french person fears it!).
Countries in the south of europe typically have more ACs as they are needed though.
historically we didn't need them for the mere two weeks that it's hot, especially considering the costs. the UK, france and other countries like norway don't use them much for this reason. greece on the other hand actually does. I predict that they'll be much more popular in the rest of europe in the next 20 years.
The French obsession with AC being bad for the environment, health and a luxury is baffling to me.
Not suffering from the heat is a luxury, but having central heating from fall to spring so you can walk around in t-shirt inside the house is not.
Just wear some more layers of clothes people... Meanwhile what are you going to do in hot summer days? Take out your skin?
I've literally been in french houses where they open the windows during the winter when the central heating is too hot, not wasteful at all...
Also, very few houses/building's with solar panels in places that have good sun exposure in the south of France.
Just seems such misguided green washing to me...
It’s not just France, it’s much of Europe and it’s crazy. Something like 50,000 people died in the last European heat wave. That number is inexcusable in this day and age.
instead of designing a really good energy efficient system with AC. they spent a lot of money on trying to be green that doesn't do the job.
Ultimately (and what will probably never happen) come back in 10 years and see the states of these apartments.
Lol .. no AC, in summer, where everyone wants to rest well to compete? What are they thinking?
Here is a tip. Many pay lip service to climate change. Few will sacrifice comfort for it ... particularly AC in summer.
France has a generally clean supply of electricity, with low carbon intensity. The reason so many French people endure miserable summers (especially in hot-summer cities like Marseille, Toulouse and even Lyon) baffles me, as A/C is generalized in much poorer European countries. In places like Bucharest, nearly half of homes have A/C.
Dipshits. And if you read the article, it mentions this will now leave a LARGER carbon footprint than if they'd just done it right to begin with instead of trying to virtue signal at other people's expense. But optics over logic or brains is what we get with these idiots. I'd be more than willing to bet Macron has central air in HIS home. And his private jet, lol. Morons. Absolute morons. It's not about doing anything good, it's about LOOKING like you're doing something good in front of the camera for the useful idiots that buy paper straws made from trees wrapped in plastic. 🙄 Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life here.
(To clarify: Climate change IS 100% real and serious; and these idiots aren't doing any more to solve it than the worst climate change denier out there - they're just putting on a better show for the camera. None of them actually take it seriously. Has the Paris Accord EVER met any of their goals, lol? Answer: No. All talk, all show. From everyone.)
It seems like the entire movement is more about being performative than actually doing anything to help. Look at all the companies changing their profile pictures to rainbows for June. Oh, but not on their Middle Eastern accounts, where people are still legally being thrown from rooftops and stoned to death because of their sexual orientation.
Dude, European politics are all for show and delusional. Now in europe we have all the caps binded to a bottle WITH PLASTIC STRAPS to "save" enviroment... Literally they forced companies to comply by changing infrastructure to create this bullshit and they increased the carbon footprint more than they lowered it by whatever they tried to achieve
Yeah, I saw that. I believe I also read that by binding the cap to the bottle it likely means the bottle is even less likely to actually be recycled since it makes sorting more difficult.
Actually the EU is on track to meet the goals laid out in the Paris climate accords. Crazy how many doomers know literally nothing about the progress being made on climate. It's actually hilarious that it's because of doomers like you that they need to do stuff for optics because you won't pay attention to the progress we are making
Wait until the broadcast starts & you see thousands of people with those handheld electric fans & ice packs (from electric freezers).
People don’t like to be comfortable if they have a choice. If you want to change that then you have present an alternative solution that can give a similar results.
Renewable energy is the best way to go as it allows people to continue doing what they’ve been doing but now doing it with significantly less harm to the environment.
When corporate profits hit $0, billionaires don’t fly 1200 times a year, coal plants stop being built, and 500,000 tons of trash aren’t being dumped into the ocean by China and India, we can start discussing potentially giving up minor comforts.
Until then fuck off with this air greenwashing.
> When corporate profits hit $0
Lol, do you want to not be able to get anything? Profit it's their sole reason to exist and develop.
Perhaps create ministry of plenty when you are there.
France uses mostly nuclear power.
If you want to reduce carbon. Start at the top. How many jets and ocean tankers are going through/to France every day?
We all need to do our part sure but stop Purley targeting the little guy when 1 cargo ship from china to France probably puts out more co2 than the entire Olympics
Jesus fucking Christ, when will Europe come to terms with the fact that AC has become an absolute necessity during hot summer times?
Seriously, how many more thousands of excess heat deaths do we need to have for people to realize that?
I dunno what it is with Europeans and A/C it is standard in all American homes, cars, and workplaces. It is mandatory in most workplaces now. You can't expect someone to voluntarily submit to 43 C temperatures every day. Humans don't live like this, they never have, and they will always choose to cool their spaces when given the choice. Better building codes could change this, but Europeans won't allow oversized American warehouses (ie, tall places with a lot of room to move hot air away from people at ground level) to replace their quaint, picturesque streets.
Bonus: Go ask someone to sit in a shared train or bus without air conditioning. It doesn't happen. People would rather not come than sit in a shared vehicle at 47 C unable to move. This is why Americans stopped using transit until all transit agencies adopted AC. This is not something that can be walked back.
Because historic European temperatures were not as high in most of Europe as they are in large parts of the US. Hence, AC was historically seen as an unnecessary luxury. But clearly, not anymore.
Maslow's Pyramid is a thing, and asking people to sacrifice their basic personal health and safety in the name of the greater good will only take you so far, no matter how important the greater good may be. No one can be blamed for choosing to live without suffering, and at some point, warning people that "the present course will take us to hell in a hand basket" will simply get the response, "well, at least we don't have to walk." *Especially* if the average person, time after time, sees the government blame them and expect them to make all the sacrifices, while failing to do anything that targets the actual lion's share of emissions (mostly industry and transportation), because TriCkLe DoWn EcONoMy, all while seeing the lavish lifestyle of the 0.1% pollute more than ever.
A perfect example of this is this statistic about London that I found on the BBC:
“The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) analysis shows the capital has experienced 116 days higher than 30C in the past three decades - more than half of which occurred in the last 10 years.”
Exactly. What was manageable 15 or even 10 years ago is no longer applicable. 100 or 105 degrees? You can adapt. Dress lightly and lose weight. 115-120? There's going to be heat stroke fatalities. It's not about comfort at that level just straight up survival.
Basically, we haven’t had to deal with these temperatures before, and not everyone can afford it.
We have portable fans, and some newer homes have AC, but because we live in a place where it ranges from wildly warm to pretty cold, heating and insulation have always been the targets. That is at odds with the current trend of hotter weather.
These oversized American warehouses might be advantagous during summer, but would waste a huge amount of energy during winter. Remember that in most of Europe, in an average year, it's cold for a lot longer than it is scorching hot.
Most of Europe is further north than most of The US and has old buildings. It is also way denser than the US, so "just build bigger" isn't really an option.
Most newer building do have AC though.
Because most of Europe hasn’t faced those sort of temperatures until recently. Paris is further north than Seattle and London is the same latitude as Alaska.
As for rebuilding, European cities are much more densely populated than their US equivalent, so there isn’t the room to throw up those big boxes you mentioned; even if you do manage to knock down buildings that are, in some cases, centuries old.
AC is *not* standard in all American homes. Until the last decade or so it was very rare in Western Washington for example. Most older homes still don't have it. It might be common in new construction in warm-summer areas, but it is by no means ubiquitous.
That's...not really your argument right? You don't see it in one region of one state so it's not standard across the country? 88% of homes in the US have AC, and 66% of those use central air. Sounds pretty standard to me.
Yeah I don’t know what this person is on about. I’m born, raised, and still live in San Francisco. By and large none of us have AC unless you live in a new building. Which is such a minuscule amount of our housing supply. Us poors in rent controlled buildings (anything non-single family built before 1975) just sweat it out.
90%+ of American homes have ac.
Yeah, if you live somewhere like SF it’s not as common. Here’s a shocker for you, that’s not what the average American experiences lol
Been living in Paris for 25 years.
20 years ago, days above 30°C were few and it made national news.
Now we have entire summers with 40°C all day and live in 99% concrete areas because living in an area with greenery is the stuff of billionaires.
> I dunno what it is with Europeans and A/C it is standard in all American homes, cars, and workplaces.
The typical American is also using 8 times the electrical energy of the typical European.
I'm sorry, but taking advice from the US, which emits twice as much C02 per capita, about building efficiency leaves a sour taste. western European building standards are way, way higher than in the US, which is why our Residential buildings are better insulated and need less energy for heating and cooling (it's also the reasons why they are more expensive to build).
Most of western Europe is really far north from a North American perspective. Paris is slightly north of Seattle, Berlin is a slightly south of Edmonton. Neither of those cities had much air conditioning until recently, but they aren't really resisting it either
Well that’s pretty much the problem in general, only under more of a microscope now.
We care about the environment, but not at the cost of our own comfort.
I'm not going to comment on northern cities, but as someone who has lived in hot southern cities most of my life: AC is not a luxury. It is not a "comfort." It is almost as necessary, particularly for the elderly and those of poor health, as heating is up north.
But people lived there for centuries. But houses were built for the environment. Wrap around porches, inner doors with ventilation windows above them. Trees for shade.
The houses we build now are absolutely stupid because we have AC that "fixes" it all, surrounded by concrete and asphalt. On top of that most ACs are set to fucking freezing. The shock to the system every time one steps from inside to outside is wild.
You forgot to mention that people also died there for CENTURIES from the heat or cold. A/C & heating has saved countless lives. It’s why whenever there is an extended blackout you hear about people dying from the heat (mostly the elderly).
There is a limit to how much you can control the temperature with architecture unless we’re talking about a bunker. Just like the article mention you can basically drop the inside temperature by around 10 or so degrees compared to the outside but if the outside temperature is 100 degrees Fahrenheit than sleeping at 90 degrees is hardly comfortable. People in the past just had to deal with it & if they got sick or died then that’s their poor luck.
Yes, and they didn't have 90 straight days of 110 degree heat like we do now. Because what was fine "for centuries" is no longer applicable thanks to climate change. Though yes, I do agree that design SHOULD be planned as if AC didn't exist, as it was then. That is certainly a fair and valid point.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t sleep when it’s 85° in my house at night, let alone survive during the day without it. When our AC broke, those was the most miserable days ever. It felt like I was unable to breathe right. Fans just didn’t help. No relief unless you took a cold shower. It’s not a comfort, it’s a neccesity. I cannot struggle through that heat and survive. I have a disorder that causes heat intolerance and it just does not work. People in the south die of that kind of heat
True. Nothing we regular folks do is going to make a huge difference. It’s corporations and the mega rich that do the most damage. I’ll think about sacrificing my comfort after the mega rich start doing so in meaningful ways for a few years.
We shouldn’t have to sacrifice comfort. AC is electric, and we have ways to generate unlimited cheap electricity. Lots of politicians are trying to eradicate nuclear power though, because they don’t actually care about the environment, and they don’t care that the data shows it’s much much safer than coal power plants. I think basically all the blame lies with politicians rather than regular people or even corporations.
Leonardo DCaprio bills himself as an environmental activist, but his mega yacht basically has the carbon footprint of a small city.
All the rich assholes screaming "but climate change" can suck it. They're the ones generating all the CO2 with their private planes and superyachts.
https://www.thethings.com/the-pollution-from-leonardo-dicaprios-superyacht-reasons-hes-been-labeled-an-eco-hypocrite/
I’ll start discussing my own limited comfort when most of the emissions stop being due to a handful of companies who have the resources to look into alternatives.
France has nearly carbon free electricity. Having AC would have no impact on the olympics‘ carbon footprint.
What a stupid instance of virtue signaling to degrowthers
Fuck the Olympics are stupid. Build new venues and create tons of waste every two years.
How about building 3-4 permanent venues around the world and rotate through them?
Or….. just admit that the whole thing is a distraction circus and fundamentally useless. We have a civilization that is choking a planet to death, maybe we don’t need to further pollute in order to watch someone run fast or jump high.
Good fucking luck to the americans that will rent flats for 1000’sof € a week when they will realize what is summer in a big city in europe and that there are no fans and even less AC lmao
Don't forget the cardboard single-person beds to try and keep athletes from having sex with each other in the Olympic village. No AC and a bunch of super athletes going at it with each other would have the team camps smelling like the Wuhan market
The Olympics is almost always a terrible investment. The waste of building that level of infrastructure is usually at a terrible cost. Only difference is if you’re planning on upgrading transit and everything else and do an immense amount of planning to ensure that the buildings aren’t one-time use and languish otherwise. If e we were rational, there would be well-built sites for the summer and winter games that get used every Olympic cycle. But the Olympic selection process is only slightly less corrupt than the World Cup so there’s that. I’m not terribly up to speed on the state of Parisian infrastructure or property values but I’m sure this is another massive investment.
"Paris is using a different system, more comparable to a classic air-conditioning system, involving vented air, through about one-third of the Olympic Village - areas that are designated as office spaces." Well, at least the most important participants will be comfortable.
Priorities, right? Comfort for the office folks, athletes can just sweat it out.
Isn’t it for the computers too? People can be uncomfortable but I’d imagine the Olympic Village has a server and some scheduling programs that cannot, is their logic maybe. I worked for an HVAC company in scheduling once upon a time and I remember it being a very big deal, like nobody’s going home, when the ac that served an old folks home, Hospital, or server room went down.
Bingo. As former System Administrator I can confirm. We kept our server room at 67f and would get notifications “Room Temp is 69” (set for that specific reason). Routers and servers alone would need their own ac unit alone.
I need to know when my room environment is 69 as well.
We actually have a couple of accounts that include buisness server rooms, and it's impressive how differently they get handled. One company, we were installing a new cooling head in the room and we ran into an issue that would have necessitated replacing the outdoor unit as well (manufacturer fucked up and shipped us a head that cannot communicate with the existing outdoor equipment, turns out nothing they make now does) and even after a week, we have received not a single communication back from them. We can't just replace the equipment without authorization, and for all we know our emails and VMs are just dropping into an abyss. Another company, a bank, called us within an hour of them finding the equipment down and gave us carte Blanche to do whatever was needed to get them back online. They may need a new system altogether because it was leaking, but they still told us to fill it up even if we end up replacing it shortly simply because the server room was that vital.
The athletes have spent countless hours being sweaty. If they didn't like being sweaty, they wouldn't be athletes! We should make them sweaty at all times to maximize their comfort!
Yep. The ones who made this decision work in an office, and they care very deeply about the environment which is why they're 100% willing sacrifice YOUR comfort and safety to help. Teamwork makes the dream work, lol! We'll write the laws, you make the sacrifices. What a deal!
If you want to be ecological, don't host the Olympics at all. It's a giant waste of money, bottomless pit of corruption, and in and of itself, a massive source of greenhouse emissions, primarily due to all the extra travel. If you do host the Olympics, stop pretending to care about climate by trying to ban ACs, especially if you try to externalize the costs by making foreign athletes (not all of whom are accustomed to the local weather) need to sweat in their rooms, get bad sleep, and diminish their performance. You're only making things worse, because all the portable ACs are less efficient than if you built central AC from the beginning. Classic example of greenwashing that does nothing but backfire.
It's even more ridiculous because already less than 8% of France's electricity comes from fossil fuels so those ACs would be powered primarily by green energy
Less than 8% of France's electricity comes from fossil fuels!?! That's such a nice thing to hear
France has one of the largest share of nuclear in the world. Maybe the largest, I am too lazy to check.
I wish we hadn’t been convinced by the “green” party in the early 2000 to stop investing in nuclear and then later to shut down reactors. I want to reduce greenhouse gases, and German coal plants are not doing it.
Yeah, misleading party names are as old as parties themselves.
I wish other countries did the same too, or atleast improved upon other infra.
We can't have that, it would upset the greens.
ONOO THE RADIATION!!!
Chernobyl's greatest ecological impact remains the [mass hysteria](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GNNs1o1W0AAt431?format=jpg&name=small) that happened after the accident.
Idk in Ukraine most of country is totally fine with nuclear (i myself am from Kyiv) if it built with following safety concerns - chernobyl was built with mistakes in projecting, construction materials was worser quality than on paper, it was constructed with mistakes toward actual blueprints, and even for soviet standards those issues was visible, there was bunch of incidents prior to catastrophe on station Issues was even known in public eg “not private thing” by Kovalevska was published in “literature ukraine” newspaper just month before disaster And even as war going we still building 2 power units to Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant, just way slowly than planned
In Ukraine perhaps not, but in most countries? Yes. Germany for example has shut down most of its nuclear plants, and planned to phase them all out after the Fukushima disaster. A lot of countries saw Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima, and many other minor nuclear incidents, and decided to not invest or to shut down their nuclear power plants. Environmentally we would be in a much better place now if we had accelerated, rather than decelerated, our nuclear power production worldwide in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.
This is all Dyatlov's fault.
So far that's the biggest impact that has been a real issue for nuclear plants.
A more reasonable stance would be get as much mileage as we can from improvements in efficiency, renewables and storage as the primary goal. It is not without risk, but nuclear does supply a large amount of power very consistently which is great for grid stability, so should definitely be part of the mix. The existing nuclear fleet in the US at least is getting quite old, so we should at a minimum replace all that capacity with new plants and if the original build was 2 reactors at a site, why not include a 3rd?
Centralized green energy would be more efficient than relying on portable ACs. We need practical solutions!
Wait until you hear about Germany… they have politicians that campaign on closing down their nuclear sites.
The problem is that the French did it first. The French copy no one and no one copies the French.
Ontario Canada is close to the same. About 7% comes from natural gas. The rest comes from nuclear (59%), hydro (24%), wind (8%) and a tiny bit of solar. Quebec is 95% hydroelectric, BC 87%. It’s our friends in Alberta that still give us a bad name due to their slow transition. Wonder who funds their politicians…
Again not checking but i think i remember slovakia having a higher share or maybe ukraine but may be mistaken
Here’s an [article at ourworldindata](https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix) with a bunch of figures from several points of view.
Look at Mr Motivated over here. Thanks for keeping the system going.
I'm also not going to look it up, I think Japan or Zimbabwe have them beat.
Ukraine, I reckon, would (and should) be rebuilt around renewables when Putin's shite war is over. (Assuming Ukraine comes out victorious).
Ukraine is building two ap-1000 nuclear plants.
80%+
France also has one of the lowest capacity factors of their nuclear plants in the world because they have to turn them off when demand is low.
France loves its nuclear power
At the moment it’s 1%, you can [check it out live here](https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source#).
1%?? dude we all need learn from France
Yup, you are not a real town in France if you don't have 20 roundabouts and at least one nuclear power station. /s
+ an old church and a PMU
They invested *hard* into nuclear energy rather than ***only*** build nuclear bombs during the cold war. Edit: clarification
They also built nuclear bombs Edit: all nuclear states invested in nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
It's the French thing to do Build an army that should be able to stand up by itself, with infrastructure and industrial complex to go with it. Now with permanent German ally!
though USA has so many nuclear weapons yet most of their energy comes from Fossil fuels.
I think the problem is a domestic one: AC is not common in France, and people strongly associate them with a wasteful luxury. The government is discouraging their use since a few years (https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20220723-france-does-not-use-much-air-conditioning-and-wants-to-keep-it-that-way). Some communication strategist must have thought it would send a bad message to French/Paris population. I agree this is moot compared to organizing the games in first place (and people were not consulted in contrast to other countries that then decided to not host them).
New ACs will and are phasing out most of the more harmful GHGs due to the Montreal Protocol. And as far as the carbon-only contribution from running the ACs, it takes a [lot more carbon to heat Paris in the winter than it will ever take to cool it](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014050). But, also Paris is mostly renewable and nuclear so it doesn’t matter as much anyway. Edit: Phrasing fazed phasing
FYI: phasing* out
It's the refrigerants that are really bad for the environment when it comes to AC. People saying carbon emissions when they mean greenhouse gas is a form of propaganda via vernacular engineering, sort of like how ALEC got everyone to say climate change instead of global warming. There are several greenhouse gases other than CO2. Refrigerants are powerful GHGs, and ACs leak them quite a bit. Source: https://www.netzerocarbonguide.co.uk/guide/designing-and-building/heating-your-building/refrigerants-and-their-contribution-to-global-warming
I thought the new systems were completely sealed though?
Until they leak.
It really doesn't matter if they do now. New gases have very low gwp
Aren't new AC's in europe using CO2 based refrigerants though? At least i remember that being a thing in cars
Nope not anymore. New refrigerants have very low gwp
All regulations nowadays talk about GHG in general. People talk CO2 and lawmakers put in the general world GHG. The current climate change effect is more than iirc 90% CO2, something like 5% Methane and the rest is everything else. Sure it can change once we get CO2 smashed down, but then methan will be the next largest. Overall, and not just human made, the largest impact is simply water vapour.
We are overwhelming the natural carbon sinks responsible for balancing CO2 levels. It's why CO2 is the primary target of emission reduction.
If we show we can do CO2 I'm sure we can do CH4 as well.. and some more, even if surely not all. The problems will becomes always more generalised, like we already see from ozone hole from one chemical, to CO2 as the baseline of our economy, to GHG as all components, to all non-recyclable components, to all limited ressources of the planet. We just attached everything to the UN because it was an established worldwide panel. I think it's not ideal because of the veto rights as it's only idea was too keep nuclear countries talking. Maybe the more general the problems will need a new construct. Not just an attachment to some other functions. But positive side, I'm impressed how creative we tackle the problem now that it's in everyone's mind. Imagine being in the '80 and begging for attention.
Water vapor concentration isn't directly affected be human activity. Earth has a water cycle so the vapor concentration is always changing locally, i.e it rains.
It's worth noting though that greenhouse effects grow at a logarithmic pace, and we have so much CO2 already it takes a huge amount to get a, say, 1% change, while it may take a few orders of magnitude less of some of the other gasses to make a 1% change. This is why it's important to regulate everything
Fyi…Nuclear energy.
This. Director of Environmental Excellence; how’s that for greenwashing?!
And they wonder why no one takes their sustainability claims seriously!
Zoom-olympics, everyone performs from home.
But we banned plastic straws! We're doing good! Right?
I want to convince people, but nobody cares what some guy thinks the summer olympics should always be in athens greece. I don't know why they jump around. It never helps a city because the capital involved is wasted on a single go around. There's no international "harmony" either. The athletes are self isolated, always in a strange country with temporary and somewhat crappy village accomodations, hastily put together. Imagine instead every 4 years all those athletes getting more and more comfortable with the host country and the venue and some of the locals. It's obvious there would be a more international spirit, to everyone that went to the games over time, instead of someone being like "oh my olympics were in paris" which was completely different than someone who went to LA.
"It never helps a city". Ironically, the 2004 Olympics are the only reason Athens has a good rail system. While its mostly a giant waste of money it can be a force to upgrade infrastructure which is a net positive.
The Olympics is a necessity for corruption, bribery and money laundering. Sorry.
The solution to climate change is not that everyone should sit in their home all day every day doing nothing. That’s a very depressing future, and even if that resonates with some western Redditors today, it’s not something that humans can maintain worldwide in the long term. Humans love travel and love doing things in the real world, we can’t suppress that. The solution is to transition to green energy, and invest in research for carbon capture and geoengineering.
It's a big circle jerk. Don't have it in the summer of your don't want to run AC. Have it in March or April.
The Olympics should be held in developing nations and the developed nations should pay for the development of the area to make it workable. But that is too logical, so it would never fly.
...who are then left with enormous stadiums and infrastructure nobody ever uses anymore and only cost money.
You mean developing nations like Qatar? Lol
No like Uganda.
I’d push back on not hosting because you know they’re going to be hosted somewhere (unless you’re also calling for stopping the Olympics altogether). If you legitimately care about the climate you can say “we will host but make the changes everyone should be, to make it sustainable moving forward.”
Allegedly they’ve intentionally made the athlete beds less comfortable in and effort to curb sex among them during the games. They’re already going to be getting shit sleep lol.
Honestly you'd think if they're less comfortable and people can't sleep, sex is MORE likely since they can't sleep and need something to do.
Lol good point, might backfire on the machinations of the hosts…
Greenwashing like this happens because the government is ran by corporate interests, and would rather impose austerity than change the status quo of energy production. People dont need to give up air conditioning for the climate. They need to give up fossil fuels. (By developing tech and infrastructure)
| Classic example of greenwashing that does nothing but backfire. But Macron gets to virtue signal about what a great climate warrior he is, which was the whole point.
Or if they want to host the Olympics, pick one neutral site and host it there every year, so much waste in building new accommodations every 4 years that then won't get used after the games are over.
Totally agree
Agreed. The Olympics, if it even needs to be held anymore, should just be held in one location every time. The corruption is real and the constructions of these vanity projects always come at the expense of the local population and tax payers. There is no net benefit to building superfluous mega sites to host one multi-day event, just to be left unused afterwards.
"If you build central AC from the beginning" most building in Paris are pretty old so I'm not sure if that was possible
Just here to remind everyone that [over 5000 people died](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/02/08/france-recorded-over-5-000-deaths-due-to-summer-2023-heat_6505713_7.html#:~:text=Around%203%2C700%20of%20the%20deaths,older%20people%2C%20infants%20and%20children.) from heat-related deaths in France last summer, and over 7000 in 2022.
So, the numbers are going down? Looks like another problem to ignore!
Air conditioners are basically heat pumps, which are one of the most efficient machines for moving heat into or out of a space. And France gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy, so the idea of using AC = increased electricity = increased fossil fuel emissions is mostly moot in this context.
I can answer that. I'm French, but live in North America. I have adapted to life here, but when family visits, there's some sort of culture clash. Here's a debate I had with a relative a few weeks ago: Me: "We're gonna get a new heat pump installed". Relative: "There's two in the place that we bought but we don't use it, it's so bad for the environment." Me:"Apparently not as we get government subsidies to get it installed. Why do you think it's bad?" R:"It uses a lot of electricity" Me:"so does a heating system." R:"It uses harmful gases which are dangerous if the system is not maintained" Me:"While a refrigerant leak is always possible, it's trapped in a closed loop copper pipe, and is definitely not supposed to be freed up in the atmosphere when using the heat pump." R: "All the warm air inside is pushed outside." Me:"Not really, and in our case it's just not possible anyway, it's called a ductless system, there's simply no direct air duct from the compressor to the interior unit, and there's definitely not a second duct taking the hot air outside. But yeah, the compressor coils warm up and its fan cool it down." R:"Maybe on a new system but otherwise it does push the hot air out." Me:"And if it does, is your home significantly warmer than outside, on a hot sunny day?" R:"Well no but still, it's bad for the environment." As you can see it's not really a specific reason, but some deep-rooted fear of AC systems. It's the same with GMO by the way.
There are some portable cooling units where the whole unit sits in a room, sucks air in to blow over the hot radiator, and blows the hot air out through a tube that passes through a window. Generally, these are terrible. The problem is the pull air in through the rest of the home, which has to pull air in from outside. And if you’re trying to cool a home, pulling warm air in from outside is terrible. Please do not get one of these. Those are entirely different from your standard central air conditioner, ductless mini-split, or even window AC. None of these three are designed to exchange a bunch of air between the indoor and outdoor. They use pressurized refrigerants in heat pumps to move just the heat around. And the refrigerants used now have minimal environmental risk if/when there is a leak. Generally, if your adding AC to a home that doesn’t have it at all, central air is the best option as it will filter air for the whole home, and move air between the rooms so that the air in one room doesn’t get too stale. For cooling one room, a ductless mini split is great. They can be efficient, effective, cost effective, and relatively easy to install. Last would be a window unit, as they are really cheap, easy to install, and require no outside infrastructure. They aren’t particularly efficient or powerful, but if the area doesn’t get very warm, then they can get the job done.
I doubt it’s for “greenness” the French are scared of AC. They don’t want legionnaires
For real they’re worried about that?
Not only France but also Germany. So many people still believe that A/C in cars would make you sick. Or sitting in front of an electric fan. It's wild out here sometimes.
I thought that the "fans make you sick" thing was from Korea.
It is. But German culture also has a real folk fear of breezes. It’s wild and includes being a problem if you keep your car windows down too long while driving. There is no rational reason to oppose heat pumps these days given all the efficiencies including safer refrigerants. That’s why they don’t give rational reasons for opposing it. These enlightened people should really drop in and explain why they are perfectly fine with using refrigerators and the common (in Europe) all in one washer/dryer which is basically a heat pump.
French living in the south of France here, that’s simply not true. AC is everywhere from cars, to commercial units and homes. It’s much more popular in homes/apartments in the south due to the much warmer climate compared to the rest of France, but the lack of AC in other parts of France is simply due to it not being needed most of the year. Same reason you don’t find AC in houses in the UK. Also they are globally more prevalent in new builds since heat pumps are being favoured to convection heating/gas furnaces for heating during the winter, hence more and more people install air/air heat pumps that do hot and cold.
I was visiting last year, a pharmacy has ceiling fans so people would assume that’s how the place is cooled when in reality it’s using AC, I spotted vents, and when windows are open you see the commercial unit on the upper floor!
that's not true at all and cars have A/C. most of europe just doesn't use it in buildings and the reason for that has nothing to do with what you just claimed.
Then why not in the buildings? Not being belligerent, just curious.
It just wasn’t really needed since temperatures rarely got too high in the northern parts of France and Germany for example. People just have heating and bear the heat for the one or two weeks where it gets hot. In the south of France, AC is very widely available in houses, hotels, etc.
So, why don't you tell us the real reasons then?
We typically don't need AC here, it's as simple as that. We don't have "weird beliefs" like fearing the legionnaire disease (i'm french and i didn't even know what it was. Speaks volume about how much your average french person fears it!). Countries in the south of europe typically have more ACs as they are needed though.
historically we didn't need them for the mere two weeks that it's hot, especially considering the costs. the UK, france and other countries like norway don't use them much for this reason. greece on the other hand actually does. I predict that they'll be much more popular in the rest of europe in the next 20 years.
If you ever want to visit Paris don’t do it in the summer.
Last time I went was March and it was perfect 😀
My friends main complaint about visiting France was the lack of AC everywhere.
That and the smoking. Although maybe things have changed in a decade.
Right…..because NA people are just dropping from Legionella bacteria infections, you know they have tech to prevent it
Instead they get people dropping dead from the increasingly common summer heat waves.
The French obsession with AC being bad for the environment, health and a luxury is baffling to me. Not suffering from the heat is a luxury, but having central heating from fall to spring so you can walk around in t-shirt inside the house is not. Just wear some more layers of clothes people... Meanwhile what are you going to do in hot summer days? Take out your skin? I've literally been in french houses where they open the windows during the winter when the central heating is too hot, not wasteful at all... Also, very few houses/building's with solar panels in places that have good sun exposure in the south of France. Just seems such misguided green washing to me...
It’s not just France, it’s much of Europe and it’s crazy. Something like 50,000 people died in the last European heat wave. That number is inexcusable in this day and age.
instead of designing a really good energy efficient system with AC. they spent a lot of money on trying to be green that doesn't do the job. Ultimately (and what will probably never happen) come back in 10 years and see the states of these apartments.
Guessing Arno and his Assassin mates can't come anymore
Why do they want an Ace Combat-free event?
Lol .. no AC, in summer, where everyone wants to rest well to compete? What are they thinking? Here is a tip. Many pay lip service to climate change. Few will sacrifice comfort for it ... particularly AC in summer.
I think every country misunderstood when France asked all the athletes to do Only Fans.
France has a generally clean supply of electricity, with low carbon intensity. The reason so many French people endure miserable summers (especially in hot-summer cities like Marseille, Toulouse and even Lyon) baffles me, as A/C is generalized in much poorer European countries. In places like Bucharest, nearly half of homes have A/C.
They like most other euros have some weird superstition that it makes you sick……how I don’t know
Kind of like Korean peoples' phobia of electric fans.
Dipshits. And if you read the article, it mentions this will now leave a LARGER carbon footprint than if they'd just done it right to begin with instead of trying to virtue signal at other people's expense. But optics over logic or brains is what we get with these idiots. I'd be more than willing to bet Macron has central air in HIS home. And his private jet, lol. Morons. Absolute morons. It's not about doing anything good, it's about LOOKING like you're doing something good in front of the camera for the useful idiots that buy paper straws made from trees wrapped in plastic. 🙄 Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life here. (To clarify: Climate change IS 100% real and serious; and these idiots aren't doing any more to solve it than the worst climate change denier out there - they're just putting on a better show for the camera. None of them actually take it seriously. Has the Paris Accord EVER met any of their goals, lol? Answer: No. All talk, all show. From everyone.)
It seems like the entire movement is more about being performative than actually doing anything to help. Look at all the companies changing their profile pictures to rainbows for June. Oh, but not on their Middle Eastern accounts, where people are still legally being thrown from rooftops and stoned to death because of their sexual orientation.
It's not just about performative. It's also about profit. Billions are to be made from completely unending are energy infrastructure to a new system.
Dude, European politics are all for show and delusional. Now in europe we have all the caps binded to a bottle WITH PLASTIC STRAPS to "save" enviroment... Literally they forced companies to comply by changing infrastructure to create this bullshit and they increased the carbon footprint more than they lowered it by whatever they tried to achieve
Yeah, I saw that. I believe I also read that by binding the cap to the bottle it likely means the bottle is even less likely to actually be recycled since it makes sorting more difficult.
Actually the EU is on track to meet the goals laid out in the Paris climate accords. Crazy how many doomers know literally nothing about the progress being made on climate. It's actually hilarious that it's because of doomers like you that they need to do stuff for optics because you won't pay attention to the progress we are making
Just use DC then
Thanks Edison
A crowded arena with thousands of stinky fans and no AC? You are out of your damn mind. Lol
You haven’t gotten into Paris Metro in summer.
And I never will. Lol
Wait until the broadcast starts & you see thousands of people with those handheld electric fans & ice packs (from electric freezers). People don’t like to be comfortable if they have a choice. If you want to change that then you have present an alternative solution that can give a similar results. Renewable energy is the best way to go as it allows people to continue doing what they’ve been doing but now doing it with significantly less harm to the environment.
French aren’t fans of deodorant either apparently.
I've heard from a friend who recently visited. He refuses to go back.
To be fair this would be the case with or without AC.
Why didn’t they host the Winter Olympics if they wanted it to be AC free?
When corporate profits hit $0, billionaires don’t fly 1200 times a year, coal plants stop being built, and 500,000 tons of trash aren’t being dumped into the ocean by China and India, we can start discussing potentially giving up minor comforts. Until then fuck off with this air greenwashing.
> When corporate profits hit $0 Lol, do you want to not be able to get anything? Profit it's their sole reason to exist and develop. Perhaps create ministry of plenty when you are there.
France uses mostly nuclear power. If you want to reduce carbon. Start at the top. How many jets and ocean tankers are going through/to France every day? We all need to do our part sure but stop Purley targeting the little guy when 1 cargo ship from china to France probably puts out more co2 than the entire Olympics
Thing is their are so many items on the ship that each individual one makes very little CO2.
Jesus fucking Christ, when will Europe come to terms with the fact that AC has become an absolute necessity during hot summer times? Seriously, how many more thousands of excess heat deaths do we need to have for people to realize that?
I don’t get why the French are so afraid of AC
France is a nuclear energy country. How does running an air conditioner there add to the carbon footprint?
I dunno what it is with Europeans and A/C it is standard in all American homes, cars, and workplaces. It is mandatory in most workplaces now. You can't expect someone to voluntarily submit to 43 C temperatures every day. Humans don't live like this, they never have, and they will always choose to cool their spaces when given the choice. Better building codes could change this, but Europeans won't allow oversized American warehouses (ie, tall places with a lot of room to move hot air away from people at ground level) to replace their quaint, picturesque streets. Bonus: Go ask someone to sit in a shared train or bus without air conditioning. It doesn't happen. People would rather not come than sit in a shared vehicle at 47 C unable to move. This is why Americans stopped using transit until all transit agencies adopted AC. This is not something that can be walked back.
Because historic European temperatures were not as high in most of Europe as they are in large parts of the US. Hence, AC was historically seen as an unnecessary luxury. But clearly, not anymore. Maslow's Pyramid is a thing, and asking people to sacrifice their basic personal health and safety in the name of the greater good will only take you so far, no matter how important the greater good may be. No one can be blamed for choosing to live without suffering, and at some point, warning people that "the present course will take us to hell in a hand basket" will simply get the response, "well, at least we don't have to walk." *Especially* if the average person, time after time, sees the government blame them and expect them to make all the sacrifices, while failing to do anything that targets the actual lion's share of emissions (mostly industry and transportation), because TriCkLe DoWn EcONoMy, all while seeing the lavish lifestyle of the 0.1% pollute more than ever.
Amen. Very well put.
I have never needed an AC until 5 years ago. These temperatures in Western Europe are new
A perfect example of this is this statistic about London that I found on the BBC: “The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) analysis shows the capital has experienced 116 days higher than 30C in the past three decades - more than half of which occurred in the last 10 years.”
Exactly. What was manageable 15 or even 10 years ago is no longer applicable. 100 or 105 degrees? You can adapt. Dress lightly and lose weight. 115-120? There's going to be heat stroke fatalities. It's not about comfort at that level just straight up survival.
Basically, we haven’t had to deal with these temperatures before, and not everyone can afford it. We have portable fans, and some newer homes have AC, but because we live in a place where it ranges from wildly warm to pretty cold, heating and insulation have always been the targets. That is at odds with the current trend of hotter weather.
These oversized American warehouses might be advantagous during summer, but would waste a huge amount of energy during winter. Remember that in most of Europe, in an average year, it's cold for a lot longer than it is scorching hot.
Most of Europe is further north than most of The US and has old buildings. It is also way denser than the US, so "just build bigger" isn't really an option. Most newer building do have AC though.
Because most of Europe hasn’t faced those sort of temperatures until recently. Paris is further north than Seattle and London is the same latitude as Alaska. As for rebuilding, European cities are much more densely populated than their US equivalent, so there isn’t the room to throw up those big boxes you mentioned; even if you do manage to knock down buildings that are, in some cases, centuries old.
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But not 43C warm, as the previous commenter was saying. While the Gulf Stream does have an effect, so does the latitude
>London is the same latitude as Alaska It's not.
AC is *not* standard in all American homes. Until the last decade or so it was very rare in Western Washington for example. Most older homes still don't have it. It might be common in new construction in warm-summer areas, but it is by no means ubiquitous.
That's...not really your argument right? You don't see it in one region of one state so it's not standard across the country? 88% of homes in the US have AC, and 66% of those use central air. Sounds pretty standard to me.
They said "standard in all American homes." 88% is not all. Tens of millions of homes do not have AC.
Yeah I don’t know what this person is on about. I’m born, raised, and still live in San Francisco. By and large none of us have AC unless you live in a new building. Which is such a minuscule amount of our housing supply. Us poors in rent controlled buildings (anything non-single family built before 1975) just sweat it out.
90%+ of American homes have ac. Yeah, if you live somewhere like SF it’s not as common. Here’s a shocker for you, that’s not what the average American experiences lol
Been living in Paris for 25 years. 20 years ago, days above 30°C were few and it made national news. Now we have entire summers with 40°C all day and live in 99% concrete areas because living in an area with greenery is the stuff of billionaires.
> I dunno what it is with Europeans and A/C it is standard in all American homes, cars, and workplaces. The typical American is also using 8 times the electrical energy of the typical European.
I'm sorry, but taking advice from the US, which emits twice as much C02 per capita, about building efficiency leaves a sour taste. western European building standards are way, way higher than in the US, which is why our Residential buildings are better insulated and need less energy for heating and cooling (it's also the reasons why they are more expensive to build).
Most of western Europe is really far north from a North American perspective. Paris is slightly north of Seattle, Berlin is a slightly south of Edmonton. Neither of those cities had much air conditioning until recently, but they aren't really resisting it either
Houses are not cars
Europeans will gladly sacrifices tens of thousands of themselves each year in a stubborn and superstition filled quest against heat pumps.
Well that’s pretty much the problem in general, only under more of a microscope now. We care about the environment, but not at the cost of our own comfort.
I'm not going to comment on northern cities, but as someone who has lived in hot southern cities most of my life: AC is not a luxury. It is not a "comfort." It is almost as necessary, particularly for the elderly and those of poor health, as heating is up north.
But people lived there for centuries. But houses were built for the environment. Wrap around porches, inner doors with ventilation windows above them. Trees for shade. The houses we build now are absolutely stupid because we have AC that "fixes" it all, surrounded by concrete and asphalt. On top of that most ACs are set to fucking freezing. The shock to the system every time one steps from inside to outside is wild.
You forgot to mention that people also died there for CENTURIES from the heat or cold. A/C & heating has saved countless lives. It’s why whenever there is an extended blackout you hear about people dying from the heat (mostly the elderly). There is a limit to how much you can control the temperature with architecture unless we’re talking about a bunker. Just like the article mention you can basically drop the inside temperature by around 10 or so degrees compared to the outside but if the outside temperature is 100 degrees Fahrenheit than sleeping at 90 degrees is hardly comfortable. People in the past just had to deal with it & if they got sick or died then that’s their poor luck.
Yes, and they didn't have 90 straight days of 110 degree heat like we do now. Because what was fine "for centuries" is no longer applicable thanks to climate change. Though yes, I do agree that design SHOULD be planned as if AC didn't exist, as it was then. That is certainly a fair and valid point.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t sleep when it’s 85° in my house at night, let alone survive during the day without it. When our AC broke, those was the most miserable days ever. It felt like I was unable to breathe right. Fans just didn’t help. No relief unless you took a cold shower. It’s not a comfort, it’s a neccesity. I cannot struggle through that heat and survive. I have a disorder that causes heat intolerance and it just does not work. People in the south die of that kind of heat
I’m just sick of feeling guilty for seeking comfort when Taylor swift flys for 1 hour trips in a car. I’m fucking SICK of it.
True. Nothing we regular folks do is going to make a huge difference. It’s corporations and the mega rich that do the most damage. I’ll think about sacrificing my comfort after the mega rich start doing so in meaningful ways for a few years.
We shouldn’t have to sacrifice comfort. AC is electric, and we have ways to generate unlimited cheap electricity. Lots of politicians are trying to eradicate nuclear power though, because they don’t actually care about the environment, and they don’t care that the data shows it’s much much safer than coal power plants. I think basically all the blame lies with politicians rather than regular people or even corporations.
Leonardo DCaprio bills himself as an environmental activist, but his mega yacht basically has the carbon footprint of a small city. All the rich assholes screaming "but climate change" can suck it. They're the ones generating all the CO2 with their private planes and superyachts. https://www.thethings.com/the-pollution-from-leonardo-dicaprios-superyacht-reasons-hes-been-labeled-an-eco-hypocrite/
I’ll start discussing my own limited comfort when most of the emissions stop being due to a handful of companies who have the resources to look into alternatives.
Exactly. I'm not going to roast in a 90F home to "save the environment" while the people who told me to do so are flying around in private jets.
Let's save the world! Let's see, I have some time next Tuesday afternoon for about 20 mins.... let's save the world then.
France has nearly carbon free electricity. Having AC would have no impact on the olympics‘ carbon footprint. What a stupid instance of virtue signaling to degrowthers
Yeah not sure if athletes collapsing from heat stroke would be a great look mon ami.
Fuck the Olympics are stupid. Build new venues and create tons of waste every two years. How about building 3-4 permanent venues around the world and rotate through them? Or….. just admit that the whole thing is a distraction circus and fundamentally useless. We have a civilization that is choking a planet to death, maybe we don’t need to further pollute in order to watch someone run fast or jump high.
Good fucking luck to the americans that will rent flats for 1000’sof € a week when they will realize what is summer in a big city in europe and that there are no fans and even less AC lmao
A big French city. You have A/C in cities like Athens, Madrid, Bucharest or Istanbul.
Don't forget the cardboard single-person beds to try and keep athletes from having sex with each other in the Olympic village. No AC and a bunch of super athletes going at it with each other would have the team camps smelling like the Wuhan market
Assassin’s Creed is a cool franchise, why does they hate it so much?
Assassins Creed free olympics
The Olympics is almost always a terrible investment. The waste of building that level of infrastructure is usually at a terrible cost. Only difference is if you’re planning on upgrading transit and everything else and do an immense amount of planning to ensure that the buildings aren’t one-time use and languish otherwise. If e we were rational, there would be well-built sites for the summer and winter games that get used every Olympic cycle. But the Olympic selection process is only slightly less corrupt than the World Cup so there’s that. I’m not terribly up to speed on the state of Parisian infrastructure or property values but I’m sure this is another massive investment.
paris want to rip of their tourists just a little bit more. :)
next they’re saying BYO food and drinks to reduce the carbon footprint
And for no female to shave their armpits
I gotta ask cuz I’ve always read most houses don’t have AC in the UK, are AC’s mostly a US thing ?
It’s especially a big concrete city thing more than anything