From "European soccer fans enjoy a brief fling with America’s air-conditioned culture/Despite a deadly heat wave at home, many say they won’t permanently embrace Americans’ electricity-guzzling amenity" (WaPo).
Questions: 1. Who says "air-con"? 2. Wasn't that a movie with Nicolas Cage? 3. What would Americans do if they found themselves wrangling with guilt about global warming whenever they indulged in air conditioning.
Answers: 1. The British. 2. No, it was not. 3. Do what half their compatriots have already done and decide global warming is a hoax.
Bonus question: "'Con Air' won a Golden Raspberry Award in what category? Answer: "Worst Reckless Disregard for Human Life and Public Property."
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I’ve heard “air con” quite a bit in Texas. There is even a local business called AirCon. I think it may be heard more often in the south, because there is less need for the H or V in HVAC.
As for “global warming”, there is another aspect. I work in energy. We had some Brits come here to “help us lower of emission intensity” only to learn our energy consumption is already more efficient than their own.
CAGW is the biggest scam in the history of the world.
cooling causes warming
Good Lord, we had some shitty movies, even back in the 90s.
I’ve read that the UK government is pushing people to install heat pumps to warm their homes in winter. An air conditioner is a heat pump that removes heat from homes. If they have a heat pump for winter, then they have the hardware for air conditioning in the summer, and you actually use less electricity than in the winter. There is always the possibility that the their heat pumps aren’t set up for cooling, but that would be stupid. I use my heat pump to both heat and cool my home. It does a wonderful job.
European homes are built to stay cool -- painted bright white and super thick walls. They have mini splits. It's not that bad. And you get used to iced coffee and eating outside and walking around. I sort of think it's better than locking yourself in a room and watching Netflix.
The key to appreciating ConAir is recognizing that it is in large part an action film parody.
“I sort of think it's better than locking yourself in a room and watching Netflix.”
It’s better than a toothache or waiting a year or more for medical treatment too.
“The key to appreciating ConAir is recognizing that it is in large part an action film parody.”
I suspect every Bruckheimer movie is an “action film parody”…
Not only do they have an aversion to AC, they also have an aversion to ice.
We were in sweltering Vienna this week. We went to McDonald’s to get a soda to cool off and it came with no ice. Awful.
Worst Reckless Disregard for Human LIfe and Public Property
Did you know, that in The French Connection, they shot that movie on real streets, without blocking them off first? All those people running on the streets were real people fleeing for their lives. The director on the damn commentary, oh my God. My film critic brain shut off completely and I was 100% an attorney again. "You should be arrested! You should be sued. This is not right. Holy fuck you are insane."
I'm accustomed to a much better quality of propaganda.
..."He’d have to break a stiff-upper-lip mentality and make peace with a trade-off that Europeans tend to view as taboo: Air-con accelerates global warming."
As opposed to other taboos, like diluting your culture to the point where nobody knows what stiff upper lips are, anymore. 'Stiff upper lip' is code for 'shut up and obey, and remember citizen, your online comments will land you in jail' Still waiting to see any signs that these people recognize the power of numbers.
The truth is, they don't have the electrical infrastructure to support the widespread use of A/C, and they don't want to have it, either. More precisely, the ruling class has it already and sees no reason to share comforts with the hoi polloi.
The letters A and C are all you need. Jeez.
I have a 12" diameter coated fabric duct dangling an inch off the basement floor, running upstairs and, with an installed 12v 12" fan, blowing on the computer desk. So there is a breeze at the temperature of the basement floor and coolness with no electricity cost in the daytime (fan runs off solar panel if there's sun; in any case the running the fan costs practically nothing.).
A/C has a capital cost, an electricity cost, and repair costs that make it an expensive item.
It would work for castles in England, if they have basements.
I think considering AC was one of the things Martin Luther confessed to Staupitz
"Air con" - I've only heard that from British people (never in Texas except from expats, in contrast to Leland).
I've had occasion to travel to the UK with a big group of Americans several times (cathedral choir in residence programs). One guy, husband of a choir member, absolutely exemplified the Ugly American on one rather warm trip, during which our guide/coordinator had booked us into an "American-style" hotel, but without A/C - months before, of course. He threw a fit like every morning, both to the coordinator and to the front desk. "I have a HEART CONDITION. It's too damn hot in my room! Get me more fans!"
Or get your own damn room in a different hotel, Hal. They do have places with A/C.
There’s another aspect to air-conditioning that one has to live in south Texas to appreciate - the psychological aspect.
The movie theaters and restaurants are kept at such a low temperature so when you leave, you actually appreciate the summer heat. (I’m not sure that’s the objective, but it certainly works for Mrs. Quayle and increasingly me also.)
More people die in Europe from heat stroke than in the USA from bullets. Never has bad science killed so many people. Get some AC, you idiots.
I sort of think it's better than locking yourself in a room and watching Netflix.
“I said, put the bunny back in the box.”
"The truth is, they don't have the electrical infrastructure to support the widespread use of A/C, and they don't want to have it, either. More precisely, the ruling class has it already and sees no reason to share comforts with the hoi polloi."
This pretty much nails it. Could that be why CAGW is so popular with the Euro elites? Sorta' pulling up the ladder on those beneath them?
they also have an aversion to ice
The worst are the American restaurants that are trying to be more European now. So they give you water without ice.
Why don't you import lukewarm beer while you're at it? Europeans are bad, but wannabe Europeans? They're the worst.
Can we trade massive amounts of people? We'll take all your poor people, yearning for AC. And you can have all our Democrats and wannabe socialists.
…how do they heat their homes in winter? electric heat pump, oil, wood pellets…coal…those are all a-okay! Dimwits…
It's Feudalism for the EU
oh sorry- muppets…
…hot, sticky muppets…
"Do what half their compatriots have already done and decide global warming is a hoax."
Even in the half who believe (as in religion) that it's not a hoax, 3/4 of them have "air-con" in their homes.
Cafeteria CAGW-ers.
@rhhardin:
During light rail construction (Phoenix AZ) in the early 2010s, crews uncovered a roughly 4-by-5-foot concrete tunnel near the Westward Ho hotel. According to a 2012 Phoenix Magazine article it was believed to be part of a primitive air-return system for the building’s original cooling unit. The tunnel ran to (or terminated in) the hotel’s basement.
A 2007 urban exploration forum post described engineers viewing it as an underground duct for cool air.
I grew up in a house in Southwest Iowa without air conditioning. My parents got AC after I left for college.
As an adult in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I believed I only needed air conditioning, which I did not have, 6 nights of the year. Living that belief involved not coming home to my hot apartment in the summer months until after 9pm, opening the windows, and turning on the window fans.
Basements aren't practical everywhere - Houston, a case in point. Heat pumps - don't they require low humidity to work well? We had one when I was a little kid in Arizona, but no one has them in Houston, where the air is basically drinkable. Shotgun houses work ok for airflow, but in a world in which we're all used to A/C, they are decidedly less than optimal. I should point out, maybe, that Houston didn't take off as a major metropolis until A/C became widespread.
A couple of years ago, we traveled around Costa Rica for a couple of weeks. The best Airbnb we stayed in, in terms of amenities, view, and number of monkeys to entertain us, had no A/C because the owner (according to her house manual) thought people should live in harmony with the surrounding jungle. So it was great all day long, when we were either in the pool or hiking or visiting some other place, and very marginal indeed every night.
What Quayle @ 8:21 said.
Same thing in South Florida. The restaurants are kept so cold here my wife and I literally put on more clothes to go out to restaurants than we would to just hang out all day. I cannot imagine how anyone lived in South Florida cities/towns before A/C became a regular use appliance.
Anyway...Europe makes its choices based on what some elite cabal somewhere in some gleaming tower will think of them, not based on the better life for their own citizens. And not just when it comes to A/C.
"The movie theaters and restaurants are kept at such a low temperature so when you leave, you actually appreciate the summer heat."
It does feel nice to thaw out, but it also means I take a sweater or jacket with me to any place I have to sit for a while because I seem to always be seated where the air is blowing out.
If it wasn't for Willis Carrier, the American South would still be a thinly populated backwater region, and Texas and Arizona would be like New Mexico.
I bet those World Cup games in Miami and Houston have whetted the European appetite for AC. And ice machines.
It could be that some public places keep the AC low to provide respite from the heat for visitors without AC or who have been outside.
I usually keep my house at 78, but if I need to do yard work, I turn it down to 72 beforehand so I can quickly cool off afterward.
Let me see. What should we install, AC or millions of foreigners who hate us and our values? Tough call.
I wonder how much the two options cost in comparison, and the results? Rape and poverty or air-conditioned comfort for all. The left has an uncanny genius for decision making.
Moved to the DC area in 1976. Seconds place I lived, a 1 bedroom, in Arlington, VA, didn’t have AC. It was miserable. Couldn’t get to sleep until 1-2 am. Gladly paid for AC over in MD after that. Since then, have always had it when I needed it (Austin, TX, PHX). Rest of the time, mostly haven’t needed it (CO, NW NV, MT). Except that we argue about it in MT. Partner claims we don’t need it in MT. My view is that we have the money, so why not? Heck, her big problem is getting from a building to an air conditioned car, and to/from another building. She is French and German, and wants to go there to see where they came from. I tell her fine - we’ll go next months when rates are low, and we have construction in MT.
Global Warming is properly known as ManBearPig, as designated by South Park: a mythical creature that lives just outside the city limits.
Boatbuilder is right at 9:29--Willis Carrier made the American South liveable. And he helped out in Arizona and inland Southern California as well.
Con Air won a Golden Globe award in what catagory?
I’m guessing Nicholas Cage’s acting.
Do they having “cooling centers” in Europe? NYC at least has cooling centers when it gets dangerously hot. The thing is, people in Europe have these hot spells. In the U.S., they’re not hot spells. They’re actually known as summer. All summer.
Due to some life circumstances, in the late 80's I lived for a year in a Miami apartment without a/c.
You do what you need to do, and you don't complain. As Lou Holtz said about complaints "20% of people don't care and the other 80% are glad you have them."
That said, I wouldn't want to have to do it now.
Europe got rid of their nuke electric generators and used 'green' wind and solar (which ain't worth a shit.) And now.. have no electricity for manufacturing OR air conditioning... FAFO.
I’m sure the glass skyscrapers in the City, La Defense, Frankfurt, etc, all have AC. CC, JSM
Optimal summer temperature inside the house (cost saving while not sweating/freezing) is 78 degrees. (when my sister is not home for long periods of time)
For the car however, its a challenge I've given up trying to control. I tell passengers (I drive Uber) to use the controls facing the back seats. Most African Americans, peoples of color, don't care the car AC. Some would go as far as to roll down the window.
Whites, for the most part, however, seem ok with the car AC set at a balmy 70 degrees.
I deduce that a house insulates the cold better than a car. Don't quote me on that, I don't want to get political.
Agree with Quayle and Temujin on places keeping it a bit too cool. I actually dressed up a bit this morning because I knew we were going to HEB, and they apparently want the meat to stay fresh throughout the store. My wife and mother-in-law keep sweaters in their cars just in case they need to get them. Work finally adjusted the AC, so that it can be comfortable with a single layer of clothing.
Houston can be fine outdoors when partly clouded to overcast and a good gulf breeze. Like anything, you have to get used to it. Having grown up in the country with only a window AC unit that kept only one room comfortable, I still remember sitting on the porch to cool off. This was usually after doing yard work.
On the opposite spectrum, do people here experience and recall when homes had in-wall gas heaters? I remember my grandparents' homes having them and using them in the winter. I can't imagine how many fires have been prevented when those things were no longer a regular feature in homes.
Also, I will repeat something I’ve said here before: AC brought us civil rights. The blacks could finally sit and think, and the whites stopped being so damn angry. And AC also was the main benefit of eating inside the drugstore or sitting in the main floor of the movie theater. CC, JSM
I have read recently that the heat pumps Europeans are being encouraged/mandated to buy to replace fossil fuel thermal systems are deliberately designed to not include the option of using them as a house-cooling device. This is an insane level of stupidity. Now, part of the problem is that most European homes are built with radiators that employ hot water, so the heat-pump installations are designed to work with those radiators- to use them for cooling requires a renovation to put in air ducts which isn't cheap or easy to do.
My new home came with heat-pump for heating the home and the hot water heater. While I was skeptical that this would work as well as the gas-fire air system we had in Oak Ridge, I have been pleasantly surprised- the new system struggled to keep the temp at 70 F on the coldest of days (we had several days this winter with sub 20 F highs and many nights in the single digits) but the costs for heating were quite a bit lower the entire winter compared to the gas system we had. So far this spring/summer the costs on the AC has been much, much lower than before but that is probably due to the far superior insulation of the new home compared to the old one.
This beyond idiotic: "The cardiac unit of the Düsseldorf University Hospital, where people recover from heart surgery, is currently measuring 38°C/ 100.4°F. As you can see, the building is only about 15 years old. And built without central air-conditioning."
And this is unsurprising: "The EU Commission in Brussels has shut off airco, but only for the lower floors, where the lower ranks work:"
"In the U.S., they’re not hot spells. They’re actually known as summer. All summer."
The daily high temperature in Phoenix is over 100 for four months out of the year and over 90 for another two. When I lived there, the duplex across the street from me didn't have AC. The people living there managed somehow.
"On the opposite spectrum, do people here experience and recall when homes had in-wall gas heaters?"
All the houses in the neighborhood where I grew up in SoCal had them. None of them burned down- well, at least in the first 20 years or so after they were built. After I grew up and moved away, I couldn't tell you what happened.
My sister and her husband live in a housing tract that was built by the same developer as the one where we grew up, her house has wall heaters. The house is about 70 years old now.
"I can't imagine how many fires have been prevented when those things were no longer a regular feature in homes."
Why would that be? I'm not familiar with them, but is there some reason they are more dangerous than a gas furnace?
"On the opposite spectrum, do people here experience and recall when homes had in-wall gas heaters?"
My first house had them in the bathrooms and bedrooms, enameled steel with those clay tile firebricks for radiant heat. There was a galvanized duct that filled the wallspace between the studs and carried the exhaust up into the attic. I thought they were pretty cool, and kept them as I remodeled. They worked really well.
Last winter we had a spell in Madison where the nighttime temperature reached -15 to -20 below (Fahrenheit, of course). Thank God for natural gas.
I spent 34 years in Seattle and didn't have AC anywhere. Most homes did not. There are only a dozen or so days a year where AC would be very useful -- otherwise, the area experiences on-shore flow from the Pacific that drops overnight temps down considerably (very much unlike continental locales). Our house (for 15 of those years) had a daylight, furnished basement, so we kept the furnace fan blowing cooler basement air upstairs for most of the Summer, and most night had window fans blowing cooler outside air in all night.
Had we stayed. . . . .I would have gotten a heat pump system with AC, and kept the (gas) furnace as a supplement for Winter heating. I believe they work well in that climate despite the humidity, although the temps are nothing like the south.
When did air conditioning become an American necessity? Growing up in the North, we never had it or thought we needed it. I have it now and it does make life a little easier. The management has also put in "heat pumps" because it thinks they are greener.
I wonder what the Europeans would think of Canadian cities which are said to be connected with passageways so one never has to go outside. Unfortunately, the World Cup isn't in the winter, and Edmonton didn't win its cup bid.
Con Air was eclipsed by Face-Off. A more memorable concept. It must have been fun for Travolta to imitate Cage. There was a plane or two in that one as well.
Architecture specialized for the climate helps. I am staying in southern VA for a training program. We've already had some 97 degree days, and it's only June. The place I'm staying is a loft apartment building converted from a brick tobacco warehouse. High ceilings with fans. Full HVAC, but I almost never turn it on. My thermometers say it's 80-plus degrees in the apartment, but it doesn't feel like it. I guess the hot air just accumulates up above. The humidity seems to make more of a difference - I have turned on the AC for sub-90-degree days with high humidity.
If I were staying in the same town in a glass-and-steel building or even a stud-and-drywall house with one layer of brick on the outside, I would be cranking that AC every day. CC, JSM
I was in France a few years ago in late July for a work event. The muckity mucks stayed in a fancy chateau without air conditioning. Us rabble stayed at a Hotel Ibis (think a step below holiday inn express) that had AC and a bar.
"When did air conditioning become an American necessity?"
There is no "America" on this topic, where the climates are so different in different places. We recently reinstalled AC in our Wisconsin home after going without it for almost 10 years. We got by; it wasn't that bad. But the calculus is very different, I am sure, in the South. Likewise heating in the winter; our requirements are very different than in the South.
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