Hot Weather Hobbles Britain, a Nation Unaccustomed To Extreme Heat (nytimes.com) 281
Trains slowed to a crawl. Schools and doctors' offices shut their doors. The British Museum closed off its upper galleries, then the entire museum. The government urged people to work from home. Much of Britain took an involuntary siesta on Monday as merciless heat scorched the country, driving temperatures close to triple digits Fahrenheit by midafternoon and threatening to smash records. From a report: By midafternoon, Wales had provisionally recorded the hottest day in its history, with the thermometer in Hawarden hitting 98.8 degrees Fahrenheit (37.1 Celsius). The current record for England of 101.7 degrees Fahrenheit (38.7 Celsius) was set in 2019, according to the Met Office, Britain's national weather service. At 3 p.m., the mercury in Kew Gardens in London hovered just under 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
For Americans in states that regularly sizzle, those numbers might seem underwhelming, but this is happening in a country unprepared for such extremes. In a nation known for its scudding clouds, frequent showers and temperate weather, the blazing heat was enough to hobble much of the country.
For Americans in states that regularly sizzle, those numbers might seem underwhelming, but this is happening in a country unprepared for such extremes. In a nation known for its scudding clouds, frequent showers and temperate weather, the blazing heat was enough to hobble much of the country.
Poor people... (sarcasm mode on... fire) (Score:4, Funny)
Poor people, suffering 37ÂC...
Spaniard talking: Now that you're also taking siestas due to extreme heat are you also "lazy people" as we'd been tagged by your kind for taking siestas?
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Englishman talking: Damn it, tried to think of a witty putdown but completely failed. Must be this dreadful heat boiling my brain. :-)
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The Brexit referendum also took place in the summer. Was it hot that day?
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Well, you still had Johnson, so I guess we're even.
global warming is no joke (Score:2)
American talking. I find that in the summer months that people have a short temper and behave irrationally. We usually have an uptick in crime during the hottest parts of summer too. Hope y'all can keep cool and safe, it's bad news if this becomes a regular occurrence.
Re: global warming is no joke (Score:2)
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Maybe people are violently intolerant of lactose?
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BTW, the actual quote is "Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun", from a song by Rudyard Kipling.
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As a Northern Canadian, I think all Spaniards are fragile folks because they don't think of 5-10C as being t-shirt weather.
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Why you put on a shirt, did the forecast say the weather gets nippy in the night?
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They should have been prepared for this unprecedented heatwave.
At least, that's what everyone smugly told Texas during our unprecedented freeze last year.
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They should have been prepared for this unprecedented heatwave.
At least, that's what everyone smugly told Texas during our unprecedented freeze last year.
Unprecedented? Or something that happens every so often, like in 2011 and 1989?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I wouldn't say Europeans are lazy. Less paranoid and war-like than Americans would be more accurate. Generations of Cold War can do that to you.
I mean you'll not find many Europeans that think a shopping center is safer when everyone can bring a gun. But that is exactly the strategy that many Americans feel is necessary. Two totally distinct cultures that are difficult to compare.
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I mean you'll not find many Europeans that think a shopping center is safer when everyone can bring a gun.
Everyone can still bring a gun to your shopping centers, whether you think so or not.
You can only forbid the law-abiding people from doing so.
Re:Poor people... (sarcasm mode on... fire) (Score:5, Insightful)
Less paranoid and war-like than Americans would be more accurate. Generations of Cold War can do that to you.
Eh, I'm not entirely sure that's fair.
You guys have had a good 80 years, I'll give you that.
But you're also the gold standard for "warlike people".
Perhaps you guys have truly broken your several hundred year cycle of continent-spanning warfare, but I think it's too early to tell. You've had lulls before.
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The EU made war between European nations impossible. The more members the better.
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To be more precise, American oppression make war between European nations impossible.
We hope the EU still prevents war after America leaves, but it's a hope.
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Movements to essentially dissolve the EU are gaining ground. The Pax Americana is ending. I hope Europe holds together, but I'm not so sure.
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There are so many assault weapons out there already, they could make them illegal today and we'd still have mass shootings for decades. Some will be turned in, but most will have been 'lost in boating accidents'.
So, weird as it sounds, it's probably true. In America, you gotta strap up to head to the mall, or hope somebody else has.
Or someone would grab a hunting rifle with similar capability to an assault weapon, but a less war like package.
"Assault weapon" (Score:3)
Gun violence is a substantial problem and one that we should be taking steps to mitigate, but you're grossly overstating the scale of the problem. The bigger problems with gun violence don't make the news -- isolated one-off cases or (even more frequently) suicide or misadventure (read: accidental suicide).
I'm all for closing loopholes, ensuring proper access controls and screening for firearms, and I'd even go further and say
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I'm all for closing loopholes,
What loopholes? Be specific. If we can't identify the loopholes then we can't write laws to close them.
ensuring proper access controls and screening for firearms,
A large number of mass murderers passed all the existing background checks and yet thousands of law abiding citizens are wrongly prevented from purchasing a firearm every day by these same background checks. Large numbers of these people eventually get through the background check but only a handful of people that fail a background check are actually charged with a crime. You'd think that if someone fa
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Well, I hope the police has...
Erh...
No, wait, I'm thinking European police...
I hope the police hasn't.
Re:Poor people... (sarcasm mode on... fire) (Score:4, Insightful)
The exception happened, ok.
Statistics (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it actually turned out to be the case yesterday [youtube.com] when a legal carry concealed carrier stopped a mass shooter.
Yes, but if you had effective gun control there would likely not have been a mass shooter for the armed individual to stop. You can show all the individual incidents of a good-guy with a gun stopping a mass murderer you like but, if you look at the statistics the number of mass shootings in the US dwarfs the number anywhere else in the west.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with gun control, this is overwhelming evidence that arming sane people is much less effective at stopping armed nutters than preventing those nutters from getting a gun in the first place. That does not mean that gun control is the only or even best solution to the problem but it is beyond a doubt a much more effective one than just hoping there is armed good-guy nearby.
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In the USA we have armed citizens defending themselves with a firearm against mass murderers. In the rest of the world the mass murderers use bladed weapons, vehicles, improvised explosives, and any of a number of other weapons while the citizens are armed with beer mugs and bar stools to defend themselves. I don't see that as an improvement over how the USA does things.
Look again at your "overwhelming evidence". You will find that they define "gun violence" so broadly that it includes murder with suicid
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Why focus on mass shootings when they are a miniscule portion of overall homicides?
US is about where you would expect in terms of homicides per capita at 5 per 100K, somewhere between Canada (2 per 100K) or Mexico/other Central and South American countries (30-40 per 100K - btw most of them have a near complete ban on private gun ownership) as it fits somewhere between those countries demographically and culturally.
Also, do you consider it interesting that places in the US with the highest rate of gun owner
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What does lazy have to do with this? Hard work does not mean wealth - the wealthiest people do the least amount of work. If you head to poor parts of America or Europe, you will see the hardest working people are the poorest - manual labor in the fields, in factories, etc. Europe does produce products and services - they have a higher standard of living than the US, so they must be getting money some how.
In the US, I get free healthcare (paid for by employer :-), and at age 65 I get free healthcare too.
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You said they are lazy. I disagreed and offered an example of cultural differences, or rather I tried to point out your own bias in the matter.
That is why they produce very little in terms of meaningful products and services
It's been a pretty tight race [reddit.com]. What one side has in laziness the other makes up for in inefficiency.
No one mentioned guns
I did. as an example of both paranoia and of cultural difference.
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The case in Japan was so notable because gun crime is so amazingly rare there. Even the yakuza don't use guns in Japan. Whereas in the US, especially this year, the amount of mass shootings is extremely large dwarfing most of the rest of the world.
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Re: Poor people... (sarcasm mode on... fire) (Score:2)
We do however like the opposite vision. It is more sensational, less boring. It also serves as a nice excuse for not trying ourselves, and making everything simple
So my boring conclusion... We're all the same, decent nice social creatures. But more seriously, if by lazy, you mean that we do not stampede to the capitol because an election did not turn out the way we wanted, I pr
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We're all the same, decent nice social creatures. But more seriously, if by lazy, you mean that we do not stampede to the capitol because an election did not turn out the way we wanted, I prefer lazy Europeans. ;-)
I totally agree with the thought that most people everywhere are "decent nice social creatures". ;-)
I'd think you'd prefer the "American insurrection" which had no weapons and only ended in a single death (one of the protesters) to the folk who stormed the Bastille or executed their monarchs. Those seemed to get a bit bloody (not just for the monarchs either)...
I'd take a few morons walking the halls of the capital taking pictures to actual revolts.
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https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]
https://abcnews.go.com/US/oath... [go.com]
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne... [dailymail.co.uk]
https://www.foxnews.com/us/man... [foxnews.com]
I cant find much on the right wing sites, but that makes sense, to acknowledge that there were weapons would not fit the narrative.
That patriotic right wing people brought weapons and planned to obstruct recognizing Joe Biden as president would not sit well.
So, dont report it.
Entering the Capitol was a violent event, even if those pushing their
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A small fraction of Americans live in Tornado Alley.
I did for about a year and a half when I was 19. And ya, fuck that. It took exactly 1 tornado for me to realize that the Earth simply does not want us there, and I'm OK with that, because it also has the most fucking un-hospitable weather in the country, even when it's not trying to blast you off the face of the planet.
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Yes, because hard work creates fossil fuels out of thin air.
It all depends on what you are used to. (Score:5, Insightful)
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In my part of the U.S., 90F/33C does occasionally kill people. Usually in conjunction with high humidity, and usually in apartment buildings in poor areas where A/C is unaffordable, not working, or nonexistent.
And it can get a good bit hotter. Officially our record is 40F circa 1986 - and I remember this - but parts of town were 2-3 degrees hotter.
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I lived in the midwest for a while, where a 100 degree day would have you dizzy after a 100 yard walk from the house to the barn.
here in Seattle, I walk a few miles even when the temp hits 100 in the summers, because as long as you have water, the humidity is low enough that you can still keep cool.
Re: It all depends on what you are used to. (Score:2)
It also depends on humidity. Iâ(TM)m in Scotland just now, suffering at 27Â. I was fine at 35 in California, and not even this uncomfortable when it hit 40Â. 45 though⦠that was all kinds of pain.
It's not just what you're used to (Score:2)
That said, once you get past a certain temp (around 78 F) you're pretty much boned no matter where you are. There's a reason very, very few lived in the American SW before air conditioning. Past the age of about 50 you were probably dying of heat stroke.
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Once you get above 37, human body temperature, things start to get tricky. Your body needs to maintain a fairly narrow internal temperature range, or stuff stops working. When the air is hotter than the inside of your body, you can't remove heat through the skin. You have to get rid of it other, less efficient ways.
In fact that closer you are to 37, the harder it is to regulate body temperature. In the high 20s you start to have problems with physically demanding tasks.
A certain amount of adaptation is poss
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The numbers in here are so wrong i
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You guys just keep moving that goalpost, don't you?
Re: It all depends on what you are used to. (Score:2)
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The second paragraph is demonstrably incorrect.
The auto-correction he was referring to was the elimination of human civilization (reducing us back to small tribes), because cretaceous environment simply cannot provide the food we need to maintain populations of even a fraction of today's.
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That heatwave was impressive. My wife and dog hid in the bedroom with the portable AC.
Myself and my cat (seriously, what the fuck is up with cats and heat) braved the living room where the 2-digit thermostat was pegged at 99F (infrared thermometer indicated that the walls were 108F)
But you know what we continued doing during that heatwave? Working
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A/C not present in households? (Score:2)
I would suspect most of the flats and houses not have A/C as it is very unusual to be (so) hot there?
Re:A/C not present in households? (Score:5, Informative)
https://assets.publishing.serv... [service.gov.uk]
According to that report, less than 5% of homes in the UK have A/C.
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Wow, really?
Geez, I dunno if I've ever heard of homes not having AC...I mean, if they're too old to have central AC, they at least all have window units...
Interesting.
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Pretty much every country which doesn't touch the Mediterranean sea has basically no air conditioning. It doesn't normally get hot enough to need it. Central heating systems on the other hand yes.
Re: A/C not present in households? (Score:2)
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I think you're somewhat confused about the history of insulation in both places. The USA certainly didn't practice it for the "last couple hundred years" on a widespread scale. Fiberglass insulation wasn't invented until the 1930s, and polystyrene and polyurethane foams later than that. Cellulose insulation wasn't around until the 1950s, when clothing became cheap and disposable. Before any of that the common method (evident in my 1860s home) was to use an air cavity between the outer 1" board sheathin
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This one landlord I had back in the day implied I was "whining" for asking about AC, and later I found out he not only had AC in his house, he had it set at 65. Meanwhile I have no balls because I find it hard to think in 93 degrees at 80% humidity.
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Correct. There are only maybe 10-15 days in any given year when it would be genuinely useful. Larger shops and offices have proper HVAC systems, however.
Re: A/C not present in households? (Score:2)
As a Brit - Iâ(TM)d be surprised if more than 1% of households had AC in the UK. The number is rising (very slowly) now that heat pumps are beginning to catch on for new builds, but itâ(TM)s very much not the norm.
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To be fair, having lived in California all my life, only my parent's home had A/C. I have a portable A/C only now. Other places I lived, no A/C whatsoever. Sometimes it's pride I think - when in college in San Diego there was no A/C probably from being cheap, but also I think there was an attitude that if you had A/C then you were admitting that the weather wasn't perfect. So after college, none of the apartments had A/C either, and in Silicon Valley the A/C is also rare. I've got a friend in a very ups
Problem is, the houses... (Score:2)
We don't have much AC usage over here in the UK, because it's never been worth bothering with.
The average summer temperature, even in Southern counties, rarely gets over 77F and when we do get what we call a "heatwave", its usually gone within days, with some rare exceptions.
So, this Monday & Tuesday are ridiculously exceptional for us, hovering close to 100F for two days, with night time temperatures not dipping much below 72F - and it's a problem because the vast majority of houses are designed for ke
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Above 85f or so all of the time can be dangerous. Usually you get a cool down over night. You probably won't. If it's above 90f inside, I would recommend trying to sleep outside regardless of outside temperate. It's midnight there, how's it inside?
Are there AC cooling stations? Spend a couple of hours there per day (let core go to regular, let metabolism heat you for a bit).
Fans, ice (in a bowl, in front of fan), and dampened synthetic shirts (on self, in front of bowl) is my recipe for handling high t
Unaccustomed (Score:5, Insightful)
I see a few comments here sarcastically saying "poor brits" simply because you live in a place that's hotter. Well good luck suddenly dealing with freezing cold. The things you're "accustomed" to go way beyond just how you feel about temperature. It goes into how buildings are constructed, how infrastructure is prepared, how it is maintained, how you normally eat and drink and work during the day, policies around working. Everything gets adjusted.
I used to live and work in a chemical plant where 40C days were a common occurrence. We've never had an employee with heatstroke. I also worked at our European sister plant. During the maintenance stop, 3 employees were hospitalised with heat stroke and the temperature barely topped 30C. Completely different work process, completely different uniforms, different equipment, different facilities, different access to water (mandatory waterbottles on one site, banned from drinking in the plant on the other).
Everything needs to be adjusted for such an extreme deviation from normal temperature.
Re: Unaccustomed (Score:2)
Maybe the Texans poking fun should be reminded that their electrical grid canâ(TM)t even stay running when it gets a bit cold. I mean, we may be struggling along, but at least our infrastructure is still mostly functional.
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Well... that's because you don't have ACs to take down your electrical grid right now.
https://assets.publishing.serv... [service.gov.uk]
I'm sure if less than 5% of Texans had heaters, we would have been able to state "our infrastructure was still mostly functional".
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Are there Texans poking fun? Also, you can turn the question around. Texas had a once in a lifetime cold spell of -17C (normally hardly ever goes below 0) and many US liberals and, I think, Europeans were blaming Republicans/capitalism/lack of regulation etc i.e. saying we should be more regulated, you know like those sensible Europeans. Meanwhile the moment temperature deviates from expected by 5 degrees Europeans literally start dropping dead like flies.
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"I see a few comments here sarcastically saying "poor brits" simply because you live in a place that's hotter. Well good luck suddenly dealing with freezing cold. "
It is a matter of proper preparation. In Eastern Washington the winter lows commonly hit 0 F and the summers commonly get over 100 F. For Spokane the record low is -30 F and the high 109 F.
I live further west and lower so the lowest temperature I remember is -19 and the high was about 112. It is 83 right now after a cold front blew through last n
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Thing and the UK is that buildings are mostly crap for any weather, hot or cold. We have the oldest housing stock in Europe, so a lot of it is poorly insulated, has very outdated heating systems, few options to cool.
Somehow new builds are often even worse, especially on the cooling front.
Fahrenheit (Score:3)
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Turns out that Fahrenheit is more useful for measuring temp from a human perspective because there are more degrees of gradient and so you can get a better idea of what a temperature feels like using a whole number rather than a number with a decimal place.
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The 0-100 F scale also corresponds roughly to the extremes of a temperate climate. It gives you nicer numbers for pretty much every use case. Except boiling water, and when I want to do that, I just listen for the sound it makes.
A lot of the metric measurements units are better, but Celsius isn't.
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We don't see fractional degrees of Celsius. The only place I've seen that is US weather forecasts where they've presumably converted it from Fahrenheit. A degree of Celsius here or there doesn't make much difference - why bother with the extra accuracy if you can't tell anyway?
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If you can't calculate between C and F in your head, why are you on Slashdot?
Very Confusing to Americans (Score:2)
Understandable, I guess (Score:2)
For Americans in states that regularly sizzle, those numbers might seem underwhelming, but this is happening in a country unprepared for such extremes. In a nation known for its scudding clouds, frequent showers and temperate weather, the blazing heat was enough to hobble much of the country.
I imagine that many places in the US would be similarly hobbled if forced to eat boiled lampreys at every meal, deal with people who cut into line, pay outrageous taxes and have to put up with universal health care.
OMFG! Temperature about average! End of the world! (Score:2)
We are all going to die!
Paul Joseph Watson nails it. The government is looking for something to go into hysterics about.
Thermogeddon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1WLjYAttV8
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People turn the AC on here on Slashdot all the time.
Britain, and much of Europe, doesn't have central air conditioning, or even fans.
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Wow, really?
Interesting, I've never lived anywhere that houses didn't all have air-conditioning.
Even houses that were too old to have central AC at least have window units.
I could understand if you were in the arctic or something where it never gets even warm, but I'd just never imagined western nations having many places that didn't have air conditioning.
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Britain has (used to have) a temperate climate like the pacific northwest in the US, where air conditioning is also a rarity. I've lived in Seattle for 20+ years and never had AC that came with a home, and for a long time didn't need it. I bought a portable unit a few years ago to deal with the heat waves we now have.
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The only fans in Britain are in a football stadium.
Ok, maybe cricket.
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>Surging AC demand
Not in the UK. It's just not needed, except for 5 days every 11 years or so.
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I couldn't imagine living anywhere without AC.
I can't sleep at night if it is warmer than about 72-73F.
Re:Nothing!!?? (Score:5, Informative)
The windows in American homes are generally a LOT easier to mount temporary air conditioners in.
In the US, a typical house has "sash" type windows, where the lower half slides up. It's not quite proper, but to a large extent, you can just set the unit on the windowsill, partially close the lower sash to keep the unit from falling out and down, extend the side curtains, plug it in, and have cold air in 5-10 minutes.
British houses tend to have windows with more complicated openings... often, combining MULTIPLE types into a single window:
* a horizontally-sliding segment that's probably too short or narrow for an American-style window unit.
* a tilting segment that's unfit for use with ANY kind of window-mounted air conditioner
* a crank-out casement segment that could probably work with an air conditioner... except, if you've ever seen the price of air conditioners for casement windows, you already know how outrageously expensive they are compared to "normal" window-mount air conditioners.
Of course, they can use hose-type portable air conditioners... but frankly, hose-type portable air conditioners just kind of suck. They're physically HUGE, and not particularly efficient. Single-hose portables depressurize the interior and draw hot, humid outside air into the house through any available opening. Dual-hose portables radiate heat from the intake and exhaust hoses into the room being cooled.
Obviously, mini-split air conditioners work in Britain... but a mini-split isn't really something you can just run out, buy, and have working within an hour. Given how neurotic British authorities tend to be about demanding permits and inspections for everything, I'd be shocked if it were even unambiguously LEGAL for someone there to self-install a mini-split air conditioner. Even in the US, it's technically a no-no in most parts of the country, and something you can only get away with because the local authorities don't really have the resources to police it. In Britain, the local authorities have enforcement resources to actively look for violations, and pursue them with zeal.
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I've never lived anywhere that had homes without AC (central or at least window unit bare minimum).
I just kinda assumed in this day in age, pretty much all western countries had AC in the homes, unless you're in the arctic or something.
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They are just bought by a different industry to sell green energy which seems to need crazy amounts of subsidies from the govt to make affordable.
LOL. Why is it that during partisan discussions it is always Republicans who claim that green energy need crazy subsidies, while ignoring the $20bn+ the USA subsidizes the fossil fuels industry with directly. I mean sure the USA isn't alone in this, the EU does so at the same rate per capita, but somehow we don't seem to have people quite as stupid as republicans in Europe who pretend that subsidising green energy is unique and out of the ordinary.
Educate yourself. But not too hard, you may turn democrat an
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Re: Global Warming (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually research says that Democratic households use less electricity [sciencedirect.com] than Republican households, although Greens use even less.
On the other hand, a solid majority of Republican voters (66%) support vehicle fuel economy standards. However if asked, an even larger majority (70%) support rolling back fuel economy standards (source [yahoo.com]. I'm not saying that to make fun of Republican voters; I understand completely; they see the usefulness of CAFE standards, but philosophically they don't like them. That's exactly how I feel about, say, drone assassination of suspected terrorist leaders. I see the usefulness of that but if we could do without that would make me happier.
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"Democrats are big government types that need a crisis to convince people that they need more government. We've had the federal government working on global warming for over 40 years now, does anyone think they are any closer to solving the problem now than they were then?"
We are closer, apparently not close enough though. No, I get that one event does not prove anything.
But we keep seeing glaciers melting and temperatures rising on average.
"Government isn't going to solve thi
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So, to what end would we drill?
Export.
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The whole system of corporate decisions in government-related or tied situations leads to the same - they care about only themselves and ones who might make their life richer/better/whatever in the heck is in their brain.
If you pop them out and put very intelligent, fair, non-political individuals in their positions, you get quite a bit of "wow, this is messed up. There are so many variables. If I fix this, it breaks that. if I fix that other thing, it breaks ten things, which then breaks 3000 others. I
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Is that Vogon poetry?