This is real. I had to double check, but it is real.
"In France, media outlets often warn that cooling a room to more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit below the outside temperature can cause something called 'thermal shock,' resulting in nausea, loss of consciousness and even respiratory arrest."
Forget air conditioning at home. Can Europeans even begin to comprehend how cold our grocery stores are in the summer? It can be 110ºF outside and the inside of Walmart is always a crisp 60º.
More from this Wall Street Journal story about the debate over AC in Europe:
Others fear respiratory infections that might result from spending long periods in air-conditioned rooms. Europeans who are particularly concerned about climate change want to avoid using electricity for air conditioning that would generate additional greenhouse-gas emissions.
Yikes. The climate cult runs deep in Europe.
Energy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said large-scale air conditioning would heat up streets with the machines' exhaust, making heat waves worse.
Air conditioning uses the same system as your refrigerator. A liquid refrigerant (the very first refrigerator in 1913 used sulfur dioxide) circulates in pipes. Inside the home, this liquid refrigerant evaporates into a gas, absorbing heat as it does. The energy is then cycled to the outside of the home where a compressor forces the gas back into a liquid. As this happens, it passes through a condenser where the heat is dumped outside and the process begins anew.
There is no exhaust - you are literally taking hot air and dumping it back outside, where it belongs. The only emissions from AC are during the production of the machinery and the electricity involved ... and since 72% of France's energy comes from ridiculously clean nuclear plants, the only real emission is steam.
The Wall Street Journal frames this debate as a consequence of impending climate change (of course), but climate fear-mongering aside, there is a very real cost to human life that comes from heat waves, particularly to the very young and very old.
Experts say more air conditioning is a necessity to prevent thousands of people from dying during heat waves.
That's an understatement:
More:
'Abroad, the contrast is striking: the United States is investing several billion dollars to modernize the air conditioning of its schools, while hospitals there are already largely air-conditioned,' read legislation proposed by French conservatives this month that would require air conditioning installed in institutions across the country.
How in the world does France not have air-conditioned hospitals?? How am I just learning this now?!
I'll leave you with a few comments:
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