Spain bans setting the AC below 27 degrees Celsius
theverge.com
theverge.com
I work from home and don't do business suits. I've always kept the a/c on 26 because I don't like the shock that you get when moving even from 19 to 30. Looks like other people are finally noticing that...
That said, Japan and some other places (Singapore!) take it to the extreme, and in a modern well insulated building, this is much less needed than it used to be. Maybe it's a hang-over from when wall insulation was terrible?
What I really don't understand is why, in London, the short distance commuter trains and buses are heated so warm in the winter. I'm only on the train for 10 minutes, why would I want to strip down!?
It happens in other places in Asia as well, not only Hong Kong. It's quite uncomfortable to go from ~34C and 98% humidity, to an environment at ~20C and less than 50% humidity. I'm surprised people don't get more respiratory illnesses more often.
It's a waste for the acclimatized locals.
First it was hard for me and making me sick, but then I got used to it also.
For a westerner, it might be hard to imagine constantly living with high temperatures like that. And for example having to sleep everyday with such climate.
Plenty of "western" countries and regions have similar climates.
In Tokyo, you sweat to death on the subway, then get off with wet underwear into the cold street and yeah, summer trains feel so cold it's like having a high fever when sitting on the train.
Anyway, the odd voice here is the one from the president of the Madrid region, who went on Twitter to say that they won't comply, mostly not because of the A/C, but another bit that requires stores to shut off their lights when they are closed, effectively keeping their showcases in the dark at night.
Personally, it sounds like the stupidest hill to die on.
Lit showcases are an anti theft measure too...
I mean, in a world where alarm systems usually include vibration and glass break detectors, cameras with night vision, and redundant phones for early alerts, do we really need showcases to be lit all night long?
I know. I'm from Spain myself, worked several jobs there.
I could cover a whole cafe with cameras for less than the cost of your average cash register, which, if I remember correctly, in 2008 was about 150 euro. Even convenience stores have cameras nowadays. I don't see the issue here.
You're thinking like a rich technologist. You're also assuming a pretty fast police response. What good does that stuff do if the police don't respond and thief or vandal wears a mask?
People feel more comfortable doing wrong when they're hidden in the dark. Keeping the lights on will deter a lot of people. A lot of gizmos no one will notice will not deter anyone.
Currently, basic cameras and alarm systems are very affordable, more so than most of the staple devices in any given shop, e.g. cash registers. And if we are talking about actual deterrents, then they should be looking at steel window grills.
But let's assume that it is true that keeping a store lit is a deterrent, then why wouldn't they put up cheap, motion activated lamps, around the store?
Point is, businesses need to keep up with the times. Just stating that lightning keeps thieves away is not going to cut it.
You're making the error of focusing too much on technological gizmos as "solutions."
> Point is, businesses need to keep up with the times. Just stating that lightning keeps thieves away is not going to cut it.
The context here is banning the lighting.
If some “gizmo” has the potential to make something better for a little investment, why not consider it?
Just like police cars patrolling neigborhoods at night lead to a drop in petty crime even if they don't actually catch anyone.
So far it seems just the word of a random Internet stranger against mine.
Yes we should have the freedom to keep our lights on if we want as long as we pay our bills. And if we want we shouldn’t have to build a ramp to our business. How are these things even something to argue about?
Are you serious? How is this even a thing to argue about???
>>Yes we should have the freedom to keep our lights on if we want as long as we pay our bills.
Even in an energy crisis? I imagine when you are faced with severe drought you also argue that you should be able to use as much water as you want as long as you pay your bills? What an argument. I'm not entirely sure where it comes from - blatant disregard for the needs of the society over the needs of an individual? Just money? Belief that as long as you pay for something then the greater impact on everyone else shouldn't be considered? I'm so baffled by replies like yours.
>>have made enemies of everybody who could sell us gas, etc.
I hope you don't mean Russia by this.
Yes I mean Russia. I don’t give a shit what they are doing. What’s the alternative, buying liquefied gas from the USA? Have you been paying attention to what they’ve done the past decades? Lol
It is a joke, isn't?
If they refuse to acknowledge that Spain is in dire need of saving energy, then they should be the first ones to be shut down if/when there is no enough power to warm up the country on winter.
You could use the same argument against any modern technology.
A car? Our bodies are designed to walk for hours. A hot shower? Our bodies can withstand cold water, and don't need to be washed every day anyway. And so on and so forth.
Yes, technology is there to make our lives more comfortable, but at what price? Is modern society mature enough to weigh the pros and cons of each technology? I doubt it.
The 27C headline figure would make more sense if it was something not commonly quoted, the web bulb temperature:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Psychrometric-chart-Givo...
Yes, outdoors, with high humidity, and 27C can become uncomfortable. But keep indoors away from direct or indirect infra red radiation (hot surfaces in sunlight like external walls and roofs can radiate a lot of IR into windows and the like, sunlight streaming into a window can add 1KW heating per square meter of window), in humidity low enough so you don't sweat, and add a fan then as you can see from that graph (area 12) it can be pleasant up to 30C. But remove the fan, raise the humidity, and even 25C can become downright unpleasant.
Setting the air-conditioning to 27C should be comfortable in the right clothes. Provided it is significantly hotter outside, the air conditioning won't just drop the temperature to 27C, it will drop the humidity as well. Keep the air moving and your body will do the rest.
I grew up with and actively use Celsius, but this instinctive disdain for other measurement systems leaves me… a little cold. It’s not even like Fahrenheit has weird non-decimal ratios. Save your mocking for the avoirdupois furlongs!
What's your standard of too hot? Uncomfortably hot? From the climate I'm used to then 80F qualifies. I'm not sure 80F is any less arbitrary a threshold than 25C. Don't confuse "my personal range of comfortable temperatures goes from 0-100F" with "0-100F maps neatly to every person's preferred temperature range and therefore is an advantage to fahrenheit"
(and that's before we get into the effects of humidity, or if outdoors, windspeed, on perception of temperature)
Similarly, 0F is -18C. -18C in my country would be a minor disaster, given our historical low is -5C. Our usual yearly low is about 0C, and 0C is more logical here than 32F, with negative temperatures actually being exceptional
As for personal preference, I think the first two thirds of that range are unbearable. I grew up in an subtropical area that regularly rises over 100 F in the summer. I don’t go around pretending that’s not hot though. It’s very hot! Unless you’re proposing different temperature scales for every climate, I’m unsure how your point about your local area is relevant. Surely people travel outside of your (and my) warm climate.
30C+ is too hot to go outside.
20-30C is a hot summer.
12-20C is the rest of the year.
0-12C is jumper weather or freezing to death in your home, depending on whether you can afford your energy bill.
<0C is fucking Baltic.
Celsius has many strengths, and is obviously better suited for scientific purposes. Fahrenheit is handy for outdoor temperatures. That doesn’t mean Celsius is useless for those.
These turf wars are weird. A good engineer doesn’t spur different tools, for different tools have different strengths. I can immediately make sense of both systems, and I consider that to my advantage.
Celsius and Fahrenheit are equally arbitrary / bad for scientific purposes, Kelvin is the only scale that makes sense since it's zeroed at absolute zero. Celsius is only marginally better than Fahrenheit in that you mostly deal with temperature increments rather than absolute values and celsius increments are the same as kelvin increments
In Fahrenheit 0 and 100 are defined in random ways, but it ends up covering most of the range of temperature human experience in the environment.
Celsius's definition does not include putting a thermometer inside an adult horse, but the common range of everyday temperatures is -18 to 50.
There are points of view in which imperial units can claim to be easier to use.
In the end the SI are technically better for sure; US imperial units are defined in terms of SI units, according to Wikipedia the pound is "legally defined as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms", nor it is a coincidence that -40F° = -40C°
I adore Randall.
Actually I had found it apparently but convinced myself that it was not the correct one, I deeply misremembered the setting.
It probably has an element of catharsis for people on the receiving end of "metric is superior" whining to point out celsius is not particularly rational
Yes, I get that, but that's what it will always remain — just a cope, but not much else.
The reason: Customary isn't criticized, as far as I can tell, based on how the individual units are defined. That wouldn't be really valid, because all base units are arbitrary, including those of SI.
No, the unit system is criticized as a whole. The way conversions are defined between each other, that's what makes them so much less practical. The fact that a foot isn't 10 inches, a mile isn't 1000 nor 10000 feet (hell, even 5000 would've been better). That 1 gallon of water doesn't weigh 1 pound.
In "daily life", both Celsius and Fahrenheit are mostly isolated scales – you don't relate them to other units very often, and you almost never have to convert them to anything else. So it doesn't really matter how they are defined — definitely not on the same level as length, mass or volume.
Anyway what I say going to say is there was a migration Path here which went along the lines of changing from a base-12 conversion to a base-10 conversion. So there suddenly was a customary unit and a transitional unit. After that metric base units were introduced
Both. Spain is one of the European countries with most diverse ecosystems. The local weather ranges from "tropical Mexico" to "Siberian winter". We have deserts and relic cloud rainforests. The inner core is dry and hot (not much unlike US pairies), the North is like Ireland and the West would be similar to California. Canary Islands are subtropical.
Currently most big cities are reaching over the 104ºF (40ºC). A pretty hot year. Environmental crimes made it much worse, so we are having a dry year also.
(Stupid note for myself: It seems that all the years with big wars are extra hot. Somebody should study how all this extra energy released locally by bombs and missiles interact with the weather models).
10-15 is nice perfect weather for outdoors.
I don't get why you said that most Europe is dry. Germany, France, the British Isles, the Netherlands, Poland, etc. aren't dry at all.
For instance, Bilbao is quite humid right now (about 80%), but max temps are in the 25°C. Madrid is expected to reach 39°C today, but humidity is about 30%.
20 is not.
30 is warm,
40 is hot!
Body temp 37c.
20c = 68f (room temp)
30c = 86f. (68 mirrored)
-20 is cold
-10 is cool
0 is cold and damp
10 is nice
20 is warm
30 is hot
40 is off the charts
FTFY