World News
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
view the rest of the comments
As this keeps happening I continue to wonder when Europe and the UK will finally realize how badly they need to air conditioning. The units are (or were in the past year or 3)b way more expensive there than here in America. I dunno about current costs. It's worth it though, even if you only need it for like 1 month out of the year.
In France the government is helping people get Aircon by subsidising heatpumps, also way more carbon efficient than Gaz or fioul based central heating.
It depends on the kind of heatpumps, in a lot of cases the heatpump is installed to replace a boiler, reusing the radiators and hot water circulation already available.
Unfortunately in this case the heatpump cannot be used as AC.
Not as AC, but a reversible heat pump can use the heating system for cold water circulation.
It's rather limited, because you run into condensation concerns, but it's still a possibility. A place I used to work at did this. It wasn't perfect, but took some of the edge off.
On the other hand reversible heatpumps work great with floor heating.
Having a cool floor during a heatwave is amazing, plus no noise,
How does this subsidy work? Asking for my dad, who lives in France.
I live in Spain, and since temperatures are now reaching 39°C in my area, I ordered two AC units for the most used rooms in my house (living room and bedroom).
With installation it costed 1300€. A months salary basically. In my area the cheapest unit with installation was 450€, but it didn't look very reliable.
I ordered it 11 days ago, and I'm scheduled to receive it and installed either this week or the next. AC installers are oversaturated with orders this time of the year. It's insane.
They are trying to push people to heat pumps (basically air conditioners tech wise)
They are also moving towards building/efficiency regs that require completely sealed houses and forced air systems in new builds.
So new houses will effectively be required/encouraged to have an air con capable houses.
The old housing stock though? Oof. I'm on a private estate that even bans that kind of stuff!
You can get a grant to install heat pumps, but ONLY if they can't be reversed and used as air conditioning.
Also, I'm keeping my combi-boiler until they literally stop pumping gas to homes. Fuck water tanks.
I guess that's to stop people from using it to get air-con when it's mean to help people move away from gas. A bit silly though.
.....I suspect there are a few models that only need 1 part switched for it to be possible....
Looking further into it, the "heat pumps" we've been pushing seem just for the ones that heat water, and then pump that round your radiators/out your taps.
The exclusion is for anything that moves air.
Do you have a link for the exclusion bit?
I think this is the official bit.
https://www.gov.uk/apply-boiler-upgrade-scheme/what-you-can-get
It must replace an existing fossil fuel system, and you can't be left with a hybrid system (e.g. heat source plus boiler)
Meaning it must heat water somewhere, using the heat pump. Can you even get a system that heats water and air? And would that be included in this scheme? Some guy on reddit says they're excluded, he may be full of shit.
I'm assuming there's a much more detailed guide than this for installers, full of technical jargon about what is and isn't included, but I can't find that.
I think it just requires you to have a heat pump for all your water and heating. There appears to be pumps that do both, (mentioned in this article) but that's more research than I can get away with while 'working'.
We're very aware in the UK but it's not too easy. We have some the oldest housing stock in the world. We don't have central air with no real way to retrofit so it would have to be one room at a time. Our windows aren't designed to house those units I see in NY. We have to rely on very inefficient portable units so I only use it on the really hot days. Energy prices are still high after Russia's invasion. People are adding proper units when extending but only the rich can really afford that.
Add to that, that all these old UK houses have about as much insulation as a cereal box.
Split heat pumps are very common in Southern Europe. Modern units have insane efficiency, in the order of 4 units of heat or cold per unit of energy expended, and can be installed almost anywhere, in contrast to central units. The only downside is that they don't provide hot water.
How badly we need AC?
How about “how badly we need to get our shit together to stop human caused climate change”?
It'll be both, even a very aggressive response will take decades for it to Stop getting hotter then at best it will not get hotter. It will be 4-5 decades at best before it gets cooler.
Methane adds some uncertainty to that though. If you were to stop using gas it might cool off after it disappears in a decade in the atmosphere.
But it will keep getting hotter in every circumstance even if we act aggressively on climate change.
I’m just so tired of people dealing with the climate change as if it was inevitable, like some karma shit. A lot of people just don’t want to change. They want to keep going like they used to and that’s driving me insane.
You can just say Europe.
Ik Dutch, and have airco in every room in the house that isnt a bathroom or toilet. It's awesome. Also have 30+ solar panels so whenever I use the airco, it's run on solar power.
My living room is around 36 square meters and the cheapest AC unit for that area was 650 - 850 euros. You also have to pay a certified company to install it, which cost another 200 - 300 euros.
The median salary is like 900 euros, which makes it out of reach for a large portion of the population.
Is the median living room 36 square meters? Seems unfair to compare median salary with a rather big house/apartment.
Growing up our dining/living room was 24m2 and I could be cooled with a 200 euro portable AC.
Fair point.
We also have a 20 square meter study where we installed AC. The unit cost around 550 euros and installation was like 70 euros cheaper. Total cost was cheaper but still hard for a median family to support.
Most families use some sort of fan or cooling column but they are quite lackluster and only work in summer.
I wonder what's the cost for them to install one. I got mine installed and it cost around €350(rm1600 in my currency), everything included, for a japanese brand(Daikin). shouldn't be too horribly expensive for european country, especially when people started to adopt it.
Edit: but honestly, i wonder how well aircond would work in 40°c+ temperature, it relies on pumping heat away from the room, and if outside is so hot it wouldn't able to effectively cool the refrigerant. Still better than nothing.
Air conditioning works just like a refrigerator in that the cooling is accomplished by the compression and decompression of gas. The outside temperature has no effect on the ability of the unit to cool the inside space. Air conditioning just vents to outside, it doesnt use outside air. The same is true for a window unit as it is for a central system
to a point. It still relies on radiating the heat produced at the compression stage outside to the outside air. Due to how thermodynamics work this becomes less efficient or even impossible once the outside air approaches the same temperature as the compressed gas. Once the gas can't cool down after the compressing step the ac starts to lose effectiveness fast
Bingo!
For new buildings that is already case. For older buildings there is limits to how well you can retrofit them with new heating/cooling/insulation systems. Lots of building are messed up, because changes to insulation and heating/cooling lead to humidity and mold or worse mushrooms.
Why would they need more airco when many houses and apartments still don't even have proper shutters for windows and many people still don't know you should keep your windows closed during peak heat hours, many roofs still barely insulated and they turned all their yards and driveways into concrete and asphalt hellscapes. A nice adult tree in your yard does more than an airco, fight me.
I'm doing all of that have have good insulation, ground floor. Doesn't help when the temperature never drops below 20°C for a week (and I literally got up at 5:00 when it was coldest to air out my flat).
So yeah, I'm getting an AC this summer.
Exactly this, it's a last resort measure. More important is that every passive cooling option needs to be tried: outside shutters, more big green around the buildins, minimize concrete and asphalt around buildings, closing and airing at best times, etc. Some people just skip all that and go airco, especially in the USA. They are actively adding more BS to the shitstorm that is climate change.
Overall, I completely agree with this comment. But I live in the middle of the forest, completely surrounded by trees and when it hits 35c that air conditioning is very needed. Trees are nice but an air conditioner they are not.
There's a huge difference in that between the UK and countries further to the south: for example, pretty much all dwellings in Portugal have outside window shutters whilst in the UK it's incredibly rare (instead they have inside heavy courtains, so the light goes into the house and the INSIDE gets absorbed by transformed into heat by the courtains) but on the other hand housing insulation is generaly complete total crap in Portugal, but less so in the UK (still not at Scandinavia or Russian levels of efficiency, but way better than Portugal) so in Winter unless one uses massive amounts of electricity/gas for heating, it's literally colder indoors in Portugal than in Britain.
At the very least both Portugal and Spain are much better adapted to higher temperatures than elsewhere in Europe, and that's anchored on traditional techniques (such as outside window shutters, houses painted in light colors and the type of roofing used) rather than the brute-force energy-heavy techniques (such as heavy use of Aircon) so common in places like the US.
Well in places like UK, people are installing AC instead of trying many other, passive cooling options first. They don't plant a single shrub next to their building but do put in highly inefficient portable AC units meanwhile asphalting/concreting there driveways... That's exactly what got me on my high horse. AC can be needed, but it's definitely not the first way to go in a northern-ish European place if the building doesn't have outside shutters, very non green streets around etc. It's not the miracle solution, AC adds to climate change, other ways of dealing with heat do not.