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.
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?
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!
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°
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
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).
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.
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
