AC For Me, But Not For Thee
It’s Monday morning, June 29, and the Environment Canada website that I check for the local weather and forecast currently features this:
I think the tiny ! over on the left is a cute touch.
Anyway, a ‘heat dome’ is about to settle over Southwestern Ontario, and the media are predictably all aflutter over it. They have for some time been reporting in breathless prose about the heat dome over western Europe, but this local event is much better for them, of course. Coincidentally, I came across a story on the Politico website about that European event, dated June 26, and titled:
EU Commission HQ forced to shut down air-conditioning amid heatwave
The EU Commission HQ is in Brussels, definitely under that heat dome.
So – Question One. ‘forced’? By who or what? Some loopy regulation? That is possible, as I also came across a report in The Telegraph that local planning council enforcement officers had forced some London UK homeowners to remove AC units they had installed. They were judged to be ‘unjustified’.
The Politico article is rather murky on this Question. The sub-headline is ‘As Brussels bakes, the Berlaymont building’s AC stops working.’
Stops working? It shuts down when the temp gets too high?
I doubt that, in part because the Politico article also includes this quote:
Staff working at the Berlaymont building received a text at midday, reading: “BERL — URGENT — Due to extreme weather conditions, forced shut down of air cooling system from floor 1 to 7 for the rest of the day.”
The 13-story building is home to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, her 26 commissioners and about 3,000 staff. Von der Leyen works on the 13th floor, and most of her commissioners’ offices are housed on floors eight or above.
Now we get it, right? The peons on floors 1 to 7 were ‘forced’ to go without AC. The important people working on 8 and above – AC still works for them.
A worker from those lower floors is quoted in the article as saying ‘It’s like feudalism’.
At least they didn’t say it’s like fascism.
The article’s last sentence is yet another piece of opaque nonsense:
The European Parliament has also faced blackouts this week due to energy consumption from cranking up its cooling system.
So that sentence literally says the EU Parliament cranked up its cooling system, which then increased energy consumption – I’m good with the logic so far – and that in turn caused blackouts.
Sorry, that last bit does not compute. What is meant by ‘blackout’? And how could that be caused by increased energy consumption by the EUP? Are we to believe that the EUP shut down the grid by cranking up its own cooling system? An impressive cooling system, if so.
That is 21st century reporting for you.
Stay tuned
Back when I was working, I would indeed be in my office in the summer, and on hot days like the ones that are forecast for this coming week, we would get emails saying that ‘due to the heat, the AC will be cycling down in mid-afternoon’, or words to that effect.
Bureaucratic logic – when the heat is the highest, we will cut down on AC. The claim seemed to be that this generated savings for the university through some agreement with the local electricity provider, London Hydro. So, again, bureaucracy. The U would rather save money than provide a reasonable working environment for its employees. Our AO would often send our underpaid staff home if it got too hot in the office. My faculty colleagues would just stay home.
My question then was always – ‘I wonder what the temp is like over in the President-and-Poobah offices?’
I await the arrival of further UWO Admin emails this coming week…
1. Later on the same day that I wrote the above, no email from the UWO bosses, but I did note this on the Environment Canada website:
So, it’s an orange warning, now. I am guessing that indicates greater danger. Or something…….
2. Ok, it is now Wed, July 1, Canada Day. No emails regarding AC have come from the university admin here on the third day of the ‘heat dome’, even though the temp at noon is already 31C. I am guessing that it finally dawned on someone in the admin that sending emails to your employees telling them you are cutting down on the AC to save money just pissed said employees off. I don’t go into the office anymore, so I don’t know what the temp has been like in my old building during all this.
On the other hand, I did get an email from AlertWesternU, the hapless automated system that warns UWO people about dangers of all kinds.
This email had the subject line: Heat.
The actual content of the email is copied directly from the Environment Canada website. It is what comes up if you click on that orange thingie I pasted in above. Go, AlertWesternU, what would we do without you?
Said content includes all kinds of insightful advice like:
Close blinds, or shades and open windows if outside is cooler than inside.
Turn on air conditioning, use a fan, or move to a cooler area of your living space.
And my personal favourite:
Never leave people, especially children, or pets inside a parked vehicle. Check the vehicle before locking to make sure no one is left behind.
Yes, indeed, no child left behind.
3. A final take on this, circling back around to AC in Europe. My thanks to the WSJ for reporting on this one. The article starts with this:
France has been broiling in a record heat wave, yet Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire declared last week that “individual air conditioning is a scourge,” and “public authorities must act quickly” to prevent a rush to install home AC units.
I can’t see even the generally hopeless Mayor of London, Josh Morgan, trying that one out.
However, the Mayor of Paris left it to the deputy mayor to suss out the cause of French overheating:
“OMG, this is so rich!” Paris Deputy Mayor Audrey Pulvar wrote online late last week, responding to American criticism. “As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, you bear a significant responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing. Your cities, ‘90% air-conditioned,’ are not unrelated to this.”
Note that she did not blame Donald Trump. I admit that I cannot help wondering if the offices of the Paris Mayor and staff are air-conditioned.