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In my latest essay, I try to list the major points I'm aware of that puncture the progressive narrative on economics, without trying to directly touch on the Culture War's social fronts.
Reality Has a Poorly Recognized Classical Liberal Bias
I think most people here have enough exposure to libertarianism that they are at least aware of these issues (even if they don't agree with them). If you think I missed one or I'm somehow dead wrong please do indicate so.
Well, yes. That was true of much of the northern U.S. until more recent times.
The problem is that the Europeans can't quite seem to get AC now that they probably ought to have it. It's kind of banned in many places.
That is a citation needed moment. Source - I am from Europe. AC is quite popular and widespread. And treated as necessity during summer. We just don't try to achieve polar temperatures and usually put it to 20-22 C (don't ask me why AC units became such pussies lately)
My recommendation would be to read the article and view the source cited therein as a good starting point.
Honestly I'm surprised this is something someone wants to contest. Do you have a lot of iced beverages in your part of Europe too?
I read it and it doesn't match reality. I look at the façade of my building and out of 40 apartments there are 30+ air conditioners. People use them both to cool in the summer and to heat in the winter. AC are extremely versatile devices when temperatures swing from -20C in the winter to 40C in the summer.
And yes we have ice drinks - we just don't enjoy as much the starbucks travesties - so ice is usually in water, soft drinks or soda water and cocktails. Or you just open an ice cold can of beer and drink it on the go.
We haven't tuned AC to 11 like US because relatively more people in EU live in regions with bearable humidity. And up to 32-33C heat is no problem if humidity is low. You just drink more beer.
Counter anecdote: many parts of Switzerland have serious restrictions on residential AC. Some cities have outright banned them (Basel, Geneva), others require the AC to be powered by solar panels, others just don't allow the heat exchanger of a mini split to be attached to the facade of a building. Those two are de-facto bans on AC in apartments.
When you're talking about Europe, regulations like that will vary wildly between locations, and you'll always find anecdotes supporting whatever side you picked.
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Have you ever heard the phrase "the plural of anecdote is not data"?
I'm not trying to convince you that your particular eyes are lying to you. But Europe is a pretty big place. In most of it, AC is not very common even as heat waves increase.
There is objective data on this fact. In my essay, I linked to such information. This is not, to my knowledge, a contested set of facts. You could, with the language skills and internet access you have go forth and rapidly find out that either I am right in my characterization, or show data that would force me to reconsider my statements.
But you standing outside of a building and telling me I'm wrong will not cut it because 1) I've been to a bit of Europe and 2) I can read sources describing the overall situation in the U.S. vs. Europe.
In even backwater shithole countries like Romania/Serbia/Bulgaria the use of ACs is overwhelming. You'd be hard pressed to find a building without them, even wearhouses and factories are chock full of ACs. New developments are even required to either have central heating/air or ACs, complete with solar panels on the roof.
Citation, please.
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It's the old established areas of Europe that have an allergy (or ideological objection) to A/C, not the ex-communist countries.
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I have been assured by top conspiracist minds that the refrigerant chemical companies ensure their regulatorily captured lawmakers’ outlaw refrigerants as soon as they go out of patent, purely for environmental reasons of course.
Am HVAC tech. Modern refrigerants are generally ok mechanically. Your theory is widely believed in the field but R410 is a fine refrigerant- it’s high pressure so there’s more leaks but it works just fine when it isn’t leaking. Propane would be even better but neurotic safety regulations the manufacturers oppose means it’s a good while before it’s going to be legal to fill a whole unit with it.
The reason new A/C units suck is because of energy efficiency stuff thats sometimes government environmental regulations and sometimes the factories trying to make it more expensive. Lots of the time it’s bypassed in practice.
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From a purely physical/technical perspective, modern refrigerants are fine.
Even refrigerants that completely satisfy our modem sensibilities (low global warming potential, zero ozone depletion potential) work as well as they always did. There's no magic sauce in those old fluorocarbons. Hell, even propane and CO2 are basically ideal refrigerants (but require a complete redesign of the cooling circuit, with much beefier parts to allow for much higher pressures).
If legacy AC systems seem to have more power, I'd assume they come with a more powerful compressor, and without pesky electronics that limit that power in any way.
Propane runs at normal Freon pressures. The government limits the amount that goes in a system for neurotic safety reasons(it’s flammable), which restricts its use to refrigerators and smaller air conditioners. But it works very well in those things.
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Part of the magic sauce is that they work at lower pressures. Other magic things include that they don't form HF if there's any water in the system, they're compatible with less expensive non-hygroscopic (remember that HF?) oils, they're single component so there's no need to replace all the refrigerant if there's a leak, and the very fact that the environmentalists hate them most makes them cool better. OK, maybe the last one is a myth.
Propane runs fine in a system designed for R-12. The issue with it is flammability.
While propane's flammability makes repairing systems using it more dangerous, it doesn't make much difference in running the system. It's a significantly better refrigerant than r-134a(the main thing it's replacing now) or r-410a(which, along with 404, it's likely to displace a lot of in the coming years) but a slightly worse one with similar drawbacks to r22(which has been banned/in phaseout for a while).
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I don't know. But my first AC that I bought in 2004 went down to 16C, was stupid and made the room a walk in freezer. My current - lowest setting is 18C and has all kind of smart bullshit to prevent it going full blast. Up to the point that I think of tinkering with the thermistor to convince the bastard to play fairly.
That has nothing to do with the Freon, that’s energy saving stuff.
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