This winter wasn’t “efficient” it was cold as hell because we all turned the heating as low as it could go without causing building damage[1] because the price of natural gas more than 10x’ed.

It’s not an example of a sustainable reduction in consumption.

[1] though a lot of people didn’t think things through and set the temperature too low or even turned off the gas and now have mold and other problems in their basements.

Your choice of spelling of "mold" is consistent with your apparent lack of experience living in high humidity parts of the world :-)

And those corners will get moldy.

Oh and I don't have a house, nor a mold problem, but know enough people who do have, even though they do ventilate reasonable. Houses were build with the assumption, that they are heated.

Now you can build new houses that are better designed - but you cannot magically adjust all the existing houses.

Yes and no.

It depends on the country and areas within it and it applies mainly to houses built in the last 60-70 years or so, maybe a few more years back in cities (for heating with radiators) before that time many, many houses were (poorly) heated by fireplaces and/or stoves.

Besides, the permeability of the building materials was traditionally much better, and windows/doors were leaky, guaranteeing a much better ventilation.

At least here in Italy the heating was a luxury until well after World War II, particularly in the country and in small vilages, anecdotally my family used to have a house in a small village in central Italy where the heating until the '70's was based on the devices that can be seen here (Italian):

https://www.muet.it/storie/tutte-le-storie/item/il-riscaldam...

Particularly the kitchen and dining room was heated by the "stufa economica" that was also used to cook meals, the sitting room had a fireplace that heated also (a little) the bedroom behind it, and there was another large bedroom heated by a "stufa in terracotta", having a "prete" for each bed was needed.

The house was anyway very, very cold, particularly at night/early morning.

Well, obviously it does, but I would think most houses in europe do have to be heated and were build in the last 60-70 years and those I was refering to.

And before that, yes it was something like 2 bugs cancel each other out. Leaky windows prevents mold.

(And in general only rich people could afford to heat the whole house)

I reduced the indoor temperature this year to see how it was, and kept ~18'C. I think I'll keep it anyway - less energy used, and it's totally doable. When I have someone over for dinner, I bring it back to 20-21'C.

Btw, what's up with Nest? I want another V3 in my new house, but they are not available anymore??

Not yet anyway. It usually starts in e.g. bathrooms.

Right. That's why we have technology and other advanced things, to live like cavemen used to.

Not everybody lives at the right latitude to have 22 degrees Celsius indoors without additional heating in the winter.

That being said, as someone else said, controlling humidity is also a concern for the long-term viability of buildings.

17 at night, 19.5 during the day is as hot as our house has ever been in winter; though with a new baby I suspect that might change by 0.5 for a while.

I'm currently happy at 18, it's pretty nice if you're a bit active.

Where did i say or imply any of that?

Put on a jumper. Or even, let your body adjust. There's plenty of evidence that keeping your body working to stay warm when you are healthy is very good forblood sugar control, which has additional benefits.

My house is extremely well insulated (BER A2), dunno if it qualifies as a passivhouse.

Also I'm exporting more than a megawatt per year back to grid for free, so you (as a society) may be happy.

So, I don't think I'm being unethical.

Do you take into account the energy needed to grow and transport the food you eat? To extract the material needed for objects you own? To build your car? To maintain the roads you use? I guess you obviously don't use fossil fuels at all and instead rely exclusively on the clean energy you produce?

Because if you don't, then you are still overall a consumer of energy.

But even if you were a net producer of clean energy, we as a society have a big problem of consuming too much overall. We will have to reduce that at some point (whether we want it or not). So it would be great if people started thinking about not eating meat for every meal, taking a plane every second week-end, and living in a sauna.

We as a society need to consume less energy (because we depend on fossil fuels that emit CO2), and anyway we will have less energy in the future (because... peak production of fossil fuels).

There is no price on that: we need to do less with less.

At this point I see zero reasons to conserve damn solar energy while half of the country still uses OFCH.

One way is to say "well I don't care, I won't do anything until I don't get a choice, and probably at that point it will hurt a lot".

Another is to face it, start doing things, and pushing your politicians to enforce very big plans. One problem I see is that everyone says "I would be ready to do a lot more if I knew everyone else did", but when it's time to vote, they don't.

Not being ready to go lower than 24.5 degrees (doesn't have to be 19 if that's not bearable for you) in winter does not sound like you are ready to do much, though.

As I said before, I'm living in a house insulated up to the highest standard, I have a heat pump and a solar PV, the largest PV array in the estate. I think this is something reasonable. I work remotely, I don't drive much and I drive with very good MPG, I've figured out that my car has the best MPG at 90 kmph so I drive about 90 kmph, I don't travel often, I'm carefully sorting my waste (most people throw everything into the black bin), I'm trying to buy things which last and I'm trying to repair and sell, I think if everyone does that it would make some reasonable impact.

Though I don't think that 19 or whatever degrees is something of your business.

> you are ready to do much

I'm not ready to do unreasonable (or idiotic) things. Why 24.5? Because I've figured out that it's the most optimal temperature for me.

> I'm not ready to do unreasonable (or idiotic) things. Why 24.5? Because I've figured out that it's the most optimal temperature for me.

Let's say that your case is extremely special and for you it does not make sense to not overheat, it does not make it unreasonable (or idiotic) to say that the vast majority of people should not overheat, does it?

Unrelated: Does your solar pv really do anything for your heatpump? What's your kwh/kwp for december-february? I don't think it'll be anywhere close to the heatpump consumtion.

> I couldn't live with that temperature in winter, where I am wearing thick pullovers and jeans.

Are you really wearing those indoors?

However, I find it SUPER SAD that... in developed countries people are living less comfortably during the winter than the middle class in Romania, a developing country.

It makes no sense. In Romania, everyone who's at least middle class sets the thermostat to 22-23 degrees and basically only wears t-shirts and shorts indoors.

So a German making €40k net per year lives worse from this point of view compared to a Romanian making €20k net per year.

Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc

In the US, and I assume elsewhere, the single greatest reduction is carbon emissions was achieved by switching from coal plants to natural gas plants. Thats a win in my book. No fossil fuels at any cost is a losing proposition. Incremental progress to sustainable energy is how we get to sustainability.

But I don't see them as the end goal; that's still 100% renewable to me.

But for the short term, I think that's preferable to the much bigger disaster of global warming and climate change.

I'd happily wear a jacket, if that can help with shutting down a coal power plant

Apart from that, Romania's energy consumption comes 75% from coal, oil and gas. THAT is something that does not makes sense and something that is SUPER SAD. And to walk around in shorts and t-shirt in the winter when you are heating with those sources is just plain stupid.

It's unfortunately these kind of attitudes which will make it hard to reduce climate change.

2. That's just dumb. Romania reduced its energy usage a ton since 1989 plus its per capita usage is super low, if someone needs to look in the mirror it's the US, Australia, Canada, Germany, China (China for the industrial pollution primarily), etc.

3. Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc

I even doubt that anything would change if everyone in the developed world switches to this extreme economy. E.g. Russia burns coal and wastes hundreds of gigawatt hours to heat the atmosphere because of how their heating systems are designed. But of course it's lot easier to force me, a person who works from home, drives a hybrid car with 52MPG on average (and I rarely do more than a couple of hundreds km per month), travels couple of times per year and who installed a heat pump and a solar PV, to live with 19 degrees than to deal with Russia. It's equally easier to force me going full vegan instead of applying seemingly working solutions to reduce meat industry emissions (toilet training, seaweed diet, artificial meat in the end).

For the same reason that if you had two jobs with the exact same conditions, but one paid twice as much as the other, you would probably pick the one that pays more. Efficiency matters. Resources are limited. Oil is a resource. The capacity to take care of offenders is another.

The first thing when I come home is to change out of jeans and co and into more comfortable clothes.

There are few clothes more comfortable than a t-shirt and shorts.

In my country, we say that the bedroom should not be warmer than 19, because that's bad for sleeping :-). So it's really a choice. If I go to bed and the temperature is 24.5, I open the window.

Also I don't find it less comfortable to wear more clothes in the winter than in the summer. Ok, working from home on a computer at 19 degrees is a little bit cold, so I tend to use a warm water bottle. But honestly that's really fine.

Anyways I'm happy enough with my bills, even winter bills.

I live far to the north, in an apartment, and didn't notice anything this winter, wherever I went. But I heard someone in their villa here nearby actually moved elsewhere, over the winter, because of the high cost of heating

Edit: by villa we typically mean a house that is not adjacent to another house.

I for one hope the consumer market will get an overcorrection and I can fix my contract for a few years, since I'm not convinced we've seen the last of energy price fluctuation.

Continental Europe's got much better housing than the bits of the US which I've visited. East coast more relevant here than the West, given exactly where I went, but Boston, Providence, etc., were awful build quality, the "middle class" places around there were even worse than the "working class" Victorian terraces and post-War council houses in the UK.

My current house in Virginia is over 100 years old, and isn’t terribly well insulated and has single pane windows (although we have storm windows which help… also it’s small and is a duplex which helps).

So the places you visited (on East Coast, big old cities) are not necessarily very representative. Any place with newer housing will have better insulation. (And yes, I realize that a lot of people think newer houses are cheap crap, but overall I think building codes have improved average quality significantly, and the reason you don’t see it in some old houses is because the crap old houses were already torn down, ie sample bias.)

My personal gas+electricity bill went from €180 a month to almost €600. I really think the price of energy is a huge influence in the reduction of usage.

Of course, according to propaganda, it's all "efficiency" and "saving" and definitely not US effectively killing EU industry.

Just one example: https://cen.acs.org/business/finance/BASF-cutting-back-main-...

But it's never mentioned in such oh-so-wonderful super-objective democratic example of western journalism as this Economist article, LOL.

The western journalism started to hit the lowest bar set by third-world countries in the last 10-15 years. Or maybe it always was the same propaganda, I just never paid attention and blindly believed it until around 2008-2011.

Germany is in bed with China in the same way it was in bed with Russia, and you can see how that went.

The western journalism started to hit the lowest bar set by third-world countries in the last 10-15 years. Or maybe it always was the same propaganda, I just never paid attention and blindly believed it until around 2008-2011."

This has very strong "old man yells at clouds" energy. So where does such an incredibly enlightened person such as yourself get news from?

Another manufacturer of food-related products closed, too: https://www.europe1.fr/economie/le-groupe-cofigeo-william-sa...

A quick search brings up others, but in French.

Fair point about moving to the US, though.

I think the reason is twofold:

1. Industries can probably not afford to cut production immediately

2. At least in France, there were worries about gas availability for the winter. The government tried to have industries lower their consumption to not run out of the reserves during the winter.

https://www.grtgaz.com/en/en/our-actions/continuity-of-gas-t...

I haven't found a similar source for electricity, though articles I've seen talk of reductions, too.

The part of the claim you have taken upon yourself to substantiate is that the reduction is mainly (or even mostly) due to industry getting closed down completely or relocated specifically to the US.

I think the reason is the same as for the lower then expected impact of the sanctions on Russia. People are quite resourceful when facing an acute crisis. When millions of people have an actual motivation to find better ways of doing things, they tend to find solutions they would have never considered under normal circumstances.

The real question is whether there was a statistically significant difference compared to previous years ceteris paribus (same location, same time of year, etc.).

Also the influx of various refugees over the years should be taken into account.

Anecdotal evidence that there is homelessness does not automatically mean doom and gloom for a country.

I visited Frankfurt just 1 month ago and was shocked to see the situation being even worse.

I believe a lot of it is a post-effect of covid where some people fell through the craks and now are just lost to drugs or other addictions.

You might easily find that a "recession" is less damaging to people than a period of drastically cut energy consumption. People unable to heat themselves in winter undermines the idea of a growing economy - the metrics aren't supposed to be a shell game of excuses where some drops are papered over because it is politically inconvenient.

I mean, how are people supposed to be better off if we're seeing these types of sharp drops in energy use? It strains credulity that someone in the Netherlands can cut their gas use by 24% in a year and claim that their material living standard didn't decline. There'd have to be something mighty positive happening - what is it? They haven't had time to build up capital to keep themselves comfortable.

Stage-1) Politicians should be the first and their energy expenditures should be cut by law to half of the median with some painful consequences for breaking it.

Stage-2) After a couple of years Same goes for top 1% and government offices.

Stage-3) After another couple of years do this for top 10%

Stage-4) The rest of us.

20 years later we had cars using up half the gasoline and with 2x the horsepower.

Humans need a solid kick in the behind sometimes.

The fact that so many in the EU don’t realise this just points out how amazing American propaganda is

Asking as a fellow European (HU)

Basically Germany's entire foreign policy is economic suicide and very much driven by a US stooge (Baerbock). The total penetration of the German Green Party (formerly pacifist) is an excellent example of American influence.

Sanctions on Russian energy are a response to invasion. Apart from moral reasons, they also are meant to cripple russia so we don't have to fight them later in the baltics, in poland or romania.

So it's pretty much EU self interest here.

I might get downvoted for this, but the duty of every head of state is to ensure its country's economic and citizens well being is above anything else.

And what the EU as a whole did was exactly the opposite with the sanctions.

And no, no one would have had to fight anywhere else in Europe.

They are doing that by ensuring future conflict is much more unlikely.

If these measures were done earlier perhaps russia would not have started current invasion and we'd be much better off.

So perhaps politicians failed by being compliant up to now.

Try telling the baltics, poland, romania that they should not fear russia and continue trading... Same countries russia constantly threatens and are part of EU and NATO.

Imagine germany's position if Poland is conquered by russia.

> And no, no one would have had to fight anywhere else in Europe.

That's a bold statement considering russia's posturing, threats, history and leaked initial plans.

I’m very proud of that and I think cutting dependency on Russian gas – while we might not have necessarily wished for it to go this fast – is just plain good policy, making Germany more resilient in the future. Obviously there have been some short term bad consequences, that‘s pretty much unavoidable with any such drastic shift. But consequences have been far from catastrophic or existential for us. Germans and Europeans are going through some times that are a bit tougher – the people suffering, however, are in Ukraine.

I see Germany and Europe coming out of this more resilient and safer, especially if we make sure Putin cannot win this war.

https://www.reddit.com/r/latvia/comments/tdct34/russian_mili...

This article says the speaker is "Colonel Igor Korotchenko, formerly of the Russian General Staff and air force and currently a reserve officer".

https://www.thesun.ie/news/8513264/russian-state-tv-discusse...

This time we're tripping over ourselves to to make life harder for the Russians no matter the cost, seemingly lacking any self awareness.

Europe desperately needs its own army.

Ha! Do you not remember the Time making Putin a person of the year? They encouraged it back in 2009

1. With US diplomacy this war could have been avoided.

2. The US could fund and arm Ukraine entirely by itself if it wanted

The EU benefits in 0 ways from this war, which could have been avoided. German industry, the driver of the EU economy is basically destroyed without cheap Russian energy. Some say this is WHY the US provoked this war, to destroy the alliance between Russian energy and German industry.

Now knowing this, joining sanctions against Russian which barely work, for a continent that doesn’t have its own energy (unlike the us), is basically suicide. India, China, lots of other countries are still buying Russian energy.

Sending arms to Ukraine - by the EU it’s unnecessary. The US could do it, and they are part of this war. It’s also completely neutered EU defense by now.

I’m not pro Russia. I think the Russian army is one of the most inhumane and evil on earth. Putin is evil and a psychopath. The Russians deserve to be destroyed.

But - this is about US geopolitics, so the US should be doing the destroying. The EU leadership is committing geopolitical and economic suicide right now, which will make us way more vulnerable and poor.

Let the US sanction Russia, arm Ukraine, etc. great. The EU should meanwhile stand up for its own long term interest.

This entire war is like your average guy standing up to a bully and getting beat pretty bad, while the martial arts expert standing next to him is egging him on but not really joining. It’s ridiculous by the martial arts expert not to really commit, and send someone else instead. I know it’s not a perfect analogy as the US is taking part, but it’s close.

Russians desperately want to present the idea that they truly fight powerful US and NATO and still pushing; and not getting kicked ass by Ukraine getting 5% of US defense budget.

Do you believe that enabling the Russians in preventing countries around them from becoming more aligned with the EU would benefit Europe?

Do you think the US is the only NATO country?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/feb/07/eu-us-di...

> Do you think the US is the only NATO country?

in the same way that ussr was the only country that mattered in the warsaw pact

Could you then explain why it would be in the interest of European countries not to react to Russia invading countries on their doorstep? It seems inconceivable to me that European countries wouldn’t have reacted with sanctions and arms for Ukraine even if the US had kept completely out of it.

It seems crystal clear to me that making sure that Russia cannot win this war is both in the interest of the US but also and especially the interest of European countries. You don’t want a dictator that invades neighbors and is successful at that at your doorstep.

The list of NATO interventions are: former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, and counter-piracy in Yemen.

The list of Warsaw Pact interventions: invading Hungary and Czechoslovakia when they wanted to leave.

Quite a distinction. Only one of the NATO interventions was driven by the foreign policy of the US--all of the others were being driven more by Europeans' foreign policy concerns.

> Anything else is just victim blaming Russian propaganda that tries to justify Russia's naked imperialism.

That's such a narrow and poor way to talk about international politics, and it is exactly the reason why we have a war in Europe, and broken countries like Syria and Libya on our doorstep. Even if your intentions are good, it is worthless if the consequences are terrible. In general the "everything that doesn't align with my worldview is propaganda" is a pretty good sign someone loves eating propaganda.

Russia invaded Ukraine because Putin is a lunatic who wanted Ukrainian land to be part of Russia because he things that would cement his legacy. That is the only reason. Everything else is lies. The invasion has caused Finland to join NATO, which was a predictable consequence of the invasion.

Because Germany was dumb enough to make itself energy dependent on gas from Russia, a warmongering country lead by an autocrat, that having invaded several countries in recent years (Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia, Syria) and supporting military separatists in various European countries (Transnistria in Moldova), and despite the US warning them several times about this risk.

But chasing the sweet teat of cheap Russian gas like a dog in heat was too good too pass for German industrialists who saw only easy money, so all national security concerns went out the window.

Maybe Germans will vote better next time and realize you can't have a heavy industry while being non-nuclear and also energy dependent on an adversary.

If you use your brain for a second, the answer is easy.

Chechnya is part of Russia. Country can not invade itself. It can commit atrocities against their own and this is what Russia did during the war. This happened because Chechnya tried to secede. Unilateral secession of the region will not be appreciated in any country and will likely lead to internal war and this is what did happen.

In Syria Russia was invited by their official government. You might not like the government and for good reasons but it is irrelevant. Btw what legal basis other countries have being in Syria?

Try doing a bit of fact checking when posting.

And while you bitch about Germany - The US and Canada for example had industry / manufacturing largely destroyed by moving it to China. If for example China disappears tomorrow we are fucked big time for a while. Not sure how long it'll take to restore our independence from 3rd world manufacturing. It is general trait - if companies can earn extra buck doing something they would do it no matter what unless stopped by Government (which they largely own).

when thinking about syria please remember that ASSAD MUST GO

And yes, no real difference from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, etc.' If those places wanted to secede, and the US bombed them flat, would many be supportive of the US "legal right" to do so?

If you want to go that far come back to me when you return California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming to Mexico. And this is a beef just between 2 countries. There are many more.

Besides nobody gives a fuck about your "not really". What matters is what is recognized by the other countries and they accept Chechnya being part of Russia

No, that doesn't matter. It's still an occupation. Many people in the Caucasus gave and do give a "flying fuck."

It's also why they campaigned in Georgia, and in Ukraine, and why all the ex-USSR states are convinced that they are targets.

Your logic seems to be completely twisted. Good luck. I've lost interest to this conversation.

I do not think the US would give a flying fuck about any country being un-supportive in this particular matter.

And the worst part is they even fail at providing a good single market. You still can't work for a Spanish company from Germany (without being a freelancer), or pay your taxes in Spain with a French bank account. If you start a company, hiring across Europe means having local payroll offices to handle local taxes and labour laws in local languages in every single country (and possibly more internal autonomous regions). Trade unions differ in every country so there's no central negotiations.

Residence registration and ID is done independently in every single country, so you might be delayed by months when moving for work.

This is what we have in the EU at the moment - VDL as a "compromise" between Center-Right, Center-Left, Center, "South-bloc" and "North-bloc", coming from the party that won the election.

None of the other major party candidates would have been able to form a commission (maybe Margarethe Vestager, but then the party arriving third would have won, which would have been weird and undemocratic to some.)

I know some people would rather have the head of the commission elected directly - but, seing the crazyness of French system, completely centered on the election of a single person, I'm starting to reconsider...

As for being a "puppet state", well... I guess we come back at the US by forcing people to implement GDPR popups ;) ?

Right now VdL has just failed upwards, being a terrible politician in Germany who was moved to the EU to get her out of domestic politics, and it seems she'll be NATO leader soon (again unelected).

The ePrivacy Directive is different from the GDPR btw. The GDPR is actually not so bad tbh - although a bit too over-reaching, but at least it's a step towards making some things like I mentioned in the previous comment a bit more uniform.

The Parliament is also very weak and can't propose laws, etc.

I guess Californians and Texans can both vote for local politicians under the same party, but nothing force the politicians to vote together once in Congress ?

Also, I think as a bloc, the EU is not entirely ready yet for, say, French people to directly vote for non French people. But who knows.

As for the balance of powers in the EU, it's far from perfect. But coming from France, who am I to judge ?

I'm not sure I get your point. The European Parlement Election _is_ held accross all EU contries "almost" at the same time. It's spread accross a few days to respect the voting tradition of each member state, but the campaign very much happen at the same time for everyone.

There were debates between the "heads", but there you hit the language barrier - we're not going to see a Spanish candidate arguing with a German one in English on French Television any time soon.

> Like have French, Spanish, Greek, Swedes, Germans, etc. all debating and voting - and people would actually know the background of who the President of the EU commission is!

To be honest, the 2019 elections were the first time it _did_ felt like the voting was occuring across the bloc. Each cross-european party had a few clear faces for candidates for the Commission, beforehand.

Had the PPE received a clear majority, we would be talking about the Webber Commission - except, no-one really won, and they had to pick a compromise candidate.

> Right now VdL has just failed upwards

She is the grand tradition of the parlementary leaders chosen because they were "the least worse alternative", and "bad enough to be acceptable by everyone."

Again, I don't know if it is structural, or just the result of an election without a clear majority.

I understand this is an issue because she was only known in Germany. Would it have been better to at least choose a "compromise candidate" that had previous EU-level experience ?

Ironically, you have to notice that the British People did not vote for Sunak either ;)

I don't know what's the structural way to avoid "an elected body not agreeing on a name chosen before the election". Do you stick to the name, until you reach gridlock ? Do you setup your elections to ensure a clear majority, artifically reducing the diversity of your electorate until you have a duopoly ?

But VdL is the head of the Commission not Parliament (which is also far too weak IMO). The equivalent would be the King in Britain, which is obviously even worse, same for the House of Lords, etc. but two wrongs don't make a right.

I think really the Parliament should be more powerful with PR voting for the European blocs directly rather than local parties with the lists, etc. and the President should also be directly elected.

Basically give the EU parliament more power in return for greater democracy.

https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/04/06/poland-overtakes-us-t...

Industry changes over time depending on the the conditions. Europeans are not fond with an aggressive gas station on their footstep, cut back on buying stuff from it and obviously see the negative impact from buying from a gas station further away. They also live less comfortably but it's far from doom and gloom, which many suspect might follow if that gas station expand its power.

Everybody knows its not ideal to spend more and everyone knows its not fun to consume less. Sometimes, you have no choice unless you are nihilistic.

The US really isn't the country to beat for manufacturing, we're a fair way in to the 21st century by now.

Who knows, maybe we'll even get to see it growing through a nuclear winter at the rate the EU is going.

China: 75% of the same.

Now I know China is well known for their green credentials and the EU have been underinvesting in Green technology by policy... of wait, no it is the opposite of both those things. That is what failed EU industry looks like. The EU has been trying to set themselves up with batteries for a decade now and China is 5x-ing them by just knuckling down and producing stuff without worrying about political correctness.

The fact that the first market you thought of was one where the EU has been drubbed so badly should be a concern to everyone. Except maybe China.

You couldnt buy artificially carbonated water for some time. Naturally carbonated water and cola (different suppliers?) was available.

Some energy intensive industries (e.g. steel) are down, but the industry overall is up, meaning many found ways to optimize.

Edit: a source, in italian https://twitter.com/emmevilla/status/1640628147845492736?t=Z...

What?

Our ministry of interior has even official guides how to promote this blaming of Putin in media.

https://www.mvcr.cz/soubor/krit-memo-putin-a-hlad-20221214-p...

Because all i can think of is exploiting Africa or cosying up to middle eastern despots.

Done is done, but what I really can't forgive is that while pushing for this asinine conflict, there was literally no plan on how to deal with the consequences. Instead of diversifying our energy supply, we are now dependent on the US, which given its trajectory, will bite us in the arse 5 years down the line. Outside of France, there is literally 0 foreign policy competence left in the EU, and it is really showing with how helpless every crisis since 2008 has been handled.

And for Europe as a whole: Winter temperatures in 2022 were around 1°C above average, ranking amongst the ten warmest winters. [1]

As far as I understand, that's the top 10 out of the past 170 years.

[1] https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2022-was-year-clima...

America is just a vast, sparsely populated country with minimal environmental protection laws so they can afford not to care.

However, it was neither fun, nor comfortable to live in cold.

Today I'm walking around in a T-Shirt when everyone has some kind of thin coats on, but when I sit and idle for an hour, or get hungry, I cool down considerably.

My wife is extremely resistant to heat, but this disadvantages her in normal and cold weather severely. Her baseline is 22-23 degrees C to live comfortably, with long sleeved warm clothes.

Also, temperature doesn't always indicate cold's penetration power. If the air is dry, -18 degrees C is survivable with a mid-thickness polar coat. If it's humid, try to survive 2-3 degrees C with a down / wind-resistant coat. It won't be easy.

The same goes for handling heat and humidity. I grew up with average temps of 35 degrees C in a dry climate. It was not a problem at all. 28 degrees in high humidity I find unbearable.

Also, feeling cold at night lowers my mood, and I don't want to do anything. However, I'm fine during the day when my body's running at its usual. I live with a t-shirt all year round, even.

Adult sleep quality benefits quite a bit from even cooler temperatures at night, ~18.5 degrees C. Use a heavier blanket.

Being tired, not being able to warm oneself after dinner at home because of a slowed down metabolism at 18 degrees C is not comfortable for me (yes, even with warmer clothes, socks, etc. Hot drinks helps, but temporarily).

You're describing something that is true of every human on Earth. Everyone gets cold when they don't move. Everyone's body cools down at night. You don't need 20C to sleep at night.

Since my body cools down at night, warmer clothes doesn’t help (since I generate way less heat). I need to get under a blanket, which hampers my mobility a lot.

In the day, I’m very resistant to cold.

I grew up in a household that would keep it at 60 during the day, and 52 degrees at night in order to save money. I then took on a job that had me doing service calls into people's homes and it was eye opening that even the most poor run down apartment I'd visit would have the heat blasting at 75+. Oftentimes with a window cracked to boot.

I don't think I have a single friend these days that keeps it lower than 70, usually in the 72-74 range. And yes, I find it extremely hot when visiting.

Let's hope the EU policy in the works[1] will fix some of this and not get gutted by the anti-green populist factions.

[1] https://www.eceee.org/all-news/news/news-2021/new-report-epb...

Well nobody really measured how capping the temperature at workplaces at 18.C affects productivity, nor long term effects in health, so the "more efficient" part has a lot of different caveats.

I mean with gas and electricity prices going up 200-500% for consumers, of course you'd see people trying to save as much as they can.

Still, if we can do it for that, can't we do it for climate change too? It's a more abstract problem though; not as concrete, immediate and urgent as a war. And frankly, I wouldn't mind being able to put my temperature back to 20 next winter. 19 doesn't sound like a big change, but it's still a bit chilly.

As a Dutch citizen I'm using up an entire African village worth of water every month because it costs almost nothing. There are probably people on this planet right now living like the Fremen.

https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2022/12/PE22_518_433.html

But ignoring that, the chart at the end shows that coal, gas and solar increased their share in electricity production, whereas it was nuclear which showed the biggest decrease.

Per capita 42.1MWh for Germany vs 76.6MWh for USA in 2021 (before the war and any special energy savings) [1]. The living standard is comparable and the output per GDP is 0.98kWh for Germany vs 1.48kWh for the USA (in 2018) [2].

So it should be easy for the USA to reduce by 1/3 their energy consumption without affecting productivity and without even switching to other energy sources.

There is a lot of potential in energy efficiency also in Germany and other countries of course.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany?country=US...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany?country=US...

If you assume your conclusion, it’s easy to make convincing sounding arguments.

There are many ways that Germany is more pleasant than the US, and if you care a lot about those things you can construct arguments for why being in Germany is preferable.

But ability to consume goods and services is not one of those arguments. The US is MUCH richer than Germany.

How much of this is due to the extreme temperatures that the US population experience that are completely unheard of in Europe?

Source : lived in america for a decade and make decent money and my million dollar home has absolutely big standard heating and cooling. Underfloor heating is a luxury and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a home in all my time here.

As an American, I can’t understand for the life of me where anyone would get the idea that either of these is a common thing. I mean, an AC running on diesel isn't completely unheard of, in that a house might have both AC and a diesel backup generator, but underfloor heating or anything in the home powered primarily by diesel are not even remotely common.

There are many reasons for this: - they are richer, so they can afford bigger houses and larger cars. You think Europeans wouldn't like to live in a larger house, or drive a larger car? This is not a choice, or efficiency improvements, this is just Europeans not being able to afford more. - they have more land, so they can afford to live in quiet suburbia, surrounded by trees and lawns rather than noisy, polluted neighborhoods. - they produce their own energy. Oil import-export is close to net zero and they export gas. Producing oil and gas is energy intensive. Europe on the other hand imports energy, and don't have to account for those emissions. - they live further south, and need constant AC in the summer.

There are inefficiencies in the US, for example houses are poorly insulated; but these inefficiencies are a little overblown, when compared to Europe. If Europeans would live at the same standards of living like the Americans, and produce their own energy, they would be close in energy consumption.