Europe's Boiling Frogs

www.americanthinker.com

We all know the myth – to boil frogs, slowly increase the temperature so they won’t realize it until it’s too late to jump out of the pot and save themselves. This summer, it appears the frogs are starting to feel the heat. Along with the anger at open borders, this may finally presage the end of the green nonsense and the politicians who are destroying their countries by promoting this hogswallop.

Like clockwork, it gets hot in Western Europe during the summer. And like clockwork, the morons in the European ministries and media blame climate change for their own failure to face reality and make proper provisions for adapting to it. Living in the UK, Germany, and France seems to be like living in a giant HOA run by scientific idiots who exempt themselves from the draconian measures they apply to others as they set about recreating pre-industrial feudal states.

The reports from there stand in sharp contrast to the experience of FIFA visitors, who saw air conditioning everywhere in the U.S., even in Houston’s very large stadium, so the FIFA visitors' American experiences might be even more damaging to the governments involved.

France

Monique Barbut, Minister for Ecological Transition (yes, there is such a thing there), works in an air-conditioned office. She holds stock in a number of large energy-consuming companies like Airbus. She swatted away questions relating to her failure to ensure air conditioning where it’s most needed with this non-sequitur deflection:

I’m horrified by the people who tell me that all we need to do is put air conditioning everywhere (...) Do you think that's going to prevent forest fires, the death of animals? That's not adaptation, it's an emergency measure."

French electricity is largely nuclear-generated, so greens are deprived of the economy-killing excuse offered by the UK and German functionaries that they must reduce carbon emissions. (As if air conditioning offered much, if any, increase in carbon emissions. It is far less significant -- even if you believed it affected the weather to any meaningful degree -- than the output in China. China, by contrast, air conditions most of its urban facilities and its public transportation, and even water mists outside large buildings to cool the ambient air.)

In 2003, thousands died in Paris due to a lack of air conditioning. And because of the nature of most living quarters sans air conditioning, numerous premature deaths occur every time the temperature rises in the summer.

Without widespread air conditioning, perishable food will spoil in grocery stores, computers will not work, and public transport will be unendurably hot. Kids are fainting in schools. In one city in southern France, parents got together to pay for some air conditioners. The communist mayor ordered them ripped out because not every school in the city had them. Égalité!

Public transport in France generally lacks air conditioning, and the TGV (fast train) from Paris to Nice broke down in a tunnel, resulting in a five-hour delay. Babies fainted in the 122-degree heat aboard the train. The level of bureaucratic idiocy that results in so much death and economic disruption is impossible to ignore.

The UK

In the UK, homeowners are being forced to tear out air conditioners in their own homes.

Council planning officers ordered residents to remove air-con units over fears they produce too much carbon dioxide, stating they should only be used as a “last resort”.

The net zero clampdown is part of building regulations that state “active cooling” should only ever be allowed when all other means of “passive cooling”, such as opening windows or using fans, have been exhausted.[snip] Meanwhile, temperatures are forecast to reach as high as 40C this week, with Britain sweltering under a record heatwave that has forced schools to close, brought trains to a halt and led to the Met Office issuing a red “risk-to-life” warning.

Apparently, the busybody council meddlers require people to justify their need for active cooling. “Air-con engineers told The Telegraph that they had been called out to remove perfectly operational units worth thousands of pounds across London.”

Now, what makes all this even crazier is that all new housing in the UK is required to have heat pumps. As far as I can tell, heat pumps and air conditioners are technically the same -- they use the same compression cycle -- the heat pump extracts heat from outside and brings it inside, while the air conditioner brings the heat from inside to the outside.

The nitwit energy policies of the UK., including shutting down their North Sea oil production and mandating irregular and insufficient energy sources, meant the country was forced to pay about 17 times normal prices to obtain emergency energy supplies.

Rupert Lowe, who heads the Restore movement in the UK, speaks for me:

With such a debate raging about whether residential air con is a ‘climate responsible’ purchase or not, I want to outline the official Restore Britain position. WE DO NOT CARE.

Germany

For ideological reasons, Germany (and Belgium) stupidly destroyed their nuclear power plants, which it is claimed could have powered air conditioners at full blast all summer with fewer CO2 emissions. Even facilities where common sense demands air conditioning -- like hospitals -- are deprived of them because placing them in new buildings would create envy in owners of older buildings where there are none.

The most shocking story of this green “crab pot” philosophy is the relatively new hospital in Düsseldorf, which provides care for the most vulnerable heart attack victims who are suffering and probably perishing in this heated, closed atmosphere after builders were denied the right to install cooling systems.

To every criticism for mandating stupid policies, Germany has chosen to flat-out lie to its citizens.

German government to its citizens: portable A/C is "not effective" because the pressure drop sucks hot air into the room, "which heats the room even more". 🤯 "Here we see the midwit condescension of the European managerial elite in its purest form. First of all, this is all disingenuous. The environment ministry knows full-well that air-conditioners work, they just don't want people using them because it would strain the German electricity infrastructure -- which the environment ministry itself has done a good deal to weaken. Also, if portable AC units don't work, why have Germans bought 75% more of these machines in the last five years? Why are there literally millions of reviews on Amazon and elsewhere saying "This thing works great! Finally I can sleep through the night!" Why has pretty much nobody ever returned an AC unit, saying "It just made the room hotter!" How stupid do these bureaucrats think Germans are?"

In nearby Austria, the Viennese are replaying the 1940s as informers against those deemed enemies of the state. This time, the “enemies” are those who installed air conditioners.

In the back of many minds is the thought that the leaders of these European states understand full well that the most vulnerable -- the elderly poor -- are most likely to die from these policies, and that will free up social welfare funds for the hordes of third-world criminals and layabouts they prefer as constituents.

The European Union

Perhaps my favorite example of the feudal structure underlying European energy policies is this from Politico:

The European Commission’s headquarters was forced to shut down its air-conditioning system on Friday due to the heat wave.

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.

It reminds me of the many laws in feudal Europe that limited the peasants to poor housing, harsh labor, inadequate low-protein nutrition, ragged clothing, and made it illegal for them to escape.

Some Brits predict it’s only a matter of time before the U.S. military airdrops air conditioners over there.