I guess the "don't wear ties" comment was meant to be less serious, but men's business clothing has driven a lot of office thermostats to 60⁰F over the course of my experience. Men in suits and ties are comfortable at the approximate temperature of a meat locker, while everyone else is freezing and energy is wasted. If the PM were serious about trendsetting to reduce energy use, he would ban the suit jacket and encourage men to wear shorts to work.
It's not just that, it's also that men have higher skin temps than women. If a man and woman were wearing the exact same clothes, in the exact same room, the man would still almost certainly be feeling warmer.
I've never understood why (in some countries) public places are so cooled down in the summer and so heated up in the winter. In Japan, in the summer they put the ACs to what feels like 16ºC, so whenever you go from outdoor (very hot and humid) to indoor, you feel like you'll freeze (because you're dressed for 30ºC). In the winter, they put the ACs to 25ºC, so you move from outdoor to indoor, it's extremely hot and sticky (as you're dressed for 5ºC). Why not meet in the middle and use 21ºC or something all year round? (Or save energy and just change the temperature a little to make it a bit more bearable.)
Myself and many others seem to find 21c too cold in winter and too hot in summer in some buildings. I think it's possibly due to radiant temperature: for example, the walls/roof/floor are hotter in summer so you need to cool the air down more to make up for that.
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!?
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.
For context, A/C in public places is not as prevalent as in the US. In some large retailers, e.g. El Corte Ingles, it's set to ~24 degrees Celsius, quite lower than outdoors, especially in the larger cities of Central, Southern, and Mediterranean Spain. It feels really cold.
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.
What would a modern human do without technology? Judging from the comments here it seems almost nobody can tolerate anything less than perfect thermal confort. Personally I find this ridiculous. Our bodies are perfectly capable of regulating their temperature over a pretty wide range of circumstances, especially with the help of adequate clothing, yet people are complaining about 18c in the winter or 25c in the summer.
> Judging from the comments here it seems almost nobody can tolerate anything less than perfect thermal confort.
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, 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 work from home most days, living in Sweden which makes me more used to colder temps. Some weeks ago we had a few days over 27C and my working space thermometer measured 26C inside. It was perfectly comfortable.
For whatever reason, I don't comprehend Celsius intuitively. I convert that to Fahrenheit and see 80.6 degrees. Is Spain dry? Or humid? I would revolt as I much prefer cold.
Probably because you didn't grow up with Celcius. Celcius makes sense because it's based on water, 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling. What's Fahrenheit based on? Anything we use in our daily lives?
The reason is simply familiarity. If you had lived your whole life with an inverted, nonlinear temperature scale that has freezing water at 53 degree, body temperature at 20 and boiling water at 0 degree you would also find that intuitive.
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).
27 is a comfortable indoor temperature for me (if I wear a T-shirt and don’t do heavy physical work). I wonder where a big difference in preferred temperature comes from, given that body temperature is almost the same for all healthy people?
You better understand Celsius when you use body thermometer. Normal body temperature is 37, 38 is a light fever, 40 is severe fever.
So 27 is temperature of a pleasant summer day, not too hot not too cold.
Celsius was based on scientific ideas and works great for describing scientific processes. Fahrenheit was based on everyday weather experience and works great for describing that. They're of course equivalent, and it would be better if the world could agree on one standard (not just for temp, cough cough, metric system).
[+] [-] public_defender|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bearmode|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stefandesu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cameronh90|3 years ago|reply
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!?
[+] [-] cko|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bamboozled|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Markoff|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LatteLazy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manuelabeledo|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nottorp|3 years ago|reply
Lit showcases are an anti theft measure too...
[+] [-] hgazx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andreareina|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ugjka|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ciconia|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manuelabeledo|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] saargrin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rstuart4133|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] piva00|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orwin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisRR|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] capableweb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] aaron695|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] draw_down|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mathgladiator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] midasz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] isametry|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cedilla|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvaldes|3 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] citrin_ru|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Glawen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Leherenn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robobro|3 years ago|reply
20 is not.
30 is warm,
40 is hot!
Body temp 37c.
20c = 68f (room temp)
30c = 86f. (68 mirrored)
[+] [-] t_mann|3 years ago|reply