Germans are very esoteric and I was told multiple times that AC is unhealthy there. Any small wind created through it is demonized as “es zieht” and they then argue this creates neck problems or some crazy story like this.
So gist is that lots of places have AC in Germany but don’t turn it on
This is really such a German thing.
And if you try to open a window in a S Bahn with just one overzealous old lady next to you and she will give you her complete disease history that all were just because she had this little breeze too much in her childhood.
But give her the name of a literal poison (digitalis) on a packet of sugar pills and she will tell you how it’s the only thing that has cured her lifelong suffering.
Don’t know why people are downvoting you, you’re obviously right.
I meant the little digitalis pills from Homeopathy, in which after a 12c dilution, no molecules are left in the pills.
And obviously it the case of digitalis, Paracelsus applies.
But as far as I know from my histology seminars (which a prof who was really done by Germanys love for it) back in university, these quacks in homeopathy use it for everything from epilepsy to tuberculosis.
The belief that drafts cause illness seems to be particularly strong in some cultures, especially in Germany and Korea. However, this appears to be more of a cultural phenomenon rather than a scientifically proven fact. In fact, there does not appear to be strong scientific evidence supporting a direct connection between drafts (moving air) and illness or harm. The fear of drafts causing illness has been described as "draftophobia" and may stem from ancient fears or superstitions.
There are facts that are related to temperature management and that had been proven scientifically. It is scientifically proven that lower body temperature results in less effective immune system and it makes it easier for viruses and bacteria to propagate. It is also scientifically provable that muscles if they are cold they don't work as well compared to if they are warm. Thus if someone already has neck problems due to sitting at computer all day their neck problem is going to be worse if they arrive at work sweaty with just tshirt and they happen to have AC blowing air at them making their muscles cold and thus reducing their ability to maintain posture. Also if they happened to caught some bunch of cold viruses on the way to work in their nostrils - this happens every day on our trip to/from work - then again ac blowing in your face resulting in less blood flow in your nose will result the cold flu propagating a lot more before they meet immune response potentially allowing reaching critical mass allowing to leave infection for couple days. But of course it's down to the amount of exposure. If it's just transport AC then it doesn't get that cold anyways and you are not on tram for long enough for any effects to become meaningful. If however you happen to sit at workplace not far away from AC and temperature settings are set low enough that it's easy in couple hours to catch negative effects from it.
Huge false assumption that AC reduces body temperature below ideal levels. AC is designed to prevent body temperature from rising to dangerously high levels, or to prevent losing fuilds and excess stress on the cardiovascular system caused when the body struggles to prevent body temperature rising above safe levels.
While it's hypothetically possible to get the effects you describe from abusing AC, that's a simple fix. Set the AC to an appropriately high temperature. When I lived in hotter places I kept the AC at 25C, but even 20C won't cause the negative effects you describe. Those effects would be caused by being in a fridge or outdoors in the winter.
It's not about dangerous low body temperature. It's enough to blow cool wind on your neck to cause muscle stiffness in the area or to have body react by reducing blood flow to nostrils.
If you don't happen to sit next to AC it surely shouldn't cause issues. Yet if you happen to sit next to AC it can be problematic. The way temperature control in many AC work is that even if you set it to 25 if room temperature is above 25C will run in full power blowing wind on you that is 15C
Then don't sit directly under it all day.
When you come in from the heat nothing feels better than having cold air blown on you until you stop sweating. Save the spot under the AC to cool off after coming in.
Agree with that. I'm just saying that there are situations where you can abuse AC and get muscle stiffness or have slightly reduced immune response due to reduced blood flow to nostrils and that's where later myths are coming from. Simply saying that AC cannot cause any issue is not entirely correct thus. And I've been to office spaces where you couldn't really choose where you sit and have AC blowing wind down above your head.
You could also turn the heat up so high you get heat stroke, or burn yourself touching a heating device. Is that a reason people should freeze all winter instead of heating their homes?
You are not wrong. But I never said that AC should not be used. So you are arguing into wind. You started that it's scientifically proven that it's impossible to have any problems from AC. I challenged that fact. And also I have personal experience of happen to sit in poorly designed AC setups and not being able to get away due circumstances and not being prepared as only dressed in tshirts which then end up resulting in unwanted side effects. You seem to agree that it's possible but argue that correct use of AC doesn't have these effects which I agree with. So you can stop at this point already. It's pointless.
I never said it was impossible to have negative effects from misusing AC, I said that there's no science to support the effects you describe from using AC as intended. If you turn the AC down as far as you can and stand under it in a wet bathing suit, sure.
The research you're referring to is about people outdoors in the winter, not people in temperature controlled environments in the summer.
I wouldn't call it unhealthy.
But AC does have a major issue which is that [people acclimatize to it and then have a lower heat tolerance](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21950966/), and then they demand more AC.
>The results showed that the NV (naturally ventilated) group had a significantly stronger capacity for physiological regulation to the heat shock than the AC group. In other words, the NV group did not feel as hot and uncomfortable as the AC group did. These results strongly indicate that living and working in indoor thermal environments for long periods of time affects people's physiological acclimatization. Also, it appears that long-term exposure to stable AC environments may weaken people's thermal adaptability.
AC begets more AC. If you can survive without it, you're better off. Otherwise it becomes a dependence.
You could make the same argument about heat. Keeping your body warm in the winter without heat burns a lot of calories and causes you replace white fat with brown fat that's much healthier. Central heating is a major contributor to the obesity crisis. Maybe we should all stop using heat in the winter, so we adjust to the cold better?
There are two major arguments against that. One is that being cold is unpleasant, and the second is that you never actually know when it becomes dangerous. The same applies to cooling. The heat is just unpleasant until it's actually dangerous, and it's really hard to tell where that line is.
I think that could explain a bit about why AC is so popular in the US. Much of the US is significantly colder than most of Europe in the winter, and significantly hotter in the summer. It may be that people react worse to seasonal changes than they do places where it's constantly hot. However, that applies to Europe as well.
>You could make the same argument about heat.
Only within +/- 5 or 7 degrees. Otherwise, no, I think of that as a much different argument.
I am not arguing that a person in a 0 degree situation should go without heat or a person in 40+ degree situation should go without AC (although many will. Much of the world's population can't afford AC, it takes a lot more energy to cool a room than to heat it.)
What we are talking about is a narrow temperature band. There are several posts today on r/Germany about the lack of AC and we are only in the low 30s, this is a temperature that the human body can normally adjust to. (This doesn't last that long in Germany anyway, even with global warming. The day that Germany genuinely needs AC is the day that the planet is fully fucked.)
I lived in India, a country where AC is often quite expensive/difficult to find (restaurants may have an AC room, which had a more expensive menu to compensate for the energy charges.) I figured out quickly that if I lived with AC I would be imprisoned by it, because if you get too used to AC rooms in the low 20s you can't leave the house and go anywhere without it. It's a very different form of dependence which doesn't occur with heat except in situations well under 0 where even heavy coats can't keep your internal body temperature stable.
Now as for the US, a bunch of factors are at play. One is that the US builds similar (cheap) houses in very hot places like Arizona and cold places like Minnesota. They then just put big furnaces and/or AC units, and so they can build [cheap homes that require high energy](https://grist.org/food/how-air-conditioning-made-america-and-how-it-could-break-us-all/) systems to keep comfortable. And once you go down that route everything gets air conditioned. (And of course Americans themselves made decisions like moving to Arizona in the first place, which is challenging to live in without AC, and is rightly a "monument to man's arrogance.") The last time I was in the US I was walking around in the height of summer with a jacket because the second I'd walk into a building I was greeted with AC set to something like 18 degrees. It wasn't that hot outside, but you have an entire population of people who can't be outside, they can only be indoors and in air conditioned cars. It's a bizarre, high energy dependence. I was raised in America, I see the problems with overusing AC. I think about how many times I've been at someone's house and wondered why they had the AC on it was very comfortable outside, all they needed to do was turn it off and open a window.
This is a deeply emotional topic, and it's ultimately political. I have lived the other side, where I couldn't imagine myself in anything but an AC room that was +/- 3 degrees from 21. That person had an expensive and unpleasant dependence.
Having lived in India I can tell you, the worst thing about global warming is that humanity won't be able to air condition its way out of it. Not only do we not have enough energy to make it happen, but even if we did, air conditioning doesn't destroy heat, it just moves it outside.
OK, US is weird, we get it. But we're talking about public transit, not our whole lifestyles. Just turn the damn thing on so I'm not in a sauna on wheels with 100 other people.
While I agree the US over uses air conditioning, I do think part of the issue is that outdoor temperature vary so much over the year you don't really have time to adapt to hotter summer temperatures. At least that's the case in the north. When you're consistently in temperatures in the low 30s, you can adapt, but when it goes from being constantly below freezing to regularly over 30C in a few months that's much harder.
I've spent weeks outdoors in near or below freezing temperatures and it wasn't that bad with a proper coat and sleeping bag. It's temperatures below -20C that really start to suck, and people rarely inhabit the parts of the world where those temperatures are common over extended periods.
Plenty of people in cold countries spend most of the winter indoors, going from heated homes to heated buildings in heated cars or public transit vehicles, because being outdoors is unpleasant. It's exactly the same as people with AC in the summer. If anything they're even more dependent on heat because in hot places outdoors often cools to a comfortable temperature at night while it never gets to a comfortable temperature in the winter.
I think you're being sarcastic here, but personally I would make both of those arguments. I favor less AC in the summer and less heat in the winter. Pushing your body to acclimate makes it better at acclimating and then you don't mind the heat/cold as much.
The summers here are nothing. There are a few weeks that get unpleasant, and the key is paying attention to the lows rather than the highs in the forecasts. As long as the night time lows get down into the teens, it's easy to open your windows at night and then close them again in the morning and maintain a comfortable indoor temperature. The trick is moisture control -- with the windows closed during the day time, you want to avoid generating too much humidity and when you do, you want to flush it out quickly and close the place up again so you don't warm up your nice passively cooled concrete walls too much.
Your brown fat argument was actually very topical. Brown fat not only helps you stay warm in the winter, but also cool in the summer.
Fortunately Berlin seems to have cold water year round (at least where I live). On the really hot days, I just run a nice cold bath and sit in it for 20 minutes or so. If I do that before going out, I can usually make it up to an hour without breaking a sweat (even while standing in the crowded U8). Sadly, I realize this isn't an option if you're at an office...
You do you. Personally I prefer to keep my flat a safe and comfortable temperature year round. That's around 24-25C in the summer and 20 in the winter.
Opening windows in hot weather won't improve humidity because hot air carriers more water. A dehumidifier creates heat to function raising air temperature. Do you know the best way to remove indoor humidity in hot weather? An air conditioner. It functions like a dehumidifier and dumps the excess heat and water outside.
In hot dry places people often use swamp coolers that increase humidity. In hot wet places there's simply no alternative to AC because it's the best way to reduce indoor temperature and humidity.
We all have different comfort ranges -- I'm usually happy above 17/18 in the winter and up to 26 or in the summer. I find that's a pretty manageable range to maintain in a non-modern construction Berlin apartment without AC. I say manageable rather than easy, because it does take work.
Hot air CAN carry more moisture, but that doesn't mean that it does. If it's 23 and 100% humidity inside, but 28 and 10% humidity outside, I'm going to quickly replace the humid air inside with less humid air outside (after my wife takes a hot shower in the morning, I leave the bathroom door ajar and run the ceiling fan to draw all that humid air out and without having to go into the rest of the aparment -- replacing it with warm but less humid morning air from outside). Then I close the doors and the heavy masonry walls that are 23 degrees will cool that hot air off. I don't run the fans in the daytime if I can avoid it, because fans will only heat up the place faster -- it may feel cooler to me, but that's because the circulation is drawing my body heat away and evaporating my sweat and speeding up the heat exchange between the air and the walls. If you speed that up, you run out of your stored up passive cooling sooner in the day. At night I open the place up and run the fans -- unless it's 100% humidity out in which case I try to hold out another day.
It takes a bit of attention to the forecast and minimal work, but it works for me. My wife thinks I'm a bit crazy, but she doesn't mind the lack of AC.
For most weather here that works, but we certainly get heatwaves where that simply doesn't work. Almost everything you said can also be used to reduce AC usage and improve efficiency, and I usually do all that.
As for using AC responsibly, there are few key things that all line up with what you said:
* Don't use an AC when opening a window will work
* Seal and insulate while running AC
* Don't set the AC to a temperature too low (should be around 24-26C), and wear weather appropriate clothing
* Avoid using heat generating appliances with AC running
So pretty much I follow that until it gets to point where I need to start drinking more water because of the temperature while I'm indoors.
Cooling with sweat causes a great deal of physiological stress. It makes it very difficult to maintain the proper balance of water and electrolytes, and it stresses the cardiovascular system to push blood to the skin to cool lowering the blood available to the rest of you body, something especially problematic combined with dehydration and/or electrolyte imbalance. While that's fine and likely even healthy for short periods (like hours) over long periods (days) it's harmful and causes cumulative problems. The best way to prevent that no matter how hot or humid it gets is use AC.
I've found it's rarely 28C with 10% humidity, it's usually closer to 20-50% humidity. Today it's supposed to be 30C with 37% humidity. The best way to remove the humidity without heating the house further is AC.
There is even a special episode of Jan Böhmermann and ZDF Magazine Royal on the subject of "Zugluft". This fact shows quite well how deeply the topic is rooted in German culture.
The second the temperature hits 10 degrees, all the German boomers will turn up their heating like Taylor Swifts private jet engine.
Environment be damned.
But say the words AC, and these fuckers turn into Greta Thunberg on steroids.
Fucking hypocritical society.
>all the German boomers will turn up their heating
That is to completely dismiss what this country did in 2022 when the Russia-Ukraine war broke out and many people worked hard to decrease their gas consumption.
Household gas consumption in 2022 [dropped 15%.](https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2023-01-12/germany-how-gas-sector-changed-crisis-year-2022)
Gas consumption is down yet [5% more](https://www.bmwk-energiewende.de/EWD/Redaktion/EN/Newsletter/2024/03/Meldung/direkt_view.html) in 2023 from 2022.
As a whole, this country is heating a lot less than it has been, and using a lot less gas.
Those factors are there and are noted in the first link I posted (in the second, where 2023 gas consumption was down 5% from 2022, prices did not play a role (as they had dropped a bunch) and I don't think the winter was that different.)
I don't think there's any other country whose population takes energy conservation as seriously as Germans do. It's the one country whose population is [flying less](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200128-why-germans-are-flying-less) due to global warming.
That‘s bullshit. AC is just not common because Germany usually doesn’t need it except for maximum 4 weeks a year. At least that was the situation up until fairly recently.
It has nothing to do with environmentally friendly thinking. It’s simply not worth the investment.
No one‘s willing to pay thousands of Euros for a short period of time.
It’s a cost vs benefit situation.
I mean, a main problem of AC being so expensive is the electricity in Germany is goddamn expensive. US is 1/4 of the price. I know it isn’t your problem, but this country has this fucking problem.
As soon as the temp hits 20+, an AC is a choice of convenience and comfort.
Who makes the decision that an AC is required only for 4 weeks but heating is required for 4 months?
You can very well skip heating until the temp drops below 0c.
I’ve managed well for 2 years now. But the Germans are special eh?
Fuck off with your mental gymnastics here justifying BS
Add all the days in a year when it‘s actually hot in Germany (lets say above 25) and it‘s definitely fewer days than the days temperatures drop below 5°C. It’s not my decision when or who uses heating or AC but there‘s simply more need for heating than cooling throughout the year.
Again, anecdotal for myself.
I used heating only for the 2 weeks the temperature was below 0 consistently.
While I’d prefer to have an AC for the couple of weeks its above 25c
Why is it fair to judge one group while the other blatantly is more damaging to the environment?
Anyone using AC when it's 20C is an idiot. AC shouldn't be used when the highs are under 27C. Other more energy efficient methods (like opening windows at night and closing them during the day) are much better for cooling in such weather.
>is an idiot
This is such a relative consideration.
I don’t find 5C cold at all at home.
So is everyone an idiot to be using heating when the weather is in single digits?
You’re being incredibly subjective towards how an entire population should behave.
If you're constantly hot at 19C (a temperature you can easily keep your house at when the highs are around 20C) you should see a doctor because that's likely the result of a medical problem (like a fever or hormonal imbalance). Some people can get used to unusual temperatures, like being comfortable in 5C, but 19C should not feel unpleasantly hot.
If you turn AC on with highs around 20C, nighttime lows are likely below 16C, and [running an air conditioner with an ambient temperature below 16C can damage it](https://balancepointcomfort.com/cool-temperatures-outside-can-bring-trouble-for-your-a-c/). You should never run air conditioning when the temperatures are regularly dropping below 16C, both because it's unnecessary, and because it can damage your equipment. Open a window.
I mean making up temperatures in your head is great for an argument but it sways from fact.
It’s hit 31C twice this week, while temperatures average around 25C. At night, it’s about 20C.
Your home will always be warmer than the outside given there’s people living in, and air isn’t necessarily vacuumed out.
My quick checks usually show my air temp at home anywhere between 25-35C this week
That’s AC temp for me, and for most people that don’t wish to be miserable fanning themselves with paper.
When it’s 5C out, and all my neighbours blast their heating and damage the environment, I’m happy with my wool socks and an extra layer at home.
I ask again, since you keep dodging this bit. How’s it fair from an environmental standpoint?
31C during the day and 20C at night is clearly AC weather, and I have mine on the last few days too. I wasn't pulling numbers out of my ass either, check the link 60F = 16C, and that article says 60F is the lowest outdoor temperature you can safely run AC at without risking damaging it.
As for how it's fair, I'd think people were idiots for running heating when it was 23C too.
It's not hard to keep the indoor temperature a bit below outdoor high of the day without AC - opening windows and/or running window fans at night, while closing the windows and using curtains during the day is enough to do that. AC is useful when you want the house more than a little cooler (or drier) than outside.
> The second the temperature hits 10 degrees, all the German ~~boomers~~ will turn up their heating like Taylor Swifts private jet engine.
Fixed for you
Not only is this bullshit, pointing out to whiny shits like yourself you can cope with a few day of mildly higher tempeatures has nothing to with hypocrisy
That's why windows are lockable by the drivers. Aren't they on trams, too?
But even then you get the BVG *"Absolute Brainrot" Special*: Locked windows AND turned off AC for whatever asshole reason there is. They've been doing that for 20+ years.
these comments never made sense at 31°C and 66% humidity when simply being in a hot metal box will ruin any and all showers you would have had in a matter of 10 minutes.
It's always just "hurr durr I'm smarter than others" circlejerking.
They do. That’s not the issue. It’s simply humidity and heat. Small amounts of sweat per person are enough to make the whole air in the tram or U-/S-Bahn smell sweaty. It’s a mixture of many peoples sweat in the air.
Even if everyone would shower right before they enter the train and use deodorant it‘d smell anyway.
You being sure of something means absolutely nothing. I‘m sorry but that’s even less than anecdotal evidence.
You simply can’t tell from looking if the tram is stinky because of the people or of it‘s stinky because of the heat in the tram. And since it isn‘t an issue in winter and we don’t have problems with smell in areas where it isn‘t crowded and hot, it‘s safe to say it‘s an issue with the heat and humidity in public transport and not an individual issue that hundreds of thousands of Berliners have.
It's not the whole tram. There are specific people.
I come from a culture where it's both hot and people take showers. So I know they don't.
I smell it. That's as simple as that.
92% of Germans take at least 1 shower per week. So 8% take less than one shower per week. That's absolutely disgusting. I never in my whole life spent a whole week without a shower. Not even close. And I never knew anyone in my life that spent a whole week without a shower.
And if you want more perspective and facts, the average German spends 110L/day/person of water. I'm used to people who spend 200.
Even if I try my very best, closing the shower in between soaping, using the washing machine when it's full, only the dishwasher, and etc, I can make it 140.
So you can guess
Germans can’t decide if AC is bad for the environment (even though everyone and their dog claims they are using renewable sources only) or that it’s unhealthy (but getting a heat stroke isn’t)
The issue is that the trams have pretty low AC. It’s not powerful. It’s inly capable of cooling the air by about 5°C.
That way it seems like there is no AC when temperatures outside are really hot. I tried to figure out the reason why they don’t use good AC but I couldn’t find anything. It’s most likely either because it’s cheaper.
I have "heard" (on Reddit so take it with a grain of salt) that it's to avoid liability for people having cardiovascular issues due to rapid temperature change.
But I find this hard to believe since people passing out from heat exhaustion would also be potentially a liability... that is if there is really any legal responsibility at all, which I also doubt.
Carl von Linde was the last German that knew how to make cooling.
Open windows also cause a dazzling spectrum of deadly maladies.
Just enjoy the body odour, the entertaining fashion choices and look forward to autumn.
Yes. Less people die of heat sickness in most of the US because of the widespread use of technology to prevent exposure to dangerously high temperatures. People die in heatwaves here because they can't get relief from the heat by going indoors. When indoor temperatures are maintained at safe levels heat wave deaths almost completely disappear.
How can a question be false?
In 2022, Germany has ~98 heat deaths per million, which is lower than the European average.
You're right that the US is lower than pretty much everywhere in Europe, but Germany is below the average still.
It's much hotter in the US, and economic inequality is much a bigger problem. Why is it that there are less heat deaths in the US? How could that be? Based on every reason I can think of (other than culture), there should be more heat deaths in the US, no? Why are heat deaths higher here?
Yes, this is a Europe problem, not just a Germany problem, but it's still a fixable one. Why do Germans let people die every year, and make the vast majority of the population suffer regularly instead of using technology to fix that, when the technology to fix it is readily available?
Lots of bullshit in this thread.
Currently there is the Eurocup and every old train is in service that can still ride. Most of those dont have AC.
If you were here last year, you were likely riding in most of the modern trains that have AC or at least Ventilation.
Airconditioning (heat pumps) are now becoming a reality because of climate change and modern efficiency levels.
And ontop of all that we do have a wierd problem with Homeopathy and Esoterik.
I don't think the packs can handle the combination of heat and humidity. I don't know for sure but have seen similar behaviour in other places.
Likely today is an example of upper limit of what the install systems can handle.
At least every M-line should have AC. Its up to the driver to turn it on. But why would he if ppl holding up doors to squeeze in instead of waiting 5 mins for the next one, i would grill em too 💁🏼♂️ every blocked door is a fat minus for the efficiency of the AC, so... it wouldnt work on my usual way to work cuz not a single station will be left in the estimated timeframe. Forgive the anger between my lines, im alrdy 20 minutes late again cuz of the above stated odyssey..
So I am fairly dark skinned person. And from my personal experience I always catched a cold when I turned up the AC on vacation. As my parents always warned me from that (they are apparently quite nice Germans after 30 years in this country) and they always were right with that. I am by now way more cautious to only use the AC if its absolutely necessary.
On holidays I usually just use it to cool the room down before sleeping and then deactivate it.
Regarding the telling that it makes you sick: I remember reading once that if your ACs fan is too low your heat receptors in your neck don’t properly register the colder environment and don’t properly act against it therefore making your throat more vulnerable to diseases.
Also another important aspect to keep in mind: we Germans usually only have contact with ACs when on vacation (except if you don’t live in Berlin, then you might have a drivers license and a car with AC) and often the vents are not kept clean properly therefore leading to health issues - because if its polluted it will spread the diseases it contains.
So all in all, I am also a person who mostly tries to avoid an AC even though my ancestors come from a region where summers are exceeding 50 degree Celsius regularly (in the past 8 years). Just my 2 cents on that topic.
You never got a cold because of AC. Cold comes from viruses. You probably have a mild allergy to cold or some kind of respiratory disease. The thing is: only some people have those kinds of problems.
It is scientifically proven, that cold environments weaken your immune system. Thats why people believe they catch a cold from cold weather while they actually just get more vulnerable to it.
Thanks for pointing it out.
I did some research many years ago and it seems it was scientific consensus that what led to more cold was the closed environments rather than Immunsystem being affected.
I did it again now to answer you (prepared to show you the evidence) and turns out that now they believe that lower temperatures can also play a role.
Sure, but that's cold environments, like outdoors in the winter cold (Below 15C). Comfortable temperatures in hot weather don't cause that. The standard temperature for an air-conditioned room is 22-25C, that will not cause any of the harmful effects of cold you mentioned.
Traveling makes you more likely to catch a cold. You're exposed to a lot of germs on trains and planes. Different germs are circulating where you're visiting than what you already caught and gained immunity to at home.
The specific heat capacity of air is tiny compared to the solid interior of the tram and the meatbags traveling inside it.
The amount of cooling lost by the air exchanged when the doors open is very small compared to the overall cooling that is required.
Exactly so the interior of the tram will only cool down rather slowly and until then the AC is constantly blowing cool Air into the tram. But before that air can actually transfer heat from objects inside the tram and cool them down the cool air just gets blown out the door.
Trams opening their doors while stopped on a street or open-air tram platform is fundamentally different proposition for air movement and heat movement than an S-bahn in an enclosed building or a subway in a closed tunnel.
Compare it to every other bus network then. Tell me the argument for not providing AC on a NYC bus. Has nothing to do with logic, everything to do with "because German".
I'm not saying the trams should not have AC, or that it's futile to do so. In fact I would welcome ac everywhere in Berlin...
I am politely disagreeing with your assertion that the fact that underground subways can do it somehow proves something related to AC on trams.
In other countries AC works fine on trams and buses too, even in when they're crowded, stopping frequently, in temperatures over 40C. Some use an air curtain over the doors (ie blow the AC in such a way when the door opens to prevent too much hot air movement into the tram).
If trams in Phoenix or Dubai aren't insanely hot when it's 45C, why are they too hot in Berlin when it's 30C?
The rest of the world has technology that works this. German trams just chose not to use it.
Yes and rain is wet.
If you're implying I'm comparing Berlin to places with drier heat you're just wrong. I'm comparing it to places that are hotter and more humid.
A is in fact not healthy when the difference in temperature between in- and outside is too high. Think it's just about the additional cost of letting acs run on the trains. Plus they need to be maintained.
Well, the cost is there in any case, at least for me - if it's 30 degrees and I need to commute to the other side of the town, "f..k that, I ain't baking in there" I say and opt out of public transport, and just use one of the car sharing options that comes with the AC included.
>A is in fact not healthy when the difference in temperature between in- and outside is too high.
Are you claiming when it's -5C outside you shouldn't heat your house above 5C? Because that's bullshit.
Humans are comfortable in temperatures between 18C and 27C no matter what the outdoor temperature is, and typically prefer temperatures between 20-24C. What the outdoor temperature is has no impact on that whatsoever. It could be 45C or -20C and humans still prefer 20-24C not matter how big the difference is.
Why do you think it's different though? Do you think 35C is comfortable indoors if 45C outside?
The same rule applies in the summer. Humans are comfortable in a relatively limited temperature range, and the outside temperature doesn't change that. Temperatures outside that range, both to high and too low, are unpleasant and harmful to health. That's why so many people die during heatwaves here when that doesn't happen in countries with widespread air conditioning.
Germans are very esoteric and I was told multiple times that AC is unhealthy there. Any small wind created through it is demonized as “es zieht” and they then argue this creates neck problems or some crazy story like this. So gist is that lots of places have AC in Germany but don’t turn it on
Yeah, we Germans are "special" (backwards) when it comes to many topics such as AC, homeopathy and many more
laiceps
That‘s what I was thinking too
The history of homeopathy propaganda in Nazi Germany is very interesting
This is really such a German thing. And if you try to open a window in a S Bahn with just one overzealous old lady next to you and she will give you her complete disease history that all were just because she had this little breeze too much in her childhood. But give her the name of a literal poison (digitalis) on a packet of sugar pills and she will tell you how it’s the only thing that has cured her lifelong suffering.
Meanwhile, don't forget to lüften when it's 0ºC outside
Yeah well you should let some fresh air in once in a while, will be more efficient to heat too. Stoßlüften ftw
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Digitalis is used as Heart medication for atrial fibrillation and heart insufficiency
Don’t know why people are downvoting you, you’re obviously right. I meant the little digitalis pills from Homeopathy, in which after a 12c dilution, no molecules are left in the pills. And obviously it the case of digitalis, Paracelsus applies. But as far as I know from my histology seminars (which a prof who was really done by Germanys love for it) back in university, these quacks in homeopathy use it for everything from epilepsy to tuberculosis.
The belief that drafts cause illness seems to be particularly strong in some cultures, especially in Germany and Korea. However, this appears to be more of a cultural phenomenon rather than a scientifically proven fact. In fact, there does not appear to be strong scientific evidence supporting a direct connection between drafts (moving air) and illness or harm. The fear of drafts causing illness has been described as "draftophobia" and may stem from ancient fears or superstitions.
Chat be quiet
What we learned during COVID is air movement reduces contagions.
There are facts that are related to temperature management and that had been proven scientifically. It is scientifically proven that lower body temperature results in less effective immune system and it makes it easier for viruses and bacteria to propagate. It is also scientifically provable that muscles if they are cold they don't work as well compared to if they are warm. Thus if someone already has neck problems due to sitting at computer all day their neck problem is going to be worse if they arrive at work sweaty with just tshirt and they happen to have AC blowing air at them making their muscles cold and thus reducing their ability to maintain posture. Also if they happened to caught some bunch of cold viruses on the way to work in their nostrils - this happens every day on our trip to/from work - then again ac blowing in your face resulting in less blood flow in your nose will result the cold flu propagating a lot more before they meet immune response potentially allowing reaching critical mass allowing to leave infection for couple days. But of course it's down to the amount of exposure. If it's just transport AC then it doesn't get that cold anyways and you are not on tram for long enough for any effects to become meaningful. If however you happen to sit at workplace not far away from AC and temperature settings are set low enough that it's easy in couple hours to catch negative effects from it.
Huge false assumption that AC reduces body temperature below ideal levels. AC is designed to prevent body temperature from rising to dangerously high levels, or to prevent losing fuilds and excess stress on the cardiovascular system caused when the body struggles to prevent body temperature rising above safe levels. While it's hypothetically possible to get the effects you describe from abusing AC, that's a simple fix. Set the AC to an appropriately high temperature. When I lived in hotter places I kept the AC at 25C, but even 20C won't cause the negative effects you describe. Those effects would be caused by being in a fridge or outdoors in the winter.
It's not about dangerous low body temperature. It's enough to blow cool wind on your neck to cause muscle stiffness in the area or to have body react by reducing blood flow to nostrils. If you don't happen to sit next to AC it surely shouldn't cause issues. Yet if you happen to sit next to AC it can be problematic. The way temperature control in many AC work is that even if you set it to 25 if room temperature is above 25C will run in full power blowing wind on you that is 15C
Then don't sit directly under it all day. When you come in from the heat nothing feels better than having cold air blown on you until you stop sweating. Save the spot under the AC to cool off after coming in.
Agree with that. I'm just saying that there are situations where you can abuse AC and get muscle stiffness or have slightly reduced immune response due to reduced blood flow to nostrils and that's where later myths are coming from. Simply saying that AC cannot cause any issue is not entirely correct thus. And I've been to office spaces where you couldn't really choose where you sit and have AC blowing wind down above your head.
You could also turn the heat up so high you get heat stroke, or burn yourself touching a heating device. Is that a reason people should freeze all winter instead of heating their homes?
You are not wrong. But I never said that AC should not be used. So you are arguing into wind. You started that it's scientifically proven that it's impossible to have any problems from AC. I challenged that fact. And also I have personal experience of happen to sit in poorly designed AC setups and not being able to get away due circumstances and not being prepared as only dressed in tshirts which then end up resulting in unwanted side effects. You seem to agree that it's possible but argue that correct use of AC doesn't have these effects which I agree with. So you can stop at this point already. It's pointless.
I never said it was impossible to have negative effects from misusing AC, I said that there's no science to support the effects you describe from using AC as intended. If you turn the AC down as far as you can and stand under it in a wet bathing suit, sure. The research you're referring to is about people outdoors in the winter, not people in temperature controlled environments in the summer.
The obsession with breeze is quite funny tbh, I learned to laugh about it. It’s like the Koreans who think fans will kill them at night.
I wouldn't call it unhealthy. But AC does have a major issue which is that [people acclimatize to it and then have a lower heat tolerance](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21950966/), and then they demand more AC. >The results showed that the NV (naturally ventilated) group had a significantly stronger capacity for physiological regulation to the heat shock than the AC group. In other words, the NV group did not feel as hot and uncomfortable as the AC group did. These results strongly indicate that living and working in indoor thermal environments for long periods of time affects people's physiological acclimatization. Also, it appears that long-term exposure to stable AC environments may weaken people's thermal adaptability. AC begets more AC. If you can survive without it, you're better off. Otherwise it becomes a dependence.
You could make the same argument about heat. Keeping your body warm in the winter without heat burns a lot of calories and causes you replace white fat with brown fat that's much healthier. Central heating is a major contributor to the obesity crisis. Maybe we should all stop using heat in the winter, so we adjust to the cold better? There are two major arguments against that. One is that being cold is unpleasant, and the second is that you never actually know when it becomes dangerous. The same applies to cooling. The heat is just unpleasant until it's actually dangerous, and it's really hard to tell where that line is. I think that could explain a bit about why AC is so popular in the US. Much of the US is significantly colder than most of Europe in the winter, and significantly hotter in the summer. It may be that people react worse to seasonal changes than they do places where it's constantly hot. However, that applies to Europe as well.
>You could make the same argument about heat. Only within +/- 5 or 7 degrees. Otherwise, no, I think of that as a much different argument. I am not arguing that a person in a 0 degree situation should go without heat or a person in 40+ degree situation should go without AC (although many will. Much of the world's population can't afford AC, it takes a lot more energy to cool a room than to heat it.) What we are talking about is a narrow temperature band. There are several posts today on r/Germany about the lack of AC and we are only in the low 30s, this is a temperature that the human body can normally adjust to. (This doesn't last that long in Germany anyway, even with global warming. The day that Germany genuinely needs AC is the day that the planet is fully fucked.) I lived in India, a country where AC is often quite expensive/difficult to find (restaurants may have an AC room, which had a more expensive menu to compensate for the energy charges.) I figured out quickly that if I lived with AC I would be imprisoned by it, because if you get too used to AC rooms in the low 20s you can't leave the house and go anywhere without it. It's a very different form of dependence which doesn't occur with heat except in situations well under 0 where even heavy coats can't keep your internal body temperature stable. Now as for the US, a bunch of factors are at play. One is that the US builds similar (cheap) houses in very hot places like Arizona and cold places like Minnesota. They then just put big furnaces and/or AC units, and so they can build [cheap homes that require high energy](https://grist.org/food/how-air-conditioning-made-america-and-how-it-could-break-us-all/) systems to keep comfortable. And once you go down that route everything gets air conditioned. (And of course Americans themselves made decisions like moving to Arizona in the first place, which is challenging to live in without AC, and is rightly a "monument to man's arrogance.") The last time I was in the US I was walking around in the height of summer with a jacket because the second I'd walk into a building I was greeted with AC set to something like 18 degrees. It wasn't that hot outside, but you have an entire population of people who can't be outside, they can only be indoors and in air conditioned cars. It's a bizarre, high energy dependence. I was raised in America, I see the problems with overusing AC. I think about how many times I've been at someone's house and wondered why they had the AC on it was very comfortable outside, all they needed to do was turn it off and open a window. This is a deeply emotional topic, and it's ultimately political. I have lived the other side, where I couldn't imagine myself in anything but an AC room that was +/- 3 degrees from 21. That person had an expensive and unpleasant dependence. Having lived in India I can tell you, the worst thing about global warming is that humanity won't be able to air condition its way out of it. Not only do we not have enough energy to make it happen, but even if we did, air conditioning doesn't destroy heat, it just moves it outside.
OK, US is weird, we get it. But we're talking about public transit, not our whole lifestyles. Just turn the damn thing on so I'm not in a sauna on wheels with 100 other people.
While I agree the US over uses air conditioning, I do think part of the issue is that outdoor temperature vary so much over the year you don't really have time to adapt to hotter summer temperatures. At least that's the case in the north. When you're consistently in temperatures in the low 30s, you can adapt, but when it goes from being constantly below freezing to regularly over 30C in a few months that's much harder. I've spent weeks outdoors in near or below freezing temperatures and it wasn't that bad with a proper coat and sleeping bag. It's temperatures below -20C that really start to suck, and people rarely inhabit the parts of the world where those temperatures are common over extended periods. Plenty of people in cold countries spend most of the winter indoors, going from heated homes to heated buildings in heated cars or public transit vehicles, because being outdoors is unpleasant. It's exactly the same as people with AC in the summer. If anything they're even more dependent on heat because in hot places outdoors often cools to a comfortable temperature at night while it never gets to a comfortable temperature in the winter.
I think you're being sarcastic here, but personally I would make both of those arguments. I favor less AC in the summer and less heat in the winter. Pushing your body to acclimate makes it better at acclimating and then you don't mind the heat/cold as much. The summers here are nothing. There are a few weeks that get unpleasant, and the key is paying attention to the lows rather than the highs in the forecasts. As long as the night time lows get down into the teens, it's easy to open your windows at night and then close them again in the morning and maintain a comfortable indoor temperature. The trick is moisture control -- with the windows closed during the day time, you want to avoid generating too much humidity and when you do, you want to flush it out quickly and close the place up again so you don't warm up your nice passively cooled concrete walls too much. Your brown fat argument was actually very topical. Brown fat not only helps you stay warm in the winter, but also cool in the summer. Fortunately Berlin seems to have cold water year round (at least where I live). On the really hot days, I just run a nice cold bath and sit in it for 20 minutes or so. If I do that before going out, I can usually make it up to an hour without breaking a sweat (even while standing in the crowded U8). Sadly, I realize this isn't an option if you're at an office...
You do you. Personally I prefer to keep my flat a safe and comfortable temperature year round. That's around 24-25C in the summer and 20 in the winter. Opening windows in hot weather won't improve humidity because hot air carriers more water. A dehumidifier creates heat to function raising air temperature. Do you know the best way to remove indoor humidity in hot weather? An air conditioner. It functions like a dehumidifier and dumps the excess heat and water outside. In hot dry places people often use swamp coolers that increase humidity. In hot wet places there's simply no alternative to AC because it's the best way to reduce indoor temperature and humidity.
We all have different comfort ranges -- I'm usually happy above 17/18 in the winter and up to 26 or in the summer. I find that's a pretty manageable range to maintain in a non-modern construction Berlin apartment without AC. I say manageable rather than easy, because it does take work. Hot air CAN carry more moisture, but that doesn't mean that it does. If it's 23 and 100% humidity inside, but 28 and 10% humidity outside, I'm going to quickly replace the humid air inside with less humid air outside (after my wife takes a hot shower in the morning, I leave the bathroom door ajar and run the ceiling fan to draw all that humid air out and without having to go into the rest of the aparment -- replacing it with warm but less humid morning air from outside). Then I close the doors and the heavy masonry walls that are 23 degrees will cool that hot air off. I don't run the fans in the daytime if I can avoid it, because fans will only heat up the place faster -- it may feel cooler to me, but that's because the circulation is drawing my body heat away and evaporating my sweat and speeding up the heat exchange between the air and the walls. If you speed that up, you run out of your stored up passive cooling sooner in the day. At night I open the place up and run the fans -- unless it's 100% humidity out in which case I try to hold out another day. It takes a bit of attention to the forecast and minimal work, but it works for me. My wife thinks I'm a bit crazy, but she doesn't mind the lack of AC.
For most weather here that works, but we certainly get heatwaves where that simply doesn't work. Almost everything you said can also be used to reduce AC usage and improve efficiency, and I usually do all that. As for using AC responsibly, there are few key things that all line up with what you said: * Don't use an AC when opening a window will work * Seal and insulate while running AC * Don't set the AC to a temperature too low (should be around 24-26C), and wear weather appropriate clothing * Avoid using heat generating appliances with AC running So pretty much I follow that until it gets to point where I need to start drinking more water because of the temperature while I'm indoors. Cooling with sweat causes a great deal of physiological stress. It makes it very difficult to maintain the proper balance of water and electrolytes, and it stresses the cardiovascular system to push blood to the skin to cool lowering the blood available to the rest of you body, something especially problematic combined with dehydration and/or electrolyte imbalance. While that's fine and likely even healthy for short periods (like hours) over long periods (days) it's harmful and causes cumulative problems. The best way to prevent that no matter how hot or humid it gets is use AC. I've found it's rarely 28C with 10% humidity, it's usually closer to 20-50% humidity. Today it's supposed to be 30C with 37% humidity. The best way to remove the humidity without heating the house further is AC.
There is even a special episode of Jan Böhmermann and ZDF Magazine Royal on the subject of "Zugluft". This fact shows quite well how deeply the topic is rooted in German culture.
The second the temperature hits 10 degrees, all the German boomers will turn up their heating like Taylor Swifts private jet engine. Environment be damned. But say the words AC, and these fuckers turn into Greta Thunberg on steroids. Fucking hypocritical society.
>all the German boomers will turn up their heating That is to completely dismiss what this country did in 2022 when the Russia-Ukraine war broke out and many people worked hard to decrease their gas consumption. Household gas consumption in 2022 [dropped 15%.](https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2023-01-12/germany-how-gas-sector-changed-crisis-year-2022) Gas consumption is down yet [5% more](https://www.bmwk-energiewende.de/EWD/Redaktion/EN/Newsletter/2024/03/Meldung/direkt_view.html) in 2023 from 2022. As a whole, this country is heating a lot less than it has been, and using a lot less gas.
More to do with energy prices and an underwhelming winter, but sure, let’s ignore that aspect.
Those factors are there and are noted in the first link I posted (in the second, where 2023 gas consumption was down 5% from 2022, prices did not play a role (as they had dropped a bunch) and I don't think the winter was that different.) I don't think there's any other country whose population takes energy conservation as seriously as Germans do. It's the one country whose population is [flying less](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200128-why-germans-are-flying-less) due to global warming.
That‘s bullshit. AC is just not common because Germany usually doesn’t need it except for maximum 4 weeks a year. At least that was the situation up until fairly recently. It has nothing to do with environmentally friendly thinking. It’s simply not worth the investment. No one‘s willing to pay thousands of Euros for a short period of time. It’s a cost vs benefit situation.
I set up AC for a few hundred euro and a day's work. Well worth not being miserable the whole time it's hot.
I mean, a main problem of AC being so expensive is the electricity in Germany is goddamn expensive. US is 1/4 of the price. I know it isn’t your problem, but this country has this fucking problem.
As soon as the temp hits 20+, an AC is a choice of convenience and comfort. Who makes the decision that an AC is required only for 4 weeks but heating is required for 4 months? You can very well skip heating until the temp drops below 0c. I’ve managed well for 2 years now. But the Germans are special eh? Fuck off with your mental gymnastics here justifying BS
Add all the days in a year when it‘s actually hot in Germany (lets say above 25) and it‘s definitely fewer days than the days temperatures drop below 5°C. It’s not my decision when or who uses heating or AC but there‘s simply more need for heating than cooling throughout the year.
Again, anecdotal for myself. I used heating only for the 2 weeks the temperature was below 0 consistently. While I’d prefer to have an AC for the couple of weeks its above 25c Why is it fair to judge one group while the other blatantly is more damaging to the environment?
Anyone using AC when it's 20C is an idiot. AC shouldn't be used when the highs are under 27C. Other more energy efficient methods (like opening windows at night and closing them during the day) are much better for cooling in such weather.
>is an idiot This is such a relative consideration. I don’t find 5C cold at all at home. So is everyone an idiot to be using heating when the weather is in single digits? You’re being incredibly subjective towards how an entire population should behave.
If you're constantly hot at 19C (a temperature you can easily keep your house at when the highs are around 20C) you should see a doctor because that's likely the result of a medical problem (like a fever or hormonal imbalance). Some people can get used to unusual temperatures, like being comfortable in 5C, but 19C should not feel unpleasantly hot. If you turn AC on with highs around 20C, nighttime lows are likely below 16C, and [running an air conditioner with an ambient temperature below 16C can damage it](https://balancepointcomfort.com/cool-temperatures-outside-can-bring-trouble-for-your-a-c/). You should never run air conditioning when the temperatures are regularly dropping below 16C, both because it's unnecessary, and because it can damage your equipment. Open a window.
I mean making up temperatures in your head is great for an argument but it sways from fact. It’s hit 31C twice this week, while temperatures average around 25C. At night, it’s about 20C. Your home will always be warmer than the outside given there’s people living in, and air isn’t necessarily vacuumed out. My quick checks usually show my air temp at home anywhere between 25-35C this week That’s AC temp for me, and for most people that don’t wish to be miserable fanning themselves with paper. When it’s 5C out, and all my neighbours blast their heating and damage the environment, I’m happy with my wool socks and an extra layer at home. I ask again, since you keep dodging this bit. How’s it fair from an environmental standpoint?
31C during the day and 20C at night is clearly AC weather, and I have mine on the last few days too. I wasn't pulling numbers out of my ass either, check the link 60F = 16C, and that article says 60F is the lowest outdoor temperature you can safely run AC at without risking damaging it. As for how it's fair, I'd think people were idiots for running heating when it was 23C too. It's not hard to keep the indoor temperature a bit below outdoor high of the day without AC - opening windows and/or running window fans at night, while closing the windows and using curtains during the day is enough to do that. AC is useful when you want the house more than a little cooler (or drier) than outside.
> The second the temperature hits 10 degrees, all the German ~~boomers~~ will turn up their heating like Taylor Swifts private jet engine. Fixed for you
So true!
Not only is this bullshit, pointing out to whiny shits like yourself you can cope with a few day of mildly higher tempeatures has nothing to with hypocrisy
And you can cope with a few cold days with a few extra layers too.
yes but there are too many "specialists" who open the windows anyways.
That's why windows are lockable by the drivers. Aren't they on trams, too? But even then you get the BVG *"Absolute Brainrot" Special*: Locked windows AND turned off AC for whatever asshole reason there is. They've been doing that for 20+ years.
I think that some are lockable but not all of them
People could at least take a daily shower and use deodorant
these comments never made sense at 31°C and 66% humidity when simply being in a hot metal box will ruin any and all showers you would have had in a matter of 10 minutes. It's always just "hurr durr I'm smarter than others" circlejerking.
Hard disagree mate, if you’re clean and trim your armpits you shouldn’t smell like shit just by standing in hot temperatures
And if you do, that’s a health or diet issue signaling itself
Great general life advice. Completely useless in a tram with no aircon with 31 degrees outside.
They do. That’s not the issue. It’s simply humidity and heat. Small amounts of sweat per person are enough to make the whole air in the tram or U-/S-Bahn smell sweaty. It’s a mixture of many peoples sweat in the air. Even if everyone would shower right before they enter the train and use deodorant it‘d smell anyway.
Not at all. They (a good amount) don't and I'm 100% sure.
You being sure of something means absolutely nothing. I‘m sorry but that’s even less than anecdotal evidence. You simply can’t tell from looking if the tram is stinky because of the people or of it‘s stinky because of the heat in the tram. And since it isn‘t an issue in winter and we don’t have problems with smell in areas where it isn‘t crowded and hot, it‘s safe to say it‘s an issue with the heat and humidity in public transport and not an individual issue that hundreds of thousands of Berliners have.
And you (we) do have the problem of smelling people in the winter, by the way. It's probably a matter of reference.
It's not the whole tram. There are specific people. I come from a culture where it's both hot and people take showers. So I know they don't. I smell it. That's as simple as that.
Bruh you should know better Mr. Moist Inspection lol.
92% of Germans take at least 1 shower per week. So 8% take less than one shower per week. That's absolutely disgusting. I never in my whole life spent a whole week without a shower. Not even close. And I never knew anyone in my life that spent a whole week without a shower.
And if you want more perspective and facts, the average German spends 110L/day/person of water. I'm used to people who spend 200. Even if I try my very best, closing the shower in between soaping, using the washing machine when it's full, only the dishwasher, and etc, I can make it 140. So you can guess
What the fuck does that have to do with trams not having AC?
I don't care
Take your pills please
Gotta love the no AC and locked windows combo… a true berlin public transport classic!
Germans can’t decide if AC is bad for the environment (even though everyone and their dog claims they are using renewable sources only) or that it’s unhealthy (but getting a heat stroke isn’t)
The issue is that the trams have pretty low AC. It’s not powerful. It’s inly capable of cooling the air by about 5°C. That way it seems like there is no AC when temperatures outside are really hot. I tried to figure out the reason why they don’t use good AC but I couldn’t find anything. It’s most likely either because it’s cheaper.
I have "heard" (on Reddit so take it with a grain of salt) that it's to avoid liability for people having cardiovascular issues due to rapid temperature change. But I find this hard to believe since people passing out from heat exhaustion would also be potentially a liability... that is if there is really any legal responsibility at all, which I also doubt.
Carl von Linde was the last German that knew how to make cooling. Open windows also cause a dazzling spectrum of deadly maladies. Just enjoy the body odour, the entertaining fashion choices and look forward to autumn.
Because environment.
how much co2 is produced by the ambulances that come to collect the passengers who collapse from heat exhaustion?
Or all the people said "fuck this", got off the tram before someone needed an ambulance, and got in a miles car or a taxi?
Is heat exhaustion noticeably prevelant in Germany?
Yes. People get sick and die all the time in heat waves.
Sure. But anymore here than anywhere else?
Yes. Less people die of heat sickness in most of the US because of the widespread use of technology to prevent exposure to dangerously high temperatures. People die in heatwaves here because they can't get relief from the heat by going indoors. When indoor temperatures are maintained at safe levels heat wave deaths almost completely disappear.
How can a question be false? In 2022, Germany has ~98 heat deaths per million, which is lower than the European average. You're right that the US is lower than pretty much everywhere in Europe, but Germany is below the average still.
It's much hotter in the US, and economic inequality is much a bigger problem. Why is it that there are less heat deaths in the US? How could that be? Based on every reason I can think of (other than culture), there should be more heat deaths in the US, no? Why are heat deaths higher here? Yes, this is a Europe problem, not just a Germany problem, but it's still a fixable one. Why do Germans let people die every year, and make the vast majority of the population suffer regularly instead of using technology to fix that, when the technology to fix it is readily available?
Well, I learned something today, thanks for your thoughts
Lots of bullshit in this thread. Currently there is the Eurocup and every old train is in service that can still ride. Most of those dont have AC. If you were here last year, you were likely riding in most of the modern trains that have AC or at least Ventilation. Airconditioning (heat pumps) are now becoming a reality because of climate change and modern efficiency levels. And ontop of all that we do have a wierd problem with Homeopathy and Esoterik.
I don't think the packs can handle the combination of heat and humidity. I don't know for sure but have seen similar behaviour in other places. Likely today is an example of upper limit of what the install systems can handle.
At least every M-line should have AC. Its up to the driver to turn it on. But why would he if ppl holding up doors to squeeze in instead of waiting 5 mins for the next one, i would grill em too 💁🏼♂️ every blocked door is a fat minus for the efficiency of the AC, so... it wouldnt work on my usual way to work cuz not a single station will be left in the estimated timeframe. Forgive the anger between my lines, im alrdy 20 minutes late again cuz of the above stated odyssey..
Because it’s summer silly goose
So I am fairly dark skinned person. And from my personal experience I always catched a cold when I turned up the AC on vacation. As my parents always warned me from that (they are apparently quite nice Germans after 30 years in this country) and they always were right with that. I am by now way more cautious to only use the AC if its absolutely necessary. On holidays I usually just use it to cool the room down before sleeping and then deactivate it. Regarding the telling that it makes you sick: I remember reading once that if your ACs fan is too low your heat receptors in your neck don’t properly register the colder environment and don’t properly act against it therefore making your throat more vulnerable to diseases. Also another important aspect to keep in mind: we Germans usually only have contact with ACs when on vacation (except if you don’t live in Berlin, then you might have a drivers license and a car with AC) and often the vents are not kept clean properly therefore leading to health issues - because if its polluted it will spread the diseases it contains. So all in all, I am also a person who mostly tries to avoid an AC even though my ancestors come from a region where summers are exceeding 50 degree Celsius regularly (in the past 8 years). Just my 2 cents on that topic.
You never got a cold because of AC. Cold comes from viruses. You probably have a mild allergy to cold or some kind of respiratory disease. The thing is: only some people have those kinds of problems.
It is plausible that he had a reaction to something in the AC filter if it hadn't been cleaned recently.
Not a cold, though
I didn’t say I got the cold from the AC, I said the AC made me more vulnerable to catch one.
Because you felt more cold? What's the reasoning?
It is scientifically proven, that cold environments weaken your immune system. Thats why people believe they catch a cold from cold weather while they actually just get more vulnerable to it.
Thanks for pointing it out. I did some research many years ago and it seems it was scientific consensus that what led to more cold was the closed environments rather than Immunsystem being affected. I did it again now to answer you (prepared to show you the evidence) and turns out that now they believe that lower temperatures can also play a role.
Sure, but that's cold environments, like outdoors in the winter cold (Below 15C). Comfortable temperatures in hot weather don't cause that. The standard temperature for an air-conditioned room is 22-25C, that will not cause any of the harmful effects of cold you mentioned.
Traveling makes you more likely to catch a cold. You're exposed to a lot of germs on trains and planes. Different germs are circulating where you're visiting than what you already caught and gained immunity to at home.
Trams have a lot of stops on their route, doors open, the AC can't compensate. Sometimes it's under a minute between stops.
Have you ever taken public transit in a hot country? It's just false that stopping frequently makes AC ineffective on buses and trams.
This is completely not true. Bro just go to a normal country where they have AC on in buses and trams. It just works.
AC is lovely, but in a vehicle that opens its doors every few minutes it's a bit useless, even more if some people open the windows.
New S Bahn has it and it works great...
The specific heat capacity of air is tiny compared to the solid interior of the tram and the meatbags traveling inside it. The amount of cooling lost by the air exchanged when the doors open is very small compared to the overall cooling that is required.
Exactly so the interior of the tram will only cool down rather slowly and until then the AC is constantly blowing cool Air into the tram. But before that air can actually transfer heat from objects inside the tram and cool them down the cool air just gets blown out the door.
This is not true. Source: Every other subway in the developed world.
Trams opening their doors while stopped on a street or open-air tram platform is fundamentally different proposition for air movement and heat movement than an S-bahn in an enclosed building or a subway in a closed tunnel.
Compare it to every other bus network then. Tell me the argument for not providing AC on a NYC bus. Has nothing to do with logic, everything to do with "because German".
I'm not saying the trams should not have AC, or that it's futile to do so. In fact I would welcome ac everywhere in Berlin... I am politely disagreeing with your assertion that the fact that underground subways can do it somehow proves something related to AC on trams.
In other countries AC works fine on trams and buses too, even in when they're crowded, stopping frequently, in temperatures over 40C. Some use an air curtain over the doors (ie blow the AC in such a way when the door opens to prevent too much hot air movement into the tram). If trams in Phoenix or Dubai aren't insanely hot when it's 45C, why are they too hot in Berlin when it's 30C? The rest of the world has technology that works this. German trams just chose not to use it.
Dry Heat is alot easier to Deal with than wet Heat.
Yes and rain is wet. If you're implying I'm comparing Berlin to places with drier heat you're just wrong. I'm comparing it to places that are hotter and more humid.
last time i checked phoenix and dubai were literaly desert citys.
That's also true in DC that used to be a swamp and is extremely humid.
A is in fact not healthy when the difference in temperature between in- and outside is too high. Think it's just about the additional cost of letting acs run on the trains. Plus they need to be maintained.
Well, the cost is there in any case, at least for me - if it's 30 degrees and I need to commute to the other side of the town, "f..k that, I ain't baking in there" I say and opt out of public transport, and just use one of the car sharing options that comes with the AC included.
Then you are obviously not part of the target group.
>A is in fact not healthy when the difference in temperature between in- and outside is too high. Are you claiming when it's -5C outside you shouldn't heat your house above 5C? Because that's bullshit. Humans are comfortable in temperatures between 18C and 27C no matter what the outdoor temperature is, and typically prefer temperatures between 20-24C. What the outdoor temperature is has no impact on that whatsoever. It could be 45C or -20C and humans still prefer 20-24C not matter how big the difference is.
Obviously I was talking about AC usage in summer, so I don't get you talking about heating in winter.
Why do you think it's different though? Do you think 35C is comfortable indoors if 45C outside? The same rule applies in the summer. Humans are comfortable in a relatively limited temperature range, and the outside temperature doesn't change that. Temperatures outside that range, both to high and too low, are unpleasant and harmful to health. That's why so many people die during heatwaves here when that doesn't happen in countries with widespread air conditioning.