You can have my AirCon remote....

Earlier, when the Pope said no one needed airconditioning (or as it is called in the Philippines, aircon), I replied: You can have my aircon remote when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

So yesterday, a WAPO editorial said that since Washington DC was not hotter than Berlin, most Europeans thought Americans were wuses for not being able to put up with the heat.

Uh, maybe Berlin is as hot as Minneapolis (and  did not have airconditioning when living in FrostbiteFalls MN), but Washington DC was always considered a hardship post for embassies because it was very hot there, and was listed as "subtropical" in the olden days.

And when I worked in Oklahoma, even our poor had airconditioners, because the temperature frequently went over 100 degrees.

So today, Bloomberg news blog notes the same thing.

We do have some cities with more European temperatures, including San Francisco and Seattle, but they are not our largest population centers. The rest of the country, even places that are frozen wastelands in the winter, experiences summertime average highs above 80 degrees. That's not a rogue heat wave, the kind that Northern Europeans complain about endlessly while futilely fiddling with their fans. That's just what we Americans call "summer." A heat wave is when it's 100 degrees (38 Celsius) and your dog won't go outside because the pavement burns his feet.

they then go on to note that since it gets very very cold in winter, actually moving to the south and using airconditioning  uses less energy than heating a housewhen it's 18 degrees F, which is considered balmy in winter if you live in places like Frostbite Falls or Chicago, where wind chills of below zero are common much of the winter.

You could argue that if Americans had not migrated en masse from the temperate north to the blistering sunbelt, we would need less energy for climate control. You could argue that, but you'd be wrong. Americans still expend much more energy heating their homes than cooling them. That's actually not that surprising. The difference between the average temperature outside and the temperature that is comfortable inside is generally only 10 to 20 degrees in most of America, for most of the summer. On the other hand, in January, the residents of Rochester, New York -- the cold, snowy, rapidly depopulating area that my mother hails from -- you need to get the temperature up from an average low of 18 degrees (-8 Celsius) to at least 60 or 65. That takes a lot of energy.

here in the Philippines, usually I only need airconditioning for heat during the hot season or for two hours in the mid afternoon. But as I have asthma, I found my airconditioner also works as a dehumidifier/air filter, so I run this as needed during the rainy season.

and during brownouts, I have my own personal generator.
Yes, the business compound has one, but often it is broken or is running to run the rice mill etc. at the farm, so I bought my own. This was especially important for the last year, when Lolo rarely left his bed due to illness.

So tell the Pope he runs a "universal" church, and  remember the PC left's opinions are not necessarily based on reality.

I mean, do you really think the writer of the WAPO editorial lives in northern Virginia without airconditioning? I doubt it.