by Will Jones
Homeowners are being forced to tear out air conditioning from their properties under Net Zero laws that prioritise “passive cooling” and only permit “active cooling” as a “last resort”. The Telegraph has the story.
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.
The Tories said Britain was being “kept in the dark ages” under a Net Zero mindset that denies people “modern conveniences that are completely normal in other countries”.
Meanwhile, temperatures are forecast to reach as high as 40°C 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.
Widely published advice states planning permission is not required to install air-con. However, planning is required in certain situations, such as in conservation areas, and there are different rules for flats, leasehold homes, as well as shared buildings.
It means there is a risk units are installed under the assumption they are permitted, but are later caught by council enforcement officers.
In one of a string of cases uncovered by the Telegraph, a resident living in North London was forced to “permanently remove” two air-con units from the back of their home.
Planning inspectors working for Camden council said there was “no justification” for the air-con units and that they failed to comply with the local authority’s so-called “cooling hierarchy”.
In an appeal, the resident was told to open the windows and balcony doors of their first-floor flat to ventilate the property “by natural means”.
Their concerns about security were dismissed, with inspectors saying the risk was not “as great as those associated with ground floor windows” and that the windows could be shut at night.
Planning documents stated that “the main issue” of concern for inspectors was whether the “need for active cooling is justified, with particular regard to local policies” on energy.
Another resident was ordered to remove three air-con units from their property, despite complying with all planning requirements.
Camden council planning inspectors made “particular note” of the “absence of ceiling fans” in their home, even though it was not listed as a requirement.
Despite inspectors finding that they were “neither intrusive nor harmful” to the character of the local area, the resident was told to rip out the units.
They were eventually allowed to keep the air-con on appeal to the Planning Inspectorate – in spite of the council’s strict climate tests – by demonstrating that the property already had numerous eco upgrades such as solar panels.
Air-con engineers told the Telegraph that they had been called out to remove perfectly operational units worth thousands of pounds across London.
Worth reading in full.
Sure glad I am not one of “His Majesty’s” subjects. My daughter requires active A/C and we must keep our house at or below 72°F. Her body can’t process heat and at temperature above 73°F she begins to show signs of Heat Stress. She will even get Heat Related Migraines.
The term “subject” was dropped long ago. UK has citizens just like US.
That makes having no say in how those who dictate you life, run your life feel much better.
No, they are subjects. Period. Full stop. They only have “rights” Parliament feels they should have.
Frankly, when QEII was on the throne, I was content to be a subject.
With Charlie, I’m content to be a citizen settling into the notion of a republic.
Charlies is not my king
The USA has citizens. The UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have subjects.
So like Democrat state subjects? You only have the rights they grant e.g. for children to change their gender, but not for parents to know what’s happening to their children.
This has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with reducing demand on the UK National Grid, which is close to collapsing. It’s also why our idiotic government is banning tumble dryers (bonkers). The UK is having to turn to connectors more and more because our crazy renewables can’t keep up with demand. The UK government will do anything to gaslight the public into believing it’s about climate change when it’s really about extraordinarily stupid ideology; and if that means destroying our economy and public health so be it.
You mean the UK grid that is currently being designed by 3-year olds with crayons?
Note: No intentional disparagement of 3-year olds or crayons intended.
I wonder if they are trying to increase Heat related deaths to bolster the narrative???
okay I support climate action but this is a bit extreme. I think that this article is cherry picking narratives where such extreme actions are happening.
Ask Google AI, “are uk citizens required to remove air conditioning units?”
Google says “UK citizens are not banned from owning or using air conditioning,,,,”
And then it goes on to say, “…but some local councils have ordered residents to remove units if they violate planning permissions or local “Net Zero” climate directives. Enforcement typically targets unapproved exterior installations”
In other words, yes citizens are required to remove AC units. They have to kiss Milleband’s ass first.
Funny how the first statement out of Google AI isn’t really about the question at all but rather a statement approved by the Climate Cabal. The question wasn’t if they’re banned from using them but if they’re “Forced to remove them”!
“I support climate action “
WTH does that even mean… ????
Net-zero idiocy in the UK will have absolutely ZERO effect on the climate.
What is “climate action”? ………… please define it.
(apart from a virtue-seeking, feel-good socialist ideology)
This is not a “narrative” which is being picked, it is reporting real events concerning real people. It should be denounced and opposed as soon as it starts not when it has already become a de facto, wide spread norm and there is no way to reverse it.
You find this extreme?
How do you explain no laboratory experiments have ever been carried out in any country to prove the climate is changing in any country?
Mr. bear: An excellent question, why don’t CliScis do actual experiments? All the grant money, none of it pays for an experiment.
Why do you support ‘climate
Action? Do you have any effect? What damage are you causing? What types of ‘action’ do you favour? Have you looked at the Keeling curve? Of course you haven’t. You have no understanding of climate. Is there an increase in tropical cyclones? Answer me
Denying reality does not alter reality, it just makes you an idiot.
Everywhere that extreme adverse actions are happening should be picked, cherry picked if you prefer.
I support climate action
Do you also support the action of the sea on the coast?
Pointing out “Extremes” is what “Climate Science”™ prefers to do.
A few degrees warmer = Climate Change = BAD
A few more inches of rain = Climate Change = BAD
Slightly Drier (drought) = Climate Change = BAD
Hurricane Cat 3 or more = Climate Change = BAD
.
It matters not…
That we grow more food
That growing seasons are extended
That some places can double crop in a season
That food grown in one country can be sent to another fast enough to not spoil!
That deaths from cold (which far out numbers deaths from heat) is dropping year over year.
Typical head in the sand socialist.
You’re an idiot. If government (national or local) can force even one individual to remove one air conditioner, then the individual is a subject, not a citizen.
And of course if you are trying to make a point you “cherrypick” examples of what you are trying to demonstrate. Just like the climate lunatics “cherrypick” one hot day to declare it’s the end of the world.
Do these idiotic bureaucrats not know that Air conditioners are heat pumps which are mandated by the state?
Air conditioners that are removed or not installed cannot be used as a “last resort.”
I’ll give up my AC when they pry away my cold finger from its thermostat.
The mandated Heat Pumps are Air to Water which cannot cool air. The Air to Air heat pumps that can both heat or cool are not part of the subsidies and are positively discriminated against as we can’t have people consuming electricity in the summer.
Camden council is an overwhelmingly Labour-Green-Liberal/Democrat (95%) run council, residents got what they voted for.
Agreed. Camden along with Harringay are always the left wing nutters of UK local councils.
One the candidates that recently won the Democrat primaries in NY is a black woman who wants to get rid of the police entirely and who is opposed to inter-racial dating.
Can you imagine the furor in the media, had a white Republican come out against inter-racial dating?
I live in the East Midlands of England, we haven’t had it as warm as the south but we’ve coped using passive measures just as we do every summer. It would be easier with external shutters allowing downstairs windows to be left open overnight to cool the house from the previous day while remaining secure. I won’t go into a long explanation but the UK isn’t good at passive house heat management.
If i lived in that area and needed air conditioning then the obvious (not perfect) solution is a portable unit.
If the air con unit is called a heat pump then the residents wanting cooling could claim the £7,500 government grant to install it. I suspect it won’t be long before the industry get wise and promote their products for what they are.
Who ever imagined a heat wave would come to the aid of the Ed Miliband heat pump fixation?
Sadly heat pumps that generate coolth rather than warmth are not subject to grants nor are they permitted.
Fortunately the UK escaped the worst of the heat, which was confined to continental Europe, with temperatures exceeding 40°C with associated humidity. I blame Brexit.
For Yanks, that’s 105°F. Not uncommon in the Mojave, but not at >50% humidity.
Likewise Florida is humid, but never gets that hot.
Mojave summer (and late spring and into early fall) 105 is more than common, it’s standard. But we can also count on a few weeks of monsoon where we have 105 (or 110 or whatever), and 50 percent humidity. Swamp coolers don’t work all that well in humid air, and it can get pretty miserable inside without AC. Monsoon isn’t common here, like this heatwave in Europe isn’t common. Unlike this European HW, our monsoons don’t make the news cycle.
Our heat index in my part of Oklahoma will hit 105F and above over the next few days. We are not near the Mojave Desert.
We get a lot hotter here in the central U.S. than does Europe and we stay hot longer.
Ditto here in SW missouri. And the sun on you in these temps will focus your attention…then you go where it’s not hot-AC in home, bar, or just sit under a tree. It’s not that hard.
Dude, in central Texas it is normal to have 100 degrees F plus with 70% relative humidity. That is a normal summer day and has been for the 70+ years I’ve been here. Our location next to the Gulf of America with normal wind pattern off the gulf guarantees this. We also have a high pressure area usually over the top of the state which creates the heat and also suppresses wind (bad for windmills).
I was not aware that such heat pumps are made. Is that a UK and EU thing?
Yes, called Air to Water heat pumps. the outside unit does the same function but as it is designed only to transfer heat to water there is no provision to cool air included. What’s perverse is the air to water outside unit has the same foot print including noise values as the air to air but the air to water gets a free ride in planning via permitted development rules. The air to air outside unit has to go through full planning and gets knocked back on carbon usage.
Exactly what does a portable AC unit look like? Window units aren’t very portable.
Portable A/C units are an excellent option for renters or owners who do not want the full cost of fixed split/ducted systems or even the typical air-water units being used in UK. These portable units are ducted to the outside through a partly opened window and can be moved from room to room as required. Here in Australia they are relatively cheap from various suppliers but here is an EXAMPLE without actively promoting any particular supplier on this blog.
Thanks for the link, Google AI says:
Portable air conditioners work using a refrigeration cycle that pulls warm indoor air, extracts its heat and moisture, and recirculates the cooled air. The extracted heat is then dumped outside through a flexible exhaust hose connected to a window
Doesn’t explain where the air comes from to exhaust out a window. Sounds like it’s pulling outside air in from somewhere.
This one
would work. All the rest look like dehumidifiers.
Two air-flow paths. Internal: sucks in air from the room, usually passes through a filter, passes over cooling coils to cool and dehumidify, then back out into the room. External: sucks in air from the outside, passes over heat sink, exhausts back outside. Standard refrigerant cycle between the cooling coils and heat sink to move the heat from indoors to outdoors.
Some units pull exhaust air from the room and then to the outside, which is where I think your confusion is. Outside air is never brought in the house.
Some inefficiencies due to heat transfer off of the ducting passing the external air around and leakage at the window though overall pretty effective and they can be built to minimize water build up from the dehumidification when in cooling mode. Most also have a dehumidifier mode. We had one when we lived in the PacNorWest for the two weeks a year the house got warm.
There’s two styles of portable aircon. The style in your image is the better type. It draws in outside air, pumps heat from inside into it, then blows it outside.
The other style only has an exhaust hose. It pulls in air from inside the home, pumps heat into it, then blows it outside. That cuts efficiency because it’s taking air the unit has cooled, heating it back up, then blowing it outside.
With some strong tape, sheets of coroplast, and some flexible duct, one may convert a single hose to a dual by building a plenum over the air intake.
Another problem with portable AC is most of them do not use insulated flexible ducting. Heat conducts through the thin plastic then radiates into the inside airspace. Additional heat transfer comes from the ducts via conduction to the air as it flows past by convection due to that heating.
There’s a YouTube video idea. Can a lower cost single, uninsulated duct portable AC be upgraded to a dual, insulated duct for less than the price difference of just buying a dual model with insulated ducts?
Get out the Kill-A-Watt meter and temperature probes…
Actually, you make a good point. Having used 4-5 of these single duct models in the past I would say that they are good for a small room area(maybe up to 30-40sqm). However if I move from our currently ducted A/C home 🙁 I would spend a bit more on the newer Vertical Windows Airconditioner style. They keep the inside air and outside air seperated but are only really suited to sliding window openings as far as I can tell.
Here is an EXAMPLE and I have seen them on Amazon as well. You should get the highest power rating available, it is false economy to get the smaller rated models.
Interesting technology. But just wait – when the powers that be find out they run on electricity and help make life comfortable they will outlaw them.
Like this:
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/appliances/g71076073/best-portable-air-conditioners-tested/
I bought one when i lived in a rented apartment in Rome a few years ago. Not expensive, about Euro 275.
It was very effective.
Noisy? No. Certainly not so much that I didn’t get used to it pretty quickly. Portable? Yes, easy to move from the living room to the bedroom in the evening.
Of course, even in Rome, it was only necessary/useful for about 6 weeks, July to August.
Only drawback: need a big bucket for the condensate. A seriously humid night would overflow a smaller bucket. Did have a small spill to clean up one morning.
Your link says, “(though they do have one or two hoses that need to be vented to the outdoors).”
If it’s just one hose it’s pulling outside (humid) air into your house from somewhere. Otherwise it’s just a dehumidifier and a crappy one at that.
He says “It was very effective”. What more do you want? It was probably also a lousy white noise generator, TV, and stove.
You are mistaken – they are not just dehumdifiers. Portable AC units do provide excellent cooling of a room. The single exhaust hose version slightly less efficient than the dual hose, but both work just fine. I’ve used one here in S Florida where AC is not a luxury but a must have. When our central AC system went down and needed replacing, we got a portable one for my 85 year old mother who cannot tolerate heat while we waited a few days for the new installation. Kept her bedroom at a comfortable 74 F with OAT of 90F.
They have a COP (Coefficient Of Performance) of 2.5 to 3.0, meaning for every watt of electricity, they provide 2.5 to 3 watts of cooling. And no this does not violate thermodynamics law. It moves heat from one location to another and requires only a small energy to do so.
The ratio of cooled air flowing over the evaporator coils, is typically about 200 CFM (ft³/minute). And the exhaust from air blowing across the condenser coils is 220 CFM out the window. So yes the portable single hose unit does draw in 220 CFM outside air from all the windows and doors and vents in a home, but the incoming air has less thermal energy than the exhausted air, hence the room gets cooled substantially.
The cooled air is typically exiting at 55-60F from the evap coils, and the exhaust air is typically 85-95F if the unit is set to say 74 F. These are actual measured numbers from our 9,000 BTU/hr unit. So ambient outside air is drawn into the home at a few deg F below what is being exhausted, while the cooling evap coil airflow is coming out at 30-35 F lower than the incoming air to the home. That room gets quite cold after a few hours, to the point where you can turn the unit to a lower fan setting.
The drawbacks of a portable, are condensate (needs to be emptied often from the collection pan drain), noise, and that you have to set up the exhaust hose into an open window and all portables come with an adjustable plank with a fitting for the hose to place in the open window. And the less expensive ones are totally manually operated, not automatic regards fan and thermostatic control.
To put some numbers on our 9,000 BTU/hr unit, it delivers 2,640 watts of cooling, and draws only 900 watts of electricity to do so, putting it’s actual COP at 2.9 or so.
Gee, somebody who actually knows the numbers rather than just opinions. Maybe europe and the UK will not go into the dustbin of history. Lets hope so. From my limited experience with europe, very few homes have insulation or dual pane windows which makes heating and cooling much more energy intensive.
“If it’s just one hose it’s pulling outside (humid) air into your house from somewhere.”
Nonsense.
The hot air that passes over the condenser is vented out through a 4 or 5 inch flexible hose, stick it out the window. The half open window doesn’t let enough air into the room to make a difference.The water that condenses out of the air over the condenser drains through a small hose, you need to provide a bucket for that if there is nowhere convenient to drain it to.
Bottom line: Portable AC is very effective, I was very satisfied with it.
And my unit was quiet, I never noticed its noise, it was never bothersome.
It is also very economical, and I would say far more appropriate for European use where even as far South as Rome AC is only necessary for about six weeks.
In UK, in a typical year, no more than two to three weeks max, often less.
I really cant see a need of that short duration justifying the far greater expense of a more expensive system with supports, wall penetrations, and installation costs in addition to the equipment cost.
Try Amazon. Lots of examples.
Or Walmart, etc. Don’t overthink it, just do.
UK temperature record
Records 😉
Is that RAF Coningsby, where Typhoon aircraft are based?
The other aspect of 1976 that is quietly overlooked is the drought, when reservoirs were down to 10% capacity and buildings that had been covered when the reservoirs were created became visible.
This Coningsby..
Coningsby WMO 03391 – An “Internationally Agreed Distance from the Runway” Record Holder and “A Denier’s tale”. | Tallbloke’s Talkshop
RAF Coningsby mass takeoff of 26 Typhoons for RAF100 flypast 10.7.18
UHI is massively more relevant to humans than that signifies. I am 2°C cooler than the local towns year in year out BUT the supermarket car park yesterday was truly tropical. Way more than 2 degrees hotter than the countryside.
Is that because of the air con inside?
In industrial size buildings, the AC units are usually on the roof.
For a car park, my guess would be asphalt.
“Longest heatwave: 1976…”
If you go back a few centuries there was a huge heatwave that preceded the Fire of London. I believe the heatwave lasted from May to September. Quite likely the heatwave contributed to the massive destruction caused by the fire.
Therein lies the problem, clearly heatwaves have never happened in the past, before the evils of the Industrial Revolution, or at least according to certain people.
Samuel Pepys clearly records the cause of the fire in his diary:
2 September 1666
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
In the US southwest, there is evidence of droughts that lasted a century and more.
Longest heatwave, we call that summer here
I would not trust any of the temperature readings given out by the Met office. They are a Net Zero propaganda outfit using compromised locations as their examples.
They have no credibility.
Here in NE Wales we had an amber warning from the Met Office on Thursday but i was able to sit out on the patio with the canopy up without any problems.
Yesterday, Friday, there was a red warning for part of the South East of England but nothing for my area. I planned to sit out and do my reading etc as normal. It was exceedingly hot and after 10 minutes I had to retreat indoors. I tried sitting out other times of the day but soon had to go indoors. It was definitely much hotter than the previous day.
The examples are from a very short time period. Try 12,000 years ago or say 1000 AD and you would get heat waves at least as strong. The record quoted is from a tiny slice of history which just by coincidence shows a warming planet.
We’ve just had another tempetayure record announced in the UK. This time from Suffolk. The weather station is situated at the edge of a small lawn surrounded on 3 sides by buildings and on the fourth side by trees. 52° 27′ 25″ N 0° 39′ 55″ E. It’s there if you want to check.
With other records set at Helipads and airports. RAF stations have yet to appear.
Oh. What was it? I was monitoring the Lakenheath and Mildenhall airfields yesterday and they both maxed out at what I estimated from my equipment – 36°C
Those coordinates are less than 5 miles from Lakenheath and in an area that is normally rather cooler.
It never got over 36°C there.
I smell a rat
37.3
Yesterday l recorded my highest Max temp here in Scunthorpe town centre with a high of 35.3C since l have been keeping a record from Feb 2024.
The local rural weather stations at Hatfield and Thorne Moors recorded highs of 35.8C and 34.7C.
They recognize the security risk of leaving ground floor windows open at night, then suggest closing the non-ground-floor windows at night, contrary to the traditional passive advice of opening windows at night. I don’t think they know anything useful.
+1 mate. You OPEN windows at night and close them by day
Once you draw the blinds to limit solar gains opening the windows merely lets hot air oin. concrete and masonry flats will stay cooler than the ambient.
My ground floor which has massive concrete floors and brick chimney breasts maxed out a 27°C yesterday when outside was 35°C.
Currently it’s 26°C with outside climbing past 28°C
Nearly time to shut the windows again…
It is amazing how cool you can keep a place with simple window management — open them once the outside temperature drops to within, say, 5° of the inside temp, close them in the morning.
A friend bought a duplex about 30 years ago, and the tenants in the other side left their A/C running 24×7 all summer long (Sacramento CA where 100°F days are common enough), $300/month bills back then, probably over $1000 now. He tried telling them about window management, but they just couldn’t be bothered.
What did the voters expect? If you elect imbeciles you get the governance you deserve.
Only imbeciles are on the ballot papers.
Armed citizens do bring about some respect from governance and limit imbecilic transgressions.
only in locales where citizens are, in fact, armed.
One of the main reasons why leftist politicians are so fixated on disarming the law abiding.
I take it the council offices are all passively cooled. Right? Right? Nope. From this page from the proud AC suppliers: “…so that the cooling capacity could be continuously adjusted to exactly meet any cooling load, up to 2,240 kW“. My AC at home requires 2 kW, so just their offices have the equivalent of 1120 aircon units. Do as I say, not do as I do.
The absurdity of it all is stunning. How about autos?
I asked Google, “What are the top brands of automobiles produced in the UK? From these manufacturers in the UK, are new automobiles equipped standard with air conditioning?”
Answer, in part: “Yes, nearly all new automobiles sold and manufactured in the UK are equipped with air conditioning or climate control as a standard feature. While highly stripped-down base models of the smallest city cars occasionally omitted it in the past, industry consensus indicates that standard air-conditioning is now universally expected and included across all segments of the modern British new-car market.”
AC for the road, fine. Everyone agrees.
AC for comfort in your home? “Not necessary, therefore not allowed. Just open a window.”
Completely bonkers.
That is all for now.
Also, “For BEV automobiles manufactured in the UK, is air conditioning provided as standard equipment?”
Answer: “Yes, air conditioning is provided as standard equipment on Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) manufactured in the UK. Because electric vehicles rely heavily on climate control systems to manage both passenger comfort and battery temperatures, features like automatic climate control are built into the baseline of modern EVs.”
My first car was a 1967 Plymouth. The A/C was broken so I used 460 cooling, 4 windows down, 60 MPH.
My first car was a 1955 Ford. Did not have AC as was the case for almost all cars then. Also did not have seat belts – my dad bought some from Sears and installed them himself. The 1950s in Texas were as hot as today and we survived. Remember when he installed window AC units in our house – was wonderful. The net zero idiots want us all to be miserable.
I resided in Houston for about 7 years and cannot imagine it without AC.
As a child, I remember wind blown hair and how tired such conditions made one on long trips. Of course, we could sprawl out into somewhat comfortable positions as seat belts were optional. Ashtrays were standard.
Mythbusters tested it once and it turned out that above at 55 mph airconditioning was more energy efficient that opening windows because of the extra drag that induced.
The residences of the Rule Makers should be inspected first, their AC units should be removed first, before anyone else. Their residences should be inspected again, frequently, to make sure they did not have any cooling they have prevented others from having.
Not enough elderly people were dying so these climatards are trying to force the issue. Typical leftist ideology.
Britain eh, they will ban your tumble drier too. Can banning cars be far away?
They have and they will
1984
UK planning rules don’t automatically require permission for A/C or heat pumps – many installations fall under permitted development if they meet certain limits on size, location, and noise.
However, if those conditions aren’t met (or if it’s a cooling-only unit, a listed building, or a conservation area), then planning permission is required.
So in cases like this, it’s often either that no application was made when one was needed, or that the installation didn’t comply with permitted development rules, and the planners are simply enforcing that.
It’s similar to extensions: you can build up to certain limits (e.g. 3 m on a terrace/semi) without permission, but beyond that you need approval.
New builds are a bit different, as planning policies and building regulations increasingly push energy efficiency and low‑carbon design – sometimes using an “energy hierarchy” approach to move developments towards Nut Zero.
Are these the same people promoting heat pumps at 50° N ?
Yes but these AC units are air to air heat pumps that can heat and cool, you are only allowed air to water heat pumps that do not cool in the UK.
I am confused. i thought they wanted everyone to install heat pumps. Heat pumps are just fancy air conditioners.
I’ll never happen here in the states- given that everybody has guns! 🙂
I’m not into guns and have none- but if the “burros” try to take my AC I’ll get one.
As a last resort, I aim to protect myself and family. “Don’t tread on me” has real impact.
You can pump in heat but you can not pump it out.
BTW Denmark and Germany are investing in a multi-billion $ Hydrogen super-hi-way; that I suspect will slowly degenerate into a Buffalo trail.
“story tip”
I have a question about the small hang on the wall room AC’s advertised. Where is the energy that is removed from the room Stored or Hidden?
They evaporate water to cool the air. One has to keep filling the water tank.
How much cooling takes place when the humidity in the room reaches 100%?
The ones that I am familiar with are actually through the wall units.
My parents house had one. They are like window units. Make a hole in the wall, but instead of filling it with glass, fill it with an A/C unit.
I’m referring to a resent click bait item.
This is what happens when folks deny that God is in charge and put their trust in the follies of fellow humans. The gas of life becomes the unseen enemy to be eliminated.
They really should have a soap opera on the telly called “The Ignorant and The Godless”.
The number of people killed in the name of various gods numbers in hundreds of millions going on a billion. Maybe less God and more sense would be a good thing.
The number of people killed in the name of atheism is well into the 100’s of millions as well.
Sure, everyone remembers the atheist crusades.
Communists have killed 100’s of millions.
That’s not what you claimed. But go ahead and move goalposts
If it weren’t for the Crusaders, you’d be bowing down to Allah right now, whether you like it or not. The Crusades were the response to 400 years of Muslim aggression.
But if you want to talk about the atheist crusades, how about we discuss the 150 million people killed by communists in less than one century? (Just for comparison, only about 7% of all the wars in history had religion as their cause. Most of them were about land or power.)
One reasonable evaluation of the Crusades is that they were the culmination of a long movement of national liberation against the imperial conquests of the Islamic powers. The main Islamic conquests took place in the 7th century, but the wars against the Eastern Roman Empire and the West continued until modern times. The Eastern Empire attempted a reconquest under Justinian but with only partial success. The Crusader kingdoms eventually fell and Constantinople itself fell in 1453.
But the attacks continued. You would have to say there was a war of imperial Islamic expansion from about 650 to about 1700. The battle of Lepanto ended the maritime expansion, but Vienna was last besieged in the 1680s.
People often talk about the Crusades as if they were the early manifestations of Western imperialism. They weren’t. They were attempts to reverse an Islamic imperialism that had been going on for several hundred years. The same is true of the Spanish Reconquista and expulsion of the Moriscos.
You will still hear echoes of these now distant wars in the more fanatical Islamists referring to Spain today as “Al-Andalus”, the old name for it when under Islamic rule. Slave raids from the North African Islamic states continued until the early 1800s when the US and UK sent fleets to put an end to it and to the maritime piracy which accompanied it, and demonstrated that continuing it was a really really bad idea.
I have been on meds in the past that gave me intolerance to heat, and this is Texas.
Net Zero is asceticism gone mad.
This is the same theft that the democrats want to impose on Americans in their rush to total power. California already does this for a whole lot of things like Lawn movers and power tools as well as cars. California energy requirement for homes have pushed up the costs by at least $40,000 for a 600 sq. ft home.
Don’t forget to inform the American tourists and renters ahead of time. But they are pretty dumb about such questions and due diligence.
Problem is that everybody is clueless until its their dick in the wringer.