Oh, this is brilliantly idiotic.
Like, The Onion-quality, they-wrote-this-as-a-joke type stupid.
At least, if I understood this report correctly, and it isn’t bullshit.
(If it news report is bullshit, or if I’ve got things wrong, please, I beg of you, tell me; relieve me of the wide-eyed disbelief and horror. Video should load below. Sorry for the auto-launch.)
YTN’s news report on the subway mildew smell of summer 2012
Apparently the done thing in Seoul this year is to keep air conditioning systems set to “above 26 degrees Celsius” in order to “conserve energy.”
As far as I understand the news report linked above, the people running the public transit system have come up with a brilliant solution for how to do this on the subway trains of the Seoul metro system. To make sure the temperatures don’t drop too low (and violate this quota), they’re running the air conditioners and the heaters alternately heater.
Apparently, heating systems in Korea are so magical that they don’t consume energy.
This has led to a lot more condensation, and a nasty, mildewy smell in some places, so the city will need to clean the ventilation system better in the future.
So, if this is all correct, the net savings of energy was…? That would have to be a net loss, wouldn’t it, if they’re keeping both the cooling and heating systems running?
Please, please, someone, tell me I’ve understood this all wrong. Tell me that I’ve got my facts all mixed up, or the article is bullshit. Because, seriously, this is almost kind of hard to believe.
(Not quite, I’ve seen things stupider than this before, but it certainly is at the outer limit of creditability.)
Speaking of energy savings: there has not yet been a major campaign to get people to close their windows while the air-conditioning is running. That seems to be a behaviour quite impossible to eradicate completely here. I’ve trained my students not to do it in classrooms, at least in my classrooms, but nonetheless I see it everywhere I go here in the summertime.
(It wouldn’t hurt to require buildings where the foyer space is cooled to install rotating doors, either; so many such buildings sit with half their front doors open, and the air conditioners on full blast, all day long.)