NEWS OF THE WEAK, ENVIRONMENTALIST DIVISION.

Dear reader, this, too, is a true story.

Beginning in June, all sunrooms included in new construction projects will be required to show they will not create “unwanted solar gain.” The change, noted Daily Mail, is part of “a raft of measures” aimed at “future-proofing” homes against summers where temperatures are predicted to reach 104º F. Though “well above what is currently experienced in Britain,” such highs would “cause conservatories to become unbearably hot, often increasing the temperature uncomfortably indoors too.”

This is a proposal from the U.K., where they're a long way from hitting three digits Fahrenheit most of the time. As the columnist notes, "More than half of the United States just laughed out loud and said 'Hold my beer.'"

In addition, did anybody even think about how an attached sunroom might come in handy in the winter, when most of the consumption of fossil fuels to heat houses go on?

According to Daily Mail, the objective of the new rules is to “improve domestic ventilation” and “reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent. (I wasn’t aware that sunrooms emit anything — least of which, greenhouse gases.) As a result, window sizes will be limited according to which direction they face and whether the home is likely to overheat.

Presumably, the process-worshippers are fretting about people using their central air conditioning more intensively on those two or three hot summer days because of the ambient heat coming from those conservatories.

Did it ever occur to them that large windows facing south and west take some of the load off the central heating in the winter?  There are several such windows at Cold Spring Shops headquarters, including (gasp!) an all-season sunroom, and from September to mid-November and mid-February to late April, the heat contained therein substantially lessens the use of central heating.