6 ms·

Do Americans Need Air-Conditioning?

18 points by darod 7y ago

lwhalen 7y ago
It's a good thing this is a country where it is NOT 'to each according to their need', and instead 'whatever you can afford'. Yay Capitalism. Yes, I need air-conditioning. And I can afford it. As such, I have it, regardless of the opinions of some NYT pencil-neck dweeb.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  It could quickly become a country of need given awareness and a state interest ITC and other agencies could block imports of AC units and the cooling fluid And other licenses could be withheld indefinitely for domestic manufacturers
- rightbyte 7y ago
  There should be a law on maximum sized windows in office buildings which choose to have AC. All those big windows are like a green house. Yay regulations!
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    The big windows in office buildings exist to create a sealed envelope to more efficiently heat and cool the air inside. They are far more efficient than the windows in your home.
    - rightbyte 7y ago
      Oh ... ye, see what would happen if I were to make regulations without asking for expert input.
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  I wouldn't give up AC for anything, but it's totally baffling how for some people this topic elicits such angry, politicized, name-calling reactions.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads on ideological tangents or call names in comments here. These things are in the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and following them when posting to HN?
adolph 7y ago
[O]n average, heating an American home with natural gas produces about 6,400 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2, a major warming gas). . . . A typical centrally air conditioned home in Florida, for instance, produces about 6,600 pounds of CO2. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13941744 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=139417...
ErotemeObelus 7y ago
Yes. Most of the United States is either continental or subtropical climate, which gets brutally hot and humid in the summer. Air conditioning is as necessary as heating in the winter. Most of Europe is either oceanic or mediterranean, which either doesn't get hot at all or only gets dry heat.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Here's my anecdata: I had a house in the Mojave Desert. In summer the temperature would run 105-115° during the day and 95-110° at night for most of July, August, and September. I'm not from the desert, so I racked up $200/month power bills for my small home. (I kept it set at 80° when I was home, and 76° when my wife was home.) My neighbor across the street (with a wife and three kids) didn't seem to mind for the most part. He would have his windows open until the temperature got to 105°. Then he'd open them again at night on those days when it dipped below 100°. Even if the temperature was over 110° there were plenty of people driving around with their car windows open. And I'm talking brand new luxury cars, not junkers. Some people are just bothered more by heat than others.
  - markus_zhang 7y ago
    Yeah some people (locals) are just more used to heat/cold. I moved around every few years so I'm kind of prepared to most of the weird weathers (no desert heat though, but wet heat and super cold winters).
  - Amezarak 7y ago
    The parent said hot and humid. Dry heat is much more tolerable, and your body handles it pretty well. No doubt it still bothers some people more than others, but at least IME, even 110F, while it feels plenty warm, especially in the sun, is tolerable, especially in shade. A good breeze can even make it comfortable. You just need to drink a lot of water (to me it's dangerous in that you don't see how much water you're losing), and you will tire more quickly. Humidity makes evaporation much less effective. While you obviously sweat in 110F dry heat, it's not really noticeable. Go outside in 85F 100% humidity, and you will be absolutely miserable, and drenched in sweat. This is mainly what makes humidity so awful: the sweat. That said, at least it's very obvious how much water you're losing. Additionally, the water in the air "holds" heat, so generally daytime highs and nighttime lows are not that far apart, whereas in drier climates its usually (but not always, going by your post), the case that the nighttime sees a solid temperature drop. You can become heat adapted, so you sweat much less, but it only works up to a point and spending time in AC resets you if you're not staying out in the heat day after day after day.
markus_zhang 7y ago
One thing I still can't get used to since my arrival to North America in 2005 is that people tend to set temp too low in summers (18-21) and too high (26-28) in winters. Everyone in the company is complaining but none of them, even the VPs, managed to bring the temp to a more "normal" range.
asdfman123 7y ago
These articles are frustrating because they don't take into account the large percentage of the population that doesn't live in a place like New York or Boston. Houston would be unbearable in the summer without AC. No one is suggesting we do away with indoor heating.
- Swizec 7y ago
  People in Spain and the rest of the Mediterranean have managed to live without AC for millenia. Some old houses, centuries old, are cool as a cucumber during some of the worst months of summer. And yet, in my experience, it’s like Americans are allergic to insulation and building houses appropriate to the climate. Something is very weird when houses in SF look just like houses in Portland which look just like houses in every suburban photo of the US I’ve ever seen. In Europe architecture changes with the climate, in the US it doesn’t seem to (or at least I haven’t noticed and please tell me that i’n wrong)
  - majewsky 7y ago
    99PI did a wonderful episode on this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-delight/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-delight/ Basically, the US abandoned their regionally different architecture once AC became common.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      another case of technological dead end
  - asdfman123 7y ago
    > Some old houses, centuries old, are cool as a cucumber during some of the worst months of summer. Those places also probably don't routinely hit 90% humidity levels. You sweat profusely even in the shade here (think Florida in the summer if you've ever been). In places as hot an humid as the American south, pretty much everyone gets AC as soon as they can afford to do so. If they do not have AC, it is because they are too poor to afford it. I'm actually kind of a hippie minimalist at heart. I'm willing to give up my car and bike everywhere. I'm willing to go vegan to save the environment. I'd even be willing to crank the AC up to 80 degrees to reduce power consumption. But I would never live in a place with no AC whatsoever, no matter how the building was built. It's one of the last luxuries I'd give up, along with daily showers.
jdofaz 7y ago
In Phoenix yes, but I can get through winter without using a heater.
tschwimmer 7y ago
This is not a particularly clever article. It conflates the question of "Are American offices overcooled?" with "Do we really need air conditioning?" The answer to the former is probably yes, but the latter is most certainly also yes. The author makes not even a passing mention of the American Southwest, the Gulf Coast or Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The current standard of living in these areas without air conditioning would essentially be impossible.
siruncledrew 7y ago
After being in Europe during the heatwave, I really did miss air conditioning when it was 35-40C yet there was no place to cool down (restaurants even closed because it was too hot to cook in the kitchen). Usually this type of weather is not the norm for Western Europe, but if the weather keeps getting hotter on average that may not be the case anymore. Still, while it’s unpleasant, with the right adjustments it is possible to manage without AC for short periods (granted, if the humidity was like Florida, I would take that back). That’s just what it’s like to have to live with seasons. Some highs and some lows. In the US, air conditioning is ubiquitous, yet also inefficient temperature management. It’s like Goldilocks - rarely just right. When it’s hot and humid outside, the shock of cold and dry indoors is nice at first, but soon overbearing to adjust to. Same goes in winter when it’s 0C outside, yet 25C inside, so it feels like a sauna in long pants and a sweater. I wish temperature control was more adjusted to external environmental conditions to provide more “modest” conditioning. In my opinion, that’s the cost of living in an environment, having to adjust to it throughout the year. It doesn’t have to be as extreme as toughing out 40C in a jacket, but when it’s summer, it’s just bound to be a little sweatier for a while. Our bodies can get to used to it, but it’s more difficult with more temperature shocks from place to place.
Simulacra 7y ago
Yes. Above 75 and I start sweating, and the humidity in the swamp gets unbearable. Without air conditioning, or significant air flow, I don't think a lot of DC would be livable.
adolph 7y ago
Americans need data centers and data centers need air conditioning. Funny story: I once was paged to be part of a shut down exercise of services in a backup data center in the middle of an ice storm where the whole city was shut down. The chillers stopped working and the DC was overheated. They had security open doors etc but they couldn’t get enough chilled air into the building. The first thought was that the AC units had somehow frozen over. The postmortem found that the AC units had not been programmed for temperatures lower than 28 degrees and had just shut themselves off.
simonsarris 7y ago
A lot of the need for AC (and having lights on) is just really, really bad modern house design. I recently finished building a house (my first one) and everyone acted like I was crazy for not building in central air conditioning. I built in an older style, with windows on every side, with a mind towards ventilation and light. Inexplicably most houses in the area, even $500k+ houses do not have these two things. My mom's condo has central air but the system is so feeble and the venting upstairs so poor that two bedrooms in the house remain stuffy anyways. It seems like light and natural ventilation are not even afterthoughts, but non-thoughts, and the designs all rely on electric light and forced air. I also built 9 foot ceilings on the first floor and 8.5 on the second. Then I placed the attic (3rd story) door centrally in the upstairs hallway. The result of the design is that airflow moves on the first floor in all directions, and upward, and on the second floor can move at least east-west (bathroom and hallway windows), and also north-south if bedroom doors are open. Finally, air flows upwards to the attic, which has windows north-south. If I close windows in the morning and open around 7pm, the result is that the house stays very cool, about(? only tested with temp gun a few times) 74 downstairs and 76 upstairs during these 90 degree days, and then gets cooler at night as I open windows again. So far, I've only bought one fan, though things might work better with more. Note I'm not an expert or an architect, I just included some design features that should be obvious to anyone who's lived in an old house for a summer. This takes some manual control, but there are far fewer parts to maintain (this was a general design goal beyond AC), and last month's electric bill was $54 (New Hampshire).
- RickJWagner 7y ago
  I'd love to use windows (and attic fans) to better manage temperatures, but a large part of my family suffers from allergies.
mnm1 7y ago
Obviously we do as do other nations especially at work. Who the fuck wants to slave away in a fucking sweatshop just to save the employer some money or to cut some energy. Only a truly idiotic employer would remove air conditioning in exchange for the inevitable lower productivity and higher employee disengagement especially in fields like software that require a lot of deep thinking. And it is absolutely essential for sleeping well at night. Sleep is not negotiable. So yeah we need it. What we don't need are stupid articles like this that can't even make the point they're trying to make compelling.
RickJWagner 7y ago
That's a pretty harsh litmus test for climate activism. I lived a number of years with cars that lacked air conditioning. It can be pretty unpleasant. AC is pretty high up on my list of things I really, really want to have.
gremlinsinc 7y ago
I think the question should be 'could we survive' by turning up the thermostat... I'm miserable if it falls below 72 (I used to be hot all the time, had surgery in 2012 and now I'm always cold), but in the winter I set the heater to 64 and just bundle up. In the summer so far we've had the furnace off all summer except when my wife was baking up a storm for a birthday party and needed to keep the atmosphere cool for the cakes and because she raised the indoor temp 20 degrees. We live by the mountains and luckily face the sun in a way that our indoor temp runs about 10 degrees less than outdoor w/ the windows up. If we started getting 90+ inside I might decide to turn on A/C, but so far it only gets to 84 this summer, and it's not so bad in the basement where it's closer to 74, or in front of the window fan in the living area. If society as a whole could just choose collectively to set a minimum thermostat threshold of 78 for summer and 64 for winter, I think that alone could have a drastic effect on climate change. Freeze or sweat a little and be a little uncomfortable? So what deal with it. It's life, but we don't need to go to extremes and freeze/heat a lot or past what is bearable. If we can't mentally function as a result and do our jobs then we need to alter things. We might even find ourselves and bodies get 'used' to the new temperatures. People in phoenix wear parka's when it drops below 70, because they're accustomed to a different temp and it feels unbearably cold to them.

18 points by darod 7y ago

It's a good thing this is a country where it is NOT 'to each according to their need', and instead 'whatever you can afford'. Yay Capitalism. Yes, I need air-conditioning. And I can afford it. As such, I have it, regardless of the opinions of some NYT pencil-neck dweeb.

rolltiide 7y ago
It could quickly become a country of need given awareness and a state interest ITC and other agencies could block imports of AC units and the cooling fluid And other licenses could be withheld indefinitely for domestic manufacturers
rightbyte 7y ago
There should be a law on maximum sized windows in office buildings which choose to have AC. All those big windows are like a green house. Yay regulations!
- reaperducer 7y ago
  The big windows in office buildings exist to create a sealed envelope to more efficiently heat and cool the air inside. They are far more efficient than the windows in your home.
  - rightbyte 7y ago
    Oh ... ye, see what would happen if I were to make regulations without asking for expert input.
happytoexplain 7y ago
I wouldn't give up AC for anything, but it's totally baffling how for some people this topic elicits such angry, politicized, name-calling reactions.
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads on ideological tangents or call names in comments here. These things are in the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and following them when posting to HN?

adolph 7y ago

[O]n average, heating an American home with natural gas produces about 6,400 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2, a major warming gas). . . . A typical centrally air conditioned home in Florida, for instance, produces about 6,600 pounds of CO2. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13941744 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=139417...

ErotemeObelus 7y ago

Yes. Most of the United States is either continental or subtropical climate, which gets brutally hot and humid in the summer. Air conditioning is as necessary as heating in the winter. Most of Europe is either oceanic or mediterranean, which either doesn't get hot at all or only gets dry heat.

reaperducer 7y ago
Here's my anecdata: I had a house in the Mojave Desert. In summer the temperature would run 105-115° during the day and 95-110° at night for most of July, August, and September. I'm not from the desert, so I racked up $200/month power bills for my small home. (I kept it set at 80° when I was home, and 76° when my wife was home.) My neighbor across the street (with a wife and three kids) didn't seem to mind for the most part. He would have his windows open until the temperature got to 105°. Then he'd open them again at night on those days when it dipped below 100°. Even if the temperature was over 110° there were plenty of people driving around with their car windows open. And I'm talking brand new luxury cars, not junkers. Some people are just bothered more by heat than others.
- markus_zhang 7y ago
  Yeah some people (locals) are just more used to heat/cold. I moved around every few years so I'm kind of prepared to most of the weird weathers (no desert heat though, but wet heat and super cold winters).
- Amezarak 7y ago
  The parent said hot and humid. Dry heat is much more tolerable, and your body handles it pretty well. No doubt it still bothers some people more than others, but at least IME, even 110F, while it feels plenty warm, especially in the sun, is tolerable, especially in shade. A good breeze can even make it comfortable. You just need to drink a lot of water (to me it's dangerous in that you don't see how much water you're losing), and you will tire more quickly. Humidity makes evaporation much less effective. While you obviously sweat in 110F dry heat, it's not really noticeable. Go outside in 85F 100% humidity, and you will be absolutely miserable, and drenched in sweat. This is mainly what makes humidity so awful: the sweat. That said, at least it's very obvious how much water you're losing. Additionally, the water in the air "holds" heat, so generally daytime highs and nighttime lows are not that far apart, whereas in drier climates its usually (but not always, going by your post), the case that the nighttime sees a solid temperature drop. You can become heat adapted, so you sweat much less, but it only works up to a point and spending time in AC resets you if you're not staying out in the heat day after day after day.

markus_zhang 7y ago

One thing I still can't get used to since my arrival to North America in 2005 is that people tend to set temp too low in summers (18-21) and too high (26-28) in winters. Everyone in the company is complaining but none of them, even the VPs, managed to bring the temp to a more "normal" range.

asdfman123 7y ago

These articles are frustrating because they don't take into account the large percentage of the population that doesn't live in a place like New York or Boston. Houston would be unbearable in the summer without AC. No one is suggesting we do away with indoor heating.

Swizec 7y ago
People in Spain and the rest of the Mediterranean have managed to live without AC for millenia. Some old houses, centuries old, are cool as a cucumber during some of the worst months of summer. And yet, in my experience, it’s like Americans are allergic to insulation and building houses appropriate to the climate. Something is very weird when houses in SF look just like houses in Portland which look just like houses in every suburban photo of the US I’ve ever seen. In Europe architecture changes with the climate, in the US it doesn’t seem to (or at least I haven’t noticed and please tell me that i’n wrong)
- majewsky 7y ago
  99PI did a wonderful episode on this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-delight/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-delight/ Basically, the US abandoned their regionally different architecture once AC became common.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    another case of technological dead end
- asdfman123 7y ago
  > Some old houses, centuries old, are cool as a cucumber during some of the worst months of summer. Those places also probably don't routinely hit 90% humidity levels. You sweat profusely even in the shade here (think Florida in the summer if you've ever been). In places as hot an humid as the American south, pretty much everyone gets AC as soon as they can afford to do so. If they do not have AC, it is because they are too poor to afford it. I'm actually kind of a hippie minimalist at heart. I'm willing to give up my car and bike everywhere. I'm willing to go vegan to save the environment. I'd even be willing to crank the AC up to 80 degrees to reduce power consumption. But I would never live in a place with no AC whatsoever, no matter how the building was built. It's one of the last luxuries I'd give up, along with daily showers.

jdofaz 7y ago

In Phoenix yes, but I can get through winter without using a heater.

tschwimmer 7y ago

This is not a particularly clever article. It conflates the question of "Are American offices overcooled?" with "Do we really need air conditioning?" The answer to the former is probably yes, but the latter is most certainly also yes. The author makes not even a passing mention of the American Southwest, the Gulf Coast or Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The current standard of living in these areas without air conditioning would essentially be impossible.

siruncledrew 7y ago

After being in Europe during the heatwave, I really did miss air conditioning when it was 35-40C yet there was no place to cool down (restaurants even closed because it was too hot to cook in the kitchen). Usually this type of weather is not the norm for Western Europe, but if the weather keeps getting hotter on average that may not be the case anymore. Still, while it’s unpleasant, with the right adjustments it is possible to manage without AC for short periods (granted, if the humidity was like Florida, I would take that back). That’s just what it’s like to have to live with seasons. Some highs and some lows. In the US, air conditioning is ubiquitous, yet also inefficient temperature management. It’s like Goldilocks - rarely just right. When it’s hot and humid outside, the shock of cold and dry indoors is nice at first, but soon overbearing to adjust to. Same goes in winter when it’s 0C outside, yet 25C inside, so it feels like a sauna in long pants and a sweater. I wish temperature control was more adjusted to external environmental conditions to provide more “modest” conditioning. In my opinion, that’s the cost of living in an environment, having to adjust to it throughout the year. It doesn’t have to be as extreme as toughing out 40C in a jacket, but when it’s summer, it’s just bound to be a little sweatier for a while. Our bodies can get to used to it, but it’s more difficult with more temperature shocks from place to place.

Simulacra 7y ago

Yes. Above 75 and I start sweating, and the humidity in the swamp gets unbearable. Without air conditioning, or significant air flow, I don't think a lot of DC would be livable.

adolph 7y ago

Americans need data centers and data centers need air conditioning. Funny story: I once was paged to be part of a shut down exercise of services in a backup data center in the middle of an ice storm where the whole city was shut down. The chillers stopped working and the DC was overheated. They had security open doors etc but they couldn’t get enough chilled air into the building. The first thought was that the AC units had somehow frozen over. The postmortem found that the AC units had not been programmed for temperatures lower than 28 degrees and had just shut themselves off.

simonsarris 7y ago

A lot of the need for AC (and having lights on) is just really, really bad modern house design. I recently finished building a house (my first one) and everyone acted like I was crazy for not building in central air conditioning. I built in an older style, with windows on every side, with a mind towards ventilation and light. Inexplicably most houses in the area, even $500k+ houses do not have these two things. My mom's condo has central air but the system is so feeble and the venting upstairs so poor that two bedrooms in the house remain stuffy anyways. It seems like light and natural ventilation are not even afterthoughts, but non-thoughts, and the designs all rely on electric light and forced air. I also built 9 foot ceilings on the first floor and 8.5 on the second. Then I placed the attic (3rd story) door centrally in the upstairs hallway. The result of the design is that airflow moves on the first floor in all directions, and upward, and on the second floor can move at least east-west (bathroom and hallway windows), and also north-south if bedroom doors are open. Finally, air flows upwards to the attic, which has windows north-south. If I close windows in the morning and open around 7pm, the result is that the house stays very cool, about(? only tested with temp gun a few times) 74 downstairs and 76 upstairs during these 90 degree days, and then gets cooler at night as I open windows again. So far, I've only bought one fan, though things might work better with more. Note I'm not an expert or an architect, I just included some design features that should be obvious to anyone who's lived in an old house for a summer. This takes some manual control, but there are far fewer parts to maintain (this was a general design goal beyond AC), and last month's electric bill was $54 (New Hampshire).

RickJWagner 7y ago
I'd love to use windows (and attic fans) to better manage temperatures, but a large part of my family suffers from allergies.

mnm1 7y ago

Obviously we do as do other nations especially at work. Who the fuck wants to slave away in a fucking sweatshop just to save the employer some money or to cut some energy. Only a truly idiotic employer would remove air conditioning in exchange for the inevitable lower productivity and higher employee disengagement especially in fields like software that require a lot of deep thinking. And it is absolutely essential for sleeping well at night. Sleep is not negotiable. So yeah we need it. What we don't need are stupid articles like this that can't even make the point they're trying to make compelling.

RickJWagner 7y ago

That's a pretty harsh litmus test for climate activism. I lived a number of years with cars that lacked air conditioning. It can be pretty unpleasant. AC is pretty high up on my list of things I really, really want to have.

gremlinsinc 7y ago

I think the question should be 'could we survive' by turning up the thermostat... I'm miserable if it falls below 72 (I used to be hot all the time, had surgery in 2012 and now I'm always cold), but in the winter I set the heater to 64 and just bundle up. In the summer so far we've had the furnace off all summer except when my wife was baking up a storm for a birthday party and needed to keep the atmosphere cool for the cakes and because she raised the indoor temp 20 degrees. We live by the mountains and luckily face the sun in a way that our indoor temp runs about 10 degrees less than outdoor w/ the windows up. If we started getting 90+ inside I might decide to turn on A/C, but so far it only gets to 84 this summer, and it's not so bad in the basement where it's closer to 74, or in front of the window fan in the living area. If society as a whole could just choose collectively to set a minimum thermostat threshold of 78 for summer and 64 for winter, I think that alone could have a drastic effect on climate change. Freeze or sweat a little and be a little uncomfortable? So what deal with it. It's life, but we don't need to go to extremes and freeze/heat a lot or past what is bearable. If we can't mentally function as a result and do our jobs then we need to alter things. We might even find ourselves and bodies get 'used' to the new temperatures. People in phoenix wear parka's when it drops below 70, because they're accustomed to a different temp and it feels unbearably cold to them.