At least 2 times and as much as 5 times seems surprisingly bad. Do you have a source or a concrete example for that? The most plausible explanation I can thin

At least 2 times and as much as 5 times seems surprisingly bad. Do you have a source or a concrete example for that? The most plausible explanation I can think of for what you're saying is that you're comparing an evaporative cooling system to a heat pump based one, in which case the 'reverse cycle' aspect is not the thing causing the inefficiency.