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I found it absolutely shocking that Furnace Creek has a (well-watered) golf course and a whole bunch of air conditioned hotel rooms, despite being in a clearly

I found it absolutely shocking that Furnace Creek has a (well-watered) golf course and a whole bunch of air conditioned hotel rooms, despite being in a clearly inhabitable location. Exiting a fully air conditioned room at 20 degrees into 45+ degrees heat feels like literally like opening a furnace door. The sheer waste of energy to keep that hotel cooled down to those temperatures and golf-course playable year-round is just ridiculous.

LeoPanthera 5y ago
It might be a "waste" but it doesn't have to be damaging. Air conditioners (a special case of heat pumps) are extremely efficient and could easily be powered from a solar array. The hottest places in the world tend not to be short of sunlight. Where they get the water from is another matter though. I always wondered how much you could scale up Air Well technology, which condenses water out of the air. I suspect the places that have lots of sunlight also don't have a lot of humidity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_well_(condenser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_well_(condenser)
- thomasahle 5y ago
  According to [1] Air conditioners use about 6% of all the electricity produced in the United States. I guess that's less than I had imagined. And apparently it's not just because northern houses don't have AC, since apparently [2] 87% of houses do. Edit: Then again a lot of energy is used by industry, so maybe 6% used by residential air conditioning is a lot. [3] suggest 17% of residential energy is AC. [1]: https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/home-cooling-systems/air-conditioning https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/home-cooling-systems/air-... [2]: https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/air-conditioning.php https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/air... [3]: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricity-use-in-homes.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit...
  - LeoPanthera 5y ago
    Heat pumps are amazing things, they are more than 100% efficient, since they use only n watt-hours to move >n watt-hours of energy from one place to another. Under ideal conditions they can move 3n while consuming only n. It's far more efficient to use a heat pump in reverse to heat a space than it is to use a traditional electric heater, which is "only" 100% efficient. (Perhaps I should have said joules, not Wh? Units are confusing.)
    - hunter2_ 5y ago
      When cooling a dwelling, the trick is figuring out where to move the heat. Typically we dump it outside (waste) but we should be heating our hot water tanks, swimming pools, or anything else that needs concentrated heat at the same time that we're removing it from the indoor air. Alec from Technology Connections recently made some videos about heat pumps on YouTube that touch on this sort of thing.
      - mikepurvis 5y ago
        This has always made me super grouchy— I even have my house plumbed for hydronics! I wish I could tie the AC units into that, put all the rads in bypass during the summer, and use the hydronic water to preheat shower water before it hits the gas-powered on demand system.
      - amluto 5y ago
        In very hot climates, swimming pools get too hot, and you might prefer to chill the pool water.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
        I'm sure this might happen somewhere, but I grew up in Florida and it never happened in Orlando. I would always have been happy for the pool to be warmer.
      - nfriedly 5y ago
- einpoklum 5y ago
  Solar arrays you install in such an area can power useful activity elsewhere - and its not like we're at 100% renewable energy everywhere to obviate this. So The waste of energy _is_ damaging.
chemeng 5y ago
Agree with your points. Also, your comment reminded me that habitable, unhabitable, inhabitable, uninhabitable, is one of the most confusing situations in the english language.
- spidersouris 5y ago
  Habitable and inhabitable mean the same, don't they? It's likely inflammable and flammable. Unhabitable doesn't exist though.
  - LeoPanthera 5y ago
    > Unhabitable doesn't exist though. There's no reason why it shouldn't, though. It makes logical sense.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      Irregardless, it can be a word if enough people say so. (to be fair, by this definition, unhabitable is in fact a word)
      - tomcam 5y ago
        I’m taking you off my Hanukkah list for that one
    - chemeng 5y ago
      Merriam-Webster seems to agree with you. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unhabitable https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unhabitable
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > Habitable and inhabitable mean the same, don't they? Yes, though "habitable" is the normal word and "inhabitable" would be a nonce construction derived from "inhabit". > It's like[] inflammable and flammable. Not really; those words mean that something can catch fire. That's all well and good for "flammable", but it's bizarre for "inflammable", since "inflame" has no surviving meaning related to fire. If you wanted to express that meaning, you'd have to say "set fire" or "ignite".
samatman 5y ago
I have more respect for that than I do for, say, Phoenix AZ. It's quite the stunt to make a habitable vacation spot in the hottest place on Earth. There's only one Death Valley, and people want to see it. The golf course is... kinda pushing it, yeah, but I have respect for the sheer human ingenuity it takes to do something like that. Phoenix is more of a case of putting a bunch of people where a bunch of people probably shouldn't be. It can probably be made energy-independent, there is a lot of sun to be harvested, but water is a different story. tl;dr scale matters.
- Pokepokalypse 5y ago
  to be fair; Phoenix has (had) quite a bit of its own water via the Salt River. And there was also quite a lot of ground water (which is nearing depletion now). The controversial bit is that Phoenix also ties in to the Colorado River system, via canals, and THAT is consuming far more water than can be sustained. Most of it for growing crops (not sustaining the massive population) - and I think that if the current drought situation continues, they're going to have to stop growing cotton and lettuce out here. Which . . . is fine.
Sniffnoy 5y ago
Nitpick, you mean "uninhabitable". I think the reversal here might confuse some people.
rsync 5y ago
"The sheer waste of energy to keep that hotel cooled down to those temperatures and golf-course playable year-round is just ridiculous." A similar temperature differential exists in Minnesota and Wisconsin (and elsewhere in the US) for months in the wintertime. Unlike air-conditioning which can be powered by solar and wind produced electricity, most heating is done by directly burning fossil fuels on-site. I think we should all be very cautious with our energy scorekeeping ...
- aksss 5y ago
  I agree with you about scorekeeping, but you did a weird comparison in your sentence about heating/cooling. You compared the potential of one with the reality of another. As in, AC can be powered by [renewable] electricity, but that most heating is [powered] by burning fossil fuels. It might be reasonable to ask how much AC actually is powered by renewables vs fossil fuels. Heating can also be done electrically, and therefore could be done with renewables. We all know that it's hella expensive at present to heat with electricity compared to natural gas, propane, or even wood in some places (at present).
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    AC-heavy environs -- especially deserts -- are a better use-case for existing renewable solutions than colder environs. And, also, actual uptake is higher. Solar can be more easily used for AC in desert environs because peak demand coincides exactly with peak production. And, it actually is. At least in places with access to capital. The situation is sadly exactly the opposite up north. For everything except geothermal the peak production (both in time of day and season) doesn't match up well with the peak demand. Also, AC requires a lot less energy than heating, regardless of generation method. But deserts have other sustainability issues. Water.
- ffffwe3rq352y3 5y ago
  The only problem I have is that its in a national park. I feel like parks should be for everyone but the renting a room is really expensive so you have to be mostly well off to get one. I guess it feels like an eyesore that richer people can use while everyone else is forced to camp.
hartator 5y ago
> The sheer waste of energy to keep that hotel cooled down to those temperatures Actually warming up cold places in winter is more energy intensive than cooling down hot places. Nordic countries should not exist by that logic.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  I have to deeply question this.. it might take some research..
- fouric 5y ago
  This is false. Heat is an incredibly common type of waste energy, and far more common than waste "cold" (if such a thing exists at all), so most (if not all) heating devices are more efficient than cooling devices. Furthermore, heat is related to entropy, which in a closed system can only increase. We have many devices that can generate heat where there was none previously (e.g. resistive heating elements) but none that can destroy heat, only shuffle it around somewhere else.
  - AbrahamParangi 5y ago
    This isn’t really true because pumping heat requires less energy to create the same differential than generating, and most homes are heated by generation.
rootusrootus 5y ago
According to this [0], the water comes from a natural spring. The electricity could be generated on site with solar panels. Doesn't seem that outlandish to me. [0] https://www.greenlodgingnews.com/how-xanterras-furnace-creek-resort-is-sustainable/#:~:text=Furnace%20Creek%20and%20its%20namesake,of%20water%20for%20several%20purposes https://www.greenlodgingnews.com/how-xanterras-furnace-creek....
- rurp 5y ago
  It's not readily apparent but pulling water out of the regular ecosystem in a desert environment like this is crushing to the local wildlife population. I spend a lot of time in the desert in this part of the country and it's tragic how many springs are dry these days due in large part to ground and spring water being taken for things like this golf course. I absolutely think that having a golf course like this is a terrible waste. Not to mention that this is in a National Park; a place whose ostensible purpose is to protect and preserve nature! If you try camping outside of an official campground there (something totally fine and legal on the vast majority of public land) you'll get kicked out with a ticket. Meanwhile that same park is making a hard life even harder for local endangered plants and animals.
vondur 5y ago
This is Las Vegas every summer. Out of a cooler, into an oven door being opened.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  King of the Hill: > Bobby: "111 degrees? Phoenix can't really be that hot, can it? Oh my god, it's like standing on the sun!" > Peggy: "This city should not exist — it is a monument to man's arrogance."
okareaman 5y ago
Let me tell you about a place called Las Vegas
pnexk 5y ago
rather related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27555563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27555563
s0rce 5y ago
AC uses less energy than heating in very cold places. Cooling from 120F to 70F is a 50F delta. Warming from -30F to 70F is 100F.
robszumski 5y ago
I stayed for a night at Furnace Creek and it was "air conditioned" and the cold water was "cold". They're not cranking the industrial ACs here, it's just enough to be on the bearable end of the range for tourists that are not used to the heat. Air temp was 116 at the official station.

LeoPanthera 5y ago

It might be a "waste" but it doesn't have to be damaging. Air conditioners (a special case of heat pumps) are extremely efficient and could easily be powered from a solar array. The hottest places in the world tend not to be short of sunlight. Where they get the water from is another matter though. I always wondered how much you could scale up Air Well technology, which condenses water out of the air. I suspect the places that have lots of sunlight also don't have a lot of humidity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_well_(condenser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_well_(condenser)

thomasahle 5y ago
According to [1] Air conditioners use about 6% of all the electricity produced in the United States. I guess that's less than I had imagined. And apparently it's not just because northern houses don't have AC, since apparently [2] 87% of houses do. Edit: Then again a lot of energy is used by industry, so maybe 6% used by residential air conditioning is a lot. [3] suggest 17% of residential energy is AC. [1]: https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/home-cooling-systems/air-conditioning https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/home-cooling-systems/air-... [2]: https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/air-conditioning.php https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/air... [3]: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricity-use-in-homes.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit...
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  Heat pumps are amazing things, they are more than 100% efficient, since they use only n watt-hours to move >n watt-hours of energy from one place to another. Under ideal conditions they can move 3n while consuming only n. It's far more efficient to use a heat pump in reverse to heat a space than it is to use a traditional electric heater, which is "only" 100% efficient. (Perhaps I should have said joules, not Wh? Units are confusing.)
  - hunter2_ 5y ago
    When cooling a dwelling, the trick is figuring out where to move the heat. Typically we dump it outside (waste) but we should be heating our hot water tanks, swimming pools, or anything else that needs concentrated heat at the same time that we're removing it from the indoor air. Alec from Technology Connections recently made some videos about heat pumps on YouTube that touch on this sort of thing.
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      This has always made me super grouchy— I even have my house plumbed for hydronics! I wish I could tie the AC units into that, put all the rads in bypass during the summer, and use the hydronic water to preheat shower water before it hits the gas-powered on demand system.
    - amluto 5y ago
      In very hot climates, swimming pools get too hot, and you might prefer to chill the pool water.
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
        I'm sure this might happen somewhere, but I grew up in Florida and it never happened in Orlando. I would always have been happy for the pool to be warmer.
    - nfriedly 5y ago
einpoklum 5y ago
Solar arrays you install in such an area can power useful activity elsewhere - and its not like we're at 100% renewable energy everywhere to obviate this. So The waste of energy _is_ damaging.

chemeng 5y ago

Agree with your points. Also, your comment reminded me that habitable, unhabitable, inhabitable, uninhabitable, is one of the most confusing situations in the english language.

spidersouris 5y ago
Habitable and inhabitable mean the same, don't they? It's likely inflammable and flammable. Unhabitable doesn't exist though.
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  > Unhabitable doesn't exist though. There's no reason why it shouldn't, though. It makes logical sense.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    Irregardless, it can be a word if enough people say so. (to be fair, by this definition, unhabitable is in fact a word)
    - tomcam 5y ago
      I’m taking you off my Hanukkah list for that one
  - chemeng 5y ago
    Merriam-Webster seems to agree with you. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unhabitable https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unhabitable
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > Habitable and inhabitable mean the same, don't they? Yes, though "habitable" is the normal word and "inhabitable" would be a nonce construction derived from "inhabit". > It's like[] inflammable and flammable. Not really; those words mean that something can catch fire. That's all well and good for "flammable", but it's bizarre for "inflammable", since "inflame" has no surviving meaning related to fire. If you wanted to express that meaning, you'd have to say "set fire" or "ignite".

samatman 5y ago

I have more respect for that than I do for, say, Phoenix AZ. It's quite the stunt to make a habitable vacation spot in the hottest place on Earth. There's only one Death Valley, and people want to see it. The golf course is... kinda pushing it, yeah, but I have respect for the sheer human ingenuity it takes to do something like that. Phoenix is more of a case of putting a bunch of people where a bunch of people probably shouldn't be. It can probably be made energy-independent, there is a lot of sun to be harvested, but water is a different story. tl;dr scale matters.

Pokepokalypse 5y ago
to be fair; Phoenix has (had) quite a bit of its own water via the Salt River. And there was also quite a lot of ground water (which is nearing depletion now). The controversial bit is that Phoenix also ties in to the Colorado River system, via canals, and THAT is consuming far more water than can be sustained. Most of it for growing crops (not sustaining the massive population) - and I think that if the current drought situation continues, they're going to have to stop growing cotton and lettuce out here. Which . . . is fine.

Sniffnoy 5y ago

Nitpick, you mean "uninhabitable". I think the reversal here might confuse some people.

rsync 5y ago

"The sheer waste of energy to keep that hotel cooled down to those temperatures and golf-course playable year-round is just ridiculous." A similar temperature differential exists in Minnesota and Wisconsin (and elsewhere in the US) for months in the wintertime. Unlike air-conditioning which can be powered by solar and wind produced electricity, most heating is done by directly burning fossil fuels on-site. I think we should all be very cautious with our energy scorekeeping ...

aksss 5y ago
I agree with you about scorekeeping, but you did a weird comparison in your sentence about heating/cooling. You compared the potential of one with the reality of another. As in, AC can be powered by [renewable] electricity, but that most heating is [powered] by burning fossil fuels. It might be reasonable to ask how much AC actually is powered by renewables vs fossil fuels. Heating can also be done electrically, and therefore could be done with renewables. We all know that it's hella expensive at present to heat with electricity compared to natural gas, propane, or even wood in some places (at present).
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  AC-heavy environs -- especially deserts -- are a better use-case for existing renewable solutions than colder environs. And, also, actual uptake is higher. Solar can be more easily used for AC in desert environs because peak demand coincides exactly with peak production. And, it actually is. At least in places with access to capital. The situation is sadly exactly the opposite up north. For everything except geothermal the peak production (both in time of day and season) doesn't match up well with the peak demand. Also, AC requires a lot less energy than heating, regardless of generation method. But deserts have other sustainability issues. Water.
ffffwe3rq352y3 5y ago
The only problem I have is that its in a national park. I feel like parks should be for everyone but the renting a room is really expensive so you have to be mostly well off to get one. I guess it feels like an eyesore that richer people can use while everyone else is forced to camp.

hartator 5y ago

> The sheer waste of energy to keep that hotel cooled down to those temperatures Actually warming up cold places in winter is more energy intensive than cooling down hot places. Nordic countries should not exist by that logic.

mistrial9 5y ago
I have to deeply question this.. it might take some research..
fouric 5y ago
This is false. Heat is an incredibly common type of waste energy, and far more common than waste "cold" (if such a thing exists at all), so most (if not all) heating devices are more efficient than cooling devices. Furthermore, heat is related to entropy, which in a closed system can only increase. We have many devices that can generate heat where there was none previously (e.g. resistive heating elements) but none that can destroy heat, only shuffle it around somewhere else.
- AbrahamParangi 5y ago
  This isn’t really true because pumping heat requires less energy to create the same differential than generating, and most homes are heated by generation.

rootusrootus 5y ago

According to this [0], the water comes from a natural spring. The electricity could be generated on site with solar panels. Doesn't seem that outlandish to me. [0] https://www.greenlodgingnews.com/how-xanterras-furnace-creek-resort-is-sustainable/#:~:text=Furnace%20Creek%20and%20its%20namesake,of%20water%20for%20several%20purposes https://www.greenlodgingnews.com/how-xanterras-furnace-creek....

rurp 5y ago
It's not readily apparent but pulling water out of the regular ecosystem in a desert environment like this is crushing to the local wildlife population. I spend a lot of time in the desert in this part of the country and it's tragic how many springs are dry these days due in large part to ground and spring water being taken for things like this golf course. I absolutely think that having a golf course like this is a terrible waste. Not to mention that this is in a National Park; a place whose ostensible purpose is to protect and preserve nature! If you try camping outside of an official campground there (something totally fine and legal on the vast majority of public land) you'll get kicked out with a ticket. Meanwhile that same park is making a hard life even harder for local endangered plants and animals.

vondur 5y ago

This is Las Vegas every summer. Out of a cooler, into an oven door being opened.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago
King of the Hill: > Bobby: "111 degrees? Phoenix can't really be that hot, can it? Oh my god, it's like standing on the sun!" > Peggy: "This city should not exist — it is a monument to man's arrogance."

okareaman 5y ago

Let me tell you about a place called Las Vegas

pnexk 5y ago

rather related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27555563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27555563

s0rce 5y ago

AC uses less energy than heating in very cold places. Cooling from 120F to 70F is a 50F delta. Warming from -30F to 70F is 100F.

robszumski 5y ago

I stayed for a night at Furnace Creek and it was "air conditioned" and the cold water was "cold". They're not cranking the industrial ACs here, it's just enough to be on the bearable end of the range for tourists that are not used to the heat. Air temp was 116 at the official station.