13 ms·

The rise of air conditioning (2018)

60 points by samizdis 4y ago

tomohawk 4y ago
Probably the biggest harm is that it makes Washington DC habitable.
10u152 4y ago
I don’t understand these articles. There’s so much hand wringing and the implication is that we’ve failed as a species. The solution hinted at seems to be ditch all technology, transport and modern methods and go back to pre-industrialised society. How about campaigning for something useful like more efficiency or insulation?
- brightball 4y ago
  Exactly. Air conditioning is probably a top 3-5 all time human invention.
  - bonzini 4y ago
    If air conditioning is top 3, blinds (the kind that actually keeps heat out, which you find in Mediterranean countries, not the shitty ones you put inside the room) are worth a Nobel prize.
    - helmholtz 4y ago
      And stepwells, and latticework false walls, and high ceilings, and ventilators at the top of the house, and having a false-basement thing in houses where it's a bit cooler in the afternoons, and siestas and walking slowly from place to place, and loose-fitting linen clothing, and lemonade. But no. My shitty white plastic Carrier A/C is all I care about. Housing in the US is depressingly shite.
      - somewhereoutth 4y ago
        I think the idea is that Americans want to live like northern Europeans regardless of the actual climate of where they are.
      - Turing_Machine 4y ago
        Stepwells are picturesque, but they are also a public health nightmare.
    - LightG 4y ago
      Agreed. We're just learning now, in the current heatwave, how effective blackout blinds are in keep the heat out (white coloured backing facing the sun). It's great.
      - bonzini 4y ago
        Look at Spain, Italy or Greece on Google Maps (or southern France too). You'll see that they put blinds outside the building.
  - throw0101a 4y ago
    > Air conditioning is probably a top 3-5 all time human invention. No such much AC specifically, but rather the refrigerant loop generally, IMHO. Being able to keep humans cool, but also food chilled (to limit bacteria growth), food frozen (for long term storage and transport), as well as medication, vaccines, blood, tissue samples, etc. The cold chain (in logistics) is a marvel of human accomplishment: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chain
    - FollowingTheDao 4y ago
      >The cold chain (in logistics) is a marvel of human accomplishment... ...until we all realize it was short sighted because it killed of billions because of starvation and the inability to cool ourselves.
- bombcar 4y ago
  “ The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.” gets lots of clicks if you change it up a bit.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    Name checks out.
- Flankk 4y ago
  It's actually incoherent. The author concludes that we need to move away from fossil fuels as a species. So AC is fine then, yeah? Or is the plan to give ourselves heat stroke until we figure out sustainable energy? Why is my higher standard of living being compared to those in Africa? I don't live in Africa.
- helmholtz 4y ago
  - Majestic121 4y ago
    It is quite a meaningless rant. "Letting the outside in" is pretty nice when the outside is within reasonable bounds, and you seem to be lucky enough to have that, but when the outside is 40C and above, or 99% humidity, it's just turning daily life to hell. And yes, we can both increase efficiency and make sure the origin of electricity is from renewable source to make things better. It will consume more energy than not doing it at all, but believe me, ask anyone that lives in a place where the weather is at least a bit harsh (apparently not your case), the price is definitely worth it. As for the rant about building shopping malls and parking lots, there's been quite a lot of development since the 90's. All the new projects I see popping up contain greenery and parks develop wild patches, and mega-malls are falling into disrepair.
    - helmholtz 4y ago
      "Apparently not your case" My friend, I lived most of my life in India. Trust me. I know everything there is to know about heat. I KNOW the engineers who're in this field. I see them every year at the same damn conference, where they talk the same damn talk all the time. Hypothetically, sure, one can do both. Improve efficiency AND reduce. But please, tell me where we've done that? CPUs? Electricity usage? CO2 emissions? Nowhere.
- Proven 4y ago
- skyfaller 4y ago
  Efficiency alone almost certainly will not allow us to avoid climate catastrophe, due to the Jevons Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox When an activity uses less energy and therefore becomes less expensive, people tend to simply engage more in that activity, until they use more energy than they did before. One reason why is obvious from your attitude here: our culture considers life to be more luxurious and enjoyable when you can do and consume more stuff, and advancing the idea of doing/consuming less is considered backwards and not "useful". Insulation at the scale needed to avoid climate catastrophe would require a massive international mobilization, along the lines of the Green New Deal and a Green Marshall Plan, to renovate all buildings everywhere before 2050. Sadly the political will to do this seems absent from almost every country, with a couple possible exceptions such as Chile attempting to rewrite their constitution to prioritize climate justice. Basically no countries are approaching even the inadequate Paris agreement targets. And if you achieved such insulation, without other more drastic changes to our society, people would just run their AC/heat more to reach more luxurious temperatures, and we would not avoid any greenhouse gas emissions.
  - somewhereoutth 4y ago
    Yes, a very important principle. See also road building and induced demand. Therefore we should be working to reduce supply of fossil fuels, to 'keep it in the ground'. If there is less to go round, then efficiencies will still be found but used to maintain what we had (as far as practicable) as opposed to increasing demand
    - fmajid 4y ago
      The concept of “induced demand” as if it’s a bad thing is irredeemably stupid. It’s like saying “adding Internet bandwidth is pointless because demand will just rise to match capacity, and we should go back to the days of 56K modems”.
      - somewhereoutth 4y ago
        It is a bad thing if we fully understand the personal and social cost of car driving.
- MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
  None of it makes sense, unless you assume that they are not very bright, or the actual goal is to dismantle the current civilisation due to malcontent stemming from the projection of personal issues. Revenge Against God For The Crime Of Being.
- btmiller 4y ago
  Father John Misty’s Things It Would’ve Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution is worth a listen.
gmuslera 4y ago
The eco-harm it causes is more related to its energy use and how it is typically generated. But there are eco-friendly ways to generate (and store) energy, not burning fossil fuels in general, or even burning at all. You can't separate ACs from other energy consuming devices, the same could be said, about, I don't know, microwave ovens. Its the energy what should be redefined, how we get it. Besides that, they are becoming more efficient, and there are alternative approaches to control temperature at homes.
- kolinko 4y ago
  This. Also, AC needs energy during clear summer days - exactly when it’s the cheapest to deliver by PV. With minimal effect on climate.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    An interesting side-effect although sadly not leveraged much in the US, and also little used in europe because of the stigma on AC, is that AC is a heat pump and heat pumps are reversible. It’s finally gaining in popularity, and depending on weather conditions a modern heat pump can provide heating several times more efficient than straight up burning fuel even if you’re producing electricity from that fuel. When your electricity is nuclear or hydro (or other renewables but that tends to be a bit sticky in winter) it’s manna.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      It's a travesty that A/C units in the US are not (in many cases) designed to be reversible. I mean, even if you have a gas furnace, using the heat pump when it's only mildly cold can be cheaper.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    This is really not true. Case in point, today where I am it will be overcast, 85*F, and very high humidity. We also get extreme cold in winter, so there's no getting around needing both AC and heating, but solar isn't a panacea. Unfortunately, hot cloudy days also don't tend to produce much wind either.
aqme28 4y ago
Obviously air conditioning is really useful in a hot climate. As someone who does a lot of moving between places with/without it, it's interesting to see how overused it can be in much of the US. Your office in the northeast does not need to be 69 degrees inside all summer long.
- helmholtz 4y ago
  It's useful in warm and humid climates. In warm and dry climates, a swamp cooler will beat the pants off of an airconditioner in damn near every metric you can think of. So, sure, in the swamps of Florida, we should be OK with using the AC. But in the dry heat of Texas? Or southern California? Why doesn't America do even the simple things right? In city planning, in cooling, in HOA's dictating lawn upkeep and on and on and on.
  - rustybelt 4y ago
    Former Houston resident here chuckling about the “dry heat” of Texas.
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      Right. People don't realize just how big Texas is, and what a wide range of climates are actually found there.
- bobthechef 4y ago
  The absurd overuse of AC seems like a peculiarity of the United States. Walk into an American household in the summer, and you find people watching TV with blankets or a sweatshirt because the temperature is so low. In the winter, the opposite is true: the house is overheated, so everyone wears short sleeves. You’re pretty much forced to do this in older apartment buildings where you have no thermostat and the landlord cranks the heat up to Saharan temperatures. The only way to regulate the temperature is to open windows, and that doesn’t always work well. Tell me that’s not wasting energy. Maybe start there if you want to actually contribute meaningfully. Such a bizarre set of practices. The point of HVAC is to bring the temperature to a comfortable level while you wear season appropriate clothing, not to eliminate or invert seasonal differences.
quanto 4y ago
"Singapore’s founding father thought air conditioning was the secret to his country’s success"[1] AC is an enabler of human productivity. [1] https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew-air-conditioning https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew...
- pawsforthought 4y ago
  Put another way, AC allows rampant population growth in places that are going to become otherwise uninhabitable to extreme heat (if they aren’t already). Swings and roundabouts.
londons_explore 4y ago
There are actually far less energy intensive ways to make houses cool... Everything from painting the roof in special IR emitting and visible light reflecting paint... To using evaporative cooling (even a small amount of water can make a large cooling effect). To having large amounts of insulation to keep things cool in the daytime and cooling stuff down at night when the outside is cooler. To using chilling loops deep underground where the soil is far cooler, or into rivers (where the water is typically cooler) than surface temperatures. There are so many options for getting coolness with lower energy cost and lower eco-harm... I think it's a real shame we haven't done just a little more R&D to make them viable and commonplace instead of electrically driven air-air heat pumps which really gobble energy.
- elric 4y ago
  None of these solutions are anywhere near as easy as simply installing an A/C unit. Which is why A/C is so popular. People would love to cool (and heat) their homes in more environmentally friendly ways, provided those ways are as convenient and as cheap as A/C. Which they're not. If anything, insulation (on its own) worsens the problem, because once the heat gets in, it's effectively trapped for days. If it's not combined with shading, or some other way to reflect heat away from the windows, a hot house becomes a hothouse real fast... I wish there were an easy way to couple all heat producing and heat dissipating devices in my home. Too much heat in my bedroom? Move it into the hot water tank. Too cold in the living room? Use the waste heat from the oven to heat the room.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  I'm thinking about blinds, but they cost 10k eur to install and require approval from the union of house owners. So I opted for heat-reflective window foils instead. Only costed 30 eur. They help — but only a little. Maybe cool my living rooms by 1C or 2C in the summer. In the mean time my wife complains that the rooms are too dark and uncomfortable. She doesn't understand why I don't just install AC. Neither does anyone else in her social group. So, what is a man going to do to keep his wife happy?
  - londons_explore 4y ago
sk8terboi 4y ago
greenhorn123 4y ago
I really don't see the problem at all. Solar energy is plentiful when you need airconditioning, so you can simply power the compressor using solar power.
baryphonic 4y ago
Air conditioning has saved countless human lives.[0] It is one of our greatest inventions. I'm not sure this is the intention, but the sentiment expressed in this article, when adopted as policy, puts human lives at risk.[1] There is no iron law that we can either have clean energy or air conditioning, but not both. And as a consequence, there is no iron law saying that environmentalism must be anti-human. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study-home-air-conditioning-cut-premature-deaths-on-hot-days-80-percent-since-1960/2012/12/22/5b57f3ac-4abf-11e2-b709-667035ff9029_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study... [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/06/28/1010923130/the-pacific-northwest-has-limited-a-c-making-the-heat-wave-more-dangerous https://www.npr.org/2021/06/28/1010923130/the-pacific-northw...
- konschubert 4y ago
  AC power usage correlates well with Solar Power output, which means that this kind of power demand is super easy to satisfy.
  - lettergram 4y ago
    That was always my thoughts, storage capacity of energy is fairly expensive. Also there are much cheaper ways to cool than we do today. There are a lot of passive cooling systems. An easy one is to bury pipes a few feet (>3-4ft) under ground and run a fan to push air through the pipes. You can also put pipes under a near by creek / pond if you have one near by (I have seen this done). There’s a whole lot of passive systems. Gardens on roofs, sun rooms, underground pipes, water cooled, etc. I’m currently looking at building a house with a combination of these. The problem with all these is the increased price of construction / inability / unreasonableness to adjust old homes. I do think new buildings should take advantage of some of these. But old builds aren’t really possible to convert.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      And thermal applications (like heating and cooling) enable cheap storage: store the product, not the input energy.
samatman 4y ago
We've been forcing interiors to be warm with technology for a million years, it stands next to the stone ax as our original invention. Last century we figured out how to force interiors to be cool, reliably. This must not be confused with the tendency to squander our unique gift of abundant energy. Places like Arizona could have houses with massive walls, arcades, all the refinements the Pueblo, Persians, and many others have brought to living in arid regions: and air conditioning, which is a wonderful invention. If your solution to ecological crisis is to return humanity to immiseration, I reject that utterly. There are more dangerous things than warm weather and this attitude is prominent among them.
ngcc_hk 4y ago
So crazy this kind of writing I refuse to read it. I think one could write how many x causing harm … how about the very existence of human and so much eco-harm this species cause.
bowsamic 4y ago
Unfortunately AC is going to become a necessary reality even in countries where it is traditionally avoided, like the UK or mainland Europe. Here in Germany we had to buy one for our rabbits, who will simply die without it. In the UK it will reach 40 next week across many areas of the country. An article on the Guardian says that we can avoid AC in these extreme weather situations by using techniques such as "opening windows". Totally delusional. Then you have the UK climate deniers which are extremely numerous and are claiming that 40C is a totally normal and expected part of the British summer. I think that it will not be long before believing in anthropogenic climate change will become political suicide, since who wants to hear the bad news that we have no solution for? Even worse are those who claim that "we will solve it with science, we always do". It is already too late, and the momentum is getting insane. Nothing we can do about it. A billion brown people will die, and all white people will have AC.
- tintedfireglass 4y ago
  how does 40C in UK compared to 40c in the tropics? is it heat directly from the sun? Or is the atmosphere hot? or does the ground radiate heat? these three different types of 40C have different mitigation strategies but will be given the same number (40C) by weather report sources. All heat is not the same. humid 40C is completely different from dry 40C. Each of these various types of heat will have different effects on our health and efficiency and have different strategies to mitigate it.
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but yeah 40C is much more severe in the UK than it is in the tropics for a huge number of reasons: lack of shade from trees (generally UK is pretty treeless in suburbs), more humid, no shutters on windows, etc.
    - politelemon 4y ago
      And buildings designed to trap heat.
    - 4y ago
Merrill 4y ago
Before air conditioning, there was the rise of central heating. Is the total energy used for the combination of heating and cooling greater in a warm climate or a cold climate, given the same floor space and appropriate insulation and construction? I was under the impression that less energy would be needed in Dallas than in Chicago, but I don't have actual data.
tintedfireglass 4y ago
if honestly people think AC is bad for the environment people could switch to water based cooling systems. these are known as "coolers" in India and are used widely during summers as they are cheap and use really low amount of electricity and have zero effect on environment. it just costs like 30$ when compared to 300$ AC systems and have many advantages both economical and environmental. not sure why it hasn't picked up in developed nations? link : https://www.amazon.in/Symphony-Diet-12-Litre-Cooler/dp/B00IYD419Q/ref=mp_s_a_1_11?crid=TJSR138XGLBJ&keywords=cooler&qid=1657975716&sprefix=c%2Caps%2C989&sr=8-11 https://www.amazon.in/Symphony-Diet-12-Litre-Cooler/dp/B00IY... how it works : https://kenstar.in/blog/post/how-does-an-air-cooler-work https://kenstar.in/blog/post/how-does-an-air-cooler-work
- cityofdelusion 4y ago
  Swamp coolers were widely used before A/C was cheap enough to become mainstream. Most people in the southern U.S. for instance may have a grandparent or great grandparent that can still tell stories of how miserable they are compared to A/C!
  - tintedfireglass 4y ago
    Interesting! Yeah, and they definetly are worse than ACs XD
- alex_sf 4y ago
  Those are referred to as swamp coolers in the US. They depend on low humidity to function, which practically limits their use to the southwest US. It also hasn't been that popular since the advent of AC since they don't do a very good job.
ThePhysicist 4y ago
Germany is poised to move all heating for buildings to electrical heat pumps in the foreseeable future (with some exceptions). With some minor differences it's the same tech, just used for heating instead of cooling. Not long ago everyone made fun of "the Americans" and their ACs. Funny how times change.
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
"A move away from fossil fuels requires the wholesale transformation of all these systems." That is why people do not understand both the scope and the urgency of the issue. Technically it is an easy problem to fix, but to change the hearts and minds of people will take a spiritual revolution.

60 points by samizdis 4y ago

Probably the biggest harm is that it makes Washington DC habitable.

I don’t understand these articles. There’s so much hand wringing and the implication is that we’ve failed as a species. The solution hinted at seems to be ditch all technology, transport and modern methods and go back to pre-industrialised society. How about campaigning for something useful like more efficiency or insulation?

brightball 4y ago
Exactly. Air conditioning is probably a top 3-5 all time human invention.
- bonzini 4y ago
  If air conditioning is top 3, blinds (the kind that actually keeps heat out, which you find in Mediterranean countries, not the shitty ones you put inside the room) are worth a Nobel prize.
  - helmholtz 4y ago
    And stepwells, and latticework false walls, and high ceilings, and ventilators at the top of the house, and having a false-basement thing in houses where it's a bit cooler in the afternoons, and siestas and walking slowly from place to place, and loose-fitting linen clothing, and lemonade. But no. My shitty white plastic Carrier A/C is all I care about. Housing in the US is depressingly shite.
    - somewhereoutth 4y ago
      I think the idea is that Americans want to live like northern Europeans regardless of the actual climate of where they are.
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      Stepwells are picturesque, but they are also a public health nightmare.
  - LightG 4y ago
    Agreed. We're just learning now, in the current heatwave, how effective blackout blinds are in keep the heat out (white coloured backing facing the sun). It's great.
    - bonzini 4y ago
      Look at Spain, Italy or Greece on Google Maps (or southern France too). You'll see that they put blinds outside the building.
- throw0101a 4y ago
  > Air conditioning is probably a top 3-5 all time human invention. No such much AC specifically, but rather the refrigerant loop generally, IMHO. Being able to keep humans cool, but also food chilled (to limit bacteria growth), food frozen (for long term storage and transport), as well as medication, vaccines, blood, tissue samples, etc. The cold chain (in logistics) is a marvel of human accomplishment: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chain
  - FollowingTheDao 4y ago
    >The cold chain (in logistics) is a marvel of human accomplishment... ...until we all realize it was short sighted because it killed of billions because of starvation and the inability to cool ourselves.
bombcar 4y ago
“ The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.” gets lots of clicks if you change it up a bit.
- morelisp 4y ago
  Name checks out.
Flankk 4y ago
It's actually incoherent. The author concludes that we need to move away from fossil fuels as a species. So AC is fine then, yeah? Or is the plan to give ourselves heat stroke until we figure out sustainable energy? Why is my higher standard of living being compared to those in Africa? I don't live in Africa.
helmholtz 4y ago
- Majestic121 4y ago
  It is quite a meaningless rant. "Letting the outside in" is pretty nice when the outside is within reasonable bounds, and you seem to be lucky enough to have that, but when the outside is 40C and above, or 99% humidity, it's just turning daily life to hell. And yes, we can both increase efficiency and make sure the origin of electricity is from renewable source to make things better. It will consume more energy than not doing it at all, but believe me, ask anyone that lives in a place where the weather is at least a bit harsh (apparently not your case), the price is definitely worth it. As for the rant about building shopping malls and parking lots, there's been quite a lot of development since the 90's. All the new projects I see popping up contain greenery and parks develop wild patches, and mega-malls are falling into disrepair.
  - helmholtz 4y ago
    "Apparently not your case" My friend, I lived most of my life in India. Trust me. I know everything there is to know about heat. I KNOW the engineers who're in this field. I see them every year at the same damn conference, where they talk the same damn talk all the time. Hypothetically, sure, one can do both. Improve efficiency AND reduce. But please, tell me where we've done that? CPUs? Electricity usage? CO2 emissions? Nowhere.
Proven 4y ago
skyfaller 4y ago
Efficiency alone almost certainly will not allow us to avoid climate catastrophe, due to the Jevons Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox When an activity uses less energy and therefore becomes less expensive, people tend to simply engage more in that activity, until they use more energy than they did before. One reason why is obvious from your attitude here: our culture considers life to be more luxurious and enjoyable when you can do and consume more stuff, and advancing the idea of doing/consuming less is considered backwards and not "useful". Insulation at the scale needed to avoid climate catastrophe would require a massive international mobilization, along the lines of the Green New Deal and a Green Marshall Plan, to renovate all buildings everywhere before 2050. Sadly the political will to do this seems absent from almost every country, with a couple possible exceptions such as Chile attempting to rewrite their constitution to prioritize climate justice. Basically no countries are approaching even the inadequate Paris agreement targets. And if you achieved such insulation, without other more drastic changes to our society, people would just run their AC/heat more to reach more luxurious temperatures, and we would not avoid any greenhouse gas emissions.
- somewhereoutth 4y ago
  Yes, a very important principle. See also road building and induced demand. Therefore we should be working to reduce supply of fossil fuels, to 'keep it in the ground'. If there is less to go round, then efficiencies will still be found but used to maintain what we had (as far as practicable) as opposed to increasing demand
  - fmajid 4y ago
    The concept of “induced demand” as if it’s a bad thing is irredeemably stupid. It’s like saying “adding Internet bandwidth is pointless because demand will just rise to match capacity, and we should go back to the days of 56K modems”.
    - somewhereoutth 4y ago
      It is a bad thing if we fully understand the personal and social cost of car driving.
MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
None of it makes sense, unless you assume that they are not very bright, or the actual goal is to dismantle the current civilisation due to malcontent stemming from the projection of personal issues. Revenge Against God For The Crime Of Being.
btmiller 4y ago
Father John Misty’s Things It Would’ve Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution is worth a listen.

gmuslera 4y ago

The eco-harm it causes is more related to its energy use and how it is typically generated. But there are eco-friendly ways to generate (and store) energy, not burning fossil fuels in general, or even burning at all. You can't separate ACs from other energy consuming devices, the same could be said, about, I don't know, microwave ovens. Its the energy what should be redefined, how we get it. Besides that, they are becoming more efficient, and there are alternative approaches to control temperature at homes.

kolinko 4y ago
This. Also, AC needs energy during clear summer days - exactly when it’s the cheapest to deliver by PV. With minimal effect on climate.
- masklinn 4y ago
  An interesting side-effect although sadly not leveraged much in the US, and also little used in europe because of the stigma on AC, is that AC is a heat pump and heat pumps are reversible. It’s finally gaining in popularity, and depending on weather conditions a modern heat pump can provide heating several times more efficient than straight up burning fuel even if you’re producing electricity from that fuel. When your electricity is nuclear or hydro (or other renewables but that tends to be a bit sticky in winter) it’s manna.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    It's a travesty that A/C units in the US are not (in many cases) designed to be reversible. I mean, even if you have a gas furnace, using the heat pump when it's only mildly cold can be cheaper.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  This is really not true. Case in point, today where I am it will be overcast, 85*F, and very high humidity. We also get extreme cold in winter, so there's no getting around needing both AC and heating, but solar isn't a panacea. Unfortunately, hot cloudy days also don't tend to produce much wind either.

aqme28 4y ago

Obviously air conditioning is really useful in a hot climate. As someone who does a lot of moving between places with/without it, it's interesting to see how overused it can be in much of the US. Your office in the northeast does not need to be 69 degrees inside all summer long.

helmholtz 4y ago
It's useful in warm and humid climates. In warm and dry climates, a swamp cooler will beat the pants off of an airconditioner in damn near every metric you can think of. So, sure, in the swamps of Florida, we should be OK with using the AC. But in the dry heat of Texas? Or southern California? Why doesn't America do even the simple things right? In city planning, in cooling, in HOA's dictating lawn upkeep and on and on and on.
- rustybelt 4y ago
  Former Houston resident here chuckling about the “dry heat” of Texas.
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    Right. People don't realize just how big Texas is, and what a wide range of climates are actually found there.
bobthechef 4y ago
The absurd overuse of AC seems like a peculiarity of the United States. Walk into an American household in the summer, and you find people watching TV with blankets or a sweatshirt because the temperature is so low. In the winter, the opposite is true: the house is overheated, so everyone wears short sleeves. You’re pretty much forced to do this in older apartment buildings where you have no thermostat and the landlord cranks the heat up to Saharan temperatures. The only way to regulate the temperature is to open windows, and that doesn’t always work well. Tell me that’s not wasting energy. Maybe start there if you want to actually contribute meaningfully. Such a bizarre set of practices. The point of HVAC is to bring the temperature to a comfortable level while you wear season appropriate clothing, not to eliminate or invert seasonal differences.

quanto 4y ago

"Singapore’s founding father thought air conditioning was the secret to his country’s success"[1] AC is an enabler of human productivity. [1] https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew-air-conditioning https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew...

pawsforthought 4y ago
Put another way, AC allows rampant population growth in places that are going to become otherwise uninhabitable to extreme heat (if they aren’t already). Swings and roundabouts.

londons_explore 4y ago

There are actually far less energy intensive ways to make houses cool... Everything from painting the roof in special IR emitting and visible light reflecting paint... To using evaporative cooling (even a small amount of water can make a large cooling effect). To having large amounts of insulation to keep things cool in the daytime and cooling stuff down at night when the outside is cooler. To using chilling loops deep underground where the soil is far cooler, or into rivers (where the water is typically cooler) than surface temperatures. There are so many options for getting coolness with lower energy cost and lower eco-harm... I think it's a real shame we haven't done just a little more R&D to make them viable and commonplace instead of electrically driven air-air heat pumps which really gobble energy.

elric 4y ago
None of these solutions are anywhere near as easy as simply installing an A/C unit. Which is why A/C is so popular. People would love to cool (and heat) their homes in more environmentally friendly ways, provided those ways are as convenient and as cheap as A/C. Which they're not. If anything, insulation (on its own) worsens the problem, because once the heat gets in, it's effectively trapped for days. If it's not combined with shading, or some other way to reflect heat away from the windows, a hot house becomes a hothouse real fast... I wish there were an easy way to couple all heat producing and heat dissipating devices in my home. Too much heat in my bedroom? Move it into the hot water tank. Too cold in the living room? Use the waste heat from the oven to heat the room.
FooBarWidget 4y ago
I'm thinking about blinds, but they cost 10k eur to install and require approval from the union of house owners. So I opted for heat-reflective window foils instead. Only costed 30 eur. They help — but only a little. Maybe cool my living rooms by 1C or 2C in the summer. In the mean time my wife complains that the rooms are too dark and uncomfortable. She doesn't understand why I don't just install AC. Neither does anyone else in her social group. So, what is a man going to do to keep his wife happy?
- londons_explore 4y ago

sk8terboi 4y ago

greenhorn123 4y ago

I really don't see the problem at all. Solar energy is plentiful when you need airconditioning, so you can simply power the compressor using solar power.

baryphonic 4y ago

Air conditioning has saved countless human lives.[0] It is one of our greatest inventions. I'm not sure this is the intention, but the sentiment expressed in this article, when adopted as policy, puts human lives at risk.[1] There is no iron law that we can either have clean energy or air conditioning, but not both. And as a consequence, there is no iron law saying that environmentalism must be anti-human. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study-home-air-conditioning-cut-premature-deaths-on-hot-days-80-percent-since-1960/2012/12/22/5b57f3ac-4abf-11e2-b709-667035ff9029_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study... [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/06/28/1010923130/the-pacific-northwest-has-limited-a-c-making-the-heat-wave-more-dangerous https://www.npr.org/2021/06/28/1010923130/the-pacific-northw...

konschubert 4y ago
AC power usage correlates well with Solar Power output, which means that this kind of power demand is super easy to satisfy.
- lettergram 4y ago
  That was always my thoughts, storage capacity of energy is fairly expensive. Also there are much cheaper ways to cool than we do today. There are a lot of passive cooling systems. An easy one is to bury pipes a few feet (>3-4ft) under ground and run a fan to push air through the pipes. You can also put pipes under a near by creek / pond if you have one near by (I have seen this done). There’s a whole lot of passive systems. Gardens on roofs, sun rooms, underground pipes, water cooled, etc. I’m currently looking at building a house with a combination of these. The problem with all these is the increased price of construction / inability / unreasonableness to adjust old homes. I do think new buildings should take advantage of some of these. But old builds aren’t really possible to convert.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    And thermal applications (like heating and cooling) enable cheap storage: store the product, not the input energy.

samatman 4y ago

We've been forcing interiors to be warm with technology for a million years, it stands next to the stone ax as our original invention. Last century we figured out how to force interiors to be cool, reliably. This must not be confused with the tendency to squander our unique gift of abundant energy. Places like Arizona could have houses with massive walls, arcades, all the refinements the Pueblo, Persians, and many others have brought to living in arid regions: and air conditioning, which is a wonderful invention. If your solution to ecological crisis is to return humanity to immiseration, I reject that utterly. There are more dangerous things than warm weather and this attitude is prominent among them.

ngcc_hk 4y ago

So crazy this kind of writing I refuse to read it. I think one could write how many x causing harm … how about the very existence of human and so much eco-harm this species cause.

bowsamic 4y ago

Unfortunately AC is going to become a necessary reality even in countries where it is traditionally avoided, like the UK or mainland Europe. Here in Germany we had to buy one for our rabbits, who will simply die without it. In the UK it will reach 40 next week across many areas of the country. An article on the Guardian says that we can avoid AC in these extreme weather situations by using techniques such as "opening windows". Totally delusional. Then you have the UK climate deniers which are extremely numerous and are claiming that 40C is a totally normal and expected part of the British summer. I think that it will not be long before believing in anthropogenic climate change will become political suicide, since who wants to hear the bad news that we have no solution for? Even worse are those who claim that "we will solve it with science, we always do". It is already too late, and the momentum is getting insane. Nothing we can do about it. A billion brown people will die, and all white people will have AC.

tintedfireglass 4y ago
how does 40C in UK compared to 40c in the tropics? is it heat directly from the sun? Or is the atmosphere hot? or does the ground radiate heat? these three different types of 40C have different mitigation strategies but will be given the same number (40C) by weather report sources. All heat is not the same. humid 40C is completely different from dry 40C. Each of these various types of heat will have different effects on our health and efficiency and have different strategies to mitigate it.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but yeah 40C is much more severe in the UK than it is in the tropics for a huge number of reasons: lack of shade from trees (generally UK is pretty treeless in suburbs), more humid, no shutters on windows, etc.
  - politelemon 4y ago
    And buildings designed to trap heat.
  - 4y ago

Merrill 4y ago

Before air conditioning, there was the rise of central heating. Is the total energy used for the combination of heating and cooling greater in a warm climate or a cold climate, given the same floor space and appropriate insulation and construction? I was under the impression that less energy would be needed in Dallas than in Chicago, but I don't have actual data.

tintedfireglass 4y ago

if honestly people think AC is bad for the environment people could switch to water based cooling systems. these are known as "coolers" in India and are used widely during summers as they are cheap and use really low amount of electricity and have zero effect on environment. it just costs like 30$ when compared to 300$ AC systems and have many advantages both economical and environmental. not sure why it hasn't picked up in developed nations? link : https://www.amazon.in/Symphony-Diet-12-Litre-Cooler/dp/B00IYD419Q/ref=mp_s_a_1_11?crid=TJSR138XGLBJ&keywords=cooler&qid=1657975716&sprefix=c%2Caps%2C989&sr=8-11 https://www.amazon.in/Symphony-Diet-12-Litre-Cooler/dp/B00IY... how it works : https://kenstar.in/blog/post/how-does-an-air-cooler-work https://kenstar.in/blog/post/how-does-an-air-cooler-work

cityofdelusion 4y ago
Swamp coolers were widely used before A/C was cheap enough to become mainstream. Most people in the southern U.S. for instance may have a grandparent or great grandparent that can still tell stories of how miserable they are compared to A/C!
- tintedfireglass 4y ago
  Interesting! Yeah, and they definetly are worse than ACs XD
alex_sf 4y ago
Those are referred to as swamp coolers in the US. They depend on low humidity to function, which practically limits their use to the southwest US. It also hasn't been that popular since the advent of AC since they don't do a very good job.

ThePhysicist 4y ago

Germany is poised to move all heating for buildings to electrical heat pumps in the foreseeable future (with some exceptions). With some minor differences it's the same tech, just used for heating instead of cooling. Not long ago everyone made fun of "the Americans" and their ACs. Funny how times change.

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

"A move away from fossil fuels requires the wholesale transformation of all these systems." That is why people do not understand both the scope and the urgency of the issue. Technically it is an easy problem to fix, but to change the hearts and minds of people will take a spiritual revolution.