10 ms·

In the '90s I survived summers in Egypt with no AC. How would it feel now?

135 points by makaimc 3y ago

KptMarchewa 3y ago
The solution is to not be biased against AC. It fits extremely well with peak generation from solar power plants. The opposite is happening for heating in winter.
- acdha 3y ago
  Not biased against but recognizing that it has significant downsides. In most cities, we should be planting tons of trees and replacing asphalt/concrete with plants to avoid ACs dumping as much heat into the city.
  - KptMarchewa 3y ago
    AC dumps hot air _up_, not down.
    - acdha 3y ago
      Yes, we all learn that heat rises in grade school but it’s not an instantaneous or perfect process teleporting heat from the unit into the upper atmosphere. Most AC units are not on the roof of a tall building with nothing around - they’re in a window, car, on the ground, etc. and if you’ve ever walked in a city you can feel the difference it makes when you walk near or even under one. Even if more heat rises, a very noticeable amount diffuses into the surrounding environment and that encourages more people to turn theirs up, generating even more waste heat.
      - KptMarchewa 3y ago
        >they’re in a window, car, on the ground, etc Car, sure. I live in a city in a country where window or ground units don't exist though. Most apartments are already way over ground, shops and other services mount the external units on the roofs. This is not an innate property of AC but a method US implements it.
fffrantz 3y ago
One thing I noticed recently during the massive heatwave we had in southern Europe is how we forgot the most basic principles for building in hot climates. For example, we enlarged windows and doors, to the point were, standing behind one that's been cooking in the sun for a couple of hours, you feel the radiant heat a meter away from it. All the older houses around the Mediterranean have smaller windows and doors, to limit the sun (and by extension the heat) from coming in. We've cut down so many trees in the cities and poured so much concrete that some places are radiating heat for hours after sundown, making the night a couple of degrees hotter than it should really be. Those are just a couple examples of poor architectural and city planning, but there are dozens of simple yet efficient techniques and tricks that we should reuse to make our cities more livable. Our ancestors didn't have all the new materials and knowledge we now have, but they were logical and lived with their environment.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Exactly. Deforestation in the Amazon is dwarfed by the end of old forests in Europe. There's almost no fauna and flora in Europe: all destroyed in the name of industrialization and civilization. Recent small-scale reforestation is touted as healing, but one might as well lay a bandaid on an amputated arm.
  - KptMarchewa 3y ago
    This might fit the UK or Netherlands, but not overall Europe.
    - foota 3y ago
      This article provides a fairly in depth coverage: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18646-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18646-7 Tldr forest coverage peaked 8k years ago, stayed more or less there till Romans, went down some couple dozen percent, paused after the Romans, then was decimated (heh) in the medieval era and modern times before now starting to recover.
      - 3y ago
ketanmaheshwari 3y ago
One possible solution to keep the buildings and other structures including automobiles cool is to paint them white. Somehow this is not mentioned much in the media these days.
- Panzer04 3y ago
  Yep. It seems like the most effective solution in heat islands would be to avoid absorbing the sun's heat in the first place. For perspective, white paint will reflect 80-90% of the sun's energy, while black paint would reflect only 10-20% (other materials - asphalt, 10%, concrete, ~50%, sand, 40% - look up albedo :)). Given sunlight is approximately 1kW/sqm, simply reflecting it back instead of absorbing it seems like it would add up to big savings pretty quickly, and something like white paint is significantly superior to what you'd get with most other finishes.
  - crtified 3y ago
    Stupid question incoming: "simply reflecting it back" - back to where? I'm trying to imagine the full journey of that heat energy, and the whole consequences of reflecting it from the ground.
    - kccqzy 3y ago
      Into space.
      - crtified 3y ago
        At what % efficiency does the reflected heat complete its return journey back out through the so-called Kármán line (or other earth-space boundary relevant to thermodynamics) ?
        Panzer04 3y ago
        Presumably similarly to on the way in - but mostly high in the atmosphere where you, personally, don't care at ground level. Supposedly it's 1.3kW/sqm at the earth's atmosphere, so take 30% off on the way out and you're at 700W out (approx). On a climate level, reflecting more heat out from earth is technically good too, I suppose :).
rottencupcakes 3y ago
"Tarik Benmarhnia says [traditional ways of cooling] aren't good enough. He studies extreme heat at UC San Diego" I hope the irony of this man's job is not lost on anybody.
- bsder 3y ago
  We joke about (the lack of) San Diego weather ... However, only a very small number of people live right on the coast with its constant 70 degress. San Diego has 4 microclimes--Coastal, Inland, Mountain, and Desert. Inland, Mountain, and Desert get hot. I always used to say that people in San Diego were in "weather denial". Most of them live in the shitty microclimes but still wouldn't buy an air conditioner.
- acdha 3y ago
  I used to work across the street from UCSD, but I lived inland - about 25 minutes east along 52. In the summer, it would reliably approach 110°, which is plenty hot even if it’s dry but it did at least cool down somewhat overnight. On my commute into work, I was leaving 85+° and driving into an uncomfortably cold fog bank. Most of the people in San Diego live inland. When you look at the coastal areas where the ocean moderates things, you’ll find a lot of multi-million dollar houses which are totally out of range for the median county income.
dj_mc_merlin 3y ago
Currently living with no AC in a very hot climate for the first time in a long time, and I'd forgotten how horrible it can be to not be able to escape the heat. During the day it's hard to concentrate, and at night it's hard to sleep. What good alternatives are there to AC, however? The comic gives: * Building buildings with less reflective materials.. there's almost none here and it's still damn hot. Obviously the concrete traps heat but I don't really see us not using concrete anymore. * Planting trees for shade. Plenty of trees here, doesn't stop it from being hot as hell inside. * A system for getting out of the way of a heat wave.. which from experience, no one would actually use. The biggest deaths from heat waves here happen since older people insist on going to stores etc. during the day, and predictably faint on the street and die. This is completely preventable already -- they're not gonna use the system. * Growing plants on top of buildings. Maybe this will help? I don't know enough to say.
- maxlamb 3y ago
  Which city? I’m just curious how hot we’re talking about, without AC.
  - dj_mc_merlin 3y ago
    Don't wan't to give my location but between 33-39C. Dry heat.
    - rascul 3y ago
      A swamp cooler might be helpful. They can also be cheap and simple to make.
      - dj_mc_merlin 3y ago
        Looking into this, thanks.
    - pengaru 3y ago
      Dry heat is easy mode, assuming you have plentiful water.
rottencupcakes 3y ago
The weather in Cairo for the next week looks like central Texas. Nobody tries to live in central Texas without Air Conditioning.
- refurb 3y ago
  You can acclimatize. I lived in Vietnam and most people there don't have A/C. Temperatures are often 33C-35C during the day and with the humidity it feels like 38C-40C. Hell, there are construction workers in heavy clothing working outside all day in those temperatures.
  - anonym29 3y ago
    "You can acclimatize" This attitude is what causes deaths due to heat exhaustion. It really ought to be a criminal offense for landlords / builders to NOT install AC in such regions. Not having AC is literally a death sentence in places with wet bulb events, including countries like Vietnam, as well as cities in the US like Seattle, Houston, and Miami.
    - jeremyjh 3y ago
      Maybe you are unaware, that both purchase and operation of AC takes money, and in some places people don't have a lot of that.
      - anonym29 3y ago
        I don't think you have any understanding of how quickly a human will die in a wet bulb event. AC is, by the actual definition of 'literally', literally more important to sustaining human life than FOOD is, on wet bulb days.
        guraf 3y ago
        And FOOD cost less than a dollar per day in those places. An AC, including electricity, and assuming their house is airtight enough to keep the cold, costs the same as 20 years worth of food. Check your privilege, as they say.
quickthrower2 3y ago
In Sydney (admittedly cooler but still hot) our house rarely needs AC due to trees. Trees make a big difference!
- bigger_cheese 3y ago
  It depends where in Sydney you are - if you live near the coast it is quite livable. The outer suburbs can be absolute hell. Parts of Western Sydney etc can be quite bad in the summer. I remember hearing at one point a year or so ago Penrith was the hottest place on earth I think it hit 48C or something like that. I grew up in Canberra (which is inland and sits in a valley) it was like living in a giant clay bowl all the heat settles in and is absolutely stagnant not much of a breeze to speak about at all. Summer there was pretty miserable (and winter as well). I now live on the South Coast of NSW - I can get away with a ceiling fan and opening my windows, we get a regular afternoon sea breeze which cools everything down.
declan_roberts 3y ago
This comic reminded me to get out my swamp/evaporative cooler. If you live in a low-humidity climate (looking at you, intermountain west) an evaporative cooler is like magic! It cools down the room noticeably with very little power. And it adds some MUCH needed humidity into the air during the dry summer months.
- pengaru 3y ago
  If you're not cognizant of what's going on you can cause mold issues by carelessly using swamp coolers without any venting of the humidified air. Some people button their place up thinking they want to keep the hot air out, but the evaporative cooler becomes ineffective once the air is too humid, and you start getting sticky. Do that enough year after year and you'll get mold in the walls.
master_crab 3y ago
Lol. We must have had different experiences in Cairo in the 90s. Mosquitos murdered me daily when I slept with the window open.
- stevenwoo 3y ago
  There are some spots near San Jose where I have to spit out the mosquitoes because they are so dense around my face and they just fly in my mouth while I am cycling and other places not far away where there are none attracted to me when I stop moving - one place where the mosquitoes swarm around me happens is anywhere along Stevens Creek (the creek not the road) up to skyline road and when I cross skyline road at the ridge line there is nothing like that on the ocean side just across the street.
  - master_crab 3y ago
    They do need standing water to breed. That might explain the fog of mosquitos near a major water source like a creek.
- paraknight 3y ago
  Yup. And I'm my area, you'd have wanted to keep the dust out too. At certain times of the year when it was windy and the power went out and the ceiling fans went with it, you'd have to open the windows to cool down, but live in darkness because your candles would blow out.
stevenwoo 3y ago
I don’t think I have ever seen an air conditioner used outside as depicted in the comic. Is electricity just cheap there or is that a cultural thing?
- anonym29 3y ago
  Ever been to a Top Golf in Texas in the summer?
- nytesky 3y ago
  In a dry climate like Egypt you actually more often use evaporative coolers or “swamp coolers”. They generate cool air with way less energy than compressor driven AC. They humidify rather than dehumidify but not enough for discomfort. You use them with open windows to prevent humidity from building up, so an outdoor application perhaps under shade is a logical extension.
- pengaru 3y ago
  I suspect it's just a sloppy comic. Outdoors like that you'll usually encounter large evaporative coolers which are basically a blower combined with water mister. If it's hot and dry, the mist vanishes by the time the air reaches you, but the air is cooler.
  - balaji1 3y ago
    > I suspect it's just a sloppy comic That's a nice way to put it. And yeah evaporative water coolers and plain fans go a long way in hot climates.
- balaji1 3y ago
  maybe he means fans? I mean they must have had and still have fans everywhere. Somehow he doesn't mention fans.
- sn41 3y ago
  The stadiums in Qatar 2022 were air-conditioned. I guess it should be possible to have outdoor cooling if you throw the heat away from the seating space. In Minneapolis, there used to be outdoor heating for restaurants in the middle of the winter. They used to be pretty warm enough for people to sit outside, no idea how costly it was.
tyoma 3y ago
This “ac is bad” seems to be a frequent thing, not just on HN but in general. Why the bias against cooling technology? No one seems to complain about the environmental impact of home heating in cold climates.
- aftbit 3y ago
  Probably because AC is newer. Home heating has been seen as a necessity for generations, so most people have had it, while there are still plenty of people who lived without AC for large chunks of their life. Plus there's the San Francisco factor. AC is simply not necessary there most of the time for most people. Even when it is hot, it is usually hot/dry, and tends to cool down at night. Thus there are many people here who think AC is a needless luxury everywhere because they personally do not need it.
  - hx8 3y ago
    > Plus there's the San Francisco factor. I think this is huge. Extreme heat kills more Americans than hurricanes, tornadoes, or extreme cold. However, the people it kills tend to be poor and far away from the political and cultural power centers in the US.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- userbinator 3y ago
  I think it's mostly just the common trend of eco-virtue-signaling these days. Why focus on technological progress when you can just generate a lot of outrage with trigger words like "climate change" and the like? It's worth noting that refrigeration is over a century old now.
  - eropple 3y ago
    It's not people who give a shit about climate change who are saying that air conditioning is bad. Maybe you'll find a lone crazy to validate the persection complex that compels such a mendacious post, and you'll definitely get a little mild "do you really need it at 66F in June?" rhetoric and I'm sure that hits conspicuous consumers right in the feels that definitely matter just as much as reality does--but on the other hand, it is also precisely the folks who care about such things who push for cooling stations and other ways to symptomatically address the worsening heat waves in urban areas, because heat kills and it kills the poor and the old preferentially. It isn't those awful hippies who have a problem with air conditioning--it's the people who wish that those people (and poor people! lest we forget!) would conveniently disappear. For other people, of course. Those positing that people should just Tough It Out aren't doing so themselves.
pygar 3y ago
All these traditional cooling techniques will reduce the temp by a couple of degrees Celsius right? When you're facing 40C can your body even feel the difference?
- CobaltFire 3y ago
  As someone who has lived well over half their life in places (both humid and dry) that regularly hit 40C: Absolutely. If you bring the temperature down even a couple of degrees it's a huge relief comparatively.
- pengaru 3y ago
  Yes. People are extremely sensitive to temperature changes above 37C/99F for obvious reasons. The higher the ambient vs. core body temp, the more you must sweat and hydrate to not overheat. If it's too humid for sweating to work, it's a miserable way to die.
6510 3y ago
a termite mount air-conditioning system runs all by itself https://www.dw.com/en/termite-air-conditioning-runs-on-smart-design/a-18698640 https://www.dw.com/en/termite-air-conditioning-runs-on-smart...
Full_Clark 3y ago
Regarding the greenhouse-gas emissions of air conditioners, it's more than just the induced demand for power generation (which in Egypt still depends heavily on fossil fuels [1]). I was a little bit surprised by that callout in the story, so I went looking for info on the refrigerants themselves. If you're old enough to remember the worries about the ozone hole over Antarctica, you might remember that we agreed to phase out CFCs as a refrigerant. They were replaced by HCFCs which are less dangerous to atmospheric ozone (yay) but have a very high impact as a greenhouse gas per unit mass (boo) [2]. Ultimately the HCFCs will be replaced with ammonia, propane, and other alternatives which have a lower greenhouse gas effect, on the same order of magnitude as CO2 [3]. [1] https://www.iea.org/countries/egypt https://www.iea.org/countries/egypt [2] https://unfccc.int/process/transparency-and-reporting/greenhouse-gas-data/greenhouse-gas-data-unfccc/global-warming-potentials https://unfccc.int/process/transparency-and-reporting/greenh... [3] https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/fluorinated-greenhouse-gases/climate-friendly-alternatives-hfcs_en https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/fluorinated-greenhous...
- nocoiner 3y ago
  I feel like the story was implied that refrigerants are consumed in the course of operation. I think that point could have been more artfully stated. Did you happen to notice whether HCFCs had worse greenhouse gas effects than CFCs?
  - Full_Clark 3y ago
    That was the first impression I got from the story too. But I didn't think it was correct so that's why I went looking for clarification. The mechanism of release for refrigerants to the atmosphere seems to mainly be escape during servicing and decomissioning as well as microscopic leaks in aircon piping that develop over the working life of the unit. I haven't done the math on total amount of refrigerant emission to understand whether it's negligible in the big picture or actually a serious problem once CO2 emissions approach net zero. Is that why you're curious about HCFC vs CFC?
    - nocoiner 3y ago
jongjong 3y ago
On the plus side, I have very good heat tolerance (I can handle 40C/104F) and beaches are too crowded in southern Europe so I wouldn't mind it if more people stayed home so that I could sometimes have the beach all to myself. Maybe it will even drive down real estate prices in these desirable areas so that I can finally afford to live there.
asciimov 3y ago
Here in South Texas the biggest difference I’ve seen in the past 40 years is people getting acclimated to the AC. It seems like too many people think you can only be comfortable inside when it’s 70F, and claim they can’t sleep unless it’s colder.
- TexanFeller 3y ago
  Part of it is definitely acclimation. I think part of it is we're all much fatter than 40 years also and fat is insulation that keeps you hotter.
  - mohaine 3y ago
    The question I have is ac part of why we are fatter?
bevesce- 3y ago
I live in an 18th-century building with small windows that don't let in much sunlight during winter. The walls are 0.5m thick and made of rocks. I close shutters in all of the rooms except the one I'm working in. Despite this, the temperature inside can reach 32°C during the day. I can't keep the windows open at night due to the noise from motorbikes. So I can't sleep without AC and I can't cool down my apartment.

135 points by makaimc 3y ago

The solution is to not be biased against AC. It fits extremely well with peak generation from solar power plants. The opposite is happening for heating in winter.

acdha 3y ago
Not biased against but recognizing that it has significant downsides. In most cities, we should be planting tons of trees and replacing asphalt/concrete with plants to avoid ACs dumping as much heat into the city.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  AC dumps hot air _up_, not down.
  - acdha 3y ago
    Yes, we all learn that heat rises in grade school but it’s not an instantaneous or perfect process teleporting heat from the unit into the upper atmosphere. Most AC units are not on the roof of a tall building with nothing around - they’re in a window, car, on the ground, etc. and if you’ve ever walked in a city you can feel the difference it makes when you walk near or even under one. Even if more heat rises, a very noticeable amount diffuses into the surrounding environment and that encourages more people to turn theirs up, generating even more waste heat.
    - KptMarchewa 3y ago
      >they’re in a window, car, on the ground, etc Car, sure. I live in a city in a country where window or ground units don't exist though. Most apartments are already way over ground, shops and other services mount the external units on the roofs. This is not an innate property of AC but a method US implements it.

fffrantz 3y ago

One thing I noticed recently during the massive heatwave we had in southern Europe is how we forgot the most basic principles for building in hot climates. For example, we enlarged windows and doors, to the point were, standing behind one that's been cooking in the sun for a couple of hours, you feel the radiant heat a meter away from it. All the older houses around the Mediterranean have smaller windows and doors, to limit the sun (and by extension the heat) from coming in. We've cut down so many trees in the cities and poured so much concrete that some places are radiating heat for hours after sundown, making the night a couple of degrees hotter than it should really be. Those are just a couple examples of poor architectural and city planning, but there are dozens of simple yet efficient techniques and tricks that we should reuse to make our cities more livable. Our ancestors didn't have all the new materials and knowledge we now have, but they were logical and lived with their environment.

renewiltord 3y ago
Exactly. Deforestation in the Amazon is dwarfed by the end of old forests in Europe. There's almost no fauna and flora in Europe: all destroyed in the name of industrialization and civilization. Recent small-scale reforestation is touted as healing, but one might as well lay a bandaid on an amputated arm.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  This might fit the UK or Netherlands, but not overall Europe.
  - foota 3y ago
    This article provides a fairly in depth coverage: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18646-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18646-7 Tldr forest coverage peaked 8k years ago, stayed more or less there till Romans, went down some couple dozen percent, paused after the Romans, then was decimated (heh) in the medieval era and modern times before now starting to recover.
    - 3y ago

ketanmaheshwari 3y ago

One possible solution to keep the buildings and other structures including automobiles cool is to paint them white. Somehow this is not mentioned much in the media these days.

Panzer04 3y ago
Yep. It seems like the most effective solution in heat islands would be to avoid absorbing the sun's heat in the first place. For perspective, white paint will reflect 80-90% of the sun's energy, while black paint would reflect only 10-20% (other materials - asphalt, 10%, concrete, ~50%, sand, 40% - look up albedo :)). Given sunlight is approximately 1kW/sqm, simply reflecting it back instead of absorbing it seems like it would add up to big savings pretty quickly, and something like white paint is significantly superior to what you'd get with most other finishes.
- crtified 3y ago
  Stupid question incoming: "simply reflecting it back" - back to where? I'm trying to imagine the full journey of that heat energy, and the whole consequences of reflecting it from the ground.
  - kccqzy 3y ago
    Into space.
    - crtified 3y ago
      At what % efficiency does the reflected heat complete its return journey back out through the so-called Kármán line (or other earth-space boundary relevant to thermodynamics) ?
      - Panzer04 3y ago
        Presumably similarly to on the way in - but mostly high in the atmosphere where you, personally, don't care at ground level. Supposedly it's 1.3kW/sqm at the earth's atmosphere, so take 30% off on the way out and you're at 700W out (approx). On a climate level, reflecting more heat out from earth is technically good too, I suppose :).

rottencupcakes 3y ago

"Tarik Benmarhnia says [traditional ways of cooling] aren't good enough. He studies extreme heat at UC San Diego" I hope the irony of this man's job is not lost on anybody.

bsder 3y ago
We joke about (the lack of) San Diego weather ... However, only a very small number of people live right on the coast with its constant 70 degress. San Diego has 4 microclimes--Coastal, Inland, Mountain, and Desert. Inland, Mountain, and Desert get hot. I always used to say that people in San Diego were in "weather denial". Most of them live in the shitty microclimes but still wouldn't buy an air conditioner.
acdha 3y ago
I used to work across the street from UCSD, but I lived inland - about 25 minutes east along 52. In the summer, it would reliably approach 110°, which is plenty hot even if it’s dry but it did at least cool down somewhat overnight. On my commute into work, I was leaving 85+° and driving into an uncomfortably cold fog bank. Most of the people in San Diego live inland. When you look at the coastal areas where the ocean moderates things, you’ll find a lot of multi-million dollar houses which are totally out of range for the median county income.

dj_mc_merlin 3y ago

Currently living with no AC in a very hot climate for the first time in a long time, and I'd forgotten how horrible it can be to not be able to escape the heat. During the day it's hard to concentrate, and at night it's hard to sleep. What good alternatives are there to AC, however? The comic gives: * Building buildings with less reflective materials.. there's almost none here and it's still damn hot. Obviously the concrete traps heat but I don't really see us not using concrete anymore. * Planting trees for shade. Plenty of trees here, doesn't stop it from being hot as hell inside. * A system for getting out of the way of a heat wave.. which from experience, no one would actually use. The biggest deaths from heat waves here happen since older people insist on going to stores etc. during the day, and predictably faint on the street and die. This is completely preventable already -- they're not gonna use the system. * Growing plants on top of buildings. Maybe this will help? I don't know enough to say.

maxlamb 3y ago
Which city? I’m just curious how hot we’re talking about, without AC.
- dj_mc_merlin 3y ago
  Don't wan't to give my location but between 33-39C. Dry heat.
  - rascul 3y ago
    A swamp cooler might be helpful. They can also be cheap and simple to make.
    - dj_mc_merlin 3y ago
      Looking into this, thanks.
  - pengaru 3y ago
    Dry heat is easy mode, assuming you have plentiful water.

rottencupcakes 3y ago

The weather in Cairo for the next week looks like central Texas. Nobody tries to live in central Texas without Air Conditioning.

refurb 3y ago
You can acclimatize. I lived in Vietnam and most people there don't have A/C. Temperatures are often 33C-35C during the day and with the humidity it feels like 38C-40C. Hell, there are construction workers in heavy clothing working outside all day in those temperatures.
- anonym29 3y ago
  "You can acclimatize" This attitude is what causes deaths due to heat exhaustion. It really ought to be a criminal offense for landlords / builders to NOT install AC in such regions. Not having AC is literally a death sentence in places with wet bulb events, including countries like Vietnam, as well as cities in the US like Seattle, Houston, and Miami.
  - jeremyjh 3y ago
    Maybe you are unaware, that both purchase and operation of AC takes money, and in some places people don't have a lot of that.
    - anonym29 3y ago
      I don't think you have any understanding of how quickly a human will die in a wet bulb event. AC is, by the actual definition of 'literally', literally more important to sustaining human life than FOOD is, on wet bulb days.
      - guraf 3y ago
        And FOOD cost less than a dollar per day in those places. An AC, including electricity, and assuming their house is airtight enough to keep the cold, costs the same as 20 years worth of food. Check your privilege, as they say.

quickthrower2 3y ago

In Sydney (admittedly cooler but still hot) our house rarely needs AC due to trees. Trees make a big difference!

bigger_cheese 3y ago
It depends where in Sydney you are - if you live near the coast it is quite livable. The outer suburbs can be absolute hell. Parts of Western Sydney etc can be quite bad in the summer. I remember hearing at one point a year or so ago Penrith was the hottest place on earth I think it hit 48C or something like that. I grew up in Canberra (which is inland and sits in a valley) it was like living in a giant clay bowl all the heat settles in and is absolutely stagnant not much of a breeze to speak about at all. Summer there was pretty miserable (and winter as well). I now live on the South Coast of NSW - I can get away with a ceiling fan and opening my windows, we get a regular afternoon sea breeze which cools everything down.

declan_roberts 3y ago

This comic reminded me to get out my swamp/evaporative cooler. If you live in a low-humidity climate (looking at you, intermountain west) an evaporative cooler is like magic! It cools down the room noticeably with very little power. And it adds some MUCH needed humidity into the air during the dry summer months.

pengaru 3y ago
If you're not cognizant of what's going on you can cause mold issues by carelessly using swamp coolers without any venting of the humidified air. Some people button their place up thinking they want to keep the hot air out, but the evaporative cooler becomes ineffective once the air is too humid, and you start getting sticky. Do that enough year after year and you'll get mold in the walls.

master_crab 3y ago

Lol. We must have had different experiences in Cairo in the 90s. Mosquitos murdered me daily when I slept with the window open.

stevenwoo 3y ago
There are some spots near San Jose where I have to spit out the mosquitoes because they are so dense around my face and they just fly in my mouth while I am cycling and other places not far away where there are none attracted to me when I stop moving - one place where the mosquitoes swarm around me happens is anywhere along Stevens Creek (the creek not the road) up to skyline road and when I cross skyline road at the ridge line there is nothing like that on the ocean side just across the street.
- master_crab 3y ago
  They do need standing water to breed. That might explain the fog of mosquitos near a major water source like a creek.
paraknight 3y ago
Yup. And I'm my area, you'd have wanted to keep the dust out too. At certain times of the year when it was windy and the power went out and the ceiling fans went with it, you'd have to open the windows to cool down, but live in darkness because your candles would blow out.

stevenwoo 3y ago

I don’t think I have ever seen an air conditioner used outside as depicted in the comic. Is electricity just cheap there or is that a cultural thing?

anonym29 3y ago
Ever been to a Top Golf in Texas in the summer?
nytesky 3y ago
In a dry climate like Egypt you actually more often use evaporative coolers or “swamp coolers”. They generate cool air with way less energy than compressor driven AC. They humidify rather than dehumidify but not enough for discomfort. You use them with open windows to prevent humidity from building up, so an outdoor application perhaps under shade is a logical extension.
pengaru 3y ago
I suspect it's just a sloppy comic. Outdoors like that you'll usually encounter large evaporative coolers which are basically a blower combined with water mister. If it's hot and dry, the mist vanishes by the time the air reaches you, but the air is cooler.
- balaji1 3y ago
  > I suspect it's just a sloppy comic That's a nice way to put it. And yeah evaporative water coolers and plain fans go a long way in hot climates.
balaji1 3y ago
maybe he means fans? I mean they must have had and still have fans everywhere. Somehow he doesn't mention fans.
sn41 3y ago
The stadiums in Qatar 2022 were air-conditioned. I guess it should be possible to have outdoor cooling if you throw the heat away from the seating space. In Minneapolis, there used to be outdoor heating for restaurants in the middle of the winter. They used to be pretty warm enough for people to sit outside, no idea how costly it was.

tyoma 3y ago

This “ac is bad” seems to be a frequent thing, not just on HN but in general. Why the bias against cooling technology? No one seems to complain about the environmental impact of home heating in cold climates.

aftbit 3y ago
Probably because AC is newer. Home heating has been seen as a necessity for generations, so most people have had it, while there are still plenty of people who lived without AC for large chunks of their life. Plus there's the San Francisco factor. AC is simply not necessary there most of the time for most people. Even when it is hot, it is usually hot/dry, and tends to cool down at night. Thus there are many people here who think AC is a needless luxury everywhere because they personally do not need it.
- hx8 3y ago
  > Plus there's the San Francisco factor. I think this is huge. Extreme heat kills more Americans than hurricanes, tornadoes, or extreme cold. However, the people it kills tend to be poor and far away from the political and cultural power centers in the US.
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userbinator 3y ago
I think it's mostly just the common trend of eco-virtue-signaling these days. Why focus on technological progress when you can just generate a lot of outrage with trigger words like "climate change" and the like? It's worth noting that refrigeration is over a century old now.
- eropple 3y ago
  It's not people who give a shit about climate change who are saying that air conditioning is bad. Maybe you'll find a lone crazy to validate the persection complex that compels such a mendacious post, and you'll definitely get a little mild "do you really need it at 66F in June?" rhetoric and I'm sure that hits conspicuous consumers right in the feels that definitely matter just as much as reality does--but on the other hand, it is also precisely the folks who care about such things who push for cooling stations and other ways to symptomatically address the worsening heat waves in urban areas, because heat kills and it kills the poor and the old preferentially. It isn't those awful hippies who have a problem with air conditioning--it's the people who wish that those people (and poor people! lest we forget!) would conveniently disappear. For other people, of course. Those positing that people should just Tough It Out aren't doing so themselves.

pygar 3y ago

All these traditional cooling techniques will reduce the temp by a couple of degrees Celsius right? When you're facing 40C can your body even feel the difference?

CobaltFire 3y ago
As someone who has lived well over half their life in places (both humid and dry) that regularly hit 40C: Absolutely. If you bring the temperature down even a couple of degrees it's a huge relief comparatively.
pengaru 3y ago
Yes. People are extremely sensitive to temperature changes above 37C/99F for obvious reasons. The higher the ambient vs. core body temp, the more you must sweat and hydrate to not overheat. If it's too humid for sweating to work, it's a miserable way to die.

6510 3y ago

a termite mount air-conditioning system runs all by itself https://www.dw.com/en/termite-air-conditioning-runs-on-smart-design/a-18698640 https://www.dw.com/en/termite-air-conditioning-runs-on-smart...

Full_Clark 3y ago

Regarding the greenhouse-gas emissions of air conditioners, it's more than just the induced demand for power generation (which in Egypt still depends heavily on fossil fuels [1]). I was a little bit surprised by that callout in the story, so I went looking for info on the refrigerants themselves. If you're old enough to remember the worries about the ozone hole over Antarctica, you might remember that we agreed to phase out CFCs as a refrigerant. They were replaced by HCFCs which are less dangerous to atmospheric ozone (yay) but have a very high impact as a greenhouse gas per unit mass (boo) [2]. Ultimately the HCFCs will be replaced with ammonia, propane, and other alternatives which have a lower greenhouse gas effect, on the same order of magnitude as CO2 [3]. [1] https://www.iea.org/countries/egypt https://www.iea.org/countries/egypt [2] https://unfccc.int/process/transparency-and-reporting/greenhouse-gas-data/greenhouse-gas-data-unfccc/global-warming-potentials https://unfccc.int/process/transparency-and-reporting/greenh... [3] https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/fluorinated-greenhouse-gases/climate-friendly-alternatives-hfcs_en https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/fluorinated-greenhous...

nocoiner 3y ago
I feel like the story was implied that refrigerants are consumed in the course of operation. I think that point could have been more artfully stated. Did you happen to notice whether HCFCs had worse greenhouse gas effects than CFCs?
- Full_Clark 3y ago
  That was the first impression I got from the story too. But I didn't think it was correct so that's why I went looking for clarification. The mechanism of release for refrigerants to the atmosphere seems to mainly be escape during servicing and decomissioning as well as microscopic leaks in aircon piping that develop over the working life of the unit. I haven't done the math on total amount of refrigerant emission to understand whether it's negligible in the big picture or actually a serious problem once CO2 emissions approach net zero. Is that why you're curious about HCFC vs CFC?
  - nocoiner 3y ago

jongjong 3y ago

On the plus side, I have very good heat tolerance (I can handle 40C/104F) and beaches are too crowded in southern Europe so I wouldn't mind it if more people stayed home so that I could sometimes have the beach all to myself. Maybe it will even drive down real estate prices in these desirable areas so that I can finally afford to live there.

asciimov 3y ago

Here in South Texas the biggest difference I’ve seen in the past 40 years is people getting acclimated to the AC. It seems like too many people think you can only be comfortable inside when it’s 70F, and claim they can’t sleep unless it’s colder.

TexanFeller 3y ago
Part of it is definitely acclimation. I think part of it is we're all much fatter than 40 years also and fat is insulation that keeps you hotter.
- mohaine 3y ago
  The question I have is ac part of why we are fatter?

bevesce- 3y ago

I live in an 18th-century building with small windows that don't let in much sunlight during winter. The walls are 0.5m thick and made of rocks. I close shutters in all of the rooms except the one I'm working in. Despite this, the temperature inside can reach 32°C during the day. I can't keep the windows open at night due to the noise from motorbikes. So I can't sleep without AC and I can't cool down my apartment.