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I wonder what the environmental costs of most American homes, stores and offices using A/C at full blast 24/7/365.
by archerx 2y ago
I wonder what the environmental costs of most American homes, stores and offices using A/C at full blast 24/7/365.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- poidos 2y agoVery high. But since they provide actual utility as opposed to the overwhelming majority of the current usecases for generative language models, it doesn’t seem relevant here.
- yunwal 2y agoQuestionable in many cases. A bunch of stores have their A/C on full blast while keeping the door open in the summer. You can actually get fined for this in NYC now but in other US cities it’s still the norm.
- archerx 2y agoI lived in the tropics where it was hotter than the USA and we survived just fine without A/C. A/C is luxury and your luxury is destroying the planet. I don’t want you to stop using A/C but I would like people to accept that it is a luxury that is not needed in most cases.
- BenjiWiebe 2y agoThere's times and places where you can't survive "just fine" without AC. And the number of those times and places is increasing.
- archerx 2y agoFunny most of the world lives just fine without A/C. It really is an American thing.
- misnome 2y agoAnd whatabout all of the lights I can see being used in the average American house at night, shouldn’t we address the environmental costs of that first?
- fabioborellini 2y agoSo you haven't heard about light bulb bans?
- archerx 2y agoI feel like cooling large spaces takes a lot more energy than lightbulbs unless they have 100 watt lightbulbs on in every room all night long. Modern bulbs are super energy efficient so that problem is kind of solved.
- gcr 2y agoThat’s the tricky thing about conservation. These problems have multiple sources! Every time a completely new energy-hungry product category is introduced, the carbon budget gets harder and harder to balance. In the 19X0s it was television and air conditioning, in the 2010s it was Bitcoin maybe, and now we’re adding AI. In the 2X00s, teleportation will double the typical commute energy usage, until heavy regulation and scientific advances will bring it down again.