Air conditioning is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century. It's also killing the 21st

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

When did indoor air become cold and clean?

Air conditioning is one of those inventions that have become so ubiquitous that many in the developed world don’t even realize that less than a century ago, it didn’t exist. Indeed, it wasn’t so long ago that the air inside our buildings and the air outside of them were one and the same, with occupants powerless against their environment.

Eric Dean Wilson, in his just published book, “After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort,” dives deep into the history of this field. It took more than just inventing the air conditioner to make people want to buy it. In fact, whole social classes outright rejected the technology for years. It took hustle, marketing skill and mass societal change to place air conditioning at the center of our built environment.

Wilson covers that history, but he has a more ambitious agenda: to get us to see how our everyday comforts affect other people. Our choice of frigid cooling emits flagrant quantities of greenhouse gas emissions, placing untold stress on our planet and civilization. Our pursuit of comfort ironically begets us more insecurity and ultimately, less comfort.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/air-conditioning-one-greatest-inventions-133029574.html

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

1. You could say the same thing about central heating, fireplaces and iceboxes?

oh yeah, lets return to the 19th century

[Demsrule86]

8. You will pry my air conditioning from my cold (thanks to the AC) hands.

[unblock]

2. Air conditioning has also had a massive political impact

Air conditioning made the south far more attractive and thus began a massive migration out of the northeast and into the south and west that continues to this day.

This built up the political power of southern states and turned the Republican Party from a hapless second party into a monster on the verge of complete takeover.

The impact air conditioning has had is huge.

[former9thward]

5. The Republican party was only a hapless second party for about 14 years in the 20th century.

Since its creation in the late 1850s it won more than half the time at the presidential level up to 1933. Then it lost the House and POTUS but won back the House in 1947. Since then it has won POTUS and/or the House and Senate its share of elections.

But yes A/C has made the South including southern CA and the SW states more desirable. Of course A/C and heaters in cars made commuting more desirable and thus living in suburbs all over the U.S.

[ProfessorGAC]

3. The Change To...

...lower pressure, higher molecular weight coolants had a profound effect on reducing AC's environmental footprint.
It's not zero, but it's way less than it was just 40 years ago.
Higher MW coolants, operating at lower pressure, don't leak as much as prior technology.
It's the leaking that causes the most atmospheric damage.
Now, there's no question that energy consumption from AC has a footprint. But, efficiencies on that have risn nearly 100% over the last 30 years or so.
Mitigating environmental issues is an area loaded with targets.
I disagree with this premise that AC is among the leaders in the overall problem.

[MineralMan]

4. AC is a first-world issue. In reality, it has improved

a great deal since it was invented. However, it is only prevalent in the first world. In most places on the planet, it might as well not exist.

See this link to view the prevalence, in percentage of air conditioning in multiple countries. Japan is #1. The US is #2. Just 5 nations dominate the prevalence of AC use. Beyond those, percentages drop sharply.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/911064/worldwide-air-conditioning-penetration-rate-country/

[ProfessorGAC]

6. I've Been To 36 Countries

Some of 3rd world.
I've never been anywhere that didn't have AC.
Admittedly, I haven't been in rural China, or India, or Peru.....I've never stayed in a tenement in Mumbai, or Rio...
But, in the cities I've gone to, hotels, stores, eateries, & office buildings are nearly universally air conditioned.
So, I think it extends beyond merely the first world.
But, I still think it's low on the list of environmental culprits.

[hunter]

7. Storing "cool" in a thermal mass for a day or two is just about the easiest battery to build.

It can be as simple as a tank full of water.

In such systems you don't need to use ozone-depleting or greenhouse-gas refrigerants.

You can use non-chloro-fluorocarbon refrigerant water chillers, safely offset from inhabited structures.

[ProfessorGAC]

9. Agreed

What you suggest is the basic principle upon which heat pumps work.
It's also possible to just use nitrogen.
Actually CO2 would be lower energy, if we could recapture excess CO2 from the atmosphere.
With the amount needed to worldwide cooling & refrigeration, the upper atmosphere CO2 would fall by about 2ppm.
That would be an exciting breakthrough.
I'm not promoting any method of cooling over another, but I'm questioning the article in the OP as hyperbole. AC is nowhere close to the biggest problem in climate change, or air pollution.