Air Conditioning: A Luxury the World Can’t Afford
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/06/21/should-air-conditioning-go-global-or-be-rationed-away/air-conditioning-is-a-luxury-the-world-cant-afford... Cooling of America's buildings and vehicles has the annual global-warming impact of almost half a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. (Three-fourths of that is attributable to fossil fuels, the rest to refrigerants.) We consume more energy for residential air-conditioning than do all other countries combined, but that's about to change. Home-cooling demand worldwide is projected to increase tenfold before 2050, stimulated by rising incomes and rising temperatures in already-warm regions. Such staggering growth will swamp out efficiency gains, outstrip renewable energy and accelerate warming.
We must break this feedback loop, but what does one say to someone living in one of the tropical nations where much of the increase in cooling demand is expected? Surely not that Americans are addicted to air-conditioning and cant give it up, but we expect Southeast Asians to get by without air-conditioners because they're used to the heat.
No, there's little we can say until we end our own society's dependence on lavish cooling. Doing that would be a good start, but addressing energy-hungry technologies one at a time won't achieve the greenhouse-gas cuts of as much as 80 percent that science says are necessary to prevent catastrophic warming. Only a per-person ceiling on overall emissions can accomplish that.
Stan Cox is the author of "Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer)."
onehandle
(51,122 posts)femmocrat
(28,394 posts)I work in a non-AC school building. It is absolutely unbearable in the warmer months. Ironic that we never had AC when I was growing up and didn't realize that we were hot and miserable! LOL
Let's hope that technology can find ways to make AC less destructive to the environment.
Nancy Waterman
(6,407 posts)lots of restaurants and hotels are way over-cooled. People often need sweaters in the middle of summer.
Surely that could be adjusted and save a lot.
libinnyandia
(1,374 posts)NYC without a/c . Now I have a/c but I set the thermostat high.
Javaman
(62,530 posts)I grew up there and had no A/C at all.
The lovely humid summers taught me how to sleep without moving and to learn to feel, what I liked to call, microbreezes. LOL
Worse yet, when I got my first "real job" at cablevision when I was 24, I worked nights, so that meant I had to sleep during the day. Daytime summer heat with no A/C. I don't think I slept for 2 years straight while on the night shift.
libinnyandia
(1,374 posts)days a year it wss miserable.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)That's not glossing over intent of OP. Keeping system maintained, upgrading, cutting back when you can -- makes a difference. Don't know if it will be enough though.
pscot
(21,024 posts)and "San Francisco" in the same sentence.
TouchOfGray
(82 posts)Would survive in Salinas KS or the Midwest, Northeast, Northwest, Europe or most of the world for that matter without "artificial" heating?
Do ya suppose he'll write a piece on "Finding New Ways to Get Through the Winter?"
Gman
(24,780 posts)until he can go spend the month of August here in South Texas without AC, he should just STFU.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)The environmental effects of heating in colder climates in other times of the year.
A solution for all climates is constructing buildings with passive heat retention or reduction built in. Desert dwellers did it for centuries. Many are doing it now. This has to change.
RC
(25,592 posts)I grew up in Kansas. I still remember seeing my outline in the the sweat on the sheet, after I got up from where I had slept.
This weekend in Kansas City, it is supposed to get to 104°F with high humidity. People die in that heat.
The problem is not too much air conditioning, but too many people and an antiquated power grid being fed by yesterday's technology.
Too many Luddites fighting newer, safer, more efficient and reliable 24/7 energy sources.
Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)...only outlaws will have air conditioning.
The reality is we rich, pampered Americans will go right on using our air conditioners right up to the moment that the power grid collapses, or the cost of electricity goes too high for the average person to afford.
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)because home and business construction lacks adequate natural ventilation. And it can get 119F here.
I do the best I can not to waste energy. I use fans a lot at home and the doors and windows are always open when I am home (even at night) so I can cool the place down enough that most the time I don't need to turn on the AC. But the office MUST be kept 78ish because my patients (and staff and clients) cannot be subjected to extreme heat.
And the cans of flea spray will leak if it hits 100F inside, which WILL happen easily without AC.
MADem
(135,425 posts)Air conditioning makes very hot swathes of our nation habitable.
Let's put this asshole out in the Mojave and see how he does, and how long it will take him to parse the difference between "necessity" and "luxury."
Spending a day or two in the Mojave or the Sonoran Desert will teach him that air conditioning is not a luxury. The night time lows are in the high 80's to low 90's and very uncomfortable.
As one other poster noted, people from Europe come for a visit and end up in the emergency room or worse dead due to the heat. (Of course where I live it is a dry heat. )
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)Where it's hot AND humid. Therefore, the temperature does NOT go down at night, unlike dry climates. I grew up in Houston without central air and my whole family was completely miserable.
When the temperature at midnight is 90 degrees or so, you can't sleep at all. I got a window unit in my room when I was in high school and it blew cold air on my feet. We never had the whole house airconditioned.
I have read that people from Europe will collapse in a Houston parking lot, between their car and the front door, from the heat.
pansypoo53219
(20,981 posts)just need to make do. hate AC, good for dieting too.
unc70
(6,115 posts)It is more energy efficient with current technology to air condition vehicles than to roll the window down. The extra wind drag is greater than the small amount extra needed for the air conditioning.
Regarding A/C in general, I remember growing up in NC my clothes and shoes would mildew just hanging in the closet.
caraher
(6,278 posts)We've seen population shifts in the US over the past 100 years to hotter areas in part, I think, because we do have AC. Relocating to someplace where temperature and humidity readings are routinely in the 90s is much more appealing if you have the AC technology to make it more bearable. Now we've moved to those places, living in artificial bubbles of temperate climates; perhaps if the notion that life would be literally unbearable without AC we really ought to shift more population back north?
But as others have pointed out, we should look at the climate impact of heating as well. Looking at AC in isolation is a mistake. And unfortunately, I don't think we can all live in the "Goldilocks zone" where it's not too hot, not too cold but is just right all the time. (And where that might be is obviously a matter of opinion anyway!)
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)This idiot has obviously never lived in any place with hot, humid summers.
cbrer
(1,831 posts)Hell, if you stick a 14" pipe in the ground far enough. And cycle air through it. You will have a heat exchanger that will stay a constant temp. year round.
Here at Munich we have the A/C for the data processing centre of BMW using groundwater. We had to pump it up anyway for a culvert at a tunnel for the subway. Sorry, link is available in German only:
http://www.swm.de/geschaeftskunden/m-fernwaerme/m-fernkaelte/bmw.html
Edited to add: Sorry for my bad English, too.
ohgeewhiz
(193 posts)and your English is okay!
The Munich-based pilot project "cooling" were particularly impressed by its high energy and pollution savings. It was awarded the 2006 Bavarian Energy Prize. In addition, the project, funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, has been promoted by: Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology .
Benjamin Parish
(15 posts)Its too hot.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)I'd like to see if Stan maintains his convictions after a summer in Houston.
ohgeewhiz
(193 posts)We can have a few thousand less trans-oceanic and trans-continental airline flights to deliver people and foods, commute to and from work with a few tens of billions more miles in mass transit instead on one person to an automobile, and we can better utilize each and every non-polluting green technology. Doing so, we could save ten times as much pollution than we use to air condition and refrigerate ourselves and our foods.
jade3000
(238 posts)Sadly, Americans really don't care about climate change. You know why? 3 reasons: (1) it's not critically hot enough in most of the country, (2) we have AC, (3) our agricultural base won't be destroyed. It's sad but true. And countries that don't have these advantages generally don't have the political, economic, or military muscle to force climate change policies.