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Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

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Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#261

Post by elil17 »

lstodd wrote: post #234
elil17 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps 15C is a typo? That is perfectly comfortable even at 100% RH + no air movement.

nope, no typo. 15C+100RH+no convection = you just die in a few hours.

Well if there's no convection you must be in a vacuum!

But if you mean no forced convection, that's just not the case. You can survive at wetbulb temperatures in excess of 30 C, which means 30 C + 100% RH. Hell, my house right now is at about 25 C drybulb and 18 C wetbulb, which from the perspective of evaporative heat transfer is identical to 18 C with 100% RH, so I should be dying any minute. See you on the other side!

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#262

Post by kalleboo »

iso1631 wrote: post #201
kalleboo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVs use less energy than ICE cars, they are more efficient.

But they put more demand on the electrical grid. Domestic connections in the UK are built with an average peak consumption of about 1.5 to 2kW, you can draw ten times that, but its unlikely every house will do that at the same time, so it's just like a contention ratio on a network. Now imagine everyone charges their car, even if it's only for an hour, but when they get home at 7pm, same time as putting on the kettle…

Easily solved with various time-of-use pricing schemes. Have people put their cars on a timer to charge in the middle of the night, or during the day in countries with solar. I already have this for my hot water heating - the water heater only runs during solar hours when there is a cheaper rate.

> Drawing 20kW for one hour

Why would you fast charge if your car is going to be parked at home overnight anyway

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#263

Post by esseph »

vlyan wrote: post #259
esseph wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the only remotely European people not going extinct are some subgroups of Israeli Jews What?

not a single European country has the TFR anywhere near 2. with the median age now reaching >=40, the TFR of 1.0-1.5 means rapid and irreversible decline. is this news to you?

Not at all, I just don't fucking care at all. It's irrelevant.

Race is not something I care about, and cultures come and go.

The groups we were 10,000 years ago are not the groups we have now, which are not what the groups will be 10,000 years from now.

Big whoop.

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#264

Post by roelschroeven »

elil17 wrote: post #218
anal_reactor wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the Netherlands. My apartment has two floors. The upper floor is basically a greenhouse, so 40C is absolutely normal if I close the windows. During the summer I always keep at least one window open, which cools down the house to around 30-35C. This sucks during summer but during winter it's a blessing because I can have 30C on a sunny day even if it's 0C outside. The only drawback is that the windows are ve…

> During the summer I always keep at least one window open, which cools down the house to around 30-35C. Yeah this is exactly my point. If your house is so poorly insulated that your internal temperatures go above the ambient temperature, you can open a window.

Chances are that ambient are doesn't provide enough cooling. Maybe you can open only window, or all windows on the same side of your home, meaning there's no draft. Maybe you're in an urban environment, with a micro climate even hotter than outside the city. Maybe both. Heat will enter from sunlight and from people inside, and will exit only very slowly.

There's a world of difference between a house in the countryside, with maybe even some trees providing shade, and an apartment in a densely populated area with very low opportunities for thermal control.

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#266

Post by vlyan »

esseph wrote: post #263
vlyan wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not a single European country has the TFR anywhere near 2. with the median age now reaching >=40, the TFR of 1.0-1.5 means rapid and irreversible decline. is this news to you?

Not at all, I just don't fucking care at all. It's irrelevant. Race is not something I care about, and cultures come and go. The groups we were 10,000 years ago are not the groups we have now, which are not what the groups will be 10,000 years from now. Big whoop.

yes, yes, very virtuous of you, now back to my point: why should Hans give a flying fuck about climate change if he will have no descendants to suffer from it?

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#267

Post by mancerayder »

In France it's a cross between a sin, American influence, and something that will destroy your health. Hospitals and retirement homes lack AC and excess deaths occur among the elderly population.

I guess there's the unintended consequence of making the healthcare costs cheaper, if you let the older people cook under unusual weather patterns (even if they are unusual every summer now).

What's particularly weird, but also very French, is it's now a Right v Left issue, with the Left saying we should explore building design ideas for passive cooling instead of hurting the environment further (after all suffering is our own fault for hurting the environment and we should be exposed to that consequence), while the Right is pushing for AC.

Whatever it is, if you go to Paris make sure you stay in a hotel or an Airbnb with A/C.

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#268

Post by m463 »

mancerayder wrote: post #267

In France it's a cross between a sin, American influence, and something that will destroy your health. Hospitals and retirement homes lack AC and excess deaths occur among the elderly population. I guess there's the unintended consequence of making the healthcare costs cheaper, if you let the older people cook under unusual weather patterns (even if they are unusual every summer now). What's particularly weird, but a…

In america, the luxuries become necessities. In soviet russia, the necessities become luxuries!

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#269

Post by m463 »

maybewhenthesun wrote: post #219
Yizahi wrote: post #202

I also find deeply and even extremely ironic, that the same greenwashing radicals who bash ACs in Europe are then supporting "heat pumps" as a modern and efficient heating device. There are even programs labelled as Eco or green or whatever the jargon of the day is, to subsidize or finance heat pumps. People are seemingly unaware that heat pumps are just an AC with a tiny additional valve in the pipes :) .

Nothing ironic about that. Using an airco to cool a house is often (not always) a luxury that humans did without for centuries. So people are used to seeing cooling as luxury. Without heating you die. A heatpump is more energy efficient than most other forms of heating. A heatpump is not always the most efficient way to cool a house.

> that humans did without for centuries.

I think building design/thermal mass and population density/location has changed quite a bit over the centuries.

Re: Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

#270

Post by slfnflctd »

dguest wrote: post #187
slfnflctd wrote: post #64

I've been thinking for a while about whether it would be feasible to produce an affordable 'personal cooling chamber' for lower income people in places getting scorched in the summer that don't have A/C. Basically an automotive air conditioning unit hooked up to a battery and solar panel, with a tanning bed type form factor (up to maybe capsule hotel size), painted or coated to reflect light & heat. Highly portable.…

Stick your feet in a bucket of water. My colleague does it: it's magical.

It did occur to me that a small, efficient portable icemaker would be an okay runner-up solution. I think being able to cool the air in a small space would be more comfortable overall, though, and wouldn't involve getting wet.
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