The far-reaching effects of air conditioning
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Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning
#2Unless you have lived in the tropical humid heat, you wont be able to relate to this. Moving to NYC recently and living without an AC or even a fan feels so glorious. I bet 10% of my brain was constantly fighting the heat back when I was in south of India.
Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning
#3Unless you have lived in the tropical humid heat, you wont be able to relate to this. Moving to NYC recently and living without an AC or even a fan feels so glorious. I bet 10% of my brain was constantly fighting the heat back when I was in south of India.
Likewise, I just came back from HK and I have no idea how they could get anything done there before the introduction of AC. And I was told it gets even worse in the middle of summer!
Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning
#4Unless you have lived in the tropical humid heat, you wont be able to relate to this. Moving to NYC recently and living without an AC or even a fan feels so glorious. I bet 10% of my brain was constantly fighting the heat back when I was in south of India.
Funny, I remember coming to NYC from Scandinavia thinking it was so humid and warm and impossible to get anything done during the summer months.
Guess it really depends on what you are used to.
Then, in the winter, the old NYC apartments were so dry and warm because of the central heat that typically couldn't be regulated from the radiators in the apartments. They just blasted on all winter and the only way to adjust the temperature would be to open the windows :-)
Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning
#5> A study in Phoenix, Arizona, found the hot air pumped out of air conditioning units increased the city's night-time temperature by 2C
Often I wish places of business and work places wouldn't turn up the AC so much. I have a jacket at work in Phoenix during the summer because they keep it so cold.
Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning
#6Fun fact: Carrier still produces HVAC systems.
Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning
#7If you like this story, I recommend reading How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World. Its a quick read and very interesting. And, yes, "cold" is one of the six.
https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-Innovations/dp/1594633...
Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning
#8The downside of air conditioned homes is that houses are now built with very little regard to insulation and intelligent use of the sun (to warm the house at winter) and the wind (to cool it during summertime).
My house has a large, paper-thin southern wall and during the summer it gets so hot that it radiates heat into the house at night. So I have to air-condition my bedroom at night. And the windows are stupidly designed, so when the wind blows in the winter I can feel it enter the room - and again I must use electricity to keep the room warm.
Thankfully, "green" building methods are starting to change this wasteful attitude.
Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning
#9Unless you have lived in the tropical humid heat, you wont be able to relate to this. Moving to NYC recently and living without an AC or even a fan feels so glorious. I bet 10% of my brain was constantly fighting the heat back when I was in south of India.
Every summer, I see a couple of posts on HN about some supposedly groundbreaking scheme to cool a building by a few degrees without using an traditional A/C. Usually it's a combination of ventilation and evaporation, resulting in somewhat cooler but much more humid air.
I guess it might work in the Bay Area. But as someone who lives where I regularly see temperatures higher than the human body temperature with humidity higher than the human body's water content, that kind of scheme is an absolute non-starter. This article does a great job explaining why.
The fact that blowing air over blocks of ice didn't work 100 years ago should remind today's inventors that damp air is unlikely to be a good solution, either, in most parts the world that currently rely on compressor-based air conditioners.
Re: The far-reaching effects of air conditioning
#10In places like Brazil were AC is everywhere but isolation and heating is limited, it gets really cold in the winter even if its only 15 degrees outside. In places like germany where home isolation and heating is generally very good, you really have to suffer in the summer because rarely any place apart from some offices have AC.
Even more so, many don't like AC at home because it consumes a lot of power and can make you sick (not sure if this is actually true).