The New Vernacular » The dangers of air conditioning

Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 at 12:09 am | In Technology |

If you can survive it, there are real reasons not to use air conditioning. Number one? Air conditioning might keep your house cool, but it heats up the earth.

From Slate.com:

All over the country, power consumption is breaking records, and air conditioning is a huge reason why. We use about one-sixth of our electricity to cool ourselves. That’s more than the total electricity consumption of India, a country whose population exceeds 1 billion. To get the electricity, we burn oil and coal. We also run air conditioners in our cars, which reduces urban fuel efficiency by up to four miles per gallon, at an annual cost of 7 billion gallons of gasoline.

More burning of oil and coal means more greenhouse gases. Based on government data, Stan Cox, a scientist at the Land Institute, calculates that air-conditioning the average U.S. home requires 3,400 pounds of carbon-dioxide production per year. The effects of this are particularly bad at night. Over the last five summers, very high minimum daily temperatures—those that score in the top 10 percent historically—have been far more widespread in this country than during any other five-year period. This is what’s killing people. Outdoor air used to cool at night, allowing us to recover from the day’s heat. Now it doesn’t. To fuel our own air conditioning, we’re destroying nature’s.

Now I feel a little validated for suffering the recent heat wave.

HT: Bru

Slate - The deluded world of air conditioning

19 Comments »

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We do over air-condition in this country. In Las Vegas where I’m currently located, they keep huge casinos at ice cold temps (probably 60-65 degrees) 24 hours, 7 days a week. I think there’s a lot of things we could do to conserve energy in terms of climate control…setting air conditioning only during certain hours, setting the air conditioning at higher temps, more efficient air conditioners, living in smaller homes.

On a completely random note: The move South and West over the last 50 years has been driven by air conditioning so America’s dependence on climate control will continue to increase.

Comment by Tim — August 9, 2006 #
I guess what we need to do is develop more air conditioners that can reduce any damage to the atmosphere. Men are smart; they can do this.

Comment by Stephie — August 29, 2006 #
Well, isn’t this a longstanding issue? This has been around for how many years, yet I think the actions were making are too slow to cope with the damaging changes happening around.

Comment by Susan — September 5, 2006 #
We’re bombarded with findings and researches. I think we need to take that giant leap: what to do?

Comment by Debbie — September 6, 2006 #
I live in Florida and have central air in my home and air in my car…down here you would die without it. At the same time, I hate having the air going, it just makes me feel sick sometimes and I worry about Legionaires disease. I didn’t know the facts about what it’s doing to nature. Now that I know, I am going to do my part and run the air less, at home and in the car. I hate summer but we also run our heat off our central unit. I hope someone can come up with a more efficient way of cooling and heating that doesn’t cost a fortune. Solar cooling and heating is probably the best idea but you would have to own a home that is built for that. Maybe everyone will some day.

Comment by Jane — September 8, 2006 #
If there’s any easier way to have that air-conditioning bliss while not harming the environment, then why not? But do we?

Comment by Constance — September 11, 2006 #
A more pressing question is…why do all of the commentors url’s point to misc. business sites? fishy.

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