
The Moral History of Air-Conditioning - ALee
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/the-moral-history-of-air-conditioning/536364/?single_page=true
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gargravarr
It's interesting reading this as a European - although offices and large
public buildings in the UK are air conditioned, homes aren't. Our climate is
often humid but even in peak summer, few of us even think of seeking shelter
in front of an air conditioner. The only place it's common to find one is in a
car, and even those are seldom used because the energy use is immediately
visible on fuel consumption.

I agree with the amount of energy used by the machines - humans are remarkably
willing to expend huge amounts of resources for what many would view as
pathetic personal comfort. On the other hand, ACs allow us to do work around
the world in climates where we would end up sweating in seconds and needing
breaks every few minutes. Of course, in other places, it's taken to excess -
in Dubai, for example, AC and related technologies allowed the construction of
an indoor ski _resort_. I cannot imagine how much power that attraction
consumes to keep the desert heat out.

The one saving grace is that an AC is actually quite an efficient machine. Per
unit of input energy, it is able to move multiple units of thermal energy
between its 'hot' and 'cold' zones. ACs can even make efficient heaters by
working in reverse, pulling heat in from outside rather than burning fuels or
using electrical resistance, and transferring more heat than the power input
of a heater. The ability to move heat around is a very useful engineering
accomplishment.

However, the article does point out the many downsides. Not only is the energy
consumed contributing to climate change, but I can imagine that with many,
many devices pumping heat out of buildings into the air, they're actually
heating the local air by a small percent and probably incentivising those
nearby to run their own ACs. A nice little vicious spiral.

Though mentioning the dangerous environmental impact of the older generation
of refrigerants, the article doesn't touch on a key breakthrough in recent
years - using carbon dioxide itself as the working fluid. This is a really
neat idea and has a two-pronged approach - not only is the gas not immediately
harmful should it leak (at least compared to other refrigerants), but in
building ACs that use it, CO2 could be captured from the air itself and
isolated. Obviously in small quantities, but when considering how many AC
units are in use globally, there's likely many, many tonnes of refrigerant in
use. Replace all that with CO2 and it could make a real different to the
planet.

