
Do Americans Need Air-Conditioning? - darod
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/style/air-conditioning-obsession.html
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tschwimmer
This is not a particularly clever article. It conflates the question of "Are
American offices overcooled?" with "Do we really need air conditioning?" The
answer to the former is probably yes, but the latter is most certainly also
yes. The author makes not even a passing mention of the American Southwest,
the Gulf Coast or Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The current standard of living in
these areas without air conditioning would essentially be impossible.

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markus_zhang
One thing I still can't get used to since my arrival to North America in 2005
is that people tend to set temp too low in summers (18-21) and too high
(26-28) in winters. Everyone in the company is complaining but none of them,
even the VPs, managed to bring the temp to a more "normal" range.

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simonsarris
A lot of the _need_ for AC (and having lights on) is just really, really bad
modern house design. I recently finished building a house (my first one) and
everyone acted like I was crazy for not building in central air conditioning.

I built in an older style, with windows on every side, with a mind towards
ventilation and light. Inexplicably most houses in the area, even $500k+
houses do not have these two things. My mom's condo has central air but the
system is so feeble and the venting upstairs so poor that two bedrooms in the
house remain stuffy anyways. It seems like light and natural ventilation are
not even afterthoughts, but non-thoughts, and the designs all rely on electric
light and forced air.

I also built 9 foot ceilings on the first floor and 8.5 on the second. Then I
placed the attic (3rd story) door centrally in the upstairs hallway. The
result of the design is that airflow moves on the first floor in all
directions, and upward, and on the second floor can move at _least_ east-west
(bathroom and hallway windows), and also north-south if bedroom doors are
open. Finally, air flows upwards to the attic, which has windows north-south.

If I close windows in the morning and open around 7pm, the result is that the
house stays very cool, about(? only tested with temp gun a few times) 74
downstairs and 76 upstairs during these 90 degree days, and then gets cooler
at night as I open windows again. So far, I've only bought one fan, though
things might work better with more. Note I'm not an expert or an architect, I
just included some design features that should be obvious to anyone who's
lived in an old house for a summer.

This takes some manual control, but there are far fewer parts to maintain
(this was a general design goal beyond AC), and last month's electric bill was
$54 (New Hampshire).

~~~
RickJWagner
I'd love to use windows (and attic fans) to better manage temperatures, but a
large part of my family suffers from allergies.

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siruncledrew
After being in Europe during the heatwave, I really did miss air conditioning
when it was 35-40C yet there was no place to cool down (restaurants even
closed because it was too hot to cook in the kitchen). Usually this type of
weather is not the norm for Western Europe, but if the weather keeps getting
hotter on average that may not be the case anymore. Still, while it’s
unpleasant, with the right adjustments it is possible to manage without AC for
short periods (granted, if the humidity was like Florida, I would take that
back). That’s just what it’s like to have to live with seasons. Some highs and
some lows.

In the US, air conditioning is ubiquitous, yet also inefficient temperature
management. It’s like Goldilocks - rarely just right. When it’s hot and humid
outside, the shock of cold and dry indoors is nice at first, but soon
overbearing to adjust to. Same goes in winter when it’s 0C outside, yet 25C
inside, so it feels like a sauna in long pants and a sweater. I wish
temperature control was more adjusted to external environmental conditions to
provide more “modest” conditioning. In my opinion, that’s the cost of living
in an environment, having to adjust to it throughout the year. It doesn’t have
to be as extreme as toughing out 40C in a jacket, but when it’s summer, it’s
just bound to be a little sweatier for a while. Our bodies can get to used to
it, but it’s more difficult with more temperature shocks from place to place.

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gremlinsinc
I think the question should be 'could we survive' by turning up the
thermostat... I'm miserable if it falls below 72 (I used to be hot all the
time, had surgery in 2012 and now I'm always cold), but in the winter I set
the heater to 64 and just bundle up. In the summer so far we've had the
furnace off all summer except when my wife was baking up a storm for a
birthday party and needed to keep the atmosphere cool for the cakes and
because she raised the indoor temp 20 degrees.

We live by the mountains and luckily face the sun in a way that our indoor
temp runs about 10 degrees less than outdoor w/ the windows up. If we started
getting 90+ inside I might decide to turn on A/C, but so far it only gets to
84 this summer, and it's not so bad in the basement where it's closer to 74,
or in front of the window fan in the living area.

If society as a whole could just choose collectively to set a minimum
thermostat threshold of 78 for summer and 64 for winter, I think that alone
could have a drastic effect on climate change. Freeze or sweat a little and be
a little uncomfortable? So what deal with it. It's life, but we don't need to
go to extremes and freeze/heat a lot or past what is bearable. If we can't
mentally function as a result and do our jobs then we need to alter things.

We might even find ourselves and bodies get 'used' to the new temperatures.
People in phoenix wear parka's when it drops below 70, because they're
accustomed to a different temp and it feels unbearably cold to them.

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adolph
Americans need data centers and data centers need air conditioning.

Funny story: I once was paged to be part of a shut down exercise of services
in a backup data center in the middle of an ice storm where the whole city was
shut down. The chillers stopped working and the DC was overheated. They had
security open doors etc but they couldn’t get enough chilled air into the
building. The first thought was that the AC units had somehow frozen over. The
postmortem found that the AC units had not been programmed for temperatures
lower than 28 degrees and had just shut themselves off.

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adolph
_[O]n average, heating an American home with natural gas produces about 6,400
pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2, a major warming gas). . . . A typical centrally
air conditioned home in Florida, for instance, produces about 6,600 pounds of
CO2._

[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=139417...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13941744)

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ErotemeObelus
Yes. Most of the United States is either continental or subtropical climate,
which gets brutally hot and humid in the summer. Air conditioning is as
necessary as heating in the winter.

Most of Europe is either oceanic or mediterranean, which either doesn't get
hot at all or only gets dry heat.

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reaperducer
Here's my anecdata:

I had a house in the Mojave Desert. In summer the temperature would run
105-115° during the day and 95-110° at night for most of July, August, and
September.

I'm not from the desert, so I racked up $200/month power bills for my small
home. (I kept it set at 80° when I was home, and 76° when my wife was home.)

My neighbor across the street (with a wife and three kids) didn't seem to mind
for the most part. He would have his windows open until the temperature got to
105°. Then he'd open them again at night on those days when it dipped below
100°.

Even if the temperature was over 110° there were plenty of people driving
around with their car windows open. And I'm talking brand new luxury cars, not
junkers.

Some people are just bothered more by heat than others.

~~~
masonic

      95-110° at night for most of July, August, and September.
    

Excuse me? Deserts cool significantly at night. If you look at USWS forecast
for Mojave for this week, for example, the nightly low is never higher than
72F and usually less... and this is with the longest days of the year.

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reaperducer
_Excuse me?_

You're excused.

 _Deserts cool significantly at night_

Certain deserts cool significantly in certain places at night. "Deserts" are
not identical nor homogenous.

 _If you look at USWS forecast for Mojave for this week, for example, the
nightly low is never higher than 72F_

There is no such thing as a "USWS forecast for Mojave." Perhaps you are
thinking of the town of Mojave, California, which is one small place in a more
temperate portion of a large desert?

Regardless, this week and the entire year is not typical for the Mojave
Desert. It has been unusually cool and moist. The Mojave Desert isn't Ohio. It
doesn't have NWS weather stations every ten miles. The weather stations you
see reporting on the internet are people with uncalibrated contraptions in
their backyards, or computer-generated guesses.

The NWS historical data page doesn't load right now, so here's a link from
Wunderground for one year ago today in a populated place with a proper weather
station: Las Vegas: [https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/nv/las-
vegas/K...](https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/nv/las-
vegas/KLAS/date/2018-7-7)

It's far from the hottest place in the Mojave, but you can see that the low
temperature, which occurred at 9pm was 93°. That is normal, not 72°.

Anyone who's lived in the desert for any length of time can tell you that the
numbers you see on the internet are far from the truth. NWS, quite reasonably,
concentrates its efforts on populated and agricultural areas.

I lived it for five years.

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masonic

      There is no such thing as a "USWS forecast for Mojave."
    

Really? I just went to weather.gov and entered Mojave in the search box, and
it gave a menu of options (more options for more detail). The top option says
"Mojave Desert". Drilling down to the 10 day forecast shows the _highest_
overnight low for the next 10 days at that top Mojave reference to be _70F_.

Sure, microclimates vary, but you made a general reference.

[https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=35.41665000000...](https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=35.41665000000006&lon=-115.58415999999994)

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RickJWagner
That's a pretty harsh litmus test for climate activism.

I lived a number of years with cars that lacked air conditioning. It can be
pretty unpleasant. AC is pretty high up on my list of things I really, really
want to have.

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jdofaz
In Phoenix yes, but I can get through winter without using a heater.

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Simulacra
Yes. Above 75 and I start sweating, and the humidity in the swamp gets
unbearable. Without air conditioning, or significant air flow, I don't think a
lot of DC would be livable.

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asdfman123
These articles are frustrating because they don't take into account the large
percentage of the population that doesn't live in a place like New York or
Boston.

Houston would be unbearable in the summer without AC. No one is suggesting we
do away with indoor heating.

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Swizec
People in Spain and the rest of the Mediterranean have managed to live without
AC for millenia. Some old houses, centuries old, are cool as a cucumber during
some of the worst months of summer.

And yet, in my experience, it’s like Americans are allergic to insulation and
building houses appropriate to the climate. Something is very weird when
houses in SF look just like houses in Portland which look just like houses in
every suburban photo of the US I’ve ever seen.

In Europe architecture changes with the climate, in the US it doesn’t seem to
(or at least I haven’t noticed and please tell me that i’n wrong)

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majewsky
99PI did a wonderful episode on this:
[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-
delight/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-delight/)

Basically, the US abandoned their regionally different architecture once AC
became common.

~~~
agumonkey
another case of technological dead end

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mnm1
Obviously we do as do other nations especially at work. Who the fuck wants to
slave away in a fucking sweatshop just to save the employer some money or to
cut some energy. Only a truly idiotic employer would remove air conditioning
in exchange for the inevitable lower productivity and higher employee
disengagement especially in fields like software that require a lot of deep
thinking. And it is absolutely essential for sleeping well at night. Sleep is
not negotiable. So yeah we need it. What we don't need are stupid articles
like this that can't even make the point they're trying to make compelling.

