
The far-reaching effects of air conditioning - unsupported
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39735802
======
jpatokal
Lee Kuan Yew, founder of modern Singapore: _" Air conditioning was a most
important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history.
It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the
tropics. Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning
hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to
install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was
key to public efficiency."_

[https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-
yew...](https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew-air-
conditioning)

~~~
pavlov
Japan is further ahead, as they have optimized this with a decade-old policy
called "Cool Biz".

To save energy and money by reducing AC, office workers are allowed to wear
more casual clothing in the summer:

[https://qz.com/465327/ditch-the-tie-and-reduce-the-ac-
japans...](https://qz.com/465327/ditch-the-tie-and-reduce-the-ac-japans-cool-
biz-gets-summer-hell-just-about-right/)

~~~
Declanomous
I wish we had that rule. My last 3 jobs have been in historical buildings. One
didn't have AC, and the other two have barely had functional AC.

My desk reaches about 80 degrees once the weather is over 65, and it won't
drop below that until the fall. In order to make our AC more efficient they
"weather sealed" the windows, which mostly involved gluing them shut. So now I
can't open the window when it's cooler outside.

I'm sitting at my desk with my sleeves and pant legs rolled up like a five
year old pretending to be a pirate. Most of the women don't mind because they
can wear light dresses and slip on shoes.

The did give me a fan after I asked HR if I could wear women's clothing to
work.

But seriously, it's kind of ridiculous to be paying to cool a place to a
certain temperature when literally nobody in the office has any reason to be
dressed up.

~~~
klipt
> Most of the women don't mind because they can wear light dresses and slip on
> shoes.

That's a classic example of female privilege:
[https://sindeloke.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/37/](https://sindeloke.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/37/)

(If the AC is too cool it's male privilege instead)

~~~
Declanomous
That article was far more sensible and pertinent than I was expecting.
Especially relevant, given the fact that a couple weeks ago one of my
coworkers was wearing a jacket while I was sweating though my clothes.

Our handbook is pretty terrible to both sexes though. There's two full pages
on how women should do their makeup. It can basically be summed up as "You
need to wear makeup, but don't look like a whore." So, at least I don't have
to deal with that.

Honestly, I wouldn't complain if it didn't affect my work, but when it gets
this hot I get dizzy unless I drink water like it is going out of style, which
means I have to get up to fill my water and relieve myself. And even then I
can barely concentrate.

I still blame the dress code more than anything. I'm comfortable to above 90
degrees or so if I'm wearing shorts and a lightweight tee. Slacks, leather
shoes and a long sleeve shirt are not suitable much above 75 as far as I'm
concerned.

~~~
antisthenes
> I'm comfortable to above 90 degrees

Consider yourself lucky.

I am not comfortable in temperatures above 80 in any clothing bar
undergarments, _especially_ not if you want me to be productive cognitively in
any way.

And if you add humidity on top of that, it essentially reduces me to a
vegetable, unable to do anything but take short naps and cold showers every
few hours.

~~~
Declanomous
I definitely feel that way if I'm in the sun with no breeze. I'm pretty tall
and lanky though, and I sweat a lot, so I think the two of those things
together combine to keep me fairly cool.

Being hot is definitely tiring though. I'm pretty sure I use a ton of energy
just sitting around sweating, and if I have to walk anywhere in that weather
I'll just want to take a nap when I get there.

------
jay-anderson
> 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.

~~~
pitaj
Better have it too cold and people where extra clothing than have people
sweating themselves. You can always put more clothes on, you can't take off
your skin.

~~~
eBombzor
Decreasing the AC doesn't mean people will start sweating themselves. 75 - 78
F is perfect but most buildings for some reason turn their ACs all the way
down to the 60s.

For athletic centers, of course it makes sense. But in big open libraries,
lecture halls, places with little activity in general, it's awful. It's
especially bad for your health if you live in a hot region like southern
California since your body has to keep adjusting between the scorching heat
outside to the freezing cold inside.

~~~
arethuza
I suspect it very much depends what you are used to - I probably think of 15C
as "comfortable" and 25C inside would be sweltering. Having said that I'm in
Scotland - the other day we had heavy rain and it was 8C which is weather we
could get at any time of the year!

~~~
fpoling
What closing do you use at 15C? After a few years in Norway I can be OK in a
t-shirt at 18C. Anything below that still requires a jacket or sweater to stay
comfortable.

~~~
dEnigma
Not OP, but here in Austria I wear t-shirts for most of the year. I even used
to go out in just a shirt on warmer winter days with only light snowfall, but
nowadays I really notice the cold when I do that. Everything above 10°C is
very comfortable to me. Among my friends and relatives I am the exception of
course. Most of them dress in more layers, some even in summer.

------
jaseemabid
Unless 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.

~~~
flexie
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 :-)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
In Beijing, we had central CITY heating in the winter. It was so toasty I
would open my window whenever the air pollution wasn't took bad.

During the summer, it was hot and humid. Unfortunately, centra AC wasn't a
thing, and the wall units would only do so much. Now I live in LA and the
weather is mostly perfect.

------
TomK32
Why did no one mention the Romans yet? They came up with the frigidarium where
you could literally cool down with your friends and some private houses even
had water running inside their walls to cool it down (or hot air in the colder
months).

Temperature control in buildings is 100% architecture and technical add-ons
like AC are a poor choice. Look at termites how they use architecture to cool
their hives.

~~~
yxhuvud
I wonder why central cooling hasn't taken off like central heating has. It
seems to me that the economy of scale would work really well with cold just as
it does with heat.

~~~
VLM
Compressed liquid refrigerant is very expensive compared to cheap water for
heating. Long pipes full of liquid would be very expensive to initially fill
not to mention after leaks. And there would be leaks...

Historically most refrigerants have had "issues" when leaked either
environmental or being toxic or otherwise it minimizes danger to keep as
little as possible. Even if we could afford to use 1000x as much refrigerant
with a central compressor station, it would be bad for the environment to use
it that way.

You can move a huge amount of heat with water pressurized to merely 14 psi or
so, but I have a puron aka R-410A conditioner at home and that dude runs near
400 psi on a hot day and its difficult to run miles of high pressure pipe.

I'm not sure bigger compressors are that much more efficient than smaller
compressors, taking into account the environmental and economic expense of the
pipes.

From an engineering standpoint its cheaper safer and less environmentally
destructive to push kilowatts thru copper wire than push high pressure
expensive refrigerant thru long high pressure pipes if all other things were
equal which they mostly are.

~~~
pinot
You do not have to distribute the compressor gasses- you just pump cold
water/glycol around. Every factory everywhere does it this way for distributed
cooling, as well as hospitals/colleges/corp campuses with central plants.

For a long while, Stanford had an underground reservoir of ice for even better
cooling (freeze ice at night when electrical prices are low, melt off during
the day)
[http://web.stanford.edu/dept/news/news/1999/april21/iceplant...](http://web.stanford.edu/dept/news/news/1999/april21/iceplant-421.html)

------
ishi
The 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.

~~~
adrianmonk
Being from Texas, that is such a strange perspective to me. Around here, air
conditioning is the main reason why you need insulation.

Heating isn't a major concern. Many houses have electric heat because it just
isn't worth the cost to put in something more efficient.

But air conditioning is needed a large part of the year. And in the summer it
gets quite hot, so electric bills can be very expensive. So in any newer
construction, there is a lot of effort to make things energy-efficient. Houses
have double-pane windows, radiant barriers, thick insulation, and leak tests
to make sure that hot/humid air from outside cannot make its way in.

There are certainly older buildings that aren't very energy-efficient, but
around here I don't see that as being because of air conditioning.

~~~
yxhuvud
I guess it is a progression where people learn from the problems they had
before.

Step 1: It is too hot/cold here

Step 2: Lets put in heating/AC

Step 3: Damn, the electric costs are getting too high. Lets put in insulation
and double-pane windows (well, actually three-pane is standard here in Sweden)
to keep down the costs.

The further you live to extreme heat or cold the faster a society progress
down the ladder. Which is also a reason the death rates during winter is a lot
higher (per capita) in central Europe than it is in northern Europe - people
in the northern parts have long since been forced to learn to build better
houses whereas people in mild climates can afford to fail as it isn't that
many days a year that it is a problem.

Have any part of Texas considered central cooling? It should be even more
effective than having units in every house as long as it isn't too damp and
the water needs to be removed as well. But perhaps that kind of solution would
be too socialistic for you :P

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Central cooling/heating probably isn't very popular in the US because of
generally lower population densities. A

------
tyng
The same goes for washing machine:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing...](https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine)

"What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? Hans Rosling
makes the case for the washing machine. With newly designed graphics from
Gapminder, Rosling shows us the magic that pops up when economic growth and
electricity turn a boring wash day into an intellectual day of reading."

~~~
vacri
A while back a friend of mine told me how her (great-?)grandmother in Malta
used to do the laundry down the river as a young woman, and her and her
friends used to dream about having a magic box that you could just throw the
laundry in, press a button, and it'd be done!

------
spodek
Low-tech magazine has an article on how useful ceiling fans are:
[http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/09/circulating-fans-
air-...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/09/circulating-fans-air-
conditioning.html).

They don't pollute nearly as much and work remarkably well. I live in
Manhattan, which gets hot and humid in the summer, and basically never turn on
my air conditioning even though I pay for my share of the building's central
air conditioning. I don't need it and prefer not to cause the pollution.

~~~
NoGravitas
Here in the South, ceiling fans will let you keep your AC on 80F and still be
comfortable. High ceilings help, too, but they're not as common as they used
to be.

~~~
saint_fiasco
High ceilings probably mean keeping your AC on 80F doesn't save as much power
as you expect, because it has to cool a larger volume of space.

~~~
logfromblammo
You're not adding cool, but removing heat. And you're not doing it for the
entire volume, but for the 2m layer nearest the floor.

Those high ceilings make it easier to remove heat from that bottom layer,
especially with drop ceilings, plenum spaces, insulating spaces, and fans. You
are cooling a larger volume of air, but it is not to a uniform 80 degF. The
higher layers will be cooled to a lesser extent than the lower layers, so the
AC burden is somewhat less overall than if the entire room volume were cooled
to a uniformly low temperature.

------
euoia
There is a great TV series called "The Secret Life of Machines" that covered
some inventions that changed the world:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDpNQQqdSh8&list=PLByTa5duIo...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDpNQQqdSh8&list=PLByTa5duIolYRtq45Cz_GmtzfWJyA4bik&spfreload=5)

There is an episode on central heating:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y08yBdoFsI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y08yBdoFsI)

------
kayoone
In 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).

~~~
ido
We live in Berlin and the insulation and generally high ceilings make most
apartments pretty cool even in the hotter summer days (which are rare and
rarely much hotter than 30c).

There are maybe 2-3 weeks per year when I wish we had air conditioning, at
most.

~~~
czechdeveloper
Once indoors temperature hits 26, I can't get any work done. I know I have
short temperature comfort range, but 30 indoors is crazy for me.

~~~
lorenzhs
ido was talking about _outside_ temperature.

I live in one of the hottest cities in Germany (Karlsruhe) and I agree with
ido. There's around 2-3 weeks where home air conditioning would really be
useful. The rest of the time, temperature is controlled easily enough by
opening windows at night and closing the shutters during the daytime while at
the office.

Air conditioning for offices is a different story.

------
superasn
Throughout the article I was waiting for the "But.." As in some how it also
deteriorated the global weather, caused some unknown sort of pollution, etc.

It was good to see that Air conditioning has only improved the world and has
no side-effects.

~~~
tszymczyszyn
It seems nobody has mentioned a near-epidemic of respiratory system infections
caused by air-conditioning. And I do not mean the cases where A/C is infected
with some rare bacteria (e.g. Legionella) often causing death. Usually it is
just common cold or sinusitis caused by overly chilled and dry air. I wonder
what are the health-related costs of overusing A/C in moderate climate.

~~~
VLM
The dew point in my house in August when the AC is running continuously is in
the 50F to 60F range. The dew point is around 50F outdoors for a couple months
before and after August.

The dew point in January during a cold snap spends weeks around -20F. This is
fairly self evident, we have some crisp dry snow free mornings around -10 to
-20 every winter and obviously if the dew point were above -20 it would be
snowing at that time, or at least cloudy. If I try to humidify the house it'll
just get moldy so I let it dry out instead.

I have noticed my hands get dry skin problems, skin cracks and gets infected,
when the dew point is below freezing for a couple weeks. Winter is a bad time
for static sensitive electronic experimentation. I participate in many winter
sports activities and when the dew point is -20F you don't have to sweat much
to get hypothermia or dehydrated. Dehydration is a big problem for long
distance hikers in the winter, you have to carry the water in a thermos or
it'll freeze and tradition is to drink caffeinated hot beverages which makes
you pee which dehydrates you faster than not drinking at all.

You'd have to live in an interesting climate where the dew point in the winter
is higher than the dew point in an air conditioned house in the summer.

------
callmeed
If 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...](https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-
Innovations/dp/1594633932)

~~~
fuckemem
"cold" is quite broad though. That would cover refrigeration/ freezing which
would be a much bigger impact than air con.

~~~
tormeh
They're literally the same thing. Only difference is how big the fridge is and
how much power you dedicate.

~~~
fuckemem
With the title "The far-reaching effects of air conditioning" I didn't
immediately think "Yup ... that's handy: frozen peas" even though the
technology underlying them is the same.

------
rudedogg
I live in an area where evaporative coolers are effective. I hate setting it
up every year, and was looking into central air. When researching I learned
about how efficient evaporative coolers are, and it gave me more appreciation
for them.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler):

    
    
        * Estimated cost of operation is 1/8 that of refrigerated air conditioning
    

It's really interesting to think about the advantages/disadvantages of
geography in regards to power generation/consumption. It didn't really occur
to me until going through the above experience.

\----------------

The design of these systems is really interesting. Most of them have a lot of
wearable parts (belt and bearings), which means more maintenance. There are
some new designs ([http://www.bonaire-
usa.com/products.html#window](http://www.bonaire-
usa.com/products.html#window)) that do away with the "squirrel cage" fan
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_fan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_fan)),
and a lot of the maintenance. I wonder if the efficiency of the new design is
lower than the traditional centrifugal fan design?

I know this can be found - I just don't want to go too deep researching. If
anyone knows off hand I'd appreciate an answer!

~~~
humanrebar
> It's really interesting to think about the advantages/disadvantages of
> geography in regards to power generation/consumption.

I've seen air conditioning that amounted to basically a shaft into a natural
underground cave and a fan.

I've also heard of people watering the roofs of their houses in the summer to
get low-tech just-in-time evaporative cooling for their attics.

~~~
rudedogg
The cave thing is neat - sounds like an easy form of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heating)

------
iamthepieman
From the OP

"Historically, a cool building in a hot climate implied thick walls, high
ceilings, balconies, courtyards and windows facing away from the sun."

New Orleans is one of the clearest examples of this hot and humid specific
architecture[0]. In that picture the second floor balcony represents roughly
the height of the 1st floor ceiling. The many doors like porticos, can be
opened on the shaded side of the building allowing for air flow. You see this
style all over the city.

Apart from reflective coatings on glass in high rises and office buildings and
the occasional Leed certified building trying to save on energy usage, you
don't see much architectural consideration for the climate.

This is especially true in office buildings (in the U.S. anyways) built
1900-1950 or so with blocky brick buildings in which the central rooms have
little natural ventilation[1]

[0][https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9459548,-90.0658908,3a,75y,2...](https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9459548,-90.0658908,3a,75y,269.21h,85.25t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1shFaAE9ft5lzkP8_FWgB0XA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

[1] [http://forgotten-ny.com/wp-
content/uploads/2005/01/e149stbus...](http://forgotten-ny.com/wp-
content/uploads/2005/01/e149stbusher1.jpg)

------
robg
Surprised the word "sleep" doesn't appear in the article. Sleeping well is
what best prepares us for productivity the following day.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/climate/global-warming-
sl...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/climate/global-warming-sleep-
loss.html)

------
woofyman
In the Southern USA, AC radically changed the culture. It allowed businesses
to relocate their factories to take advantage of cheap labor.

It also changed a slower paced culture where people spent their evenings on
their front porch socializing with their neighbors to a more insular, face
paced one.

I grew up in South Florida without AC.

------
triangleman
Not mentioned in the article: Air conditioning makes it possible to stay
indoors, away from mosquitoes, thus fighting illnesses like malaria and zika.

------
h20sdvaid
Wow, it has to be 35c/95f before it is hot. Living in Australia on one mine
site the daily temperature was 45c/113f at night 32 c/90f

Amazing how you get used to the temperature. Joys of working in a desert in
Summertime. Never use air conditioning no good for my health. And yes termites
are pretty smart in keeping things cool

~~~
hvidgaard
Humidity plays a huge role in this. In dry climates, it can be 30-40c without
too much problem, you just need to hydrate a lot. If it's humid, then even 25c
can be very uncomfortable.

------
OrangeTux
Fun fact: Carrier still produces HVAC systems.

------
jaboutboul
Odd that no one here has made any comments on the correlation of the massive
boom in air conditioning in the last 30 years around the world and climate
change.

Wouldn't it seem like having an ever increasing number of these things,
humming constantly in both hemispheres all throughout the year and generating
loads of hot air and greenhouse gases, is a significant contributor (even
maybe main contributor) to the global rise in temperature?

~~~
btbuildem
That, and they insulate us from the effects of climate change. Out of sight,
out of mind, right?

------
setgree
I thought -- this is a very pro-capitalist piece for the BBC! And then saw the
byline :)

------
neals
Let's not forget about health and the breeding ground for pathogens and
bacteria that AC's are.

I used to get really bad colds and coughs during summer, when the AC's went
on.

I now carry a spray that puts bacteria in the air that displace other bacteria
and no colds and coughs anymore. But that's not mainstream. There's probably a
lot of sick people out there, thanks to AC.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
> _I now carry a spray that puts bacteria in the air that displace other
> bacteria and no colds and coughs anymore. But that 's not mainstream._

No, it's not, I've never heard of it! I'm pretty skeptical of new medical
claims, though, and I'm curious about this description. From my limited
understanding, don't think the bacteria in air are like a bathtub full of
objects that take up space, or like an ecosystem that compete for resources
and reach an equilibrium: it's more like an ocean full of fish, where spraying
more fish into the water aren't going to do much about the existing sharks.
Can you provide a link or description of this product?

> _There 's probably a lot of sick people out there, thanks to AC._

This is also a claim I find surprising. Air conditioners are ubiquitous around
here in the summer, but I've never heard of a health risk from them. I'm aware
that the cheap window units can develop condensation puddles if improperly
installed (I cleaned one out in my old apartment that was disgusting), but the
typical business has central air and I thought it actually improved the
microbial situation by dehumidifying the air. Citations for this claim?

~~~
tunap
As to your 2nd point, go find your indoor blower(furnace closet for split
system or outside in a package unit), _pull the power supply_ , then open and
take a look inside at the blower wheel. Unless the unit is a less than a year
old you will will clearly observe why health risks do exist. If you need more
proof see the evap coil & the primordial sludge in the condensate tray/drain.
When finished, reassemble, plug power back in & change your air filter.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
I clean out my evap coils and condenser coils annually, and replace my filter
twice a year (for efficiency, not for health). I'm well aware of the dust that
my filter removes, which makes my indoor air cleaner than outdoor air. My
allergen-sensitive wife proves experimentally that it has a strong positive
effect for a couple weeks every spring and fall. And I'm aware of the crud
that develops in the condensate tray. There's little crud in my central air
system, but when I used a window AC in an apartment and the unit wasn't
leveled properly it got pretty bad.

More generally, though, the presence of unattractive substances does not imply
a health risk. My yard is, in the most basic sense, an enormous pile of dust,
plus a few organics that grow and decay into dust. My home happens to be a few
hundred meters from a lovely trout stream, and that stream and its floodplain
contain more life from bacteria to algae to fish than any primordial sludge
ever had. Neither are dangerous.

