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Earth

People Living in the Hottest Places on the Planet Are the Least Likely To Have Air Conditioners (qz.com) 235

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Zoe Schlanger, writing for Quartz: In 2016, roughly 10% of the planet's energy use went towards air conditioning. Figures vary wildly from country to country, though, and some of the hottest regions on Earth use the least A/C -- for now. A new report from the International Energy Agency says that's about to change. By 2050, the intergovernmental agency predicts, global energy use from A/Cs will triple, reaching a level equivalent to China's total electricity demand today. The African continent is home to some of the hottest places on Earth, but fewer than 5% of people in most African nations own an air conditioner, and energy used for cooling comes to just 35 kWh per person living in the continent, according to the IEA. In India, where large parts of the country are hot all year round, people use an average of 70 kWh for cooling. Compared to nations where having an A/C is the norm, that's almost nothing at all.
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People Living in the Hottest Places on the Planet Are the Least Likely To Have Air Conditioners

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  • Lack of insulation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MoarSauce123 ( 3641185 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @02:13PM (#56684438)
    Air conditioning is not a luxury, crappy insulation is! Look at most of the buildings in the US and they are badly insulated if at all. Also does not help that even new construction is using popsicle sticks and office supplies. Brick fares much better to keep buildings cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

    • Re:Lack of insulation (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CaptnCrud ( 938493 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @02:19PM (#56684476)

      Was going to mention that this is a big reason why 3rd world countries don't "need" ac in homes, they are all made of concrete and typically have an atrium or some sort of natural means of cooling the home. Its not perfect, but its free.

      Also in lots of poor, hot countries people tend to live on the coast where they can get some wind rather than the interior.

    • Brick fares much better to keep buildings cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

      Which you won't find much of on the west coast because of earthquakes. It's been years since I've seen a brick house, but strangely a lot of the new condo buildings in Seattle have brick facades on the first floor which seems like a problem.

      During the 2001 earthquake, the brick building where I worked was made uninhabitable and a block away a brick wall crushed a van. If someone had been inside it, they would have been killed.

      • A modern brick facade is about 1 inch thick, and is only for aesthetics. Frequently, it looks like brick but if a car crashes into it, you will realize that it's some sort of hardened shell and mostly foam. It's the underlying wood/steel frame that carries the actual load. That's the part that needs to be earthquake-proof.

      • It's been years since I've seen a brick house, but strangely a lot of the new condo buildings in Seattle have brick facades on the first floor which seems like a problem.

        I am not sure about how it works in Seattle, but I will bet that it is not structural brick they are using. I have seen some taller buildings (not single family homes) going up and the structural components are all steel it seems nowadays. The outer walls of the buildings are curtain walls [wikipedia.org]. The Wikipedia article mentions stone veneer of marble, granite, etc, mounted on an aluminum honeycomb backing. A few years ago I saw one go up that hade some brick veneer, no more than an inch or two thick on a backing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by quenda ( 644621 )

        Brick fares much better to keep buildings cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

        Thermal mass is good when you have hot days and cool nights, like coastal southern California. Seattle too?

        Which you won't find much of on the west coast because of earthquakes. It's been years since I've seen a brick house,

        Concrete has the same problem as brick, but you see plenty of that. You just need to reinforce it to add tensile strength.
        The cost is not huge, but building from sticks is cheaper, and insulation against the cold is more important than thermal mass.
        Do you have concrete slab floors?

    • Re:Lack of insulation (Score:5, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @02:59PM (#56684688)
      The best insulator is air (actually it's vacuum, but that's prohibitively expensive aside from thermoses). Brick is actually a worse insulator [archtoolbox.com] than standard wood-frame construction with fiberglass insulation in the gaps.

      Brick (and masonry) just feels cooler because it takes longer to heat up in the morning due to its greater mass. The larger mass means after absorbing the same amount of sunlight, its temperature increases less. But likewise it takes longer to cool down in the evening. This may not be an undesirable trait if you're in a desert-like area where the days are hot but the nights are cold. But in climates which are consistently cold or hot (i.e. most of the world), brick and masonry are about the worst possible building materials. Their greater mass increases the amount of energy you need to use on heating or cooling (because you need to heat or cool the bricks along with the interior air space).

    • Re:Lack of insulation (Score:4, Informative)

      by hjf ( 703092 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @03:12PM (#56684746) Homepage

      BULLSHIT. There is no escape from heat when it's 40C and humidity is through the roof.
      There is no shade, no brick, atrium, high ceiling, or ANYTHING that will lower the temperature.

      The temperature stays above 30C during the coolest moment of the night, and this happens for weeks at a time.

      I know this. Because I live in one of these places.

      • Re:Lack of insulation (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Dasher42 ( 514179 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @04:17PM (#56685080)

        People who've lived in "one of these places" for millenia before there was such a thing as air conditioning knew how to do exactly that.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        One of the houses I've helped to build in Central Texas features large amounts of rammed earth and white, reflective domes, and they only run the AC in that house for three months out of the year. They haven't even used all the tricks a passive thermal architect knows in the classical or cutting edge senses, and it's already a success.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hjf ( 703092 )

          Ah yes, every location has readily available underground water THAT CAN SCALE TO A CITY OF 400,000.

          Get real.

          • Cities tend to have large apartment buildings, large apartment buildings have a greater volume-to-surface ratio than individual houses, greater volume-to-surface ratio decreases thermal management energy expenditures per inhabitant.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by hjf ( 703092 )

              No. American cities do. Look at Mexico City and tell me if it has "large apartment buildings".

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hjf ( 703092 )

          Also, I forgot: the structures you posted are for the "middle of the desert", where it's trivial to get evaporative cooling. I live more like in the "middle of the jungle". Good luck getting evaporative cooling with jungle-levels of humidity.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by arth1 ( 260657 )

          To be uncharitable, part of the problem is that in much of the Western world today, most people are either overweight or obese. It's no secret that fat people overheat easier, and complain more about the heat.
          In other parts of the world, people survive heat much better, with a higher surface-to-volume ratio and lower internal heat production.

          Anyhow, TFA headline is wrong. The least likely to have air conditioners are those who live in the far North and far South. At 70 degrees North were 16C/60F is cons

      • I spent a week in the peak of summer in Puerto Rico a couple years back, 85% humidity 90F heat and the AC was most definitely an escape

      • I know this. Because I live in one of these places.

        I grew up in one of those places. Never had AC. The architecture with atriums and high ceilings precisely did help. It created much needed airflow that does a world of good for keeping the temperature livable. There's a big difference between 40C stagnant air, and 40C of moving air. The absolute temperature is not the problem.

        You need AC? Grow some balls. (Side note: Testicles hang outside the body for cooling purposes)

      • First off, when you are living in 40C, you get acclimate to it. As long as it remains high, you will get used to it. My sister lives in scottsdale az, and runs her house at 35C for nighttime, and will let it go up to 37 or even 40C in the summer during the daytime. But, she hates 11C, even though she grew up in a place that ran from -40C to 40C.

        But my in-laws in Chennai India go through that 40+C/99% humidity. Personally, I think that is nothing more than a lobster tank. Still.....

        I do suspect though t

      • Then your building must suck.
        What is the problem if outside is 30C at night? If the building is fine constructed it will not increase much above it over daytime. And 30C is a fine temperature for a night. Not perfect, but I would not mind it.

    • Agreed, the reason for the trouble is that the "energy will be too cheap to meter" mindset of the 60's completely fubar'ed our sense of architectural design.

      If you're in the east coast of the USA, go to Monticello. On a hot summer day, they'll open the windows at the top of the dome, and this sets up a convection current that draws air through the thermal mass of the box section which whirls into a vortex in the center, up and out. It will become quite a strong breeze, almost a gale sometimes, and there's

      • I have thought that if my wife and I build a new home, we will do it in the ground., with a central atrium. That way, hail, fire, etc. resistant along with a great moderated temp that will require heating, not cooling.
    • Friends built a house in a desert area that used passive heating and cooling methods. The door faced west and had a black tile floor to capture heat during the winter, They covered it with a white rug to avoid summer heating, There was a heat exchanger that used cool water in the basement to draw in cooler air.

    • There are a lot of older homes that are just terrible at insulation. Excessive power use in winter and summer. Newer houses tend to be better built as far as insulation goes, fewer drafts, double paned windows, etc.

      Although growing up we had A/C after awhile, we didn't use it much even though it would regularly get above 100 in the summer. The cost was just too high to keep it on all the time. So you head to a swimming pool instead, or go stand in the ice cream aisle of the grocery store. Even in colle

      • Oh ya, I'm 55 and finally got my first A/C last year, a portable for those few days where it gets miserable. There's just something about California where they resist putting A/C into houses, condos, apartments because it would be like admitting that the weather wasn't perfect.

  • Why do hot (and therefore sunny) countries not make a point of powering their air conditioning systems with solar panels? Given a COP of around 4 on modern systems, it should be possible to do this both economically and not using too much real estate. Even if power is required out of daylight hours, the panels should bear the brunt of the load.

    • Re:Why not use solar panels (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ledow ( 319597 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @03:14PM (#56684768) Homepage

      http://www.dry-it-out.com/cool... [dry-it-out.com]

      A 10m x 10m room x 2m ceiling requires 12KW to cool it. I made the numbers easy to simulate an entire house and give 100sq meters of panel.

      https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/201... [ucsd.edu]

      A standard solar panel produces about 250-300W per square meter in such regions. Therefore you'd need about half your roof space to cool just one room, and nothing else. Call it a two-storey house (upstairs and downstairs) and you can *just* about cool the house if you do nothing else with it.

      https://news.energysage.com/12... [energysage.com]

      "As of January 2018, the average cost of solar in the U.S. is $3.14 per watt ($37,680 for a 12 kilowatt system). That means that the total cost for a 12kW solar system would be $26,376 after the 30% Federal ITC discount"

      You would literally be spending something on the order of $35k just to cool your house. That's an annual wage. If you can't afford the air-con (notice that the article is just as much about "poorer countries can't afford air con, hotter countries cost even more to air con), $35k on top of the investment to power it is a huge amount.

      https://www.ovoenergy.com/guid... [ovoenergy.com]

      That would buy 437,500 KWh of electricity in India, for example, which would keep that same 12KW powered for.... 99 years.

      What you're asking is "Why can't people just spend 100 years of their cooling electricity usage in one hit so that they don't have to pay for any more cooling? On top of the price of the cooling system, and not including maintenance, replacement, fitting, etc. of either."

      • A 10m x 10m room x 2m ceiling requires 12KW to cool it.

        Seriously? Where, on Venus? Or using American "insulation"?

        As of January 2018, the average cost of solar in the U.S. is $3.14 per watt ($37,680 for a 12 kilowatt system).

        Get lost. This is not about the mind-bogglingly ovepriced US residential solar. Even in Europe, you're somewhere around $1.2/W today. In the developing world, you're practically talking about hardware costs, which are below $1/W for both panels and an inverter (or perhaps just $0.4/W for the panels, plus structures and labor, if you happen to have DC equipment).

        That would buy 437,500 KWh of electricity in India

        Except for the time when everyone's AC turns on and the notoriously unreliable Indian gri

      • Re:Why not use solar panels (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gb7djk ( 857694 ) * on Sunday May 27, 2018 @04:08PM (#56685044) Homepage

        Three things:

        1. Today I can buy 250w panels in the UK for ~79cents/watt, or a little under $9500 for 12KW at today's exchange. Bearing in mind that the price that you or even I pay is likely to considerably higher than the price of panels in "third world countries" - for the same reasons that power is cheaper. At MW scale the price is even lower.

        2. I am not necessarily advocating panels on housing (although Germany is currently experimenting with estate built housing all with solar roofs and also estate battery systems (but not necessarily on the same estate)). If you visit Germany, you see MW sized solar panel systems built on all sorts of otherwise marginal land - all over the country. Here in the UK, it is actually more profitable to farm MW sized solar panels than crops on anything less than grade 2 land and there are many 100s of such installations all over the country, even though the UK has notoriously erm.. variable weather. Imagine what could be done in countries in sunny climates.

        But the point is that increasing scale pushes the overall price down and, crucially, balances the majority of the aircon load - reducing the overall emissions for aircon is a happy by product.

        3. In India, even dyed in the wool coal fired power plant companies are seeing the writing on the walls and are actively building double (and a few triple) digit solar plants. There must be money to be made here otherwise they would not bother.

      • http://www.dry-it-out.com/cool... [dry-it-out.com]

        A 10m x 10m room x 2m ceiling requires 12KW to cool it. I made the numbers easy to simulate an entire house and give 100sq meters of panel.

        What a worthless calculator. Cool what? An insulated room? An uninsulated room? What's the starting temperature? What's the final temperature? 12KW AC? You turning the Sahara into the Arctic? There are whole houses in the middle of the desert that don't have that kind of systems installed and are perfectly cool and livable. Here have an equally useless calculator that gives a completely different an equally useless result: http://www.uk-air-conditioning... [uk-air-conditioning.com]

        Personally I put a 3.5kW unit in my 12x10x2 combined

    • Solar is obviously where the new power supply will be coming from, not much to see there. More power to them, so to speak, if they can cool their living spaces with sunlight.

      The question becomes: who is going to build those masses of solar panels to drive the price down? So far, the answer has been, China, and that is in large part because of the Chinese monopoly on highly concentrated rare earth ores. This has created an arab oil embargo type situation that keeps solar panel prices higher than what Africa

      • So far, the answer has been, China, and that is in large part because of the Chinese monopoly on highly concentrated rare earth ores

        No it hasn't; rare earths have absolutely nothing to do with solar panels, period. (I might have heard that maybe some solar panel glass manufacturers use trace amounts of cerium to improve the glass quality, but that's not strictly necessary.)

      • For funk sake, how often do I need to post that?
        PV solar cells don't contain rare earth minerals!!! They literally made from SAND!

  • Sigh. (Score:2)

    by ledow ( 319597 )

    The US military spends $20bn a year on air-con.

    This is more than NASA costs to run.

    And yet, people in hot countries don't really have air-con according to this. What does that tell you?

    It tells me that humans adjust to the environment with enough exposure and training (or they shouldn't be there at all), and that $20bn would be much better spent on something useful.

    • And yet, people in hot countries don't really have air-con according to this. What does that tell you?

      They are relatively poor.

      • Calorie restricted diet (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Latent Heat ( 558884 ) on Sunday May 27, 2018 @04:03PM (#56685008)

        In thinking about the high-calorie foods that would make our coder-drone selves become obese, I got to wondering where recipes for things like fried chicken and pecan pie came from and what social purpose to they serve?

        Pre-mechanization, the use of horses was a productivity enhancer over human labor but even over draft animals such as oxen that are used throughout the world, past and present. An ox has pulling force, but a horse owing to its higher capacity cardiovascular system has a lot more power output, and the use of horses over oxen in agriculture was a breakthrough.

        Likewise, the consumption of high-calorie foods by farm workers as opposed to having them get by with a minimum-calorie subsistence diet that is the norm in many parts of the world is also a productivity enhancer.

        It has been said that air conditioning kindled the economic growth of the American South, or at least the southward migration of Yankees. Yes, one can subsist at a poverty level on minimal calories and natural outdoor temperatures, but think of the increased work, both physical and mental, one can do with enough to eat and respite from the heat? And think of this as breaking out of subsistence-level poverty?

      • They are relatively poor.

        Or they don't find air conditioning desirable.

        I'm planning to translocate to Thailand. Lived there now for 4month in total. Going there for another month in about 6 weeks.
        If I really settle there, my house won't have AC. I simply don't need nor want it. Having AC is a status symbol in Thailand. And freezing down a perfect house to 16C makes no sense to me. At home in Germany I would start the heating if it was that cold.
        The second time I was in Thailand, I got a blood bladder infect

    • The US military spends $20bn a year on air-con. This is more than NASA costs to run.

      That kind of thing tends to happen when you run your air conditioners with $200+/US gal convoy-delivered fuel.

  • The people living the hottest places on Earth are less likely than say, continental Americans, to have air conditioners. But there are places where it's cold enough that they don't NEED AC. From what I can tell, it looks like Sweden, for example, tops out at 23 C, so I doubt they need to bother with that.
    • Most of Europe is without AC because they do not have any real high temps. ANd to be honest, most of Europe does not have that low of temps. For example, you do not see places there that will run from -40C to 40C. Yet, parts of the American midwest do just that.
      As I said elsewhere, it is really not a high or low temp that produces the need for massive heating or cooling. It is WIDE variation along with cheap housing (i.e. not enough insulation) that causes the need for it.

      • The African continent is home to some of the hottest places on Earth, but fewer than 5% of people in most African nations own an air conditioner, and energy used for cooling comes to just 35 kWh per person living in the continent, according to the IEA. In India, where large parts of the country are hot all year round, people use an average of 70 kWh for cooling.

        In the US, 90% of homes have an A/C, and per-capita cooling-energy use is 1,880 kWh, according to the IEA report. Of the 1.6 billion A/C units installed globally, 23% are in the US.

        The US uses 4x the electricity for cooling than the EU, and that's not even accounting for the smaller US population, that's just total.
        Are you going to tell us 90% of the US has those 80C temperature swings you are claiming as the reason for all that use?

      • I live in Karlsruhe,Germany, most of the tim,e or roughly 52% of my time ;D
        Temperatures here easily reach 40C in summer ... since 30 years or so.

        Spain, Italy, Greece, south France, all top 40C every summer. (And most places have no AC, because traditional buildings don't need it)

    • 23C is _average_ not the top temperature. The top is 28C

      https://www.thelocal.se/201708... [thelocal.se]

  • The state of South Australia can get very hot. It recently went through an energy crisis, leading to a deal with Elon Musk to provide batteries to help even out power demand. This might be a small scale example of what's to come. South Australia has a tiny population compared to India, so a lot of research will need to happen focusing on new ways to generate, store and distribute energy if a demand for summertime A/C takes off there.
    The cool thing (punny) is that would drive down the cost of batteries, solar panels, or whatever technologies are in large scale use, making them cheaper for the rest of us (assuming production can keep up).

  • (Judging by the summary) the authors of the report are projecting that added air conditioning in currently underserved areas will use energy-hungry heat pumps, like developed world city and suburbs currently do. This ignores recent (and any yet-to-come) technology breakthroughs.

    One is M-cycle cooling systems like Coolerado's. In locations where a swamp cooler would work, and many where it would fail due to moderately-too-high humidity, an M-cycle cooler will deliver cool air using about twice the power needed to blow it around and a little water (less than the amount saved by some power plant not generating the added electricity to power a heat pump, so you're AHEAD on water use, too). The air delivered does not have added humidity (just the higher relative humidity from cooling it, which WON'T drop it below the dew point and get mold going indoors), nor does it have added bacteria (though the half exhausted outdoors still may).

    The guts of the Coolerado version is a "mass-heat exchanger" - a stack of plastic sheets that gets water (with a trace of soap) injected on one port, outside air blown in another, cooled air coming out a third, wet air out a fourth, and an unevaporated fraction of the water with the minerals and such out a fifth. Cheap (or it can be if the patent holders chose). Already being used in, among other places, medical facilities in India.

    Another is the "infrared window" approach. Think "solar panel" that dumps about 90 watts per square meter of heat energy into the sky 24/7, (slightly better at night than noon). Cheap version of a plastic film with a silvered backside and 10-ish micron glass beads embedded in it. Only reason you need any power at all is to control the transfer of heat from the room to the panels (say, by circulating a heat-transfer fluid and blowing air through a radiator), so you don't get more cooling at night (when you probably don't want any) than at noon or afternoon (when you want a lot).

    Not only can these, and potentially other approaches, provide air conditioning for the developing world at a fraction of the energy cost (and perhaps the equipment cost) of a classic heat-pump system, but they can also reduce the energy cost of cooling in the developed world.

    • We are waiting for geo-thermal HVAC to drop in price or our furnace/AC to go out. That seems like the way to go, at least in the west/developed world. Very efficient.

      • That's better than aheat pump with the ambient air as the source/sink (which deviates from the desired temperature in the exactly wrong direction).

        But it's' still a heat pump. You're pumping across a lower gradient but you're still burning substantial power, compared with the solutions I mentioned.

        It DOES have the advantage that proven solutions at reasonable prices are available now.

    • nice to see that this is in town. Do you work there? I live at 80126, so obviously happy to see it here.
      Nice concept. However, it is cooling only. That is why for residential buildings, I like the more/better insulation such as aerogel windows, combined with geothermal HVAC. OTOH, that coolerado makes great sense for businesses, esp. kitchens,maybe DIA, etc.
  • Seriously, if your outside temp is constantly running from say 50F - 110F (or 10C to 40C), that is only a 60F(30C).
    OTOH, if in the course of a year, you go from -40F up to 105F (or -40C to 40C), then you have 145F(80C) difference to deal with. Then add in 90-99% humidity during the summer. That is when you are far more likely to see AC being ran.
    Of course, with that said, in places like Phoenix, Arizona, it regularly hits 115F ( 46C) through the middle of summer. Plenty of AC going on there. But, I notic
    • What on Earth are you talking about WindBourne? If it's 40C people will want to use air-conditioning to cool down a bit,if they can afford it, many can't. It makes absolutely no difference what the temperature was last winter. Why would you think it does?
    • Or you could read the article and find it's correlated to wealth.

      The African continent is home to some of the hottest places on Earth, but fewer than 5% of people in most African nations own an air conditioner, and energy used for cooling comes to just 35 kWh per person living in the continent, according to the IEA. In India, where large parts of the country are hot all year round, people use an average of 70 kWh for cooling.

      Take Japan and Korea, for example, where people use 800 kWh on cooling each. Fully 91% of Japanese homes and 86% of Korean homes have an A/C. In the US, 90% of homes have an A/C, and per-capita cooling-energy use is 1,880 kWh, according to the IEA report. Of the 1.6 billion A/C units installed globally, 23% are in the US.

      Africa 35 is less than India 70 less than Korea & Japan 800 less than America 1,880
      It's as if people who have more money spend more of it on cooling. But we can't have them using as much as you already do can we. It's bad for the environment. Better to try and keep them poor and keep that AC for yourself.

      Put another way, the 328 million people living in the US consume more energy for cooling than the 4.4 billion people living in all of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia (excluding China) combined, according to the IEA report.

    • Even your sister who is acclimated to 40+C and plays tennis in 47+C still runs the AC if it's 40C
      Even though she matches your profile perfectly 10C to 40C year round. According to you she doesn't need it...
      • i never said that those ppl do not use it. You continue to lie.
        • And you continue to deny the truth staring you plainly in the face.
          Your own anecdotes match the story perfectly, those with more money use more air-conditioning. Hence produce more CO2.
          Entitled pricks like yourself use more than everyone else, but if poor people start to use even a fraction of what you do, somehow it's their fault but not yours.

          Put another way, the 328 million people living in the US consume more energy for cooling than the 4.4 billion people living in all of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia (excluding China) combined, according to the IEA report.

          You entire premise of it being related to the change of temperature over a year, doesn't even match your own examples that you tried to use as evidence.
          And you s

  • Go here [wikipedia.org] to read about "the only viable option for generating the massive amounts of electrical power that would be needed to raise the standard of living in third-world nations to that of first-world nations."

    • I wish that more ppl would actually THINK before posting here. It seems like the average IQ has fallen with the massive increase in trolls. Ok. No, you are not trolling. However, you are obviously not thinking. This approach will involve beaming ENERGY to the earth. That is, your guy is talking adding LOADS of energy to the earth. Now, how will it be sent? Either via visible light or microwave. In either case, the energy is going to be absorbed by various elements in the atmosphere. As such, we are looking

    • There are not many third world countries left. Somalia comes to mind ... Columbia perhaps, what else is a third world country in your mind?

      And then define "standard of living"? An AC is a piece of "standard of living"? Then I must live in a cave for you, because I live in a building build 1870. In Germany. In a city that used to have -30C to +35C climate around WWI and has now a -5C to +40C climate. The house never needed an AC, only heating. Of course I have much better windows like they had 100 years ago

  • Maybe their ancestors shouldn't have settled there. Maybe they should have kept walking until they found a place where the climate supports human life.

  • Last time I checked you need electricity to run AC units. Yes I know 10% is the low end of the spectrum but for the whole continent 60% of the population is without Electricity.
    Only 42% have access to running water.
    This reminds me of the old joke about the scientist and the frog. Scientist cuts 1 leg off and tells frog to jump, frog jumps. Cuts another leg off and tells frog to jump, frog jumps. Cuts the 3rd leg off tells frog to jump, frog jumps. Cuts 4th leg off and tells frog to jump, nothi

  • Swamp coolers are far more efficient than AC units and are also highly effective, assuming the climate is hot and dry. In places like the middle east, these would consume far less power than AC units and just need a pittance of water to achieve their efficacy. I have a friend out in Nevada who pointed out to me that all the houses have swamp coolers, with some of them even being integrated into the central cooling system of the house.

    All it needs is hot air pulled across a damp membrane with a squirre
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