metal fans with or without a plate of block ice in front of it for homemade AC.

Last edited Sat Aug 17, 2013, 10:43 PM - Edit history (1)

is coming from. Never feel deprived.

I'm getting concerned about the way it seems to be going that people think AC is a basic necessity. Concerned because I don't think it will continue to be available and because the AC itself is making things hotter for everybody.

At least they didn't in the 90s when I lived there. In fact, it is a cultural trait that many people consider air conditioned air to be unhealthy.

Fans, appropriate clothing, and lots of fluids are the normal way to deal with the heat. The thing is, this year they have been hitting records all over the country.

The carbon that traditional sources of energy emit are what is making it hotter for everybody.

Without nuclear energy it would have been much hotter this summer - for everyone.

Renewables provide 16.7%.

Too bad Japan didn't spend all that money on wind, solar and geothermal instead of wasting it on nuclear.

the surrounding area. Essentially, you are burning something to cool your space, just like a refrigerator.

in the atmosphere, nearly all of that heat would be harmlessly radiated out to space as infrared radiation. But on it's way out, it's trapped by CO2, creating an effect similar to a greenhouse.

As it is, the Earth radiates away nearly all of the energy it receives from the sun. Excess CO2 is enough to upset the balance.

There weren't as many people in the past. And they didn't live nearly as long.

See here for an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_North_American_heat_wave

And contrast to here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_2012_North_American_heat_wave

In 1936 5k people died from the heat wave. In 2012 only 82 died from the heatwave.

In 1936 the population was 128 million. In 2012 the population of the United States was 314 million.

That works out to 0.003% of the population killed in 1936 vs. 0.00003% dead in 2012. Or air conditioners are 100x times better at keeping the populations alive than if they didn't exist (this is especially true since most of the 2012 deaths were people who didn't have air conditioning).

and for the people who are working in manual labor, there's more awareness of the dangers of extreme heat.

People lived in Redding before air conditioning, and I don't know how they did it.

Certainly a sedentary lifestyle is able to deal with the heat more than anything else. I can't imagine being active during a heatwave beyond a few minutes just to nourish myself with water.

People forget from whence we came.

We know you are owned by the Nuclear Industry.

Who do you think you are fooling?

Do you have anything besides ad hominem attacks to address the OP?