Posted on 08/12/2019 6:05:16 AM PDT by C19fan
We think of air conditioning as a “first world” luxury, but it’s really more of an American one. In Europe, fewer than 5% of households have air conditioning, according to the International Energy Agency, and even in hot regions like Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, only 8% of households have it. In the US, nearly 90% of households are air conditioned.
In New York, where the summer reverberates with the hum of air conditioners, that percentage seems even higher. Along certain avenues, you walk in a sprinkle of condensation dripping from row after row of window units above, never quite sure if you’re supposed to be disgusted. In Queens, where I live, one of my neighbors runs their window unit almost all year long, cooling their apartment in winter against the steam radiator that the landlord keeps on full blast around the clock, and in summer against, well, the summer. The poor unit only gets a couple months of rest a year, in the spring and the fall, though even then the person often runs it in fan mode, probably because the sudden absence of the machine’s roar is so unnerving.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Do they have a similar article on the lack of need for heat in winter?
“in hot regions like Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, only 8% of households have it”
What he neglects to tell you is the reason they don’t have it. It’s not that they choose not to, they can’t afford it. The real story is 90 percent of us can afford to make that choice.
Thank God for Willis Haviland Carrier!
Go ahead and sweat, you’ll be fine.
I’ll enjoy my A/C.
Tell that to my asthma. We got central air 2 years ago and it has been a big relief mostly because of the humidity.
R-22 was the standard refrigerant used for most residential systems until about 10-12 years ago, when the conversion to R-410A for those systems really got moving. The conversion was driven by the phase-out of R-22 due to the Montreal Accords to protect the ozone layer.
Now we are starting to see talk from our overlords at the EPA about phasing out R-410A, not because of its effect on the ozone layer, but because it has a big greenhouse gas effect! And they’re talking about this despite the fact that there is no reasonable replacement in sight.
I’m long on R-410A, personally. And thinking maybe I should buy another bottle.
“Hydrofluorocarbons, the refrigerants used in a/c units, are far more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide or methane...”
This guy is a ‘writer’, so no, I wouldn’t expect him to know what R410 is.
Try living in Sacramento, CA in the summer with its sometimes long-stretched of over-100 °F. days minus air conditioning.
I can remember how it was to put up with this heat back in the day before AC. I grew up in a house without AC in the 1950s and 60s. Fans in all the windows to drag the hot air out of the house. We did not have to shut the house up like a fort at night. No one bothered you. You simply latched the screen doors in the front and rear of the house at night and let the cool night air circulate throughout the house with the fans pulling the air out through the windows. Slept in our undies(!!!), no shirt and it was still hot.
These leftists rant over this crap, but I guarantee you 10000000000%, they have air in their houses. Just like they rant about guns while having armed guards protecting them and their fort they live in. Just shut the hell up. We know you are stupid already. You don't need to open your mouth and help prove it!!!
As my Daddy used to say,
“General Sherman didn’t conquer the South, Willis Carrier did.”
Be that as it may try driving in Phoenix when it is 115 degrees and the air coming in feels like a hair dryer pointed at you
Never needed A/C....
Choose for yourself Sparky
However then in his last 1/3. He went from a reasonable argument to a looney, off the rails Global Warming and Anti-Trump screed claiming Air Conditioners are American Imperialism and our greed is killing the planet and making ludicrous claims that in 40 years people from America will illegally immigrating to Canada to escape global warming.
With a menopausal wife?!!? I’d sooner live without oxygen.
Note: The thousands of elderly who died during the 2003 heatwave in Europe are not around to argue the point.
They always want to be like Europe which is experiencing epic fails all over the map.
I never see articles like this coming out of Atlanta, Miami, Houston or Phoenix. Why is that, Mr. Schneider?
Because it is so hot and, except for the much hotter and drier Phoenix, humid to the point of being unlivable.
I read an article in the WSJ years ago about the development of metropolitan Houston, Texas. The article focused on the invention of refrigeration or A/C as the key for the city to grow from a muggy, insufferable backwater town, to a major city in the US. People would not and could not live and work in such oppressive heat and humidity prior to the invention of refrigeration.
Come on down to my neck of the woods, Mr. Schneider, in Florida where I work outside because my wife and I raise beef cattle on our farm.
I would not, emphatically, would not live here without refrigeration in our home. It would be a death sentence. It was 84 degrees and 98% humidity this morning on my 45 minute swim....er....walk. Or as I call it, my morning death march. Takes me longer to recover than the walk itself.
So come on down to my home and we'll have you whining to retract the "ditch your A/C" story in the Guardian in less that 5 minutes in the Florida sun.
re: “We think of air conditioning as a “first world” luxury, but it’s really more of an American one. In Europe, fewer than 5% of households have air conditioning,”
Idiots; are they totally UNAWARE of the latitude differences between the bulk of the US and Europe?
NO. Come and take it. YOUR MOVE, Leftists.
“thats why thousands die in “woke” EU during heat waves...NO THANKS.”
It also greatly cuts down on the number of mosquitoes in the house.
Death by disease would skyrocket.
See my post #55 on this thread about the development of Houston.
Prior to AC being generally available NOLA pretty much shut down from noon to 4PM from June to October. I think Maison Blanch or H H Holmes was the fit department store with AC. Big boost to sales.
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