The Cult of Climastrology has long held a deep seated hatred for air conditioning, though few are willing to give it up themselves. They always expect it to be restricted for people in Third World Nations. It’s the typical liberal “do as I say, not as I do”. The Washington Post’s resident hyper-Warmist Chris Mooney, along with Brady Davis, continue their complaints, while exposing something interesting
The world is about to install 700 million air conditioners. Here’s what that means for the climate
As summer temperatures finally settle in, many in the United States take it for granted that they can dial down the thermostat: Americans use 5 percent of all of their electricity cooling homes and buildings. In many other countries, however — including countries in much hotter climates — air conditioning is still a relative rarity. But as these countries boom in wealth and population, and extend electricity to more people even as the climate warms, the projections are clear: They are going to install mind-boggling amounts of air conditioning, not just for comfort but as a health necessity.
That’s already happened in some places. In just 15 years, urban areas of China went from just a few percentage points of air conditioning penetration to exceeding 100 percent — “i.e. more than one room air conditioner (AC) per urban household,†according to a recent report on the global AC boom by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And air conditioner sales are now increasing in India, Indonesia and Brazil by between 10 and 15 percent per year, the research noted. India, a nation of 1.25 billion people, had just 5 percent air conditioning penetration in the year 2011.
A study last year similarly found “a close relationship between household income and air conditioner adoption, with ownership increasing 2.7 percentage points per $1,000 of annual household income.†For Mexico in particular, it therefore projected a stupendous growth of air conditioning over the 21st century, from 13 percent of homes having it  to 71 to 81 percent of homes.
Growth of wealth. Awesome! We should be happy about this, right? Right?
In most ways, of course, this is a very good thing: Protecting people from intense heat — a town in India this month saw temperatures exceed 123 degrees Fahrenheit — is essential for their health and well-being. It’s just that it’s going to come with a huge energy demand, and potentially huge carbon emissions to boot.
How dare these people use energy! But, they have a solution
To try to address this problem, Moniz’s department is participating in the Advanced Cooling Challenge, which is to be launched Thursday in San Francisco at the 7th Clean Energy Ministerial, a global meeting of national energy policy leaders. The goal will be to find creative solutions to lessen the energy and climate impact of an unstoppable trend toward more global air conditioning — by making air conditioners much more energy efficient, and also less dependent on HFCs or hydrofluorocarbons as refrigerants, because these substances themselves act as an extremely powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
Now, see, there is nothing wrong with looking towards more energy efficiency. Most companies that make cooling units look to do this, due to consumer demand. And, from an environmental standpoint, which doesn’t include ‘climate change’, looking for alternatives to HFCs is a good idea. However, what we’ve seen from these same Warmists are proposals to increase costs significantly, which would price the lower income folks in the country and around the world from being able to afford cooling. And heating. They’ve advocated for blocking the usage and sales of A/C, along with replacing the refrigerants with really, really expensive gases. Warmists care little about the people their policies harm. Yet, strangely, the same Warmists will not give up their own A/C.
That all said, the article is less bat guano insane than normal, and recommends more research and development. That would be a good thing, even for just saving energy, saving us all money. Of course, Warmists also want to dramatically increase the cost of energy, so….
