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….
I mentioned a week or so ago when President Nixon imposed the nationwide 55 MPH speed limit that, if the government were really interested in increasing fuel efficiency, they would ban automobile air conditioners, which can cost more than a mile per gallon. Even when not actually in use, modern vehicles have just one serpentine belt, which turns the air conditioner compressor.
Like you said, the elites don’t mind those Other People getting all hot and sweaty, but, Heaven forfend! that they should be subject to such inhuman conditions!
This may be too big a concept for your Trump-sized brain to comprehend, but A/C runs on electricity, not coal or oil. Electricity. So… if you generate the electricity from non-CO2 polluting sources, there’s no problem. Those you slur as “warmists” would be pleased as punch if electricity was free world-wide – as long as it wasn’t causing the planet to warm.
And no where did the authors suggest that others do without. They suggested more efficiency.
So shy the stupid whiny lies?
Can you point out where the authors write anything that supported your false headline?
Granted, it’s not a high bar, but this is one of your dumbest posts?
That is right, we can use solar power for our air conditioners, just use them during the day. An try to figure out how to get them on the car. Or we can accept the fact that our world is tied to fossil fuels and that fossil fuels have nothing to do with the climate. And that the solutions for reducing CO2 have more to do with income redistribution and world government (as they have clearly stated).
Democrats, keeping the negro people down since the party was begun. First it was gun control to keep the free blacks from defending themselves after Republicans gave them full civil rights. Then it was minimum wage to keep the blacks from working in northern cities and competing with union contractors**. Then it was the war on drugs to control the mythical negro coke fiend. Then it was planned parenthood to keep the so-called unfit negroes from procreating.
Now they don’t even want them to have air-conditioning.
** Then there was FDR’s New Deal. CATO’s Jim Powell: “The flagship of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery Act, passed in June 1933. It authorized the president to issue executive orders establishing some 700 industrial cartels, which restricted output and forced wages and prices above market levels. The minimum wage regulations made it illegal for employers to hire people who weren’t worth the minimum because they lacked skills. As a result, some 500,000 blacks, particularly in the South, were estimated to have lost their jobs.”
Democrats, Keeping The Black Man Down Since Republicans Freed Them
Shockingly, it seems that air conditioning use by liberals is worse than that by conservatives:
Jeffrey wrote:
Electricity power generation fuel sources, 2015:
So, yes, non-automotive air condition runs on sparktricity, 66% of which is generated by burning fossil fuels and another 20% by leftist-loathed nuclear power plants. Then there’s another 1% generated by burning petroleum — usually diesel — to take us to 87%. Add another 1.6% for biomass fuels, which are also either burned directly, or processed into ethanol or methane, and you have 88.6% of all electric power generation produced by fuels the left hates.
And, as a Star Trek fan, I would love to see the day when all power generation was entirely costless and non-polluting, but I’m enough of a realist to understand that, sadly, Star Trek is fiction. Perhaps it will one day become closer to reality, but that day has not come, and will not arrive in the foreseeable future. By the time it does arrive, we will have long since passed yet another bunch of the carbon tipping points the warmists keep telling us are right around the corner, so Jeffrey’s dream will come far, far too late.
Well, yeah, there is, when it’s mandated. The problem is that the IECC – International Energy Efficiency Code – says how efficient your heating-A/C MUST be. And every three years, they tighten the standards some more.
Extra efficiency? A fine choice, but it’s not a choice. It’s yet another administrative law. And, naturally, there are unintended consequences, such as higher failure rates from the thinner-walled heat exchangers in furnaces that give us this wondrous high efficiency.
I see that Jeffty is still five. If you came up with a completely-non-polluting power source tomorrow, the left would try to ban it.
[…] From The Washington Post, via William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove: […]
Teach thinks there is nothing wrong with increased efficiency in AC!!