Welcome to Things We Learned This Week, a special Tuesday morning edition of Morning Feature featuring the things we have collectively recently learned.
This week I learned a whole lot more about air conditioning than I ever knew. For example, in the central southern states (LA, TX, etc...) A/C alone accounts for, on average, 35% of the average household's annual energy bill. The American energy use for air conditioning alone equals the energy use of the entire continent of Africa for everything requiring electrical energy on that continent.
It may not be so surprising, then, that air conditioning is a major player in climate change and global warming, as well as the energy crisis.
A Brief Tutorial
Basically, air conditioning works by cooling air. It does this by extracting warm internal air through an intake, passing it over coils containing freon (or another cooling agent) gas, then sending the cooled air back into the internal space, while hot air byproducts are pushed outside. A compressor pressurizes the freon gas into a hotter freon gas than usual, which condenses into a liquid that evaporates as it moves through the coil. This evaporation involves a heat exchange, as most evaporation does (this is why animals sweat when they are warm, the evaporation of sweat cools the animal). Air conditioners also usually have filters on them that remove pollen, dust, and other particulate matter from the air that passes through them, "cleaning" the air as it is conditioned, or cooled.
This is the same mechanical process used by refrigerators, as well, except they keep the cold inside the sealed box of the fridge (or freezer).
When I was growing up...
My parents have never been one's to run a/c very much. My dad installed a house fan in the ceiling of our attic when I was in high school, an enormous thing that slammed doors shut and pulled air from throughout the house and blew it out the roof. In fact, many of my relatives were much more likely to complain about the heat than to turn the a/c down to 70 degrees.
In terms of energy use, this extended to the winter months as well. We were accustomed to sleeping in cold rooms, with as many blankets, comforters, and afghans as needed to feel warm. Sweatshirts and even light jackets were de rigeur during the daytime as the thermostat was rarely set to anything higher than 68, even when the external temperature was in the 20s. Or less.
Now...
New York City has famously experienced several summer time brown outs, which some attribute to the increased drain on the power grid of high usage of a/c in the hotter summer months. Our apt. building offers no a/c, even though the heat in the winter is set by the landlord and runs building-wide. So, we now have 3 window units, one in each bedroom and one in the livingroom window. We try to use them as little as possible while keeping cool with fans and lots of drinking water. But, when the sweat begins to roll (as it often and easily does with me, at least) the a/c switch gets flipped. I don't think we've ever set them below 74, that I know of, and we only go that low when absolutely necessary to be able to move around without soaking ourselves (and I have a tendency to discolor my clothes when I perspire heavily, an unsavory personal detail, but one that I have to deal with on a daily basis in hot weather - I only use white towels for this reason, for example).
Stan Cox
Stan writes that I, and millions of others like me (those that use a/c at least!), need to commit to other forms of cooling than a/c. He has recently written a book Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer), full of unsavory details about the energy required to feed our a/c habits and the impact of these energy expenditures on the economy and ecology of our planet. Reading about it, and hearing him in recent interviews, has been enough to make me think twice about my personal relationship to sweat.
The Facts (or at least some of them, according to Stan Cox)
Air conditioning has directly contributed to massive population growth in urban centers from Pheonix to southwest Florida, and especially in Atlanta, GA. While a/c has had this impact on human migration patterns in the South, in the last 15 years, increases in the use of a/c have been greater in the western and New England states than in the south. Yet, globally, when Cox looks at studies of electricity consumption in China and India, he finds 40% of electricity consumption in India is now going to feed air conditioners, and that China is only beginning to ramp up a/c in industrial and home construction. He predicts a "12 fold increase in energy consumption" for a/c in India alone over the next decade. This energy will mostly come from new hydroelectric dam construction (and coal burning) which has its own environmental impacts, displacing hundreds if not thousands of centuries-old villages and disrupting surrounding natural environments. Coal has it's own well known consequences, from mining to burning. Especially in countries without the minimal regulations in place in the northern hemisphere countries.
In the United States, movie theaters continue to be havens of cool respite in the summer, one of the advantages of going out to see a movie in July. Churches are usually well air conditioned as well. Movie houses, however, were early sites of air conditioning comfort. So were department stores. The NYSE was also a known early adopter. Places where people gathered, usually for the purpose of consuming some product, were the most common early a/c adopters.
Now, public, private, and home construction are all as dependent on a/c as they are on running water. To build a new office park or single family home without air conditioning is as nonsensical for most modern people as is building them without doors. And, can you imagine the attendance rates of those big megachurches without their climatically cooled interiors on Sunday mornings?
Ironic Consequences
In a recently aired radio interview (On Point with Tom Ashbrook) Stan Cox was confronted by callers who reacted with somewhat predictable "you can pry my air conditioner from my cold, dead hands" statements. Some gave perfectly reasonable reasons for their use of a/c. Asthma relief. Allergy relief. Etc...
But, Mr. Cox answered that the asthma and allergies that air conditioned sufferers experience relief from are exacerbated by the increased air pollution produced by our increased use of air conditioning. He made an eloquent societal argument in response to individual concerns, which made me wonder how many individuals would be convinced. He's basically asking us in his book to think of the big picture, environmental impact of our many millions of individual decisions to turn on the a/c instead of planting a shade tree. He convinced me, but it will be hard for me to plant a shade tree in the concrete near our 2nd story apartment windows. Let alone my 6th story neighbors, and in our general community, those NYC apartment buildings grow to 50 and 60 stories, some of them.
And, about that concrete...
One caller made the argument that air conditioning has saved lives of the elderly and those susceptible to heat in the summer months. "Does that count for nothing?" Cox's reply was, and I summarize, summer heat deaths predominantly take place in places where the natural environment has been paved over with asphalt and concrete, and people are either afraid to go outside because of crime or have no outdoor options for appropriately cooling hot-weather activities. Therefore, air conditioning increases the propensity of heat deaths over time because they enable more asphalt and concrete, and the decrease of outside options. They are essentially a "band aid" on a much larger societal problem.
Alternatives
Some options include shade trees and cooling roofs (using water to absorb heat before it enters a house). Solar panels can also be wired to air conditioning systems to reduce their energy related environmental impacts. There are green-design consultants nationwide (such as Alicia Silva in Seattle) who specialize in natural(ly) cool construction, bringing centuries-old natural solutions to cutting edge architecture and urban design.
What About You?
Where do you keep your thermostat in the summer? In the winter? Do you adapt with fans or freon? Sweatshirts or steam? Is there any way Stan Cox's argument to think of the planet first, and our individual personal comfort second stands a snowball's chance in a bayou heatwave of transforming our energy consumption and extraction practices when they go to feed our need for human temperature comfort?
I'd love to know what you think...
TWLTW
- Even though I left the high school where I previously taught a year ago, when I attended their graduation yesterday it felt like I had never left. Congratulations Eleanor Roosevelt graduates and parents!
- I miss Bill Moyers' PBS show even more than I thought I would.
- 1099 and W-2 tax accounting forms are not only indicative of different categories of work (independent contractor vs employee) but that the distinction is based upon who controls the work being done. An independent contractor is assumed to have control over resources, tools, prep-work, etc...while an employee, well, does not. Also, through a 1099, an ind. contractor can deduct the cost of items that an employee cannot (such as travel expenses). Any of you with more experience than the casa Caractacus with this, what other insights/experience can you share to increase the learnin'?
- There were nearly "7,000 female doctors and surgeons in the United States (almost 6 percent of the total)" in the year 1900. One of these was Clelia Mosher, one of the first scientists to study female menstruation with the goal of disproving Victorian assumptions. She argued that instead of being bedridden, women should continue their daily routine during menses because isolation produced a "morbid attention" that unnecessarily exaggerated "whatever symptoms" were perceived. She also argued that "equal pay means equal work; unnecessary menstrual absences mean less than full work." She also studied women's sexual habits and preferences as early as 1910, predating the famous Kinsey studies by more than 30 years. These results were not published during her lifetime, however.
- Publishers earn about $13 on a new bestselling hardback for which a customer pays $26. Amazon bought e-books from publishers at this $13 standard, then sold them to consumers for $9.99 to establish market share and drive Kindle sales. Steve Jobs set out to change that with iPad pricing, sensing that publishers no longer supported Amazon's price-scheme. More details for you e-book readers here. (While I'm sure it varies, this source also cites that author's get paid about 15% of the cover price of a new hardback release.)
- In 1908, Orville Wright crashed an early plane, injuring himself and resulting in the death of his passenger, a member of a rival aircraft design team. The Wrights then spent more time in patent battles than they did designing and testing new aircraft.
- Humans care more about what is probably right, than what is potentially right, therefore powering our cognitive abilities and making us different from computers. Even though, some may be getting close to bridging the probably/potential divide.
- According to the Boston.comwebsite, 90% of those who visit anonymous online comment boards (like those at the end of online newspaper articles) lurk. 9% occasionally leave a comment. 1% post comments on a regular, daily basis.
What Did You Learn This Week?