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People Living in the Hottest Places on the Planet Are the Least Likely To Have Air Conditioners (qz.com)
Zoe Schlanger, writing for Quartz: In 2016, roughly 10% of the planet's energy use went towards air conditioning. Figures vary wildly from country to country, though, and some of the hottest regions on Earth use the least A/C -- for now. A new report from the International Energy Agency says that's about to change. By 2050, the intergovernmental agency predicts, global energy use from A/Cs will triple, reaching a level equivalent to China's total electricity demand today. The African continent is home to some of the hottest places on Earth, but fewer than 5% of people in most African nations own an air conditioner, and energy used for cooling comes to just 35 kWh per person living in the continent, according to the IEA. In India, where large parts of the country are hot all year round, people use an average of 70 kWh for cooling. Compared to nations where having an A/C is the norm, that's almost nothing at all.
This does not matter or they would do something about it.
I voted for Hillary. I have also been to India and seen these things firsthand. Facts are not racist.
Given the progressives genocidal bigotry against Appalachian cultures, I'd say the odds are pretty even that he's a hateful bigot just like you.
Air conditioning is not a luxury, crappy insulation is! Look at most of the buildings in the US and they are badly insulated if at all. Also does not help that even new construction is using popsicle sticks and office supplies. Brick fares much better to keep buildings cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.
So you are saying that India is not an overcrowded country where people bathe in the Ganges and treat cows as sacred?
Why must we pretend that India is a great place to live when it sucks?
That's mostly gas-guzzling norf 'murika, ie the yoosah and kanuckistan. Mostly the yoosah, at that.
Me, I typically prefer no airo even if it's hot, because hot is just that, while airco dries me out and gets me headaches. But anyway, there are better ways than spending (fossil fuel-generated) 'leccy on cooling, especially if the climate is hot and dry. Use natural airflow, water vaporisation, and so on. But that requires actual engineering instead of just plunking a loud machine on the problem and done.
The Earth can support the already developed world just fine but with the developing countries progressing the Earth is struggling. Perhaps human generosity is the problem.
Why do hot (and therefore sunny) countries not make a point of powering their air conditioning systems with solar panels? Given a COP of around 4 on modern systems, it should be possible to do this both economically and not using too much real estate. Even if power is required out of daylight hours, the panels should bear the brunt of the load.
Alternate headline: "Crappy places to live have poor economies, so people have fewer luxuries."
This paper will be published in the quarterly edition of "Journals of the Obvious".
Can I shove my throbbing cock into your quivering asshole?
Air conditioners are not necessary if you design buildings correctly. I built my home and my butcher shop so that they do not require cooling and they do not require heating. This does require thinking differently and intentionally about design, materials and construction methods. These methods also kept the cost of construction down to less than 1/20th of what it would have been with standard construction, the buildings have less maintenance cost and will last longer.
Yeah that makes sense.
kWh per day, kWh per year, kWh per fortnight, kWh per parsec?
The US military spends $20bn a year on air-con.
This is more than NASA costs to run.
And yet, people in hot countries don't really have air-con according to this. What does that tell you?
It tells me that humans adjust to the environment with enough exposure and training (or they shouldn't be there at all), and that $20bn would be much better spent on something useful.
Alternatively people who live in the hottest places may not be able to afford ACs because the hottest places also tend to be some of the poorest places when it comes to the citizens themselves. Even those countries that have oil don't hand the profits down to the population. People also may not be able to afford contraceptives and or their stupid religion bans such measures. However the will to fuck is evolutionary ingrained into us about as much as the need to eat and drink. That's why moronic approaches like teaching people to not have sex also doesn't work very well.
If you want to contain overpopulation don't keep the people ignorant. Educate them. Make contraceptives easily available and cheep. Integrate women into the work force and give them equal rights. But of course there are those who don't like the idea, especially when faced with backwards immigrants whose birth rates are scarily high.
Annual births in the United States have gone down the past three years. Try again!
Well that statement just shows your fucking stupidity.
Only USians use kWh as a measure of any kind of energy consumption -- the rest of the world uses MJ?
Nice try Ivan. Trump is dying in prison either way faggot.
The people living the hottest places on Earth are less likely than say, continental Americans, to have air conditioners. But there are places where it's cold enough that they don't NEED AC. From what I can tell, it looks like Sweden, for example, tops out at 23 C, so I doubt they need to bother with that.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The state of South Australia can get very hot. It recently went through an energy crisis, leading to a deal with Elon Musk to provide batteries to help even out power demand. This might be a small scale example of what's to come. South Australia has a tiny population compared to India, so a lot of research will need to happen focusing on new ways to generate, store and distribute energy if a demand for summertime A/C takes off there.
The cool thing (punny) is that would drive down the cost of batteries, solar panels, or whatever technologies are in large scale use, making them cheaper for the rest of us (assuming production can keep up).
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
(Judging by the summary) the authors of the report are projecting that added air conditioning in currently underserved areas will use energy-hungry heat pumps, like developed world city and suburbs currently do. This ignores recent (and any yet-to-come) technology breakthroughs.
One is M-cycle cooling systems like Coolerado's. In locations where a swamp cooler would work, and many where it would fail due to moderately-too-high humidity, an M-cycle cooler will deliver cool air using about twice the power needed to blow it around and a little water (less than the amount saved by some power plant not generating the added electricity to power a heat pump, so you're AHEAD on water use, too). The air delivered does not have added humidity (just the higher relative humidity from cooling it, which WON'T drop it below the dew point and get mold going indoors), nor does it have added bacteria (though the half exhausted outdoors still may).
The guts of the Coolerado version is a "mass-heat exchanger" - a stack of plastic sheets that gets water (with a trace of soap) injected on one port, outside air blown in another, cooled air coming out a third, wet air out a fourth, and an unevaporated fraction of the water with the minerals and such out a fifth. Cheap (or it can be if the patent holders chose). Already being used in, among other places, medical facilities in India.
Another is the "infrared window" approach. Think "solar panel" that dumps about 90 watts per square meter of heat energy into the sky 24/7, (slightly better at night than noon). Cheap version of a plastic film with a silvered backside and 10-ish micron glass beads embedded in it. Only reason you need any power at all is to control the transfer of heat from the room to the panels (say, by circulating a heat-transfer fluid and blowing air through a radiator), so you don't get more cooling at night (when you probably don't want any) than at noon or afternoon (when you want a lot).
Not only can these, and potentially other approaches, provide air conditioning for the developing world at a fraction of the energy cost (and perhaps the equipment cost) of a classic heat-pump system, but they can also reduce the energy cost of cooling in the developed world.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In thinking about the high-calorie foods that would make our coder-drone selves become obese, I got to wondering where recipes for things like fried chicken and pecan pie came from and what social purpose to they serve?
Pre-mechanization, the use of horses was a productivity enhancer over human labor but even over draft animals such as oxen that are used throughout the world, past and present. An ox has pulling force, but a horse owing to its higher capacity cardiovascular system has a lot more power output, and the use of horses over oxen in agriculture was a breakthrough.
Likewise, the consumption of high-calorie foods by farm workers as opposed to having them get by with a minimum-calorie subsistence diet that is the norm in many parts of the world is also a productivity enhancer.
It has been said that air conditioning kindled the economic growth of the American South, or at least the southward migration of Yankees. Yes, one can subsist at a poverty level on minimal calories and natural outdoor temperatures, but think of the increased work, both physical and mental, one can do with enough to eat and respite from the heat? And think of this as breaking out of subsistence-level poverty?
The electric bill takes like 35% with one refrigerator one medium TV and 3 fans at night and weekends.
Going to one mall is the cheapest way to not get a heart attack when the concrete starts to melt.
Or, encourage them to be smart and move to a richer country.
Less likely than people living in the coldest places?
Seriously, if your outside temp is constantly running from say 50F - 110F (or 10C to 40C), that is only a 60F(30C).
OTOH, if in the course of a year, you go from -40F up to 105F (or -40C to 40C), then you have 145F(80C) difference to deal with. Then add in 90-99% humidity during the summer. That is when you are far more likely to see AC being ran.
Of course, with that said, in places like Phoenix, Arizona, it regularly hits 115F ( 46C) through the middle of summer. Plenty of AC going on there. But, I noticed that when I visit my sister, her idea of an AC cool house is 95F/35C. Ugh.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We are waiting for geo-thermal HVAC to drop in price or our furnace/AC to go out. That seems like the way to go, at least in the west/developed world. Very efficient.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Go here to read about "the only viable option for generating the massive amounts of electrical power that would be needed to raise the standard of living in third-world nations to that of first-world nations."
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
That's better than aheat pump with the ambient air as the source/sink (which deviates from the desired temperature in the exactly wrong direction).
But it's' still a heat pump. You're pumping across a lower gradient but you're still burning substantial power, compared with the solutions I mentioned.
It DOES have the advantage that proven solutions at reasonable prices are available now.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Here in Sweden houses use good isolation because otherwise it would be very cold in the winter.
I do realize bodies and cooking and fridges and freezers generate heat for instance, so there's that, then again flushing the toilet and such could provide some cold.
But how much of it is simply people wanting the convenience of easy access to the outdoors or whatever the reason is?
But yeah, electronics generate heat. Anyway, if you live in UAE and build a large building and insulate it well I'd imagine the cooling cost is much lower than otherwise, maybe they already do insulate well? Or they don't?
Maybe their ancestors shouldn't have settled there. Maybe they should have kept walking until they found a place where the climate supports human life.
Just shows what we already knows, americans like it up their ass.
Last time I checked you need electricity to run AC units. Yes I know 10% is the low end of the spectrum but for the whole continent 60% of the population is without Electricity.
Only 42% have access to running water.
This reminds me of the old joke about the scientist and the frog. Scientist cuts 1 leg off and tells frog to jump, frog jumps. Cuts another leg off and tells frog to jump, frog jumps. Cuts the 3rd leg off tells frog to jump, frog jumps. Cuts 4th leg off and tells frog to jump, nothing happens. He again tells frog to jump, nothing happens. The scientist writes in his notes "cut 4 legs off frog and frog becomes deaf.
The Lunatick, Carpe Corpus!
Swamp coolers are far more efficient than AC units and are also highly effective, assuming the climate is hot and dry. In places like the middle east, these would consume far less power than AC units and just need a pittance of water to achieve their efficacy. I have a friend out in Nevada who pointed out to me that all the houses have swamp coolers, with some of them even being integrated into the central cooling system of the house.
All it needs is hot air pulled across a damp membrane with a squirrel cage fan. Couldn't be simpler or cheaper.
But the main point you seem to be purposely avoiding is that it takes money to have the luxury of air-conditioning. So rich countries use much more of it, even if it's sometimes unnecessary, just because they can afford it.
Poor countries who use it less than you do, do it because it's too expensive for them. Just another example of rich countries producing more CO2 just because they are rich.
Are you going to tell us again that it is their fault for finally being able to afford air-conditioning? Or is it your fault for using it all along?
There's a direct relationship between heat and intelligence.
It literally cooks peoples brains.
What on Earth are you talking about WindBourne? If it's 40C people will want to use air-conditioning to cool down a bit,if they can afford it, many can't. It makes absolutely no difference what the temperature was last winter. Why would you think it does?
nice to see that this is in town. Do you work there? I live at 80126, so obviously happy to see it here.
Nice concept. However, it is cooling only. That is why for residential buildings, I like the more/better insulation such as aerogel windows, combined with geothermal HVAC. OTOH, that coolerado makes great sense for businesses, esp. kitchens,maybe DIA, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
One, the statistic is bogus: 10% of all energy? No. All electricity? Perhaps.
Two, irrelevant if the world would get off the nuclear anxiety train.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
On the contrary, a dumb, fast-growing, un-educated population is a wet dream for a repressive government:
1: Life is cheap, so they can do things like mass executions to keep the population in order.
2: With modern weaponry, the population can be starving to death, and revolutions won't succeed. One missile can put down a riot of thousands.
3: People are desperate, so they will do what you tell them in hopes of eating, or perhaps a roof over their head and shoes better than discarded water bottles.
4: If you get the population split among political lines, they will be -begging- you for strong-arm tactics, be it prisons, executions, or even genocide. Under a brutal government, people focus on their rivals, not the tyrants causing the horrific conditions.
Sadly, this seems to be the state of humanity. The Middle Ages stayed the way it was because people reproduced like rabbits, nobles could kill peasants and serfs left and right. What actually gave people some form of existance other than hellish, brutal, groaning slavery in Europe was the Black Plague. Nobles realized they couldn't continue to break people's backs, and actually had to share power in order to survive. The piss-ant duchies and dukedoms had to merge to survive, and with the lack of population, food resources was eased, so "luxury" crops like olives could grow.
In general, the only thing that can stop brutal governments, especially water empires, is a pandemic plague like the Black Death.
I use to think it was nonsense to let kids out of schools 20 years ago, when it "got too hot". Heck, growing up in the 60's, they never let us out of school when it was hot. But then I got to thinking...NO ONE had AC back then. Going to the theater, grocery store, shopping were about the only places that had AC. We were acclimated to the heat. Now, you have AC at home, all businesses, your cars, so you are NOT use to the heat. If someone has never had AC, never worked around AC and never been where there is AC, then the heat won't affect them as much as "modern" humans that have such comforts.
A 10m x 10m room x 2m ceiling requires 12KW to cool it. I made the numbers easy to simulate an entire house and give 100sq meters of panel.
No. You have made a serious calculation error. That's 12KW of heat moved, not 12KW of electricity. The amount of electricity required will depend on the efficiency of the air conditioner. Its much, much less. I have a high-efficiency 6KW ductless AC from Mitsubishi, it consumes 1.6KW of electricity max in order to provide 6KW of cooling. So, two of those units would do the job of cooling your 10x10x2m room at just 3.2KW of energy.
Furthermore, that calculator you used is intended only for calculating peak cooling requirements to keep the house at 72 degrees, I forget the exact technical number, but its like 96 percentile as in it only has to run at maximum cooling 4% of the hours in one year. The other 96% of the time is at various levels less than maximum. So maybe, on peak days, they keep the house at 80 degrees instead of 72 degrees and save a bunch too. Also, that calculator itself is way over-simplified, it doesn't even ask what location, so it has no idea whether your in miami or fargo, which matters a whole lot.
There is a lot more going on here, but your own crazy ass numbers should have triggered the laugh test and lead you to ask what mistake are you making that would produce results that are so patently absurd as a $35K solar installation just to cool a 1000sqft house.
FWIW, in the US solar costs are dominated by labor. Panels are really cheap, like 65cents/watt. In the 3rd world labor is going to be dirt cheap. So, I am going to SWAG a 6KW system at $5K for the panels, inverters, etc and $1K for labor. If you are grid-tie, that is it, total $6K. But, if you have to go with a battery, that's going to double the cost so $12K. But that's not only enough power to cool the entire house on peak days, but run everything else too.
It's also the lack of robust electrical service. Having an A/C does no good if all you have is a generator to power it as long as you have some extra gasoline being what you needed to travel.
Rising Temperatures cause People to buy more air conditioners, using even more energy that emits CO2 (assuming non-green energy source) . Repeat.
Death Valley holds the record for hottest place on the planet. California isn't a poor place.
> Coolerado
Coolerado has been around for like a decade and a half but they are barely more than experimental. Sounds great, but lets not get excited, their track record of commercial scale production is abysmal. Its going to be heat-pumps for at least the next decade.
The people who live in these hell holes realize hot weather is caused by global warming and Donald Trump. If they were to install an air conditioner it would further increase the consumption of fossil fuels and raise the temperature even higher. They are doing their part to curtail global warming by not using air con.
Makes sense.
We should follow their examples and just turn off the air conditioners, so the planet can cool down.
FTFY.
Or raping teenagers.
The African continent is home to some of the hottest places on Earth, but fewer than 5% of people in most African nations own an air conditioner, and energy used for cooling comes to just 35 kWh per person living in the continent, according to the IEA. In India, where large parts of the country are hot all year round, people use an average of 70 kWh for cooling.
Take Japan and Korea, for example, where people use 800 kWh on cooling each. Fully 91% of Japanese homes and 86% of Korean homes have an A/C. In the US, 90% of homes have an A/C, and per-capita cooling-energy use is 1,880 kWh, according to the IEA report. Of the 1.6 billion A/C units installed globally, 23% are in the US.
Africa 35 is less than India 70 less than Korea & Japan 800 less than America 1,880
It's as if people who have more money spend more of it on cooling. But we can't have them using as much as you already do can we. It's bad for the environment. Better to try and keep them poor and keep that AC for yourself.
Put another way, the 328 million people living in the US consume more energy for cooling than the 4.4 billion people living in all of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia (excluding China) combined, according to the IEA report.
i voted for a businessman because America is a business. you have to think money on a global basis. arizona is good at 105 degrees. 2 things are mandatory in az...a/c and a swimming pool. i can almost...understand if you dont have a swimming pool. its your own fault.
Or you could read the article and find it's correlated to wealth.
The African continent is home to some of the hottest places on Earth, but fewer than 5% of people in most African nations own an air conditioner, and energy used for cooling comes to just 35 kWh per person living in the continent, according to the IEA. In India, where large parts of the country are hot all year round, people use an average of 70 kWh for cooling.
Take Japan and Korea, for example, where people use 800 kWh on cooling each. Fully 91% of Japanese homes and 86% of Korean homes have an A/C. In the US, 90% of homes have an A/C, and per-capita cooling-energy use is 1,880 kWh, according to the IEA report. Of the 1.6 billion A/C units installed globally, 23% are in the US.
Africa 35 is less than India 70 less than Korea & Japan 800 less than America 1,880 It's as if people who have more money spend more of it on cooling. But we can't have them using as much as you already do can we. It's bad for the environment. Better to try and keep them poor and keep that AC for yourself.
Put another way, the 328 million people living in the US consume more energy for cooling than the 4.4 billion people living in all of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia (excluding China) combined, according to the IEA report.
Even your sister who is acclimated to 40+C and plays tennis in 47+C still runs the AC if it's 40C
Even though she matches your profile perfectly 10C to 40C year round. According to you she doesn't need it...
....but I'm guessing it's because it's hot?
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
The people in the countries identified here as having no AC are among the least productive, most backward places on earth. Perhaps the heat is the reason?
i never said that those ppl do not use it. You continue to lie.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Your own anecdotes match the story perfectly, those with more money use more air-conditioning. Hence produce more CO2.
Entitled pricks like yourself use more than everyone else, but if poor people start to use even a fraction of what you do, somehow it's their fault but not yours.
Put another way, the 328 million people living in the US consume more energy for cooling than the 4.4 billion people living in all of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia (excluding China) combined, according to the IEA report.
You entire premise of it being related to the change of temperature over a year, doesn't even match your own examples that you tried to use as evidence.
And you still deny it's simply money, not need, that drives AC use.
Coolerado has been around for like a decade and a half but they are barely more than experimental. Sounds great, but lets not get excited, their track record of commercial scale production is abysmal. Its going to be heat-pumps for at least the next decade.
But they got bought recently. So either their tech dies or gets developed by somebody with enough industry savvy to run with it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I don't disagree with you.
But my premise was intention to contain overpopulation. Education and women rights strongly correlated with reduced birth rates here. There was a TEDTalks about this issue some time back when they weren't as full of crap as they are today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Of course population can be done by letting nature take its course and people starve to death or you use force. But due to rapid urbanization all the hybrid warfare that is possible with today's technology it's not just as easy any more. Using a missile without also causing some significant collateral damage from which yourself may not recover that easily is almost impossible.
I'll bet on death. Lots of companies get acquired and their entire product line goes away. As far as we know it was an aquihire.
Those countries aren't shitholes!
We can't send them back! Their country is a shithole!
Like the United States where a significant amount of people believe exactly the same thing!
when they pry my warm rotting dead hands from it.
You did say they don't need it though. They don't need it but use it anyway...Rich people waste because they can, not because they need too. How many times before it seeps into your thick head?
In western countries we have over reaching government that regulates everything under the sun.
I'm capable of manufacturing a cooling system that works off sun, convection, geothermal, and water, but government would destroy it or fine me for not buying THEIR energy.
Threatening to ban someone over political differences is ridiculous, Sad to see this kind of heavy handed censorship from Slashdot. Cmdr Taco must be glad he has nothing to with this site anymore.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Why must we pretend that India is a great place to live when it sucks?
Because most countries have places that don't suck.
In India that would e.g. be Goa ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.