your air conditioner is making the heat wave worse - portable swamp cooler air conditioner

The heat wave at the Midwest barbecue last week was pressure-
Cook on the East Coast this weekend.
With the temperature and humidity index reaching three digits, urban residents have no choice but to keep the thermostat set low and the energy consumption high.
But we need air conditioning because we use air conditioning and this cycle logic is getting worse and worse as global temperatures rise.
Half of the past
S. cities have presented an unstable form of thermodynamics since this century, like boxes packed with cold air on the concrete hot island.
Turning off the air conditioning, the office building will become unlivable, the vehicles sitting in the traffic will become torture rooms, and the apartment building will become a death trap.
How did this happen?
The technology started slowly: 1960, 12% in the United StatesS.
Families with air conditioning;
By 1980, the figure had risen to only 55% per cent;
Now it's almost 90%.
But once the cooling technology became more effective and affordable after World War II, it began to change the buildings of cities and suburbs, as historian Gail Cooper did in her book Air
Regulate the United States.
It ushered in the glass office.
Deep, cheap block designto-
Build interior spaces that will never be comfortable in summer without manual cooling.
House and apartment builders can avoid expensive warmth
Weather features such as porch, big eaves, high ceilings, crossover
Ventilation design, air window, open window and loft fan.
This allows people to afford more houses, but buyers often live where Fortune Magazine calls it "TV"
Summer livable hotel with air conditioning only.
With prosperity (
Summer temperature)
In the 1990 s, builders and buyers may return to investing in warm areas
But they chose to spend more money on building space.
By 2006, the average size of each occupant of a new house was three times that of 1950, increasing from 290 square feet per family member to nearly 900 square feet per member.
As a result, cooling demand soared: between 1993 and 2005, when the increase in housing area peaked, the total electricity consumption of residential air conditioners almost doubled, from 134 billion kilowatts
According to U. S. data, hours to 261 billion hoursS.
Survey of Energy Information Administration
S. Department of Energy says air conditioners use about 5% of the country's electricity a year, costing homeowners more than $11 billion.
It's not too late to reduce our reliance on air conditioning, especially in rural areas, small towns and leafy suburbs.
Even in big cities, homeowners can plant shade and other vegetation to install the whole
Fan of the house, sleeping in the basement.
On the other hand, apartment residents have much less choice: they can endure open windows, fans and cold rain, but when a heat wave like this comes, it's time to go and get the thermostat.
This weekend, urban communities in depressed economies will face more than just discomfort.
Decades of research have shown
The highest mortality rate for concrete wavesand-
Asphalt city disaster landscape, especially among socially isolated elderly or patients, lives behind closed windows for fear of crime (
A factor in the 1995 Chicago heat wave that killed 739 people)
Or can't afford the power needed to run an air conditioner or even a fan.
There, the community refrigeration Center became the last refuge.
Air conditioning has become a necessity but not a solution.
For a patient with extreme fever, it's like an ice bath to treat symptoms without touching the underlying cause --
In this case,
Climate change and the two major impacts of distorted material and social structures in our cities.
Due to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, air conditioning has temporarily cooled our world, thus making it hotter permanently, keeping the vehicle fuel consumption and refrigerant production of cold air flowing.
According to the Energy Information Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, I calculated that the impact of air conditioning in the United States on climate is equivalent to 0. 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
More than the sum of all industrial processes. About three-
The fourth impact is the average distribution of the rest from power generation to cooling buildings by excess fuel consumption in the air
Air-conditioned vehicles and refrigerant leaks used by all air conditioners.
So as temperatures rise this weekend, now is a good time to question the general assumption that adapting to the more frequent heat waves in the future simply means using more air conditioning.
This will be a tail exercise. chasing.
This is not helpful for millions of people working outdoors or for many industrial factories where air conditioners cannot reach.
Global warming will have a particularly serious impact on them.
It can only work if climate adaptation is linked to stopping global climate damage, both of which require us to start digging into the roots.
Sharp problems should be solved first.
We have to help cool the heat of the poorest cities again by hammering concrete
Create green space and improve the quality of housing.
All of this will help fight the "urban heat island" effect, which will keep the city 22 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding area.
Reducing the reliance on air conditioning in urban areas will require a serious reform: for example, continuously reducing parking and driving space while improving public transportation;
Depilation and reconstruction of the rescued space;
Retrofit large buildings with ventilation Wells for ventilation where weather permits;
And require all new buildings to be designed as non-air-
At some point in the year, the comfort of the air conditioner can be realized, with functions such as windows can be opened, better air
The flow inside the building and the building, giving everyone an external window.
In most parts of the country, when the outdoor temperature is 85, the air-conditioning system operates to keep the temperature at 70 or 72.
With better ventilation and architectural design, and a slightly higher tolerance to indoor temperatures, we don't need manual cooling.
According to analysts at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, this is a collision project designed to maintain or build three shades of each building and make all the roofs and sidewalks in the United StatesS.
Urban reflection can reduce national demand for cooling by 20% by lowering temperatures.
This will directly reduce fuel consumption for power and vehicles, and will also increase the number of days each year when air conditioning is safely shut down, making buildings more comfortable without artificial climate control. For U. S.
Home, reducing the use of cooling energy will mean working with the weather, not against the weather.
Instead of closing the house a year
When switching the thermostat from "hot" to "cold" on April and October, we can turn it on, use the fan, and enjoy fresh air on warm but not extreme days.
The move to get rid of the excessive use of air conditioning in society will be self-reinforcing.
Large contact with air conditioning will reduce the ability of the human body to withstand heat;
On the contrary, according to Michal Horowitz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and many other thermal researchers, the more we live in warm weather, the more we can stand it.
This is the real adaptation.
Getting used to warm temperatures won't be as unpleasant as it sounds.
Research from countries around the world shows that the more warmth we experience in recent days and weeks, the higher the temperature we feel comfortable.
When we are exposed to a temperature of about 70 degrees, we are the most comfortable in the 70 degrees room.
When we reach the lower 90 s, we prefer the latter 80 s.
Still, I don't recommend this weekend to be a good time to start adjusting. Go ahead —run the AC.
But unless we start to change our society soon, both indoors and outdoors, the summer will eventually be out of the control of any thermostat.