quote:

Residential air conditioners aren’t made to operate below about 66.

Yikes! That's good to know!!

Yea, I kinda wondered about that 60 degree target.

Al's suggestion to read the comments is spot on. Lots of good discussion there.

I'm not sure about the supercooling idea. It seems like it would be influenced by so many local aspects. No one ever floated the supercooling idea in Arizona, where managing your A/C is practically a religion. Of course, if you tried to cool your house to 60 degrees in June, your heat pump or A/C unit would probably just catch on fire....

The biggest ways to impact your A/C bill, and the feeling of comfort in the house were to:

1. Use a time of use plan, so you could cool your house down more at night while you slept, so you could sleep. (This is perhaps just an AZ phenomenon.)

2. Invest in fans, which will make you feel a lot cooler without lowering the A/C temp, and remember to turn them off when you're not in the room.

3. Invest in a smart thermometer, so you can raise the temperature while you're away (at work, how quaint ), but we were always told to not raise your temperature more than 5 degrees, because the energy spent to drop it back down was too high to make anything more a cost savings.

4. Keep the direct sun away from your house: blinds/drapes, landscaping, shade trees, etc.

5. Make sure your windows aren't leaky.

6. Invest in double- or triple-pane windows.

Obviously, not everyone can do, or afford to do, all these things. It's also not clear to me (because it's really so localized) that these make sense in other environments. I guess I'm not sure there's such a thing as a universal set of recommendations.

The NYT article referred to in the above article.

Air conditioning contributes to global warming to the extent that it is powered by fossil fuels, just like heating fueled by fossil fuels, and indeed almost any activity that requires energy that is not supplied from sources that do not emit CO2. The move in California to remove natural gas use from building via the building code is a response to this, but not necessarily a solution unless the alternate energy sources are not themselves CO2 emitters. The increased percentage of electric power from renewable sources along with nuclear power falls in this category. Perhaps greater inroads will be produced by the conservation measures impelled by the elimination of natural gas as an energy source. If some energy is not required because the buildings do not fluctuate in temperature so easily due to better insulation, glazing, shade, or other factors, then the use of both CO2 contributing and non-contributing sources will decline.

The argument for or against air conditioning could be compared to many other arguments that pit the immediate welfare or convenience of some against the ultimate damage to all. The answers are not all that obvious, particularly when the welfare of convenience is immediately served while the damage is cumulative and long-term.

We're all at least somewhat like addicts who can't do without their daily energy fix, even though the long term consequences are dire.

Big Al

I hate to sound like a Marvel villain, but the problem is too many people on a planet that cannot sustain this population.

I might add "with our current rate of consumption of resources..."

Interesting stuff.

Here’s an overview of how the system works.