The Cruel Irony Of Air Conditioning
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.ย. 2024
- Thanks to the University of Minnesota for sponsoring this video! twin-cities.umn...
The technology we use to keep cool is heating the world in a vicious feedback cycle, so we need to improve it and use it less.
Thanks also to our Patreon patrons / minuteearth and our TH-cam members.
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To learn more, start your googling with this keyword:
Refrigerant - a substance used in air conditioners & refrigerators for its ability to change phases and transfer heat
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If you liked this week’s video, you might also like:
How AC changed the world: www.bbc.com/ne...
People use AC to make their homes feel like Africa: bit.ly/2Y9fOH3
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Credits (and Twitter handles):
Script Writer & Video Narrator: Alex Reich
Video Illustrator: Arcadi Garcia Rius
Video Director: Julián Gustavo Gómez
With Contributions From: Henry Reich, Kate Yoshida, Ever Salazar, Peter Reich, David Goldenberg, Sarah Berman
Music by: Nathaniel Schroeder: / drschroeder
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References:
European Commission. Climate-friendly alternatives to HFCs. ec.europa.eu/c... Accessed May 2019.
Gunawardena, K. R., et al. 2017. Utilising green and bluespace to mitigate urban heat island intensity. Science of the Total Environment, 584, 1040-1055. bit.ly/2GbBuHY
Graves, R. Pers. comm. May 2019.
International Energy Agency. 2017. Space cooling: More access, more comfort, less energy. www.iea.org
International Energy Agency. 2018. The Future of Cooling: Opportunities for energy- efficient air conditioning. www.iea.org/fu...
International Institute of Refrigeration. Nov 2017. The impact of the refrigeration sector on climate change. bit.ly/30A56Xh
Keeler, B. L., et al. 2019. Social-ecological and technological factors moderate the value of urban nature. Nature Sustainability, 2(1), 29. www.nature.com...
Ministry of the Environment, Japan. 2016. Recovery, Recycling & Destruction of CFC, HCFC, & HFC. www.env.go.jp/...
Pakbaznia, E., & Pedram, M. 2009. Minimizing data center cooling and server power costs. In Proceedings of the 2009 ACM/IEEE international symposium on Low power electronics and design (pp. 145-150). bit.ly/2JDL5bN
Reardon, C. & Clarke, R. 2013. Passive cooling. Australian Government: Your Home. bit.ly/2LNMmj7
Sachar, S., et al. 2018. Solving the Global Cooling Challenge: How to Counter the Climate Threat from Room Air Conditioners. Rocky Mountain Institute. www.rmi.org/insight/solving_the_global_cooling_challenge
Sadineni, S. B., et al. 2011. Passive building energy savings: A review of building envelope components. Renewable and sustainable energy reviews, 15(8), 3617-3631. bit.ly/2G9uGec
Sivak, M. 2013. Air conditioning versus heating: climate control is more energy demanding in Minneapolis than in Miami. ERL, 8(1), 014050. bit.ly/2SbyOix
Zhang, X., & Caldeira, K. 2015. Time scales and ratios of climate forcing due to thermal versus carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. GRL, 42(11), 4548-4555. bit.ly/2LS8id0
Zhao, L., et al. 2015. Reduction of potential greenhouse gas emissions of room air-conditioner refrigerants: a life cycle carbon footprint analysis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 100, 262-268. doi.org/10.101...
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I love your videos so much that’s why i have notifications on
For some reason I love to watch these videos after school
For some reason I like to watch these videos after school
Your videos are really educational
Love your videos
There was a guy that moved from here in cold northern Sweden to sunny, hot California. When he built his house he built it like we do here with LOTS of insulation. People laughed at him but he saved a ton on air conditioning because once the house was cooled it stayed cool without having to run the AC constantly because the heat outside couldn't get in.
what a king
*Air Condition:* I became the very thing I swore to destroy
You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the heat, not join them.
UnPuntoCircular it was said you would bring balance to the temperature of the environment, not leave it warmer!
Its over Air Conditioner, i have the high ground
Oh no the likes are 666
ey why do i feel like this is a quote from a movie hm
I love that the "This is fine" dog made a cameo
Gud mem yt by
I love that walle made a cameo
2:56
I made it 200 likes
What about the wall e cameo
I remember one hot day when my friend and I were on a walk. We saw a small area of overgrowth with plants and flowers that were a little higher than our heads. We decided to check it out and couldn't BELIEVE the temperature difference within it! Must have been about 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) cooler.
so simple solution: install air conditioners backwards so the outside cools off
*Modern problem requires modern solution*
😉 nice
Well...You see...Uh...Actually I don't have anything against this lol
Someone gets it
Someone's definitely gonna get wooshed after reading this comment. Mark my words.
I live in an arid semi-desert, but because my house is surrounded by huge trees (trees that don't need lots of irrigation) my house is always cool, so I don't use air conditioning
at home.
Trees are natural Air Conditioning devices, and they don't produce CO2. remove your lawns and flower beds and try surrounding your selves with more trees.
YES!
Gad Yariv
In other words, you have a garden, and not just a lawn. 🙂
Yes, except in fire-prone areas where we're told to keep a wide vegetation-free perimeter.
@@ragnkja ya, pretty much. but I just see how people are scared of having huge trees these days, they want a lawn a few small fruiting trees and small shrubs, nothing that will be taller than their house, they might even just pave the front yard, that's the worst.
@@regular-joe that's a bummer
AC "burns fossil" the same way the electric car does, but changing the electrical generation mix to Nuclear (France, for example) or renewable, the problem can be somewhat offset.
Somewhat offset yeah, but not with it's own slough of issues. Not to mention the TRILLIONS of dollars that need to go into the infrastructure and technology required to switch completely over to renewable sources. The tech just isn't even close to being there yet
@@DreadJester448 Nuclear is extremely viable, just a few billion dollars could retrofit some existing coal and gas plants to nuclear plants, which could drastically reduce emissions. But people are spooked by Nuclear because communists fucked up, so now we gotta deal with green peace being fucking retarded as usual.
Nice to see someone who ain't panicing about nuclear power 😊.
Wanna talk more about it?
@@SCIFIguy64 And Americans (Three Mile Island, Idaho Falls, others). And Japanese (Tokaimura (twice), Fukushima, others). And Canadians, French, Swiss, a bunch of other nations...
Nuclear power is super clean, but if done safely (including providing a _permanent_ storage solution for burnt fuel before letting a plant go operational) it's also super-expensive. Much more so than renewable.
@@giantnanomachine Thorium reactors wouldn't be nearly as expensive, and much better overall.
I like jokes. But jokes about air conditioners?
Not a fan.
LOL BEST PUN OF THE SUMMER
This is some good shit
Only morons laugh at puns
@@LordTalax prove it
Yeah, air conditioners used to be cool, but then they became a hot topic.
Thank you , I live in 50C summer country and I witnessed the exact thing happening, air conditioners were expensive and the max temperature was 43 44 now every house has one in each room , stores , shopping centres ... the sad part is when I talk about this people laugh and don’t believe 😔
I have always hated air conditioners. My father can't sleep without an ac in summers. He apparently has asthma as well so he can't bear the humidity caused by water based floor fans. Shit's bad and I can only see us dying very soon.
Because u are stupid. Air conditioners make up for about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. U people are retarded if u think reducing the 4% by "60%" to a measly 2.5% of total greenhouse gas emissions, IS SOMEHOW JUSTIFIABLE. THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS WILL DIE DUE TO HEAT WITHOUT AIR CONDITIONING, U FUCKING MORONS!!!
Well , the people are stupid.....
THEY USED A MEME AT THE END
THE THIS IS FINE DOG
I KNEW THE DAY WOULD COME!
Well, to pump the heat from inside the house to outside has exactly the same effect than prevent it to enter in the first place. That's not an issue. The issue is the additionnal heat due to the power consumption.
Edit: so many likes, thank's! That surprised me because i was sure people would disagree.
Depends on whether sunlight would be reflected or not. A house is essentially a black body box, all the sunlight that enters gets turned into heat, if instead that sunlight was reflected back to space, that heat would not be a contributor to global heating.
@@CorwynGC It's still impossible for the house to reflect all that heat anyways. You can reduce it, yes, but the best you can do is maybe 20 degree difference, and when it's 110, that's not enough.
@@SCIFIguy64 If you are unwilling to do what it takes to reduce the problem because it doesn't completely fix the problem, you are dooming humanity. Thanks.
@@CorwynGC Yeah, there is a big greenhouse effect inside the houses. If moderns steel and glass buildings were really made of glass and not vitroceramic
water would BOIL inside the building.
CorwynGC dOoMiNg HuMaNiTy sure bro
Air conditioning is just a cool way to heat up the planet :3
A lit comment 🔥
You just have to open the windows and cool the planet a bit, it's like donating money but it goes to . the electricity company. You're all welcome.
@@BogdanManciu you dont get the joke do you
@@absentchronicler9063 r/woooosh
@@BogdanManciu r/woooosh dumbass
Me: is that the "this is fine" dog?
Dog: this is fine
Me: bruh...
This post gave me cancer.
@EvilArtist This gives me cancer that doesn't kill but hurts equally as aids, tetanus, measles, coronavirus and the flu combined, I think that pain came from ok boomer overdose..
This joke was so fatty that it gave me Diabetes type 2
@@doesnt you made the joke... if it gave you cancer why didnt you remove it...
I'ma guess you like trains
I appreciate how these videos offer solutions / alternatives that individuals (as well as policy makers and institutions) can implement. Keep on educating and promoting change!
Fortunately, Atlanta is already very tree covered, keeping much of the city beautiful and nice and cool!
That does matter in the longo run the lack of trees on other parts will bump up the temperature globally.
Isn't using a reversible heat pump more efficient than just burning fuels? So we pump the heat out when we want it cooler inside, and we pump the heat in when we want it warmer inside. I've also started to want an all-in-one unit that uses the waste heat from the AC to help the water heater.
Oh that sounds neat, could have it work in tandem with any solar power stuff if you have it too.
Reversible heat pumps are more efficient AT THE SITE, whether it is more efficient, or more green, depends on how you make your electricity. Solar plus a heat pump is a cheap, green, and efficient system. But still not as good as using more insulation, night flushing the heat, and other such passive measures.
Shad Sterling
My uncle’s “old” house, which they got built in the 1990s, has (or at least had) large “heat catchers” that warmed water for both heating the house and regular hot water. To facilitate this it had a gigantic hot water tank - 4000 litres if I remember correctly.
@@ragnkja Still do-able, and 4000 liters is not always required.
CorwynGC
Yup, the gigantic hot water tank was more because they had the capacity to heat that much water than because they needed that much hot water. Even if it’s just the capacity of a regular hot water tank, that’s still energy you don’t need to get from other sources. After all, that thing was/is about 20 times the size of a regular household hot water tank.
*world is on fire* Dog: This is fine. This, is fine.
Hotdawg
Air conditioning has one major plus: It can heat the building way more efficiently than traditional heating. Most Air Conditioning systems can reverse the cooling process and heat up your home by cooling the outside. Wich needs only ~10% of the energy than heating up the inside with coal, oil or gas.
With that being said: green or regenerative city design, using renewable energy sources and changing to greener coolants are still very important points. Thanks for this awesome video 🙌
Yes that is true.
Insulation helps with heating and cooling the house alike. I use my A/C almost exclusively only for heating... Way more effective than the electric heating I used (that was only 100%). I feel pretty good about using A/C.
Your you tube video is outdated about air conditioners:
1) Modern Aircons use newer coolants and very soon may even use Co2 coolants as well. These coolants have only 1-4x times warming capacity of CO2 and not thousands of times as you are saying and through proper disposal they will not contribute anything to global warming as these coolants are buried deep inside earth.
2) The total heat released by aircon does create heat islands in cities but its impact in raising temperature is minuscule compared total atmospheric heat.
3) The only way in which aircons contribute to global warming is by consuming more electricity which uses more energy burning more fossil fuels but with greater use of renewable energy , even these could become redundant.
Well said brother, I was thinking the same as AC only moves heat from one side to the other and also make a minuscule heat increase by the motor and compressor, the only problem would be reducing energy consumption...
If we use non-heat trapping refrigerants, or always recycle / destroy them, and also convert to 100% renewable engergy, doesn't that eliminate all the problems of air conditioners?
Of course, better buildings, more green spaces, etc., are also good ideas in their own right.
A lot of poor people in Asia buy AC units now. They are buying the cheapest product available, they just dump it somewhere when it breaks because returning it for recycling would cost money they don't have and the installation is usually, say, "not meeting professional standards". If they can, they "fix" them but that often leaves them leaking (just more slowly).
Well this will probably cost way less than the entire us military Budget 😂
The mechanism of AC itself requires that some amount of heat is still released. Its impossible to have a 100% efficiency AC (except for when room temperature is equal to outdoor temperature).
I learned that in thermodynamics class
Good fucking luck converting to 100% renewable energy within your lifetime
Patrick W. Gilmore using non-heat trapping refrigerants to move out heat? How lmao
I guess I’ll just make my house out of ice cubes to cool myself and save the earth
Your refrigerator/freezer uses the same principle as air conditioning
How'd you make ice without refrigerator
@@CarlvanGoens nani!?
Don't drown XD
But who cools the ice?
Air conditioning and pv power pair really well. After all most of the ac demand is during the day when the sun is shining. It should almost be required, if you want ac you have to install solar to balance it.
Yep. If you have solar panels, running a/c does not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. All you are doing is moving heat inside to outside or other way around. You at least aren’t generating heat. It’s effectively the same as opening a window but just faster.
The true irony is that you cite problems with air conditioners but ignore those same problems with electric cars (that producing them creates toxic emissions, that they get energy from (usually) carbon emission fuel elsewhere, and they're disposed of with tons of toxins, some of which could leak out.
2:42 Hmmm it seems that the dog get out of the fire ( meme : Dog on Fire)
More like a hotdog
I get that this video was supposed to make me alarmed that Air Conditioning is a vicius cycle, but I had already realized that.
In fact, the very cool thing here is that now I know there's many possible solutions and therefore hope
I love the meme addition. Clever writing & production!
While I agree the vicious cycle of air conditioning, the proposed solution are focused on cities that need too cool, but don't address cities taht also need warm. For example, I live in Buenos Aires, where summer can reach 40°C and winter can reach below 0°C. During winter, the proposed solutions that for cooler buildings won't help, and they may even be worst, since people will have to use more energy to heat their homes. And I believe, based on statistic energy consumption, people in this city use way more energy during winter than summer.
Making your house more efficient by adding insulation works in both winter and summer.
nowadays air conditioners use eco friendly gases, and if ACs cool our homes and let out heat in the summer (heating the earth additionally) isn't that effect counteracted in winter when we heat our homes with ACs, generating hot air inside our homes and letting that cold air out again ?
You have an excellent point
I always felt hot air from the outside of air conditioners, but I never truly realized how until this video
0:00 You are under arrest for holding a salomon suspiciously
is this a reference? if so i get it.
@@antarcticpenguin it is a reference to the English law Google up salmon act
Sorry to tell you this, but not enough people are willing to give up their ac. So, yeah, i hope we can find ways to make them more efficient and echo friendly. Using a fan isn't going to cut it.
* edit * *Echo* *friendly* 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I do hope that a material like this can be used more: th-cam.com/video/7a5NyUITbyk/w-d-xo.html
Maybe people shouldn't be living in areas where you can't live without an AC.
PGraveDigger1 Yeah so just abandon around 10-20 different countries right
@@PGraveDigger1 The entire southern U.S. would be abandoned. The North sometimes really needs A/C too though.
@@mattwolf7698 I live at the same latitude as the northern part of the USA, and I have never needed AC. It is a luxury and unnecessary for a large part of the USA.
Well the irony is, this video must have been made in an air conditioned office only!!
I heard about a group of students in Oregon in a science club that developed polyhedral container units that could be put inside walls and regulate temperature. It has a substance that changes state around the comfortable range of temperature. when it freezes the formation of bonds releases so much heat it warms the building, and when it melts it absorbs so much energy it cools the building, then when it gets cool at night it refreezes, resetting to keep the building cool again. They got special permission to make prototypes and install them in one building.
I like how you give us this looming warning of our grim future with a few solutions that could help us in a cheerful way
MinuteEarth: Don’t use AC
Me: How bout I do anyway
this is everyone, cutting down trees for the funs and not caring about how ac warms the earth ,sad
I find these videos really helpful in learning about whatever it is your teaching... Australia (where I live) don't use nuclear power because everyone screams when they hear the word "nuke." Could you make a video explaining how nuclear energy works?
a good reason to get better isolation in your house, it doesn't just keep it warm in the winter but also cold in the summer.
You deserve to be isolated.
@@tubegerm6732 i hope the isolation cell is insulated :P
The hot air released from air conditioners as exhaust doesn't contribute to climate change. The cold air inside your home will eventually be released back to the outdoors, re-balancing the differential. Otherwise, you'd be looking at free energy, which isn't a thing.
... no? The usage of coals, fuel, and electricity takes one medium of energy (being chemical energy), and converts it to another form of energy as heat. Heat energy is constantly lost by our planet through the atmosphere, and simultaneously we gain both light and heat energy from the sun. It means the Earth is not a closed system, energy flows in and out at variable rates. One of those variable is greenhouse gases, as is their namesake, they prevent heat loss from leaving the Earth. By converting fuel into the energy used to pump out hot air, you further disrupt the planet's heat cycle. Cold air doesn't get "released" from your homes, the heat energy of objects transfers into the cold air. You assume that the heat pumped out can be let back into the house, when fluid dynamics shows hot air rises, and it is more difficult to transfer energy into insulated homes, against the direction of gravity, than it is to just release into the upper atmosphere.
Heat is energy, all air-conditioning does is transfer energy from one place to another. Air-conditioning doesn't create new energy. Therefore, it's impossible for the running of air-conditioning alone to cause any kind of global warming. It's the other factors such as electricity generation to run the air-conditioning that's the real issue. If you run a air-conditioner strictly off solar panels it has no affect on the environment because you are not creating anything that wasn't already there. You are just simply transferring energy from one place to another.
2:56
*this is fine*
Building materials like terracotta is best possible option at least for walls, reinforced terracotta also does have significant heat cycling throughput the day and night cycles.
Muralidhar Reddy Challa and it looks good I’m Minecraft too
@@riteshsiwakoti2935 My favorite is the green glazed terracotta
@YoungD3mon314 I don't think you or me would last that long to see Antarctica habitable.
@YoungD3mon314 Yeah that could work and i'm an unsocial potato
Another cool tech is "space cooling" where we literally radiate heat into space. This works by emitting infra red frequencies for which the atmosphere (=air, water vapor, clouds and dust) is transparent. Infra red telescopes use the same trick to look deep into space. Google: "radiating heat into space" and "TED space cooling"
The math behind that seems a bit dodgy, considering how low energy IR is. Interesting concept, and innovation is always welcome, nonetheless.
This reminds me of the old Patrick meme “Why don’t we just take Bikini Bottom and push it somewhere else?”
I Went To School For HVAC So I Feel Compelled To Stick Up For My Technician Brethren/Sistren By Reminding You That We're Trying Our Best To Combat The Greenhouse Issue By Using Less Harmful Refrigerants In Our AC Units. Our Technology Is Always Evolving, From The Tools We Use (Some Are Now Digitalized) To The Refrigerants We Attain To Replace The Harmful Ones.
I’ll show this video to my grandma upon her next heat stroke. Sorry grandma but you gonna have to walk it off for the planet.
1. That is true in general for any device that uses electricity from the net and is not limited to AC in any way.
2. The localized warming might be true (you unfortunately didn't tell us which of your references that number cam from for easy confirmation and further details) but it can't contribute global warming because there is no change to the total heat energy in the system (Except for the waste heat from running the AC with electricity of course but again, that's true for running any electronic device and is not specific to AC). Putting it the way it was presented in the video is misleading IMO.
3. That's not an issue with AC, that's a waste management issue and affects all devices with components that are dangerous for the environment and (again) is not specific to AC at all.
The improvement suggestions are great and should be implemented IMO but the reasons/issues shown in this video are poor and/or misleading.
Most people won't understand unfortunately, though it is refreshing to see a few comments mentioning the fact that the total heat in the system remains the same, and you actually are not adding more heat
@@mrfoodarama Burning fossil fuels to power everything including a/c units, adds energy to the system. That is the problem. Oil is part of carbon sequestration, a long term process that keeps a lot of energy out of the system.
@@mrfoodarama tl;dr We are changing the system by quickly adding in energy from millions of years ago.
2. Yes, the total heat energy of the system does increase. You can't neglect the electrical energy consumed just because every electrical device consumes electrical energy. All the energy that is consumed by the air conditioner is sent out as heat, in addition to the heat that is pumped out from the inside. Therefore, the total heat of the system increases by the amount of energy consumed by the air conditioner.
@@jasonmraz3311 Earth is not a closed system. Energy goes in, energy goes out. Not necessarily at the same rate. The problem with global warming isn't heat, it's atmospheric conditions preventing heat from leaving.
Energy production is GOOD because it increases wealth and happiness and that in turn makes people care about the environment and the future.
Definitely interesting, I never knew that AC’s alone contribute to global warming by a good amount. Summers are just gonna get hotter!
If we start a global energy project, perhaps organized by the UN, to supply Thorium fueled nuclear power to the world, including the developing world, we could essentially solve these problem for good. Waste is managable, the energy is completely clean and molten salt reactors are very reliable and safe. Ideally we could fund this project with a form of extra-national tax that is adjusted based on GDP per capita. This way the whole world gets clean, cheap energy that is fair to everyone and doesn't affect economic competition between countries.
Sadly nucler power is too stigmatized for this to be very likley to catch on.
@@tubegerm6732 Yeah. It's really frustrating to know that we have the solution to this problem in our grasp but because misguided fearmongering we refuse to use it, even as the world burns and millions starve.
Me: BRO ITS SUPER HOT OUT HERE!!! My air conditioner: hold my beer,boss
build an air conditioner around the equator. When it's winter in the northern hemisphere, face the air conditioner towards the southern hemisphere so they're cool, and the north is warm. Reverse accordingly.
people thought of that, it wont work
Thank you for this. I never thought about it.
Sounds like we need to urgently address the issue of heating homes since it is far more damaging!
Heating homes is about survival, not comfort. It isn't really possible to tell people in Britain or Scandinavia to get rid of heating.
@@pkmntrainermann4476 You are very unaware of how much cooling is VITAL to survival my new friend... No worries. I will hook you right up mate. I suggest spending a few summers in white sands new mexico or Kuwait if you would like a proper lesson in dealing with arid climates. Thankfully I now live far away from deserts these days. I have to now move, stack, and split *6 tons* of wood each year, by hand mind you to heat my home as that is the primary heat source available to me. Doing things like correcting the insolation, windows, and adding soap stone to my wood stove went a very long way to making sure that I don't have to use even more wood during the 6 months of winter I have to deal with. I can guarantee that in my town alone, at least 50% of the population has not done what I have done. Worse, there are a ton of oil fired heaters around here. So yes, addressing heating will be FAR more helpful to dealing with this issue since we only really need the AC for 3 out of 12 months. Why do we *NEED* it? Because some of us have family that literally will die in high heat that would be merely uncomfortable to others.
@@derptothemaxclearly I get that, I have been to Mexico, Arizona and malta, all of which where very hot or arid. However heating is needed from October to February in the UK, and this year it was still 10 celsius in April.
@@derptothemaxclearly Cooling is needed for survival but the amount of cooling that is needed is very less and most people who use AC are using it much more than necessary. An AC set at 27 degrees Celsius can ensure comfortable health whereas when people use AC at 24 degrees Celsius for example, it is nothing but addiction. In most places using an evaporative cooler (in dry places) or a dehumidifier (in humid places) can work very well enough and is much more sustainable than using ACs.
@@yashagrawal88 lived in 4 different desert climates in two different countries on opposite sides of the planet. Gotta say I disagree with you about evaporative coolers. They tend to be so inefficient that they are on left on constantly in addition to using water directly.
few years back, only our house had an AC in the neighborhood but today everyone has it . .
Back in 1990 me and my brother would play outside in the Florida summer. Was never unbearably hot like it is today.
Why Don’t We Make A Heat Sink? A Copper Heat Sink Using AC’s That Put Hot Air Inside The Copper Room, And Since It’s Copper, It Could Collect Sunlight Energy. Like Solar Panels.
And It’s A Regenerative Building. Mentioned At The End.
When I visit my Dad's friend in Phoenix, Arizona. I was so surprised that why A/C in the US is central system, I meant it used so much energy to cool the whole house. Compared with my country, Thailand, which we only turn on the a/c in the room we only used, mostly bedroom.
Luckily, we once tried to have air conditioner and immediately stopped when we figured out that ACs consume a lot of electricity and increase the electricity bill by almost 100x. And never thought about having one again 😁
if minisplit ones, find the inverter ones
I think you overestimate the proportion of energy produced being used to power AC units
'Climate change' sells. If your science research is not related to climate change somehow, you can forget about getting grants. So everybody jumps on the climate change gravy train.
@@PaulaJBean
That's funny because many government tend to be somewhat hostile toward climate research
especially the US, so I doubt they'll give much money to that sector
@@Pac0Master NASA was given a 2B dollar budget to study Climate Change Exclusively, by being told to divert all research over from Space Exploration and in Total the US spends over 166 Billion Dollars since 2016.
@@pathfinder290 Gonna need source for that.
www.popularmechanics.com/space/a13895/president-obama-nasa-funding/
"NASA would get $1.9 billion for Earth science, something that could prove contentious in Congress given the number of anthropogenic climate change deniers on Capitol Hill."
www.climatedollars.org/full-study/us-govt-funding-of-climate-change/
After examining the reports, and removing double counting, calculations show that from Fiscal Year 1993 to FY 2014 total U.S. expenditures on climate change amount to more than $166 billion in 2012 dollars.
GODDAMIT, even AC isn’t safe!
2:05 - this is happening in 2020. New R-600 is essentially propane, so while flammable (if mixed with just the right amount of air), it is not a greenhouse gas and does not need to be recovered at the end of the unit's life.
still, wouldnt release it tbh
0:28 Also because heaters generally burn fossil fuels directly, while ACs, being electric, can be powered by whatever. ACs are also more efficient (>400% in most cases). The main actual problem is the refrigerants.
Also, using ACs to heat buildings (usually called Reverse Cycle Air Conditioners or Heat Pumps), will drastically reduce the need to expand the electric grid compared to resistive heating, but finding good heat pumps that aren't price gouged to the point of just not being worth it in the US is challenging.
Just judging from title... No.
Air Conditioning units are just heat pumps, they just move heat from one place to another (if you don't count small amount of motor heat from compressor and fans)
This is an old comment but... do watch the video, it's more complicated than that.
We approve of this cool message!
😎
I wonder what the relations between PBS and MinuteStuff are now
Refrences:
1:09 Wall-E
2:05 This is fine dog
I am Glad that in my home I don't have AC. I think in India just like me , most families have air cooler . They consume 80% less energy than ACs and does not release any harmful pollutants.
cries/laughs in table fan.
I see you animator who put the bi and trans pride colors on the server lights. 11/10 you rock
1:17 actually the refrigerants don't trap heat, they bond to upper atmospheric ozone, destroying the ozone layer which leads to increased global temperatures.
The ozone layer is concentrated at the Earth's poles, blocking the Sun's thermal radiation from making contact with the sensitive polar ice caps.
Without the ozone layer, the thermal ice caps will melt more quickly, allowing more heat to stay in the Earth's atmosphere, etc etc. This is taking too long. You get the point.
(ASE certified refrigerant operater from 2009. Sorry if I made a mistake from memory)
2:19-2:56. That sounds cool on paper, but where is all this money going to come from? Inflation is enough to make people live paycheck to paycheck, telling us to spend even more money on this(while understandable) is completely asinine.
Future me not using AC during the summer: Ah that’s hot that is hot
40C (105F) where I'm at right now, This is fine...
17 for me
@@marc_frank,
Where do you live? I'm from the Netherlands.
Socialists: For the sake of the planet, you’ll just have to live with it.
@@erik-ic3tp germany
@@GamerFromJump i don't have to live with shit cranking the ac now
That is the cutest sad CO2!
A scientist in India has developed a plaster known as Vedic Plaster which keeps the building cold in summers and warm in winters and that plaster is made from natural materials
As someone who works as system planer, engineering technical equipment for buildings, I can say that most of the people who live in temperate climates don't actually need air conditioning. Heating and window ventilation enough create a comfortable living climate. In Germany for instance, air conditioning is only common in hotels. Nobody uses them in the private sector, unless you don't own a passive house. Unfortunately, like everywhere else, we humans are very lazy and therefore want to let everything work automatically. By doing that, we also increase the risk of diseases and allergies, because we are constantly surrounded by perfect air and can no longer bear the slight impurities and temperature differences. Making everything perfectly clean, doesn't keep you healthy.
Air conditioners that help stop the environment warming:
*insert here photo of hide-the-pain harold*
The thermodynamic equilibrium part of this video is completely asinine, and you need to take a visit over to your MinutePhysics cousins for a crash course. You discredit your two valid points (renewable energy and coolant leaks) just by including this.
The AC moves hot air from inside to outside, which increases the temperature in cities, which leads to more air conditioner use, exacerbating all their other heating effects in the process.
Well-said, OP.
This video is extremely misleading and disingenuous, and it only takes high-school physics to figure out why.
MinuteEarth, WRONG.
The main environmental effect of a heat pump is the power consumption of its electric motor (which could come from renewable sources, a fact conveniently omitted from the video). Of course, *all* power eventually becomes waste heat, but that's it.
The thermal energy dumped outside your house *does not* change the overall thermal output of your city (unless of course you only place thermometers outside, and disingenuously claim that the average temperature has risen!)
*You can completely reverse the effect of a heat pump* (be it your fridge, or AC) *just by leaving it turned off for a few hours.*
buildings that are naturlly cooler?
what happens if we live in those buildings during the winter?
You'd have to burn more fossil fuel at winter to get warm.
@Fortescue how does that work?
I crank my AC on 60 degrees F every morning so it's nice and cool when I come home in the evening! Make enough to afford it, and it feels great!
making it free to return appliances with refrigerants in them would be a big start to stopping escaping chemicals. It may work in large cities to charge people but as soon as you live in a city where a 20 minute drive puts you in the middle of no where, charging to recycle appliances just puts more appliances in the middle of no where.
That isn't irony, it's the law of conservation of energy.
0:12 I see those pride flags!
Clever, 2nd computer unit the lines are in the trans flag design.
Uuhhh ok
wow, that is a good catch. I had to google what a trans flag looked like to confirm
The bi flag's on there, too
I disagree
Wow so now blame it on the developing countries, not addressing the fact few countries who have citizens pouring tons of co2 everyday.
If they blame it on Boeing or similar then they end up committing sudoku :(
a house that will keep cool in the summer will also keep cool in the winter. therefore pumping extra heating defeating the purpose the house was built for, sustainability
If it's good at preventing heat from entering it will prevent it from escaping
You are absolutely right. In india more people are coming in upper middle income group and buying more expensive things like A.C.s all my friends have ac in their home i am planning to have my first one in next month. But when we think about global warming it is depressing.
Thanks to air conditioning, this video was made possible
We will do nothing. That's a fact.
Not if Elon Musk can help it...
@@senantiasa Elon Musk won't do shit, maybe he'll send a full auto warehouse into space but that's it
Elon Musk should see this video
That's why when I first understood thermodynamics, I thought of making a big fucking Air Conditioner powerful enough to send all the heat out in space...... 😇
Yeah, I really thought about that.....
Yeah, the video is *definitely* not clear in explaining what causes the earth to heat up in connection with ACs.
AC moves the heat from inside to outside, but the cooler air inside now cools the inside walls, which in turn cool the outside walls, ultimately letting the temperature balance out. The only problem is the burning of fossil fuels to achieve this, ACs moving hot air from one place to another don’t raise the earth’s temperature.
Think of a ball bouncing on the ground then coming to a stop, heating the ground under it in the process. The ball’s loss of kinetic energy is a lot more apparent to us than the heating of the ground under it, but no energy is lost in the process, it is just converted from kinetic to thermal, and the kinetic aspect of what is happening is just easier to grasp with our senses. In the same vein, an AC directly blowing out hot air onto poor poor cities feels a lot more acute and palpable than the coolness houses/apartments emanate after being cooled down by ACs, but they’re both the exact same amount of energy. Moving hot air from one place to another doesn’t warm the earth - burning fossil fuels to do so does.
Its simple: just live in Germany- almost no one has air con 😜
Yet.
@@aviadlampert5956 It's not a joke if it's not fucking funny. You should have not said anything and kept your monstrous "sense of humor" to yourself, where it doesn't hurt people.
@@jahmocha9542 Welcome to the interwebs.
Aviad Lampert the 300k jews
Or, you know, just dispose of your trash properly.
+
We are sailing in Europe during their current heat wave. The cities are crazy hot but it’s cool out on the water. The boat remains in the 70s while the city gets over 100F!
The problem with refrigerant gasses is not their greenhouse gas effect (as they are short lived in the atmosphere) but rather the fact that they catalytically destroy the ozone layer.
There has been a recent spike in illegal refrigerant production and the ozone has begun depleting again.
00:47 "air conditioning also burn fossil fuels" you mean in USA, right? A lot of countries are living consuming less fossil fuels with an electricity matrix based on renewables, nuclear and hydro.
You should look it up: 87% of the world energy is produced by burning stuff. 30% coal, 33% oil, and 24% natural gas. Hydro and nuclear account for only 11% unfortunately
In my country it is more than 90% hydro (Brazil by the way 6th largest population).
rip Africa, Middle weast and everywhere else that’s hot
Just turn them all backwards! Now you’re cooling the outside, problem solved!
/s
no
0:48 When your power is hidroelectric and ignore al that parte when it says that electricity produces CO2
even then, the chunk of our power that isn’t hydro gets bigger the more energy we use
It looks like we might need to use less air-conditions to help control the global climate. I think that it might be better for many people to use fans because fans don't cause global warmings.
So what if we reversed that air conditioning, make my house warm? That would be very "cool" In winter.
That's what a heat pump is.
When you see the video in your recommendations before you get the notification: >:V