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Comment by smsm42 | Hacker News Reader

> Everyone turning ther A/C on is actually making the planet hotter.

That's bull. I won't have absolutely any effect on the planet if I run my AC 24/7 for all my life. The scales are way too different. You are free to do what you want but please spare me the sanctimonious baloney.

BTW, how do you get to the sea - I bet it's in a car and not on the back of a unicorn? At least most people do. Same as they get to air-conditioned malls (whose AC would probably be consuming energy couple of orders of magnitude more than that home AC) and other places. As I said, it's your choice how to deal with it but please, less posturing.

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Ac works by pumping heat out of the house and pulling Air in that passes by coils with compressed solvent. When solvent changes from liquid to gas when released into the coils under less pressure, the molecules absorb heat energy from the incoming air (gasses inheritely have more energy because the molecules are moving around faster). The gasses used are greenhouse gasses which contribute to making the world hotter. You say it's on a small scale, and I agree with you, but so is an individual cow, but cattle contribute a large percentage of the greenhouse gasses. The collective use of air conditioning does indeed contribute to climate change. While it does push out hot air, I don't think this would have a noticeable immediate effect on the local temperature.

Oh and btw I love AC and am totally wtfing about not having AC now that it's hot and all the fans being sold out wrf.

Thank you, I know how AC works. The point is the difference is minuscule, on home scale. Unless all home AC users start to vent their refrigerant tanks into the atmosphere (which would defeat the whole purpose of having AC), and keep doing it for decades, the effect of it would be nil. In practice, the leaks are small and are promptly fixed because when refrigerant is leaking, AC is useless and nobody wants that. Of course, it would be nice to use even better chemicals (such as HFOs), but even now the contribution of home AC - if properly used and disposed - is small.

> The collective use of air conditioning does indeed contribute to climate change.

Not significantly more than any other use of the same energy.

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