Do Americans Need Air-Conditioning? | Hacker News Reader

Do Americans Need Air-Conditioning?

nytimes.com

18 pointsdarod47 comments

This is not a particularly clever article. It conflates the question of "Are American offices overcooled?" with "Do we really need air conditioning?" The answer to the former is probably yes, but the latter is most certainly also yes. The author makes not even a passing mention of the American Southwest, the Gulf Coast or Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The current standard of living in these areas without air conditioning would essentially be impossible.

One thing I still can't get used to since my arrival to North America in 2005 is that people tend to set temp too low in summers (18-21) and too high (26-28) in winters. Everyone in the company is complaining but none of them, even the VPs, managed to bring the temp to a more "normal" range.

A lot of the need for AC (and having lights on) is just really, really bad modern house design. I recently finished building a house (my first one) and everyone acted like I was crazy for not building in central air conditioning.

I built in an older style, with windows on every side, with a mind towards ventilation and light. Inexplicably most houses in the area, even $500k+ houses do not have these two things. My mom's condo has central air but the system is so feeble and the venting upstairs so poor that two bedrooms in the house remain stuffy anyways. It seems like light and natural ventilation are not even afterthoughts, but non-thoughts, and the designs all rely on electric light and forced air.

I also built 9 foot ceilings on the first floor and 8.5 on the second. Then I placed the attic (3rd story) door centrally in the upstairs hallway. The result of the design is that airflow moves on the first floor in all directions, and upward, and on the second floor can move at least east-west (bathroom and hallway windows), and also north-south if bedroom doors are open. Finally, air flows upwards to the attic, which has windows north-south.

If I close windows in the morning and open around 7pm, the result is that the house stays very cool, about(? only tested with temp gun a few times) 74 downstairs and 76 upstairs during these 90 degree days, and then gets cooler at night as I open windows again. So far, I've only bought one fan, though things might work better with more. Note I'm not an expert or an architect, I just included some design features that should be obvious to anyone who's lived in an old house for a summer.

This takes some manual control, but there are far fewer parts to maintain (this was a general design goal beyond AC), and last month's electric bill was $54 (New Hampshire).

I'd love to use windows (and attic fans) to better manage temperatures, but a large part of my family suffers from allergies.

After being in Europe during the heatwave, I really did miss air conditioning when it was 35-40C yet there was no place to cool down (restaurants even closed because it was too hot to cook in the kitchen). Usually this type of weather is not the norm for Western Europe, but if the weather keeps getting hotter on average that may not be the case anymore. Still, while it’s unpleasant, with the right adjustments it is possible to manage without AC for short periods (granted, if the humidity was like Florida, I would take that back). That’s just what it’s like to have to live with seasons. Some highs and some lows.

In the US, air conditioning is ubiquitous, yet also inefficient temperature management. It’s like Goldilocks - rarely just right. When it’s hot and humid outside, the shock of cold and dry indoors is nice at first, but soon overbearing to adjust to. Same goes in winter when it’s 0C outside, yet 25C inside, so it feels like a sauna in long pants and a sweater. I wish temperature control was more adjusted to external environmental conditions to provide more “modest” conditioning. In my opinion, that’s the cost of living in an environment, having to adjust to it throughout the year. It doesn’t have to be as extreme as toughing out 40C in a jacket, but when it’s summer, it’s just bound to be a little sweatier for a while. Our bodies can get to used to it, but it’s more difficult with more temperature shocks from place to place.

I think the question should be 'could we survive' by turning up the thermostat... I'm miserable if it falls below 72 (I used to be hot all the time, had surgery in 2012 and now I'm always cold), but in the winter I set the heater to 64 and just bundle up. In the summer so far we've had the furnace off all summer except when my wife was baking up a storm for a birthday party and needed to keep the atmosphere cool for the cakes and because she raised the indoor temp 20 degrees.

We live by the mountains and luckily face the sun in a way that our indoor temp runs about 10 degrees less than outdoor w/ the windows up. If we started getting 90+ inside I might decide to turn on A/C, but so far it only gets to 84 this summer, and it's not so bad in the basement where it's closer to 74, or in front of the window fan in the living area.

If society as a whole could just choose collectively to set a minimum thermostat threshold of 78 for summer and 64 for winter, I think that alone could have a drastic effect on climate change. Freeze or sweat a little and be a little uncomfortable? So what deal with it. It's life, but we don't need to go to extremes and freeze/heat a lot or past what is bearable. If we can't mentally function as a result and do our jobs then we need to alter things.

We might even find ourselves and bodies get 'used' to the new temperatures. People in phoenix wear parka's when it drops below 70, because they're accustomed to a different temp and it feels unbearably cold to them.

Americans need data centers and data centers need air conditioning.

Funny story: I once was paged to be part of a shut down exercise of services in a backup data center in the middle of an ice storm where the whole city was shut down. The chillers stopped working and the DC was overheated. They had security open doors etc but they couldn’t get enough chilled air into the building. The first thought was that the AC units had somehow frozen over. The postmortem found that the AC units had not been programmed for temperatures lower than 28 degrees and had just shut themselves off.

[O]n average, heating an American home with natural gas produces about 6,400 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2, a major warming gas). . . . A typical centrally air conditioned home in Florida, for instance, produces about 6,600 pounds of CO2.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=139417...

Yes. Most of the United States is either continental or subtropical climate, which gets brutally hot and humid in the summer. Air conditioning is as necessary as heating in the winter.

Most of Europe is either oceanic or mediterranean, which either doesn't get hot at all or only gets dry heat.

Here's my anecdata:

I had a house in the Mojave Desert. In summer the temperature would run 105-115° during the day and 95-110° at night for most of July, August, and September.

I'm not from the desert, so I racked up $200/month power bills for my small home. (I kept it set at 80° when I was home, and 76° when my wife was home.)

My neighbor across the street (with a wife and three kids) didn't seem to mind for the most part. He would have his windows open until the temperature got to 105°. Then he'd open them again at night on those days when it dipped below 100°.

Even if the temperature was over 110° there were plenty of people driving around with their car windows open. And I'm talking brand new luxury cars, not junkers.

Some people are just bothered more by heat than others.

Yeah some people (locals) are just more used to heat/cold. I moved around every few years so I'm kind of prepared to most of the weird weathers (no desert heat though, but wet heat and super cold winters).

The parent said hot and humid. Dry heat is much more tolerable, and your body handles it pretty well. No doubt it still bothers some people more than others, but at least IME, even 110F, while it feels plenty warm, especially in the sun, is tolerable, especially in shade. A good breeze can even make it comfortable. You just need to drink a lot of water (to me it's dangerous in that you don't see how much water you're losing), and you will tire more quickly.

Humidity makes evaporation much less effective. While you obviously sweat in 110F dry heat, it's not really noticeable. Go outside in 85F 100% humidity, and you will be absolutely miserable, and drenched in sweat. This is mainly what makes humidity so awful: the sweat. That said, at least it's very obvious how much water you're losing.

Additionally, the water in the air "holds" heat, so generally daytime highs and nighttime lows are not that far apart, whereas in drier climates its usually (but not always, going by your post), the case that the nighttime sees a solid temperature drop.

You can become heat adapted, so you sweat much less, but it only works up to a point and spending time in AC resets you if you're not staying out in the heat day after day after day.

  95-110° at night for most of July, August, and September.

Excuse me? Deserts cool significantly at night. If you look at USWS forecast for Mojave for this week, for example, the nightly low is never higher than 72F and usually less... and this is with the longest days of the year.

Excuse me?

You're excused.

Deserts cool significantly at night

Certain deserts cool significantly in certain places at night. "Deserts" are not identical nor homogenous.

If you look at USWS forecast for Mojave for this week, for example, the nightly low is never higher than 72F

There is no such thing as a "USWS forecast for Mojave." Perhaps you are thinking of the town of Mojave, California, which is one small place in a more temperate portion of a large desert?

Regardless, this week and the entire year is not typical for the Mojave Desert. It has been unusually cool and moist. The Mojave Desert isn't Ohio. It doesn't have NWS weather stations every ten miles. The weather stations you see reporting on the internet are people with uncalibrated contraptions in their backyards, or computer-generated guesses.

The NWS historical data page doesn't load right now, so here's a link from Wunderground for one year ago today in a populated place with a proper weather station: Las Vegas: https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/nv/las-vegas/K...

It's far from the hottest place in the Mojave, but you can see that the low temperature, which occurred at 9pm was 93°. That is normal, not 72°.

Anyone who's lived in the desert for any length of time can tell you that the numbers you see on the internet are far from the truth. NWS, quite reasonably, concentrates its efforts on populated and agricultural areas.

I lived it for five years.

You said you lived in the desert (and, here, imply an unpopulated area), not by airport tarmac which retains heat and reradiates it all night. You specifically chose the airport as your data point for this comment, and even it doesn't have 110F nighttime temperatures with any frequency.

  There is no such thing as a "USWS forecast for Mojave."

Really? I just went to weather.gov and entered Mojave in the search box, and it gave a menu of options (more options for more detail). The top option says "Mojave Desert". Drilling down to the 10 day forecast shows the highest overnight low for the next 10 days at that top Mojave reference to be 70F.

Sure, microclimates vary, but you made a general reference.

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=35.41665000000...

I fail to understand. Thick stone walls yield cold rooms passively.

I fail to understand. Thick stone walls yield cold rooms passively.

For a while, not not indefinitely.

In European climates, it cools off at night or through moisture, allowing the stone to release the heat it stored during the day.

There is a vast swath of the United States larger than Europe where it simply does not cool down at night and/or moisture is insufficient, and so stone buildings become ovens.

Yeah and if you open the windows more heat air comes in...somehow we managed to survive when I was young (80s) and we didn't have air conditioning in a wet heat area. But I won't make it without air conditioning nowadays, because 1) global warming 2) less resistant ot heat

The other thing is most new houses are constructed without any concerns to natural (cross ventilation) cooling. My previous house was built in 98, and had huge windows that happened to line up on the east and west sides. They let in a lot of light, but also too much heat (even with blinds and thick curtains closed, still too much heat for the AC to keep up with). That, and the neighborhood was former farm field, so the only trees were the ornamental (short) ones that were put in front of every house.

Where I'm at now, only 20 miles away, was built in the 70's, much fewer windows, no vaulted ceiling, and the summer AC bill dropped by more than half. And the neighborhood is older with many mature trees -- everywhere I look is green. So overall much more pleasant.

Absolutely. I investigated some new condos last year but either they have pitiful area, or low quality materials. Much worse than the older ones (but the older ones have higher condo fees)

Oh ok, I'm deeply wrong then

That's a pretty harsh litmus test for climate activism.

I lived a number of years with cars that lacked air conditioning. It can be pretty unpleasant. AC is pretty high up on my list of things I really, really want to have.

In Phoenix yes, but I can get through winter without using a heater.

Yes. Above 75 and I start sweating, and the humidity in the swamp gets unbearable. Without air conditioning, or significant air flow, I don't think a lot of DC would be livable.

These articles are frustrating because they don't take into account the large percentage of the population that doesn't live in a place like New York or Boston.

Houston would be unbearable in the summer without AC. No one is suggesting we do away with indoor heating.

People in Spain and the rest of the Mediterranean have managed to live without AC for millenia. Some old houses, centuries old, are cool as a cucumber during some of the worst months of summer.

And yet, in my experience, it’s like Americans are allergic to insulation and building houses appropriate to the climate. Something is very weird when houses in SF look just like houses in Portland which look just like houses in every suburban photo of the US I’ve ever seen.

In Europe architecture changes with the climate, in the US it doesn’t seem to (or at least I haven’t noticed and please tell me that i’n wrong)

99PI did a wonderful episode on this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-delight/

Basically, the US abandoned their regionally different architecture once AC became common.

another case of technological dead end

> Some old houses, centuries old, are cool as a cucumber during some of the worst months of summer.

Those places also probably don't routinely hit 90% humidity levels. You sweat profusely even in the shade here (think Florida in the summer if you've ever been).

In places as hot an humid as the American south, pretty much everyone gets AC as soon as they can afford to do so. If they do not have AC, it is because they are too poor to afford it.

I'm actually kind of a hippie minimalist at heart. I'm willing to give up my car and bike everywhere. I'm willing to go vegan to save the environment. I'd even be willing to crank the AC up to 80 degrees to reduce power consumption. But I would never live in a place with no AC whatsoever, no matter how the building was built. It's one of the last luxuries I'd give up, along with daily showers.

Not sure if Spain is the best example since AC is already very popular there and growing in popularity: http://www.ine.es/jaxi/Datos.htm?path=/t25/p500/2008/p01/l0/...

The average temperature in Madrid in July is 9C cooler than in Phoenix. Good insulation would reduce the cooling costs (and it's sort of absurd how many homes in hot areas don't have good insulation), but no amount of insulation will keep a house cool when the ambient temperature doesn't even make it down to 25C at night for a month or longer.

Portland and SF have similar climates, so you would expect them to look similar. Portland has rain instead of fog, but both rarely get notably hot or cold.

How did people get anything done in Houston before ACs became common in the mid 20th century?

How did people get anything done in Houston before ACs became common in the mid 20th century?

Swamp coolers. When I lived in Houston, they were very common.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler

My dad lived here in the fifties. People used fans and got used to it. You just would sweat a lot.

But there's a good argument that AC lead to the rapid growth of a lot of southern and sun-belt cities. I know if it didn't exist, I would take a hard look at living here.

https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/06/cities-might-not-exist-...

But really, how would northerners react if the Houston Chronicle wrote an article entitled "Do we really need heating?" suggesting that people get thick blankets and wear warm coats indoors. A few people in the comments might have a few provocative things to say about the kind of lifestyles of people who live up north, and suggest they move to the kind of place that doesn't need extensive heating.

Well, when I was a young sprout we used to use thicker blankets in winter, and that was in Rome, Southern Europe. Today I live in Amsterdam - Northern Europe - and people chill outside bars wearing T-shirts under blazing hot gas heaters... very Titanic IMHO

AC actually opened up the south to office buildings. They most likely wouldn't exist (except where necessary) without it.

Imagine a company offering a great relocation package doing exactly what you want for 40% more money, but you have to sweat inside a 95 degree, humid office in the summer.

Would you take it?

Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? Both this and your previous post have been so, and it's a thing we're trying to avoid here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough. I rewrote it to be less provocative.

Obviously we do as do other nations especially at work. Who the fuck wants to slave away in a fucking sweatshop just to save the employer some money or to cut some energy. Only a truly idiotic employer would remove air conditioning in exchange for the inevitable lower productivity and higher employee disengagement especially in fields like software that require a lot of deep thinking. And it is absolutely essential for sleeping well at night. Sleep is not negotiable. So yeah we need it. What we don't need are stupid articles like this that can't even make the point they're trying to make compelling.

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