or you know, dont live in the desert e.g Phoenix Arizona, or if you do decide to live in the desert then realise that's your choice and dont add to pollution and climate change by trying to cool down a desert with AC.
Which is funny, because you can always and universally add an extra layer of clothes to keep warm. You literally don't need heating as long as you forgo internal plumbing. But there is no universal alternative to AC to cool something down and people die all the time from heat exhaustion at home.
To "oceanplexian": Note that I used the word "universal". Evaporative cooling only works in dry climates. And the funny thing about dry climates is that they almost all lack water. I'll never forget the feeling of dread and horror when I saw water fans in Madrid cooling outdoor seating areas.
Your desert cooler is an environmental calamity and they should be banned.
To "celticninja": Yes you can do all those things but not universally in any climate (which was my point) and where it is possible it's probably an environmental disaster to do so (I can't think of any city in a dry climate in the world that doesn't have a water sustainability problem). You see we rely on AC (to your point), because we've thought the problem through and didn't stop at a shallow understanding.
Jeez guys! If your climate is dry enough for swamp coolers to be effective, they're dry enough for solar panels to make sense (if you care about CO2. I don't, I'm on acetaminophen). And it makes a lot more sense than wasting mineral water (i.e. well water).
Heat pumps are more than 100% efficient at heating the house, which is what we want, and one of the places where we are on the same side as thermodynamics.
As in you’re merely absorbing some of the heat from the sun to then move existing heat around?
Frankly, even without solar power it wouldn’t generate “extra” heat directly over a long timescale, it would only accelerate the release of existing “heat” currently trapped in oil/gas/nuclear/etc.
Once the heat is captured by the solar panel, I think you’re right using it for a/c is neutral - just moving heat around.
As for burning stored energy, that has to play into the heat dynamics of the globe. Like if you release it all at once it stops processes that would remove it from the atmosphere (animals and plants die), and it creates runaway heating feedback loops. there is some level of burning stored carbon that the planet can buffer and absorb and results in no change in global temperature. So burning stored energy in excess of that is a big problem. Like how you can sit or walk without noticeably sweating, but running causes you to have to actively cool yourself by sweating.
And the Delta(T) that an AC has to work with are far more favorable in AZ summers than a heating heatpump in MI's upper peninsula in the winter.