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Comment by tstenner | Hacker News Reader

We're in the middle of finding it out with climate change.

Middle?

We're just starting. The air conditioning technology didn't hit its wall of fire yet. What we're going to do when that tech will cease to cool us?

Every AC system (from refrigerators to air conditioners) has an upper limit, which is around 41 degrees Celsius for T1 class.

You can't AC your way out of climate change anyway: they make heat. In sparsely populated areas that might be okay, but in density, you're never far from the hot exhaust of an AC unit; they exacerbate the problem.

Why would 41C be the limit for the hot side? How does it work now in hotter places?

In short: Things degrade.

More: https://angliancompressors.com/blog/how-ambient-temperature-...

There's a T3 class for up to 52 degrees Celsius. While it's higher than 41 degrees, it's not significantly higher:

https://zerohvacr.com/blogs/t1-t2-t3-explained-climate-class...

Is 52C a physical limit?

Yes. The compressor can't pump more heat outside since it's already hot from working and trying to pump out the extracted heat as well.

For T1 class of devices, that 41 degrees is also a physical limit, not an artificial cut, because of their design.

You know, thermodynamics.

Why would the limit of T1 devices matter when there are ones that already can do hotter? Thermodynamics make things harder to remove heat but not sure how they forbid it (you need the hot side to be hotter than outside to pump heat). Might need stages, for example. We can cool things 200K and more below ambient.

> What we're going to do when that tech will cease to cool us?

Move. This is already happening, with water shortages forcing people to move. Climate change will (likely) cause famines and many deaths, but the bigger effect will be mass migration.

> Move.

Another planet? How?

We assume that we will have a planet to live at the end of the day. I'm not so sure about it for the long run.

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