I'm not aware of the tech to design air conditioners.
All I know is the market is booming here in France, for personal use, because heatwaves occur more often than ever during the summer.
So far, air conditioning was mostly in use in office buildings, data centers and places of that kind over here.
It's been unavoidable for long to maintain the productivity of employees, to make sure expensive servers/computers don't literally burn out and so on when it's really hot.
But now, old people in particular must rely on it in their homes too, to simply not die from heat.
I think that's an acceptable and even necessary solution for elderly people, being skeptical otherwise.
Here is some reason why.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by independent.co.uk
Wednesday 4 July 2018 00:23
Air conditioning to tackle summer heatwaves causes surge in deadly pollution
'If our nation continues to rely on coal-fired power plants for some of our electricity, each time we turn on the air conditioning we'll be fouling the air, causing more sickness and even deaths'
Air conditioners are essential in some of the hottest parts of the world, especially as global temperatures increase, but they are responsible for harmful emissions ( Getty )
While air conditioning can quite literally be a lifesaver in a rapidly warming climate, scientists have warned that it comes with major health problems of its own.
If climate change continues at its current pace, heatwaves are expected to increase in intensity around the world, from France to India.
Experts estimate that in the past decade alone, the number of lives lost due to heatwaves has increased by more than 2,000 per cent.
One way of tackling this problem is to roll out more air conditioning systems, but according to Professor Jonathan Patz at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this means trading one problem for another.
“Heatwaves are increasing and increasing in intensity. We will have more cooling demand requiring more electricity,” he said.
“If our nation continues to rely on coal-fired power plants for some of our electricity, each time we turn on the air conditioning we’ll be fouling the air, causing more sickness and even deaths.”
In a new study published in the journal PLOS Medicine, Professor Patz and his colleagues predicted that the boost in air pollution from the fossil fuels powering these systems will cause up to 1,000 additional deaths annually in the eastern US alone.
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Buildings are the biggest energy sinks in the US, responsible for 60 per cent of power demand in the densely populated eastern region. Air conditioning is responsible for a significant portion of that demand.
In their study, which simulated future energy consumption and pollution levels, the researchers found between 5 and 9 per cent of future air pollution-related deaths could be linked to air conditioning.
Air pollution is thought to be responsible for millions of deaths every year, with toxic gases and particulates implicated in everything from cardiovascular disease to dementia.
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I'm not going to quote the whole thing. Just read the short article.
https://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...-a8428936.html
I also hear air conditioners just work pretty much like refrigerators and freezers. To cool the inside, they obviously release heat on the outside.
So it actually appears to be some very poor (and cheap, by the way) solution, not sustainable.
Experts say the only reliable thing to do today is to design buildings and cities differently.
For example, large windows with no
brise soleil (from French, "sun breaker") would not be recommended.
It is also necessary to grow many more green spaces within cities, to let them breathe, and to design urban density more like they used to in old Mediterranean towns where heatwaves are nothing much new.
You'll notice there's no large windows to old Mediterranean homes, in their ancient villages. It's often a little dark, but you still can breathe without air conditioning in there, even when temperatures hit 90°F or more.
On the other hand, urban sprawl remains far too greedy. So building cities in a dense fashion is the right thing to do.
And that's where skyscrapers can be really useful.
Your thoughts, if any. This could certainly be an interesting discussion.
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