To Ban Air-con

[chaosmaker]

On a rapidly heating planet, shouldn't we be looking for ways to build/fit housing for all sorts of extreme weather?
Air-con just makes it hotter for everyone overall as it adds heat into the environment and makes it worse overall.

The UK climate is temperate and most of the world's population has bigger temperature swings - look at most of the US, Canada, Central Europe, Russia, etc etc. Hotter in summer and colder in winter than the UK.

YABU. Like another poster, come and prise it from my cold dead hands. Summer is fucking unbearable in humid Australia. Air con restores my sanity in the heat. In winter we don’t need any heating so I guess it balances out.

I understand your point but Aircon is a necessity in many countries and it's only going to get worse. We just need to find a more eco friendly way of producing energy

Even adjusting for population, Europe’s average annual heat-related mortality rate (some 175’000 people a year) exceeds the US gun death rate (including suicide). So more air conditioning would seem a better option.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152766

yeah but maybe the poster was referring to the shorter amount of time between such swings.

I’m pretty sure it was within the last 2 weeks that my heating came on overnight because the temperature dropped so low. And now we need the air con on.

good luck when you’re in hospital with heat stroke ! Mine will be going 24/7 if needs be

If you're going to do that then we should ban heating as well.

In terms of adapting houses to the climate I'm not sure the frequency of the temperature swings matter though?

Yeh and me putting bottles in those awful recycling bins that make houses look like shit holes whilst China pump out ozone-busting pollution.

BAN AC???????!?

We have east and west facing windows and it's a nightmare! The morning sun comes in heats the house up, you get a bit of a break in the middle of the day if you sit downstairs because the upstairs is baking, and then on an evening you get double boiled as the sun starts to set and then even with the windows open all night the amount of heat energy within the house means it is too slow to cool. Nobody sleeps well.

SORRY?

We should ban you!

Try living in phoenix Arizona.

Ridiculous idea

Like banning heating

It regularly hits minus 20 in the winte where I live... If we didn't have heating, we'd be burning forests all day to keep warm

I’d ban private jets and AI first!

On a rapidly heating planet, available Aircon should be mandatory. Drives me insane that climate change puritans would rather people boil to death.

We've got an 80s architect designed house with all sorts of quirky/weird design additions but it's boiling in summer and freezing in winter. We've added cavity wall and new loft insulation, got a Worcester boiler, new glazing... and we still hadn't cracked it. Then we got insulated blinds for inside all the window recesses and added blackout linings to all the roman blinds/curtains outside the recesses. They keep heat out in summer and heat in during winter. Absolute game changer. It was only 24c in the house at the peak of day yesterday.

My AC unit runs on solar energy, can I keep it?

It’s routinely below 3 degrees for months at a time where I live - not all parts of the UK have the same weather.

We keep talking about building houses that cope with hot temperatures, but that's not what's being built. Brick - warms up and stays warm. If you get a prolonged hot spell you're basically living in a kiln. Then the flats that seem to pop up these days are all glass and no openable windows - how can you vent hot air outside?
No amount of through breeze is going to change the fact that it was 26 degrees at 9pm last night though.
As someone said above the issue is actually the nightly temperatures staying high. People can't cool off to sleep and that has health impacts.
We are also very north - some areas see the sun from 4am to 10pm at night. The length of day is also an issue when getting very high temperatures that you cannot build your way out of.

So in short, I disagree. We need AC.

We own a house half an hour inland from the Med. I completely agree with this comment.

My point was more about making the problem worse than the energy it consumed. Shops are often too cold in the summer when you've come from the outside heat and it's an extreme temperature jump.
I do have central heating which I use as little as possible.
The wind funnels look fantastic.
The centre for alternative technology in North Wales has a house that that was built in the seventies and stays the right temperature in any season. Also has a conservatory on the front for growing your own.
We could use our waste for energy as well (side effects would be cleaner rivers)

100%

While they accumulate air miles in their private jets shuffling between air conditioned properties around the world.