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We should talk more about air-conditioning (www.technologyreview.com)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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One twisted thing about cooling and climate change: It’s all a vicious cycle. As temperatures rise, the need for cooling technologies increases. In turn, more fossil-fuel power plants are firing up to meet that demand, turning up the temperature of the planet in the process.

“Cooling degree days” are one measure of the need for additional cooling. Basically, you take a preset baseline temperature and figure out how much the temperature exceeds it. Say the baseline (above which you’d likely need to flip on a cooling device) is 21 °C (70 °F). If the average temperature for a day is 26 °C, that’s five cooling degree days on a single day. Repeat that every day for a month, and you wind up with 150 cooling degree days.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Another feedback loop is that, thanks to thermodynamics, the heat being removed from homes and businesses is transferred into the environment, further raising temperatures.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

All the energy from the sun becomes heat in the environment eventually.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Not exactly. Much of it radiates out into space. If all the sun's energy remained in the atmosphere, climate change wouldn't be a concern, as the Earth wouldn't have been habitable for humans to even evolve.