Kent Lassman

Today's New York Times The Daily podcast on air conditioning is bizarre. nytimes.com/2024/08/16/podca… These passages are quite remarkable to me. They argue that air conditioning is “unsustainable” partially because it requires energy that produces greenhouse gasses that warm the climate. The solution? Forgo air conditioning and jettison the ‘culturally constructed’ notion created by the “air conditioning industry” that 68 to 72°F is the ideal temperature. In reality, the reduced climate warming from avoiding air conditioning would be much less than the warming people would personally experience. In other words, the warming savings of forgoing air conditioning are nowhere near the costs. This matters because hot temperatures are detrimental to human health, and air conditioning has greatly reduced people's vulnerability to hot temperatures. It is a big part of why human heat deaths have declined despite warming. journals.uchicago.edu/doi/ab… It is also remarkable how casual the episode's dialog is about people experiencing 10-20°F hotter temperatures when normally the NYT is so hyper-focused on the negative impact of long-term warming on people, which is much less than 10-20°F. The US outdoors has warmed about 2.5°F since the middle of the 20th century. ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitor… For example, in June, the NYT ran a story on why longer heatwaves are so dangerous to people where they reported that, “For every extra degree Fahrenheit above normal temperatures, the risk of death increased by 2.5%” nytimes.com/2024/06/18/clima… So, when the NYT discusses climate change, every °F of warming is framed as extremely detrimental, but when they discuss an action that has some supposed climate benefit, many degrees of warming are framed as just a matter of inconvenience that can be overcome by cultural change. In reality, a widespread scaleback of air conditioning would undoubtedly have far-reaching negative consequences for human health that would certainly not be made up for by any reduced warming via reduced energy consumption. Climate change mitigation should focus primarily on reducing the CO2 produced per unit of energy consumed, not primarily on restricting the energy consumed per person (using Kaya terms). xitter.gq/PatrickTBrown31/status…