Posted on 08/29/2021 11:16:07 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
When did indoor air become cold and clean?
Air conditioning is one of those inventions that have become so ubiquitous, that many in the developed world don’t even realize that less than a century ago, it didn’t exist. Indeed, it wasn’t so long ago that the air inside our buildings and the air outside of them were one and the same, with occupants powerless against their environment.
Eric Dean Wilson, in his just published book, “After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort,” dives deep into the history of this field. It took more than just inventing the air conditioner to make people want to buy it. In fact, whole social classes outright rejected the technology for years. It took hustle, marketing skill, and mass societal change to place air conditioning at the center of our built environment.
Wilson covers that history, but he has a more ambitious agenda: to get us to see how our everyday comforts affect other people. Our choice of frigid cooling emits flagrant quantities of greenhouse gas emissions, placing untold stress on our planet and civilization. Our pursuit of comfort ironically begets us more insecurity and ultimately, less comfort.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I flew to Texas once in summer. As soon as I got off the aircraft I was dripping in sweat with my sunglasses fogging over. My driver told me I’d get used to it. I told him I wouldn’t be there that long.
Not sure about currently but a few years ago I was able to purchase a good stock of R-22 for my “older” home A/C system out of Texas on eBay. Just one top-up of my system put me ahead financially vs. using the local HVAC folks.
There’s plenty of good vids on YouTube for instruction.
LOL, people that say they’re used to it, are lying their asses off. I love Texas, been here 45 years, but this is not a place you want to visit during July through September.
He looks like the kind of guy who would be really popular in say, a biker bar, or prison.
Well here goes AC. Sweat to death in southern summers back on the menu. 😣
As my Dear Mother used to say, “some People are so smart, they’re stupid”.
The older I get, the more I understand what she meant.
‘Without AC, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada would still be mostly uninhabited stinking desert.’
The entire growth of the South & West of the country in the past 75 years is entirely due to the accessibility of the average middle class person to own an air conditioner & to get central air.
No one would voluntarily live in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Orlando, Oklahoma City or dozens of other cities without air conditioning.
That’s easy to do in Connecticut or here in Cleveland were I live. It is the rarest of years that we get more than a handful of 90 deg days. In Houston the average temperature for several months is over 90 deg. It’s always 99 deg & 99% humidity there.
What, all four black people in Portland?
Portland Demographics
White alone, 77.4%
Black or African American alone, 5.8%
American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 0.8%
Asian alone, 8.2%
I know. But that was the assertion on the call. I wanted to point out blacks in the south have AC.
Freon was phased out due to it’s effect on the ozone layer. The new ozone-friendly refrigerants have been found to be potent greenhouse gasses. So, now they have some new new refrigerants that are presumably ozone and greenhouse friendly. When a few hundred million people switch over, they will reveal the downside of this new stuff. It probably causes cancer.
Yahoo...you’re not that smart.
Nothing like an old R-12 Air Conditioner. Get so cold it makes your nipples hard!
They dont have to they can shut it down via smart tech
Columbia SC in the middle of summer.
‘many in the developed world don’t even realize that less than a century ago, it didn’t exist....’
This guy is a complete Bozo! Air conditioning is 120 years old. The first modern air conditioner was invented in 1902 by Willis Haviland Carrier, the man should be canonized!
And Arizona, too.
Until the early 80s, unless it was a store, mall, or some other commercial, government, or school, at most a window unit.
Very few vehicles had AC in my immediate family I can remember also until the 80s.
I am still in the habit of running windows down on all but the hottest days.
The AIDS he catches from anal sex will take him out before the bogey man of so-called “climate change.”
My favorite saying is; the older I get the smarter my dad becomes. Unfortunately I lost him 20 years ago now. So I tell him in absentia hoping he hears me. 🙂
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