Air-conditioning on AlterNet
July 5th, 2006 | by jg3 |So, for the second time today I’ve run accross interesting, if not a-little-too-enthusiastic articles on this site which was previously unknown to me but one with a name that is very interesting (to me): AlterNet. The article is called Air-conditioning: Our Cross to Bear.
I’ll tell you this story while you wait for that page to load:
The first thought I had this morning as I lay drowsing in bed was, “it is so quiet here. The bird’s song is so pretty. I can’t believe that I am inside the beltway, 200 yards from a major street, 400 yards from a Starbucks, and under a mile from the Interstate. What a lovely little quiet neighborhood with big trees and happy birds.” And then, my neighbor’s air conditioner kicked on. Like the rest of the little packed-in row-house units, their air conditioner is about thirty years old and noisy enough to notice but not noisy enough to do anything about, and certainly not noisy enough to replace due to the expense. Expense that mostly stems from the fact that these rowhouses were reengineered to have individual electric-powered heat instead of one big boiler for the whole community the only space for the furnace was in the attic. If you think about the physics of distributing hot air throughout a two-story house you realize that the attic is about the worst possible option for placement of the furnace. So, if you reengineered the house to have a heat pump instead of just an air conditioner you would have a lot of work to do and you would still be left with a noisy electric-powered fan jobby that sits in the back yard and interrupts the reverie of people like me who prefer to open their windows to the natural fresh air and bird songs to air conditioner noises and sealed, recirculated air.
The heavy, muggy, rainy summer air is what makes the bridge of my nose feel slimy after I’ve been outside in the summer. It is also an important element in what gives this place the lush feeling of stuff growing on top of stuff growing on top of stuff in a delicious, deciduious thickness.
Bonus Link! Taken from the AlterNet article linked above is this article in New Scientist that shows the fuel consumption difference in using the A/C versus rolling down the windows in the car:
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