There is nothing stopping them from releasing sulfur dioxide into the air to have the same effect in an engineered and superior manner. Also, various surfaces can be painted white to reflect sunlight back into space. Trees also can be planted, and forests restored.
The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive indoor air conditioning.
> The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive air conditioning.
The heat doesn't vanish with AC, at least not unless you use a very expensive deep-underground well as a heatsink instead of the open air.
Even if everyone has AC indoor - the air outdoor will still be too hot and, most likely, humid, with all the expelled heat from the ACs added on top of that. Animals won't stand a chance, especially wild ones, and humans that absolutely have to work outside (e.g. policemen, firefighters, EMS) will be just as impacted.
We have to face the reality: large parts of the globe, impacting billions of people, will be unable to support human and a lot of animal and plant life during the summer months if climate change continues at the current pace in a short enough time that most people reading this text will eventually witness this.
There's much more air outside than inside, so 15C colder inside does not mean that the entire city gets 15C hotter outside. And in a heat event, most people are inside, not outside. 1C hotter outside to make it livable for 99% of humans sounds fine. And this is only about cities, anything living outside cities will be fully unaffected.
For the people that have to work outside: air conditioning in the vehicle, frequent breaks in air conditioned areas, and I wonder if we could get proper air conditioned clothing at some point (currently vests with fans embedded are quite frequent in Japan, but that's the best there is as of today).
But I agree with the last paragraph. Air conditioning is the only countermeasure we have but in the end the fact remains that many cities will eventually become incompatible with human life in summer.
In a dense residential community, when 70% of the units are running ACs and a minority are not, it's going to get substantially hotter than 1C for the ones that are not. It will be upward of 5C hotter in the non-AC units in my experience when the wind is minimal. The 1C you came up with does not apply in the close proximity of the dense urban air conditioning.
Reflective clothing using PDRC materials will be a lot more feasible than personal air conditioning. The latter would require a powered spacesuit anyway which makes it awkward to work. See https://youtu.be/NVAcSgLZues although it's not about clothing, but the idea is the same.
> Reflective clothing using PDRC materials will be a lot more feasible than personal air conditioning.
Doesn't change the fact that when the wet-bulb temperature (i.e. a combination of the air temperature and humidity) does not allow for evaporative cooling (aka sweating) to work any more. No matter what, you cannot survive such conditions for a prolonged amount of time, as your body will slowly cook itself.
You can survive heat on its own in dry air (that's how people have thrived across MENA deserts, or how people survive saunas), you can survive extensive moisture (that's how people and plants have thrived in the rainforests). But you physically cannot survive in a wet-bulb temperature of > 35 °C for prolonged times.
Purdue University produced a barium sulfate nanocomposite paint that has 98% reflectance in the desired band using a 150μm layer, cooling surfaces by 4.5C.
The second law of thermodynamics implies that one must spend energy as work to move thermal energy up a temperature difference. So the net effect of an air conditioner is to increase the total amount of thermal energy.
It's already silly coming from the US, but jumping to the conclusion that a random comment, on a US-based forum, is propaganda specifically for a German political slapfight, is a very funny form of political egocentrism.
it's the Prisoner's Dilemma - AC helps the individual at the expense of those outside, for whom it is now hotter (can raise ambient air temp by 2-4C). It worsens global warming in how it is powered (on hot days might have to fire up peaker plants using gas) and leaks of refrigerants.
Yes but as long as there's no international agreement where we either all stop using AC to "save the planet", then individuals will optimize for their survival and comfort, which means using AC.
You can't force people to downgrade their lifestyle when they see that only applies to them and not to other people on the planet, making their suffering in vain.
The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive indoor air conditioning.