this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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A/C particularly, electricity waste. It's damn ridiculous, even for Texas. Are northerners born in fridges?
It gets to be 90ยฐF with a dew point of ~75ยฐF where I am.
You can swim in the air with those numbers and absolutely suffer heat stroke. Fans just circulate the humid as fuck hot air. :(
And that's a bit of a break here. We hit 100+F regularly over the summer, and its 82 F and 85% humidity in the mornings. No AC is bad.
Guys, I've literally lived on a tropic. Not talking about specific places where heat in times of climate change is a real health issue.
I guess I got triggered by "northerners" lol I'm from long Island NY and it gets absolutely brutal in the summer. The NE gets surprisingly gross in the summer months
Sorry for the confusion. I used it loosely as in "people from the north hemisphere well above the tropic", even though, the A/C comment is in reference to the USA in general.
But what we are all saying is that it doesn't apply to the USA in general, it's different in different parts.
it's also worth noting the secondary purpose of air conditioning is to remove humidity, as it's bad for the house.
High humidity is not a good thing to have. Especially for more northern climates where the summers are brutal and the winters are also brutal.
The climate is different in different parts of the world, you see. But if you want to live through a Texas summer without A/C, go for it and enjoy.
Jesus. I've lived in a place where it's not rare to surpass 120 F each year in summer. This is not the point, the point is to have A/C on 24/7 everywhere as soon as you are reaching 70 F.
It's 93 here today and I'm not using the AC, haven't turned it on for several weeks. That's because it's autumn and the hot days are fewer and further between now, and the lows are getting down into the 50's so in the house it's only 78 right now (which is comfortable for me, that's what I keep my AC set on during the summer). If it was 93 but August instead of October, you can bet I'd be using the AC. The overnight lows at that time of year don't go below the 70's and the house would never cool off to 78 without it.
Point is, the US is a very large country with lots of different climates, which the people who live in them are acclimated to. Northerners are acclimated to the cold so the 70's feel very warm to them, while they feel perfect to me where I live. In even hotter areas 70 may feel cool. Of course that all depends on the humidity as well.
I lived in western Montana (cold and dry climate) back in the 80's. I don't know how it is there now with climate change, but most people didn't even have air conditioners at all back then. There was no need. Even in the hottest part of the summer it got chilly or even cold at night. The house would hardly have time to heat up, you could regulate your inside temp with strategic opening and closing of windows at different times.
What's the dew point at those temperatures?
Around 100 F, depending on the humidity of the specific year. It used to be a tropical forest.
yes.
As a midwesterner here. Anything above 75f is uncomfortable for me, i either have to be functionally naked (or literally) or in a cooler temperature to be comfortable.
It also varies from person to person, although i've noticed commercial buildings will often have a lower temperature, idk why this is, might be regulation, might be social policy, something or other, who knows.
Now it makes total sense. But for real, that bit about commercial buildings is the stuff I talk about. Sometimes it's freezing and it has its toll in health too.
im not sure how much of a toll on health it would have, unless maybe you're deathly allergic to air. Aside from like environmental impacts and stuff obviously, but there's gotta be a reason lol.
https://www.ashrae.org/technical-resources/bookstore/standard-55-thermal-environmental-conditions-for-human-occupancy
seems like standards exist, another proposed idea i've seen is oversized HVAC, which would make sense.
You might be underestimating how extreme the weather gets in the American North. During the summer it'll be over 100F heat index for 3-4 months, but then in the winter the wind chill will fall as low as -45 (take your pick on units because that's a point of parity for Celsius and Fahrenheit) personally I'm uncomfortable once it gets over 70F but even when the temperature plunges into the deep negatives, you just bundle up and limit your time outside and it's not too bad. It doesn't feel much colder at -20 than it does at -5, but 90 and 110 degree heat indexes definitely feel significantly different. Climate change destabilizing the polar vortex is clearly making the extreme cold practically an annual occurrence now.
On the subject of Texas, if you were visiting a region with high humidity that may well be why the AC was running so hard. I'm not sure if the mold risk is universal or far lower for a stone structures but high humidity can ruin structures and make you very sick by incubating mold. Also modern structures are designed to be heavily insulated to the point where artificial ventilation is needed to replace stale CO2 rich air, which also means the interior needs to be regulated since it won't just breath with the outside to correct like older structures, so trapped moisture will remain trapped and fester