On the necessity of heating and cooling

[knoxblox]

@d_r

This is a little deja vu for those of us old enough to recall the wailing and gnashing of teeth when Jimmy Carter told us all to turn our thermostats down to 68F in the winter.

Actually, I was chewing mostly. The temperature made it easy to sneak candy into class in your coat.

[FSogol]

There’s your problem. Commercial energy usage tops residential. The US spends more on a/c than heat.

@smulder

You spend more money on gas and electricity in the summer than in the winter?

Nope, 25+ years of doing mechanical engineering for commercial and government buildings including energy analysis and LCCA.

[Mindysan33]

@d_r

for those of us old enough to recall the wailing and gnashing of teeth when Jimmy Carter told us all to turn our thermostats down to 68F in the winter.

Examining Carter's 'Malaise Speech,' 30 Years Later

[prooftheory]

@d_r

This is a little deja vu for those of us old enough to recall the wailing and gnashing of teeth when Jimmy Carter told us all to turn our thermostats down to 68F in the winter.

I do kind of wonder how many of the people who are upset about the indoor temp at 78 in summer, also keep their thermostats at 75 in the winter. (Not that I think Ercot should be able to do it without warning etc.)

[d_r]

One quick self-correction: it was Nixon who suggested turning the thermostat down to 68. Carter’s suggestion (in 1977) was 65; two years later he mandated that public buildings not be heated above 68 or cooled below 78. Two years after that, Reagan eliminated the public building mandate. (The mandate was saving the government around 300,000 barrels of oil every day, so the Reagan order was one of many of his initiatives that increased government spending, contrary to his rhetoric.)

[emo_pinata]

You mean because of data centers then, because commercial cooling was less energy than heating until data centers. Or maybe you mean refrigeration which is a huge power sink, but then you should be comparing that to commercial ovens and heaters running 24/7 at several hundred Celsius.

[j9c]

@d_r

FWIW, I teach in classrooms that regularly reach the 90s (higher in the summer). My post isn’t based on having a life protected from heat.

Wow.
Respect.
Thank you for being a teacher.
Teachers have been heroes to me for as long as I can remember.

I believe that it would be a good thing if as many of us who are healthy and able become more acclimated to hotter temperatures. I’ve thought this way since reading John Michael Greer’s The Long Descent when it came out.

The Long Descent: A User's Guide... by Greer, John Michael

I work outside in central Texas, and coming inside to cool down is something I do crave: refuge from Fahrenheit temperatures when it’s > 92-100°+.

There are definitely temperatures at which humans simply can’t cool off and will die of heat stroke, though I sense this is not what you are advocating. The U.S. military is definitely trying to sort it though:

Physiological tolerance to uncompensated heat stress in soldiers: effects of...

[d_r]

@j9c

There are definitely temperatures at which humans simply can’t cool off and will die of heat stroke, though I sense this is not what you are advocating.

No, of course not; as you and other have noted, extremely high temperatures kill people. (Ditto extremely cold temperatures.) However, for most of us, 80F is not a problem, outside of mild discomfort. If we have enough energy to get indoor environments down to 80 without blackouts or increased global warming, then that is a victory.

The smart thermostat program that was being criticized in the original post only applied to people with central air. Someone using a window or split AC unit to cool a single room containing a person or pet who is vulnerable to the heat would not have been affected.

(ETA: BTW, no need to thank me for being a teacher, I teach at a public university. Not exactly a front line job.)

[bryan]

Every home with central AC that I’ve lived in, the temperature varied throughout the home, the day, and the year. So just how profound are the frame of reference issues?

Or is it safe to assume that ‘everybody’ is opening and closing curtains, vents, and rooms throughout the day, trying to actively manage the airflow through their homes, and checking various surfaces with a ranging thermometer before blithely assuming that everywhere (and everything) in their home is within half a degree of the temperature at that one spot on their living room wall, right?

[smulder]

@FSogol

There’s your problem

I don’t have a problem, I was right and I proved it

@FSogol

The US spends more on a/c than heat

“citation needed”

[GulliverFoyle]

@emo_pinata

Part of the reason you don’t cheap out on a country’s infrastructure.

Indeed. The little people are just going to have to cook is the kind of non-solution capital conned society into to bring us to this point because it’s much cheaper for the rich than supporting infrastructure and renewable energy investment and way more costly for everyone else including the future.