Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the United Nations, everyone has the right to air conditioned comfort powered by magic.
Keeping cool in the face of climate change
As global temperatures reach record highs, providing cooling systems which are effective, sustainable and which do not harm the environment is increasingly essential for everyday life. That’s according to Rachel Kyte, Chief Executive Officer of Sustainable Energy for All, and Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL).From the cold chain systems that maintain uninterrupted refrigeration during the delivery of food and vaccines, to protection from extreme heat waves globally – access to cooling is a fundamental issue of equity, and as temperatures hit record levels, for some, it can mean the difference between life and death.
UN News asked Rachel Kyte why she is so passionate about cooling.
What is sustainable cooling?Cooling is essential to human health and prosperity. As the world rapidly urbanizes, warms and populations grow, cooling is an urgent development challenge that has important ramifications for our climate. It requires fast action to protect the most vulnerable, and is vital for economic productivity by allowing workers, farmers and students to work in comfortable environments.
Yet as cooling needs rise, we must meet these challenges in an energy-efficient way, or the risks to life, health and the planet will be significant. At the same time, they provide equally important business opportunities for companies or entrepreneurs who can design and produce hyper-efficient cooling devices at affordable prices for this rapidly growing market.
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A clean energy transition is already underway globally that can provide affordable, safe and sustainable energy for all. We must now incorporate cooling for all needs within this transition, while keeping us on track to reach our global climate and energy goals.
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Read more: https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/06/1041201
While I applaud the idea of air conditioned comfort for everyone, I suspect the 800 million or so people who don’t get enough to eat probably have other priorities.
$2B in renovations to the UN Building complex in NYC completed in 2015…no mention of any renewable energy.
https://www.wbdg.org/additional-resources/case-studies/united-nations-headquarters
Can’t find any information on even a token solar panel or wind turbine associated with the campus.
There is no “clean energy” transition, yet they talk about it as if its real. There is real energy generation and there are so called renewables faffing around on the sideline, destabilizing and adding cost to the grid.
Have Germany, Ontario and South Australia not been big enough disastrous, useless , money pits to make the point clear?
A/C ? I don’t need no stinkin’ A/C!
I bought a cooling pad for my cats last Friday while I was shopping. It’s filled with a gel that drops its own temperature when pressure is applied to it, thus creating a cooling effect. My two spoiled cats did not appreciate the $10 I sacrificed for their comfort in the humid, heated air of July in this Great Frozen North, so I’m keeping it for myself and the cats can go pound sand.
It is, in fact, better than A/C, because it cost me $10 to buy it and nothing to “run” it and when the weather cools off, I can put it away for next winter when we have a massive heat wave generated by Gorebull’s Big Warming Machine.
Air conditioning! What a limited world that bunch of dopes live in!
From the article: “As global temperatures reach record highs, providing cooling systems which are effective, sustainable and which do not harm the environment is increasingly essential for everyday life. That’s according to Rachel Kyte, Chief Executive Officer of Sustainable Energy for All, and Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL).
From the cold chain systems that maintain uninterrupted refrigeration during the delivery of food and vaccines, to protection from extreme heat waves globally – access to cooling is a fundamental issue of equity, and as temperatures hit record levels, for some, it can mean the difference between life and death.”
We should wait until it looks like temperatures are going to hit record levels before stressing out about it. There is a good chance we won’t see temperatures hit record levels anytime soon. In fact, the globe has been cooling since Feb. 2016, the supposedly “hottest year evah!” The globe is currently about 0.5C cooler than Feb. 2016 and there are a lot of indications that things are cooling off, so this author is a little premature in her predictions.
The last time it got as warm as Feb. 2016, was in 1998, where 1998 was 0.1C cooler than Feb. 2016 (a statistical tie), so it took 19 years after the last high temperature was reached in 1998, for the global temperature to again reach that level in 2016. Let’s see: 2016 plus 19 years equals 2035. So it might be that long or longer before the world revisits the Feb. 2016 temperature, if it ever does in our lifetimes.
Don’t worry, Be Happy! Things are not as bleak as some would make them out to be.
And men in he11 demand ice water.
Do they get it?
He11, No.
Except at the bottom level, which is a frozen lake according to Dante.
“everyone has the right to air conditioned comfort powered by magic”
Oh, they mean cold fusion.
No one has the “right” to the goods or services provided by others. In order for such a “right” to exist, those providing the goods or services must first be made slaves.
Ahhhh….somebody who understands what a right is!!!
This is a good video, taken of our fathers, the Great Generation, in WW2 Europe during 1944-45.
D-Day to Germany: Cameraman Jack Lieb comments on original footage of 1944-45
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4kmRTZrgMQ
“Spectacular HD-scanned footage of 1945 with narration by newsreel cameraman Jack Lieb. According to this source (https://unwritten-record.blogs.archiv…), Lieb’s voice had been recorded in 1976 by his son, Warren, one of his final lectures. Lieb went to Europe in 1943 to film war coverage for Hearst’s News of the Day newsreels.
0:00 London (Westminster Abbey) 10:06 Landing on the Utah beach (by a British landing craft) 23:46 Mont St. Michel 30:19 Paris (on the day of liberation) 37:16 Westwall 38:10 Aachen 39:11 Berlin”
~25 minutes Ernest Hemingway
One wonders what has happened to recent generations – how did so many people get to be so damned gullible and so intensely stupid? How could any sensible person believe global warming, climate change and green energy nonsense?
Is there a new stupid gene in the population? Is there a toxic chemical in the drinking water?
As George Carlin said: ““Think of how stupid the average person is; and then realize half of them are stupider than that!” 🙂
“Is there a new stupid gene in the population? Is there a toxic chemical in the drinking water?”
I read a study some time ago (less than a year) which proposed that conservatives and leftists brains work differently. I wasn’t much impressed with the study at the time, but there is definitely something that is causing otherwise intelligent people to look at the same reality and see things completely differently. Maybe brain structure or how the brain works in different people is part of the answer.
My first impulse is to blame the propaganda machines of the Main Stream Media and the Entertainment Media and the Leftist teachers in our schools for all the deluded individuals we find ourselves having to deal with. Propaganda fools a lot of people but not everyone is taken in by the leftwing propaganda, so what causes one reasonably intelligent person to buy the leftwing propaganda and what causes another reasonably intelligent person to reject the leftwing propaganda? The Right and the Left are currently living in completely different realities. One of those realities is false.
re: “The Right and the Left are currently living in completely different realities. One of those realities is false.”
I can simplify it for you further: One of those ‘worlds’ is simply not reality.
If someone tells you they can fly, can see into the future, or walk through a wall they are not dealing with reality, since these things in our present temporal plane are impossible for a human being. If someone says they can fly using a paramotor this then is a completely rational statement (assuming you know what a paramotor is.) The other two activities are still outside our present temporal plane.
I have had this thought many years earlier, there are really only two types of people in the world, those that are rational, and those that are irrational. This, for me, satisfies the differences seen between so-called ‘left and right’.
The press, politicians, the MSM et al then play upon the fears, hopes and desires of these two types of people, and we get the result we now see …
My read of the article, access to cooling isn’t necessarily air conditioning, the priority should be refrigeration for vaccines, then for food preservation. And it shouldn’t be that technically difficult to store cold overnight made from daytime pv solar. Or use absorption cycle refrigeration. The equity part is fairly offensive though. Places that get 45 c in summer don’t get minus 45 c in winter. Life’s like that.
Refrigerated vaccines don’t actually need cooling – a fascinating TED talk about how they solved the problem of keeping vaccines cool for weeks without refrigeration, by using a very well insulated flask and a dispenser, so you never have to open the flask.
https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grosser_and_his_sustainable_fridge?language=en
Sustainable cooling, then rigor mortis.
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We should tell the UN, “No.”
Then close it.
I’d love to see the look on the face of the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All when she was told, “We don’t need any of that anymore. Your position is eliminated. You have an hour to clean out your desk. This security guard will be your escort.”
Guadalajar, Mexico just got a nice delivery of sustainable cooling: six feet of hail.
https://electroverse.net/six-feet-of-hail-buries-the-mexican-city-of-guadalajar/
It’s that global warming I tell ya, it’s that there climate change too, and it’s all because of CO2.
If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels right now, we’re all gonna die, I tell ya! We’re all gonna die!
[sarc/off]
Without burning additional fossil fuels, nuclear power plants is the only rational approach to applying the additional required energy to supply adequate power for all. At the same time we need to gradually reduce the world’s human population and relocate those that are in areas that require excessive air conditioning and or are too far from electrical energy sources. I also want the UN to install central air conditioning in my home because I cannot afford to do so.
Thunderf00t would agree, but, seeings as he is basically ” a mechanic”, he recommends “mechanic” cures, sort of like here, cures that ignore a larger socio-spiritual-cultural aspect.
Also, such written, specific “prescriptions” cannot possibly take into consideration unforeseen (or, underway BUT not recognized by the public at large) developments on the energy and/or science fronts. Most of the “shackling” of future human development is self-imposed, such as was “germ” (medical) science a few hundred years back. We find similar ‘shackling’ WRT to science today as well …
This is incorrect. Prairies type places, often in the middle of a continent, like Saskatchewan and Kazakhstan, do have climatological swings from plus to minus 45 Celsius.
By the way, in my province of Québec using the airco is only 10% of the cost of heating in winter. Either way, all our energy is province owned renewable hydro, and it’s super cheap.
So according to the UN’s Intellectual-Yet-Idiot Rachel Kyte, nuclear power plants are not able to run air conditioning units in
Socialist HellGreen Utopia.Someone needs to take her to France and show her how they make most of their electricity.
France is having to curtail nuclear output due to a lack of available cooling. Rooftop solar PV gets less efficient in 45 c weather but doesn’t have to be shut down. And doesn’t take so long to build. And literally turns some of the energy to electricity instead of heat. It might be wise to have both nuclear and solar PV with ground source heat pumps. I can’t think of anything less useful than a solar panel on a winter night except maybe an air conditioner in a blackout caused by a heat wave.
In other words, because solar panels are not the complete and sufficient solution, they are of no use at all. Got it.
Almost exactly… not what I said. Rooftop solar PV and nuclear are complementary in meeting a need, not alternative solutions. Both highly useful / not, at roughly oppoaite times.
I stand corrected, then.
Is this due to a seasonal (hot weather thing) or the unavailability of suitable sites? I’m having to infer this, since your statement as made might indicate the laws of physics or something like that had changed …
Summer nuclear curtailment in France is due to limits set on discharge water temp and low river flows. Not a problem at the coast. Their physics work the same as here, and they’re pretty good with the Metric system. They just don’t have a Lake Ontario for cooling water and a Niagara River for hydro.
Who do I contact at the UN to get my free AC?
Rachel, the IYI.
https://www.seforall.org/people/rachel-kyte
on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/rkyte365
She’s leaving her UN post in September for a high paid Dean’s Yob at Tufts University in Boston. Kyte will assume the deanship on October 1, 2019.
https://www.seforall.org/news/rachel-kyte-named-dean-of-the-fletcher-school-of-law-and-diplomacy-at-tufts-university
email:
Rachel.Kyte@tufts.edu
Just tell her you want your “fair-share” of all that Free Stuff that Democrats are promising to the kiddees (anyone under 26) and to all the illegal aliens.
It’s totally bizarre, people die world wide from cold and that mainly because they lack the money to buy effective fossil fuels. Sure, people in air conditioned offices might think that everyone should eat cake (to apply a well known instance of delusional people with no empathy for the real problems of anyone outside their air conditioned offices). But cold is the killer … this was even obvious on an episode of “Naked and Afraid” filmed in a tropical forest in Malaysia. One participant got so cold they were experiencing the early symptoms of hypothermia.
The biggest problem we have is not heat (especially in a world that is not currently warming), but moronic, out-of-touch, scientifically imbecilic, deluded, fat-cat bureaucrats without a bone of empathy for anyone else.
I see the offensive part of the UN pronouncement as conflating ‘need’ with right’ and hinting that the rest of the world should fork over. The rest is restating the obvious – rooftop solar is now a relatively cheap way of providing refrigeration. Probably the UN should first stick to making sure that people’s homes aren’t getting regularly blown up, and their ‘fridges and solar panels will work even better.
I like my A/C at night, I like my lights at night. I like my reliable electricity on even on cloudy rainy days.
Solar is just an added expense with little value added when a complete life-cycle cost analysis is done. It’s only utility is “virtue signaling.”
The cost of solar panels is falling and will continue to fall for a while. Even now, people who install them recoup the expense in a few years. They stay on the grid because, yes, it gets dark at night. But by using solar panels, they reduce overall demand on the grid, which means that power plants burn less fossil fuel to meet demand. And they their electric bills.
Jesse, those statements are just a dream. Solar is a waste of money for houses that have access to inexpensive electricity. By the time that you recoup your expense it is time to replace the system. They also don’t reduce demand on the grid, they destabilize the grid.
We’re deregulated, so the main savings in adding a 10 horsepower solar system were in reduced transmission fees on daytime usage. And shingles underneath will last forever.
They destabilize the grid? in what way? And why would the power utilities allow the grid to be destabilized?
And if houses are making some of their own electricity, how could they NOT be reducing demand on the grid?
And why are so many houses in our area putting solar panels on their roofs?
I think clouds passing over solar panels can destabilize the grid in the same way that electric clothes dryers do. Not a concern or the utility would force curtailment. Or they wouldn’t let it be connected in the first place.
I like stuff to work at night too, so we’re still grid connected. We have solar panels because it cuts our power bill by about 2/3. Probably going to get micro-chp for backup because natural gas is cheap and we sometimes need heat in the middle of summer. If we lived in an upcountry part of Cameroon, for example, grid connection might not be an option. Storing cold in frozen saltwater is not difficult engineering, and storing enough battery power for overnight LED lighting isn’t too difficult either. It’s not as much about ideology and saving the planet, as getting it done as well and cheaply as possible.
The UN creating rights. Who else created rights with class warfare and gifts. All feel good stuff with very bad results in the old defunct USSR.
“A clean energy transition is already underway globally that can provide affordable, safe and sustainable energy for all. We must now incorporate cooling for all needs within this transition, while keeping us on track to reach our global climate and energy goals.”
The shorter Rachel:
We have to make sure the deplorables don’t expect us to go without airconditioning with the sacrifices required of them so let’s get that straight here and now.
From the top pic, I hope Harlem doesn’t have even a small earthquake. Then again, NYC sits on very stable bedrock.
On June 15, 2019, I commented in the Seattle times, at https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/heat-waves-could-kill-hundreds-more-in-seattle-as-globe-warms-researchers-say/#comments :
In my house I’ve avoided installing air conditioning by adding:
Insulation in the rafters.
Blown-in wall insulation
Large (Sunsetter) awnings on sunny side windows.
An attic fan, thermostatically controlled.
One idea I’ve had that ought to be tested is adding thermostatically controlled and time-limited sprinklers along a roof-beam, to cool the house by evaporation. This would be cheap and very cost-effective, I suspect.
There are already garden hose timers that let one program water to flow every hour or so for a specified length of time, and I seem to recall seeing a thermostat arrangement to control garden hose flow. The cost of both, plus a couple of sprinklers and 50 feet of garden hose should be half that of an air conditioner.
What’s needed is for some group of greens who are looking to reduce energy consumption to put this brainwave to the test—assuming it passes an initial sanity check regarding costs and benefits. (I’m just guessing regarding those, obviously.) It seems to me that this arrangement would be a social and individual benefit even if there were no climate change issue. (If water gets short, prohibit lawn-watering—other types of ground cover are just as attractive.)
I think there’s a good chance a pilot-test-study would get funded if a proposal were submitted to some agency or foundation concerned with the topic of sustainability.