Guest “Goods and services aren’t rights” by David Middleton
HEALTH & FITNESS | MAY 16, 2022 2:29 PM
Why Air Conditioning Should Be a Universal Human Right
This century is only going to get hotter. Expanded access to cooling has become essential.BY TANNER GARRITY
It’s hot out there.
Pick a country, pick a headline, pick a statistic, it’s all telling the same story — the planet is warming at an alarming rate. In the last few days alone, South East Asia recorded temperatures of 122°F, as regions of Pakistan and India labored through a punishing early-season heat wave; the bodies of assumed old mob hits washed up in Nevada’s historically-dry Lake Mead; and sweltering highs rarely seen this side of June have arrived in France and Spain.
[…]
Considering that rampant energy consumption on the part of humans is responsible for this crisis, it might seem counterintuitive that leading researchers are now calling for expanded access to air conditioning. In a recent article for Scientific American, four authors argue that AC ought to be considered a fundamental “human right,” and will be prerequisite for climate justice in the years ahead. They write:
“As the world heats up, billions of people need air-conditioning. This 120-year-old technology used to be considered a luxury, but in the age of climate change, it is a necessity for human survival.”
How can the planet possibly accommodate billions of more AC units, though? (Just 12% of people living in the world’s hottest regions currently have air conditioning, while 90% of Americans use the technology.)
[…]
Inside Hook
Having lived in Texas since 1981, I fully appreciate the value of air conditioning.
Abstract
Heat is the primary weather-related cause of death in the United States. Increasing heat and humidity, at least partially related to anthropogenic climate change, suggest that a long-term increase in heat-related mortality could occur. We calculated the annual excess mortality on days when apparent temperatures–an index that combines air temperature and humidity–exceeded a threshold value for 28 major metropolitan areas in the United States from 1964 through 1998. Heat-related mortality rates declined significantly over time in 19 of the 28 cities. For the 28-city average, there were 41.0 +/- 4.8 (mean +/- SE) excess heat-related deaths per year (per standard million) in the 1960s and 1970s, 17.3 +/- 2.7 in the 1980s, and 10.5 +/- 2.0 in the 1990s. In the 1960s and 1970s, almost all study cities exhibited mortality significantly above normal on days with high apparent temperatures. During the 1980s, many cities, particularly those in the typically hot and humid southern United States, experienced no excess mortality. In the 1990s, this effect spread northward across interior cities. This systematic desensitization of the metropolitan populace to high heat and humidity over time can be attributed to a suite of technologic, infrastructural, and biophysical adaptations, including increased availability of air conditioning.
Davis, Knappenberger, Michaels, and Novicoff, 2003
There’s no doubt that air conditioning has saved millions of human lives.
A study published in 2016 found that Americans’ risk of death on a very hot day has fallen by 80 percent since the 1939-1959 period, with most of the gain coming after 1960 —an improvement researchers attributed almost entirely to the spread of home air conditioning. That’s a number that would translate into 20,000 more deaths each year in the US if we maintained midcentury rates of heat-related deaths today. Researchers also found that this protective effect was particularly strong among vulnerable populations, including Black Americans and those ages 65 and up. This pattern holds true globally. A major 2021 research report in the Lancet estimated that, globally, access to air conditioning averted 195,000 heat-related deaths among people ages 65 and older in 2019.
In simplest terms, then, millions of people are alive today who would be dead if not for air conditioning.
Foreign Policy
However, calling it a “human right,” makes me think of a scene in the 1985 classic, Police Academy 2…
You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to a court appointed attorney. You have the right to sing the blues. You have the right to cable TV… that’s very important. You have the right to sublet. You have the right to paint the walls… no loud colors.
Steve Guttenberg as Carey Mahoney in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment
Goods and services aren’t rights
While I believe that energy poverty is a serious problem and that increasing access to affordable, reliable energy should be a societal priority, air conditioning can no more be a right than cable TV can. No person has a right to the goods and services provided by other individuals. If air conditioning was a right, the people who manufacture and sell air conditioners would become indentured servants.
Access to affordable, reliable energy isn’t a right either, but it is the answer
Aug 23, 2019
Carbon Pricing Is Not a Fix for Climate Change
By: Scott TinkerThere is much talk today about carbon pricing to reduce CO2 emissions and address climate change. Unlike many environmental pollutants that have a local or regional impact, carbon dioxide (CO2) is global — there is only one atmosphere. If actions taken to reduce atmospheric emissions in one region result in increased emissions elsewhere, then the one atmosphere suffers.
Some form of carbon pricing — carbon tax, carbon trading, carbon credits — is favored by many politicians, NGOs, academics and even some in industry. But the reality is that a price on carbon will not be imposed by developing and emerging economies because it makes their energy more expensive, and they are too busy trying to build their economies and lift themselves from poverty.
In the developed world, carbon pricing increases the cost of manufacturing and products, which in turn drives manufacturing to developing nations where it is more affordable because of lower labor costs and less stringent environmental regulations and emissions standards. Global emissions rise in the one atmosphere.
Said differently, the good intentions of carbon pricing have an unintended negative impact on climate change. This is not hypothetical. It is happening.
If carbon pricing won’t work, what will? Energy science tells us how to actually lower CO2 emissions into the one atmosphere in the time frame needed. Unfortunately, those who are the most passionate about addressing climate change seem to not like the answers from the energy experts.
[…]
So what options does energy science suggest will have a major impact on climate change?
Natural gas and nuclear replacing coal for power generation in major developing nations such as India, China and Vietnam would have a major impact. Carbon capture, utilization and storage; direct carbon capture from the atmosphere; and perhaps nature-based solutions such as increasing the size of forests would help, especially in fossil fuel producing regions such as the U.S., Russia, China and the Middle East.
[…]
These scientifically sound and economically underpinned energy solutions present a problem. Many are not favored by people who are the most concerned about climate change. Thus, politicians seeking climate votes continue to passionately promote programs and policies that won’t actually address climate change.
But we have a remarkable opportunity. The right can acknowledge the need to tackle climate change. The left can acknowledge the energy science needed to accomplish real global emissions reductions into the one atmosphere. And developing and emerging nations can continue to climb out of energy poverty.
Unfortunately, this appears to be far from happening. Climate politics seems to trump energy solutions in Europe and the U.S., and the developing world continues to burn coal.
Scott Tinker is the Allday Endowed Chair of Subsurface Geology and director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin.
UT News
It is undeniable that “those who are the most passionate about addressing climate change seem to not like the answers” and “politicians seeking climate votes continue to passionately promote programs and policies that won’t actually address climate change.” While the need to address climate change is highly debatable, the need to fight energy poverty is not.
It truly is a Bizarro World… Those who consider climate change to be an existential threat are least likely to support natural gas, nuclear power and CCS/CCUS. Instead they support Green New Deals that would destroy our economy, have no affect at all on the weather while worsening energy poverty.
Reference
Davis, R. E. , Knappenberger, P. C. , Michaels, P. J. , & Novicoff, W. M. (2003). Changing heat‐related mortality in the United States. Environmental Health Perspectives, 111(14), 1712–1718. 10.1289/ehp.6336 [PMC free article] [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
Given that hard corp greens do not approve of anything more advanced than a punkah fan worked by a servant, air conditioning should be doubleplus ungood.
Are there good paying union jobs for punkah wallahs?
Sorry to break this to people, but there is no such thing as ‘human rights’.
Go out into nature. Stand up proud. Demand to nature your rights.
Know what will happen? Nature will look at you in bemusement and idly wonder if it should kill and eat you, or just wait for you to die. And eat you.
What people call ‘rights’ are actually privileges earned by generations of society going out and carving them out of nothing.
They are not just given. They must be created and then they must be defended. If society wants electricity to their home they must constantly defend their need to have this within their society and culture. You can demand and expect it, but you still need to constantly proof you deserve it and it is never a Right.
Rights are an excuse not to do any work.
👍👍🍻
Right to life. You were bestowed it by nature, it is yours to keep.
Right to freedom of speech (and of thought). Same source.
Right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, same as the above two.
If any of this sounds in any way familiar to you, you get one point.
To get two more points, name the famous document which declares these rights.
(Check back later for the answer, if needed)
All of those are society’s rights Tony. Go try them out in the jungle. The problem is that the only thing needed to violate those rights is for one person to just ignore them. Rights have no substance. They’re like the lines on the highway. All fine and good until somebody just doesn’t care about the rules, which is happening with increasing frequency. (unlike tornadoes)
Right to life, means you can defend yourself. You can do so with “extreme prejudice. Especially in the jungle, no society necessary.
Tell that to Timothy McVeigh. Oh wait, you can’t. He was executed by the same society that guarantees those rights after he took that right away from 168 people in the Oklahoma Federal building that he bombed. Nobody’s life was saved by having the right to life. Nobody was given the chance to defend themselves.
Rights are nice, but they only work as long as everybody agrees to follow the rules.
Remember that freedom is not the same as perfect safety. With freedom comes risk.
Because people, and the government, can and do violate our rights, you’re saying our rights don’t exist? I’m trying to follow that thread but I’m not quite getting it.
Our society depends upon people agreeing to behave civilly. I hesitate to use the word “gentlemen” in these PC times, but that’s what our society depends upon.
All societies depend upon agreed to codes of conduct, that’s their definition.
Indeed.
You may not be Christian, but the Ten Commandments seem, to me, to be a fair starting point.
Me – an agnostic, looking for – well – other than a Nature God, perhaps.
Auto
I’m trying to say that rights are a non substantive human abstract construction that can only serve as a general guide for preferred behavior. Laws are needed to protect those rights and enforcement is required to give either of those constructions any value. I live in a state where enforcement is vanishing rapidly, which exposes the impotence of rights alone.
Our society depends on a balanced system of rights and associated responsibilities: you have the right to life but the associated responsibility to ensure others enjoy the same right and not deprive others of it, you have the right to freedom of speech but the associated responsibility not to harm others by it nor to deprive another of it. You have the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness but the responsibility not to deprive others of those rights. I see a lot of talk about rights but bugger all about the responsibilities of a member of society.
Thanks Richard for a very cogent comment. In today’s society it seem everybody knows their rights, however, mention the associated responsibilities and all you usually get is a blank stare.
Who gave you those rights if you don’t believe in a higher power? Certainly not nature. Agreement among men – society – is a nice thought, but then they also have the power to end that right, which means it is not truly a inalienable right but a privilege offered by others.
Absent a creator, who would enforce those rights in an afterlife and punish offenders violated them, there are no intrinsic rights.
There are many places, even within industrialized countries, that still live under the code of the jungle – if you want something and can take it, it’s yours.
Absent a creator, do right and wrong still exist? Yes. Same with natural rights.
Absent a creator right and wrong no longer exist. Might makes right becomes the law of the land.
The law of the jungle.
For the curious read John Locke.
Your ‘right’ to life only extends to your ability to protect your life. A shark isn’t going to be concerned with your rights. If it infringes upon your ‘right’ who or what enforces that right to live?
Rights most certainly do have “substance” – if backed by legislation.
Not really. Many citizens of the United States believe their “rights” are guaranteed by the U.S. Consitution. Not so. Our “rights” are guaranteed by the Armed Forces of the United States, without which, some other folks with perhaps superior arms could specify what “rights” they wished to allow us to have. Same goes for anywhere else in the world.
Well, to be pedantic the laws are enforced by the Executive branch of our government, which controls armed forces, civil defense and law enforcement.
wasnt covid enough of a lesson as to what your rights are worth?
on paper and reality seem to vary somewhat?
Go tell a Ukranian all about their rights to life, liberty, and everything else. Tell them legislation will save them.
Legislation means nothing if it is not enforced. What you are assuming is that countries are actually governed by a set laws, I.e., legislation, not individual men. I don’t think there is any country on earth presently meeting that definition.
The present U.S executive administration, those responsible for executing those laws, seem to view them as suggestions. In most countries, only some of the people are held accountable to the laws.
I bet we’re all in agreement that the jungle cannot and does not guarantee our rights.
Although many Americans talk about natural rights, no, that doesn’t mean the jungle or the oceans grant or respect those rights.
This article on Natural Rights is among the small minority of Wikipedia entries that haven’t been corrupted by the left — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights_and_legal_rights and it does a good job of explaining the concept.
“ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..”
I am not a strongly religious person, but if you take a Creator out of the equation, there is no basis for any rights. Something must create those rights. It certainly isn’t nature, so ‘natural rights’ is pure fiction, and whatever man creates, legal rights, man can destroy.
I suspect the elimination of a Creator in many parts of our society has resulted in some not believing anyone has any rights, and they act accordingly.
Voltaire is credited with saying, “ if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.” I believe he was right, but for the wrong reason (he believed people needed a higher power to believe in). I think belief in God(s) was necessary in order to form a working society. Some supreme power that laid down the rights people have and the laws that must be followed. There is no clear gain, particularly during times of shortages, for doing what is best for the whole rather than what is best for the individual, if it is not granted by a higher power.
‘Rights’ are just social constructs/contracts that vary from place to place. Guaranteed in writing but not in practice.
–Thomas Jefferson, 1776
Rights are created by the Creator, God, nature, The Force… Take your pick. Just governments, created by people, preserve those rights. Most governments aren’t just.
The rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” don’t come with air conditioning as a standard feature. They just secure the opportunity for individuals to benefit from the fruits of their own labors.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the US the only nation that says our rights are intrinsic and are not granted by the government?
On paper, the US recognizes natural rights. In actuality, a large number of our citizens believe everything comes from government and our rights are nothing more than what some unaccountable people in black robes (judges and SCOTUS justices) say they are.
The US constitution (1787) and the French declaration of the rights of man and the citizen (1789) are remarkably similar in content, unsurprising seeing as Jefferson and Lafayette worked together on much of both. The current French constitution is built on the framework of the declaration. So no.
Yes, some people stupidly believe that judges decide what our rights are. They do not. They only decide the meaning and extent as to how laws can be applied to a specific situation, and if the laws are permitted under the Constitution.
If they rule in a way that people do not like, laws can be rewritten to address the issue or the Constitution amended.
The basic misunderstanding is that the average person in the US does not realize that the Constitution restricts the power of the national government. If a power is not explicitly given, then the federal government cannot legislate it. It could not, for example, require states to enforce federal laws. They were not given that right in the Constitution. The Constitution says nothing on that subject at all. The federal government must enforce its own laws. If they are not explicitly given the right, they are barred from legislating on it.
“Yes, some people stupidly believe that judges decide what our rights are.”
Considering some judges 50 years ago invented a certain right (and a regulatory scheme around that invented right!) whole cloth that the leftwing media is in a tizzy over the fact that another set of judges today are looking to overturn, you can’t really say that what people stupidly believe is an entirely baseless belief in actual practice.
Tony: I agree with you. Our rights are God given, not man given. They are not given by society, government, or other men. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be abrogated by other men but they can’t be taken away. If government uses force to suppress your speech you still retain your right to free speech, you are just prevented from using it. African-Americans would never have emancipated if rights could be taken away. If you lose your rights then how would you ever regain them unless they are innate?
Societies are formed to protect individual rights. Same for government.
Some societies are formed to protect individual rights.
Same for government. Would that that were true.
Assuming Craig from Oz is Australian, I wouldn’t expect him to be familiar with those documents. I wager most Americans aren’t either, especially anybody under the age of 40.
The only rights nature bestows upon us at birth are the rights to compete for temporary survival and the right, and indeed, certainty of death. All the other rights you list are those gained through organized society that is motivated and able to support such rights.
Actually, those rights were endowed by the Creator, not nature. Nature isn’t good. It isn’t bad, it just doesn’t give a damn what happens to anything. If you don’t believe in a creator, then there is nothing on Earth to give you rights that cannot be taken away, with no repercussions at all.
The US has a Constitution that includes the Bill of Rights that provides certain freedoms government is barred from infringing on. But even they are not truly guaranteed. Any of them can be taken away by amending the Constitution or by revolution.
“Human rights” are what a country’s legislators promise their country will extend to citizens by legislation. These “rights” can of course be just as easily cancelled by legislation by a different government, at a later time. As Craig from Oz points out, nature gives us no rights whatsoever.
I am all for enlightened and charitable human rights in all our democratic countries – and will gladly pay loads of taxes to pay for such.
Well said that man
Human rights and natural rights are abstract concepts, just as an anthropomorphized nature “that cares” or doesn’t “care” is an abstract concept.
The concept of rights has been perverted by progressives. Natural rights are intrinsic. We have these rights because we are sentient and self-aware. A believer would call these rights “God-given.”
Our rights are not granted by any government. Any right given by government can be taken away. The purpose of governnment is to protect and guarantee our rights.
As I said, the concept of rights is perverted. A right is not something one person owes another. People do not have the right to something that requires others to pay for it. Freedom of speech does not require me to pay for your public access television show. The right to keep and bear arms does not require anybody to provide you with a firearm.
Rights are not entitlements.
Well said. Rights are not entitlements. Entitlements are not rights.
Perfect. Now I have my response to those claiming this right. “Yes you have a right to have air conditioning, just like I have a right to bear arms, and I support your right to buy an air conditioner, as you support my right to buy arms. By the way, those in the Green movement are trying to take away your right to have air conditioning by making electricity unaffordable.”
Absolutely agree. What we call human rights are those that a developed society chooses to name and then support through law and force. Societies over time have defined and redefined such rights over time according to societal wealth, ability and sensibilities. Only by maintaining a healthy functional society and productivity can we preserve those rights we wish to remain universal.
I think I agree with this sentiment” “Air Conditioning a Human Right”, not because of climate change but because of Texas. It gets too d*ng hot here in the summers. Therefore, the government should have to pay for all my cooling bills – because it’s my human right. (?!!? whatever, I have a hard time thinking in “progressive”)
Right next to that right is another equally important human right – the right to ice-chilled beer.
Between those two rights I can live here in the Texas summer comfortably…except when the wind stops blowing knocking down all the power grids. Grrr. Never mind, after thinking this through I want the government to have NOTHING to do with my ice-chilled beer.
How about the right to have that “ice-chilled beer” served in a titty bar …. surely there is a need for that to be a right too 😉
I’ll drink to that.
The countries with the largest and poorest populations have the lowest percentage of air conditioning, even though many of them are tropical or subtropical. Yet worldwide life expectancy has increased by 20 years since 1960. The greatest increase is likely to have been in the poorer, A/C deprived countries. Air conditioning is nice, I’d like to have it myself, but how is it necessary for life?
I suppose having refrigeration for your food is going to be a right also. A right is something you can exercise without requiring someone else to provide it for you.
In Northern Nigeria (the Sahel) gets up to plus mid 40sC. I had two clinical thermometers break in my luggage in Sokoto when I took my wife and two small children there on an in country holiday. I worked for the Geological Survey at the time.The only place (in the mid 1960s) that had A/C was the Federal Palace Hotel in Lagos where we stayed over night before taking the overnight train to GSN HQ in Kaduna.
At my home there we had ceiling fans that seemed to do the trick! I mapped geology out in the sun on foot by compass traversing. We acclimatized alright. Much of the world today is gripped in neurosis from the fearmongering over climate. This can’t end well.
I am at a loss for words when Scott Tinker, former State Geologist of the Great State of Texas, can speak (without apparent sarcasm) about “the one atmosphere suffers” by CO2 emissions.
I met him once in the early 2000s and heard him speak eloquently in defense of fossil fuel development for the benefit of mankind – and now this?
Can we all agree on the basic fact of biology that all life on Earth relies on photosynthesis of CO2 and water to make hydrocarbons?
The atmosphere has been perfectly fine in geologic history with 1000s of ppm CO2, and is currently in severe CO2 deficit.
Global temperature is immaterial if life ceases for lack of CO2 fuel.
Period.
Scott Tinker’s position is that fighting energy poverty is far more important than reducing GHG emissions. Although, he believes we can make progress on both.
Scott is still the Texas State Geologist and Director of the Bureau of Economic Geology.
“Scott Tinker’s position is that fighting energy poverty is far more important than reducing GHG emissions. Although, he believes we can make progress on both.”
So the Texas State Geologist believes it is necessary to reduce CO2 emissions. This does not inspire confidence in this man’s thinking.
Thanks for the clarification David. I don’t follow Texas BEG developments as much in retirement
Tinker is probably still a level-headed guy, but it pains me that he and other “energy policy leaders” are giving quarter to the forces promoting energy poverty
You and I and others here at WUWT have made the straightforward “Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” and we need to continue to do so – without apology or rationalization
Net Zero policies/fantasies are Anti-Human
Period.
We can actually address energy poverty while reducing net GHG emissions… That said, ” net zero” is just a slogan.
“This century is only going to get hotter.”
Starting a post with a computer generated fairy-tale doesn’t help his credibility much !
Why bother reading further nonsense.
Humans have existed without air-con right through the Holocene, The Minoan. Roman, and Medieval warm periods that were warmer than now.. Only struggling during the colder periods of the Dark Ages and Little Ice Age.
I remember the first day I walked off the airplane in South Vietnam. It felt like I was walking into a blast furnace, it was so hot.
I got used to the heat in very short order. As much as that is possible, anyway. I would have liked to have had an airconditioner, but I survived without one, without too much trouble.
In view of the fact that my observation is we are heading for the next ice age, central heating will be a far bigger concern in the near future.
Growing up in the Deep South (US) in the 1950s without AC was not pleasant either at times. I remember how great it was when we got a box fan for the bedroom window. Trying to sleep at night was difficult in the summers.
The worst, though, was Sunday sitting in church. Everyone attended. The church was small, crowded, and had no AC. They put little hand-held paper fans in the pews that did no good whatsoever. A long-winded preacher introduced us all as to what hell must feel like.
We all survived though. It was just part of life.
The omelet problem rears its ugly head again. Tp wit: “The government shall provide ‘the people’ with free omelets, but the breaking of eggs shall be strictly forbidden.”
In this case, “The people shall be provided with air conditioning as a ‘human right,’ but everything that makes air conditioning possible shall be taxed into oblivion, or prohibited outright.”
They have it completely wrong. Air conditioning is a huge consumer of electric power, which is destroying the planet. Worse, the working fluids in the air conditioners are destroying the atmosphere. This is going to kill us all.
It is clear from these two facts that all air conditioning must be banned planet-wide, except for the modern Western Nations of North America and Europe and perhaps a few select Asian countries. Nothing short of this will accommodate the environmental needs of the planet.
I vote for refrigerator/freezers as more important than AC.
My family got a 1945 model Philco before buying a first auto.
Search images.
The freezer compartment could make a tray of ice cubes and
hold about 3 pounds of food. One of my earliest memories is
helping to paint it pee green. A window AC came about
10 years later.
Pea Green !
Better than peeing blood, marginally.
I think air conditioning should be a right if your last name is Carrier, Lennox, or Trane, among others…
There is no demonstrated climatecrisis.
This is true. The alarmists are trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist in reality. Alarmists are delusional.
There is
Griff, your two-word reply is convincing. I can’t believe I’ve been so misguided my whole life. There IS a climate crisis and I have the word of Griff to thank.
/sarcasm
Why did you even bother?
and all the aircons running full belt day and night? raises the UHI ..
I live in a wooden home with ceiling insulation and doors n windows, to stategically control draughts etc
never had and never would install aircon
in 44c days i use a small fan or go outside under a tree and if superhot will use the sprinkler on the grass/dirt under the tree for a brief time to aid the cooling effects. worse for people in disgusting pestholes of cities with little airflow and tarmac/cement all over. good reasons to live OUT of the town zones
From the article: “This century is only going to get hotter.”
This century is getting cooler at the present time. About 0.4C cooler than in 2016. So where’s your evidence for the future getting hotter? CO2 levels are increasing, yet it is getting cooler. The author must not have noticed this. This can happen when you have a distorted view of reality and the Earth’s climate, which is common among climate change alarmists, such as this author.
The Earth’s climate warms for a few decades and then it cools for a few decades. We have had our few decades of warming. What do you think comes next, going by history? Going by history, cooling comes next.
Alarmists think the amount of CO2 makes a difference. We shall see. It’s not looking good for the alarmists lately because CO2 is increasing and temperatures are cooling, just the opposite of what alarmists claim should be happening if CO2 is the control knob of the Earth’s atmosphere.
A little cooling will blow the alarmist climate change delusion out of the water. And we are getting a little cooling. But the clueless author asserts it’s only going to get hotter this century based on a little snapshot in time from 1979 to the present.
Further, as I have pointed out before, we are now on the verge of the next BIG ice age, thanks to the big Milankovitch cycle.
It isn’t…
Tom Abbott: “ From the article: “This century is only going to get hotter.””
Griff: “It isn’t.”
For once Griff got something right.
Doesn’t air conditioning make the environment hotter? Don’t those compressors produce heat?
And where will the electricity come from? We aren’t increasing electricity generation enough to meet demand as it is and now we must all provide everyone with air conditioning.
I don’t suppose Tanner Garrity and the like-minded care whether or not there is power to run the air conditioning, they will feel their mission is accomplished as long as we have wall-unit equity.
“Don’t those compressors produce heat?”
Yes? It’s part of the UHI phenomenon.
“I don’t suppose Tanner Garrity and the like-minded care whether or not there is power to run the air conditioning, they will feel their mission is accomplished as long as we have wall-unit equity”
Yep!
Air conditioning is a human right? Because climate change? Wait, didn’t climate Czar John Kerry declare air conditioning to be an evil that causes climate change and must therefore be abolished? (Except for him and his friends, of course.)
According to the models, most warming is going to occur in places that are currently the coldest. Places that are currently warm and humid will see little if any warming.
The idea that we should address climate change is a given to the authors and they suggest the only rational compromise is for those on the right to drink the Koolaid and accept the belief that we can and should control the climate while convincing those on the left to accept natural gas and nuclear. Instead, why don’t we start at the beginning and force those advocating any action to prove the fundamental underpinnings of their cult:
Wow! You pretty much nailed it. No one has yet established what the best global average temperature should be and GAT is fatally flawed anyway for many reasons. As Freeman Dyson pointed out years ago, climate studies have to be holistic (across the entire biosphere) to be legitimate and useful. Yet that is what the climate models are NOT.
Speaking of Texas…
My family on mom’s side goes back to before Texas was a State. My dad met and married mom when he was in the service stationed at Randolph Field (now called… I forget what).
Dad went back to the Midwest with his Texas bride and our family was based there.
1) Mom ‘n us kids would go to Texas for summers and the Christmas holidays. Summers in the ’50s and ’60s.
What #@!&!!-ing air conditioning?!? There weren’t none! There were windows and a couple of fans. Church on Sunday was open windows and everyone used those paper fans on a wooden stick that were flapped to beat the band. Everyone had a hanky to mop the sweat off the brow. When the preacher closed with the altar call, everyone was more than relieved. (Few sinners came forward. They’d already been through an hour or so of hell 😉)
A few wealthy people had window air-conditioning units at home; very few.
Did I mention that those were the times when people went to church in suits and ties or sport coats and ties and women wore dresses and hats and gloves and stockings and lord only knows what corsets and other unmentionables underneath?
2) To all our cousins, aunts, and uncles, we were the “Damn Yankees.” They loved us all the same, but we were still “damn yankees.” No changing that.
I conclude, air-conditioning isn’t a right. It’s a blessing from God. God didn’t allow it until we were ready for it.
P.S. So now air-conditioning is ubiquitous in cars and houses, and every church is air-conditioned… and not many people attend church anymore. And if they do, it’s in shorts and sandals and a golf shirt.
We can all sit through as much hellfire and brimstone preaching as a body can stand, in complete comfort, and nobody bothers anymore. WUWT?!?
“What #@!&!!-ing air conditioning?!? There weren’t none! There were windows and a couple of fans”
Yep! I was in college before my parents got central air (60’s). All we had was one nat gas heater in the house before then. We had to use fans to blow the warm air in the living room back into the bedrooms.
“(Few sinners came forward. They’d already been through an hour or so of hell )”
ROFL!
We keep hearing about how awful the heat is in India. This is what it looks like at night, when the ground and air temperatures are similar:
It appear to be a UHI problem!
https://scitechdaily.com/extreme-indian-heat-wave-nasas-ecostress-detects-blistering-heat-islands/
Generations of people who’ve had the healthy relief of air conditioning would be seriously harmed by having A/C banned. A question of “right” should not even enter the picture, as our US founding parchment documents state that we “are entitled to health, wealth, and the pursuit of happiness” The government is not authorized to interfere in our health, wealth, or pursuit of happiness. It’s main job is to ensure national insecurity & protect us from foreign invasions.
In what founding document did you find “health, wealth, and the pursuit of happiness”?
Post says:”…would become indentured servants.”.
The democrat party was supportive of slavery why would they be supportive of indentured servitude?
Today they claim right to housing, health care, etc.
It gets so much better that.
ERCOT lists how much money it pays to curtail excess alternative energy electricity.
While 2021 was an exceptional year at $2.7 billion paid – the 4 years prior still averaged over $200 million a year paid to curtail (i.e. get rid of) excess electricity. We’re talking well over 12 million megawatt-hours of electricity, on average, for the 5 years ending in 2021.
So this isn’t just about the duck curve mismatch of solar PV/wind vs. actual consumption, or the unreliability, it is also about the cost to get rid of the excess electricity generated when nobody wants it.
Sure, air conditioning and infanticide are human rights but free speech and self defense are not. FJB