Technology

38465 readers

322 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org

gyrfalcon@beehaw.org

rs5th@beehaw.org

coldredlight@beehaw.org

SemioticStandard@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social

remington@beehaw.org

We should talk more about air-conditioning (www.technologyreview.com)

submitted 3 days ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@beehaw.org

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

One twisted thing about cooling and climate change: It’s all a vicious cycle. As temperatures rise, the need for cooling technologies increases. In turn, more fossil-fuel power plants are firing up to meet that demand, turning up the temperature of the planet in the process.

“Cooling degree days” are one measure of the need for additional cooling. Basically, you take a preset baseline temperature and figure out how much the temperature exceeds it. Say the baseline (above which you’d likely need to flip on a cooling device) is 21 °C (70 °F). If the average temperature for a day is 26 °C, that’s five cooling degree days on a single day. Repeat that every day for a month, and you wind up with 150 cooling degree days.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The Orange R by John Clagett written back in 1978 was describing this feedback loop in its story.

In the story Nuclear radiation was poisoning the air and scrubbers all over the country were cleaning up the radiation but were using nuclear power to power them creating a huge feedback loop where more radiation was leaking and needing more scrubbers to clean it.

I won't give away what they thought about solar power, but it's awfully close to the same messages that certain orange people say about wind and solar power to this day.

ETA: it's amazing that back in the '70s they thought our future would be nuclear pollution from power plants while they had polluting coal plants and now 50 plus years later we still have polluting coal plants.