A world without air conditioning.

Last updated on December 3rd, 2024 at 11:26 am

With global warming and the effects of green house gasses once again being a hot button topic in the current political climate, one commentator satirically suggested simply getting rid of all air conditioning in the world as a means to combat the ever increasing threats to the evironment. Here we will imagine such a world and its many implications.

Let me level with you…..I too prefer driving with the window down instead of using the air conditioning in my car, and there is something to be said for the mostly fresh air moving through your home’s open windows on a Sunday afternoon. But life has taught me that the universe is a complex mosaic of interwoven elements and its never as simple as removing one thing while the rest trot along uneffected. Pull one strand and it inevitably effects the others in ways that we can seldom accurately predict. Sure, if air conditioning was nothing more than a comfort solution for those who can afford it, then yes, a little discomfort is a small price to pay for a cleaner, greener world, but there is more to the application of HVAC systems than meets the eye and to some parts of industry, air conditioning serves a more salient purpose.

AIR CONDITIONING AS A PART OF THE INDUSTRY.

The irony hasn’t escaped me of writing a post about a world without air conditioning that will be stored on a server that relies on air conditioning for it to function. Data centres that house these server banks produce massive amounts of heat that need to be expelled quickly, or the equipment will suffer catostrophic failure and the data stored on them will be lost.

Ever read a book, newspaper or magazine? Well the machines used to print those pages rely heavily on an internal cooling system that is fed by an industrial air conditioning chiller plant. Without a steady flow of chilled low temperature water, those machines overheat and inevitably break down, with major component damage often the end result.

In fact any manufacturing plant that relies on printing would have these chiller plants as part of their production line, which means that a world without air conditioning means a world without any kind of printing, and books, newspapers, magazines, and the labels on your grocery items are but a few things that simply wouldn’t exist. Couple that with the lack of server farms due to the absence of HVAC systems, and you would have wiped out all forms of modern media and communmication almost instantaniously.

While I’m at it, I may as well mention the manufacturing of contact lenses and spectacles, recycling plants, pharmaceutical labs, robotic assembly lines, vehicle manufacturing plants, the hvac systems in aircraft with its hepa filters that control indoor air quality, operating theatres, food processing plants… well, I’m sure you get the picture.

Air conditioning is as entwined in our modern lives as the energy grid or water supply systems, and simply erasing them from existence will not only effect our comfort levels, but threaten our very survival.

LESSOR KNOWN APPLICATIONS OF COMMERCIAL AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEMS.

Thermoelectric systems exist in some form in most electronic applications today, and it has been reported that they were extensively used in NASA’s ‘Project Mercury‘. Power stations also use air conditioning as part of their critical infrastructure, and underground bunkers used at military installations have life-preserving HVAC plants that control humidity and indoor air quality for their occupants. Vaccines for various viral threats get stored in temperature-controlled environments, and life-saving blood plasma gets stored at very specific temperatures inside massive storage facilities. Even the signal stations that operate our very sophisticated rail transportation system employ a relay-type air conditioning plant in order to protect their very sensitive equipment from damage and, more importantly, prevent any potential train collisions from happening.

Modern gyms also use commercial HVAC systems as a heat recovery mechanism for tasks that otherwise would have been done by less efficient technologies. The heat that is removed from the gym area by the HVAC plant is expelled into a water reticulation system that then supplies the hot water to the indoor swimming pool as well as the hot water taps in the bathrooms. The absence of this heat recovery system would mean that the gym would need to resort to less efficient methods of heating the water, such as the older heating element boiler types that require large amounts of electricity to run, and as we know, the generation of electricity is currently one of the largest contributors to global pollution.

MORE PRIMITIVE TIMES

At first glance it would seem sensical that the reduction in harmful gasses is worth the cost of our discomfort despite the rapid advancements in refrigerant technologies globally, but there is clearly more to the argument, however hypothetical this all may be. Air conditioners serve more than just our comfort needs, and expelling them from our lives would not only regress us to more primitive times, but their absence would threaten our very survival.

Sure, we are innovative and out of necessity we may develop some new technology that could serve these needs going forward, but sometimes the treatment is worse than the thing we are trying to cure and we aren’t ready to move on from air conditioning just yet. We may find a way around using refrigerants, only to create worse pollutants through the manufacturing processes of whatever piece of science we replace them with. The place where our technology finds itself right now means that we often make tradeoffs, like converting from biofuels to electrically driven systems, without considering that the production of that electricity comes with its own pollutants and downsides. Until the renewable energy sector is ready to do all the heavy lifting, we are simply choosing the lesser of two evils, and air conditioning is no different. In its current form, its what we have right now and we need it more than we realise, not for comfort in our homes and offices but rather as a way to drive our lives forward in the most meaningful and fulfilling way.