Environmental Containment Bubbles
Americans devote more than 15% of their electrical consumption towards air-conditioning. Depressingly, this amounts to more than the total energy usage in India, which has more than 5 times the number of people that we do. American cities are hotter outside because we cool them down inside.
Perhaps we should rethink this propensity to isolate ourselves from our environment. We live in an environmental containment bubble — thick insolation, triple-pane windows filled with inert gas, electronically controlled temperature that keeps not just the part we occupy but the entire house within a 2 degrees span. Lest we go outside and melt, we have elaborate mobile environmental containment bubbles (complete with soundproofing, audio-manipulation and air-conditioning) that allow us to move between environmental containment bubbles — home, office, restaurant, tanning salon — without fear.
We fear nature and our neighbors — and design our technology accordingly.
It is grotesque.
August 18th, 2006 at 11:49
Actually, they are hotter outside because of all of the asphalt and concrete. The materials used in cities retain heat.
The same effect is observed at airports. The runway surface is not hot because of air-conditioning; it is hot because of solar energy retained in the material.
Also note, when the “global warming†folk point to NOAA data as “evidence†they usually fail to tell you that over time more and more observations are made from airports and cities, that are getting larger and becoming bigger heat sinks, than from other places.