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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't thermodynamics laws say that if you want to cool something down, you need to warm some other thing up more?

First of all - yes, AC heats up outside as much as it cools down inside. But the temperatures get equalised over time (the moment you open windows, or hot air gets back in through poor insulation), so the overall balance is exactly zero.

But more importantly, even if we put all the energy produced by humanity into space heaters, we wouldn't be able to increase the planet's temperature by any measurable amount.

To give you a sense of perspective - Humanity produces 4 TW of electricity on average at any given moment. Sun delivers at that same moment 170,000 TW of energy.

From my understanding - the more significant factor in global warming is GHG emissions

Sure, moving the heat outside makes the environment slightly warmer, but that's nothing compared to the significant amounts of solar energy getting trapped because you made the energy to run your a/c by burning coal or any other fossil fuel

(Also - the volume of every place where you could reasonably want A/C is negligible compared to the volume of the earth's atmosphere, so that isn't as much of an issue)

HA, people here do not like amelius's comment because it causes them cognitive dissonance in their scientific brain.

What he said was a true statement and the effects are real and quantifiable. https://news.asu.edu/content/excess-heat-air-conditioners-ca...

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of this part thermodynamics. ACs only move heat, not produce extra ignoring GHG, the process is heat-neutral.

It's you that has a fundamental misunderstanding of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy only increases, you cannot move heat without producing more. And it's not insignificant，a typical AC uses 1kWh to move 3kWh.

Quality of HN commenters has really declined.

I represent that remark!

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