Hmmm, Air Conditioners are heat pumps as are fridges. Pumping heat rather than generating it comes in at roughly 1/4 the energy budget.
An innovative "Air Conditioner" that could store the usually dumped heat for later use (Say in preheating water for a hot tap to lower costs of heating) would probably be extremely popular if it was a decent product otherwise (Cheap, durable, easy to install).
Effectively what is needed is a set of technologies that allow heat to be moved around and stored as easily as electricity and for a lower cost than generation.
If we had those then you'd have the best of both worlds, technologies that reduce climate change as well as allowing the non-first world to make life more comfortable in a warming world.
I remember reading recently about heat sinks for AC units that expel waste heat in as specific infrared band that sees the atmosphere as entirely transparent. In effect, it allows you to 'beam' the waste heat directly to space.
Similar to an AC unit, I would love to see two-part refrigerators. It always seemed dumb to me to cool the interior of your refrigerator by dumping heat into your home, which your AC has to then extract and dump outside. A refrigerator that had an external heat exchanger that could be placed outside, or shared with the AC heat exchanger, would be pretty spectacular.
> It always seemed dumb to me to cool the interior of your refrigerator by dumping heat into your home, which your AC has to then extract and dump outside.
It seems dumb in California, but in my much of the country (and much of the inhabited world, though there's a lot where this isn't true, too), you need heating of living space more than cooling, so pumping heat out of a fridge into the living space is a double win most of the year, and added complexity to avoid it is pure waste.
> seemed dumb to me to cool the interior of your refrigerator by dumping heat into your home, which your AC has to then extract and dump outside.
This doesn't strike me as dumb at all, unless the refrigerator's heat pump is more efficient [1] than the AC. Although it may be, it's not a foregone conclusion, and it stands to reason that a refrigerator would be designed to function better when pumping [2] heat into room temperatures than outdoor temperatures (as opposed to an AC).
Regardless, all heat pumps have to work harder (use more energy and/or run longer) when the temperature differential on either side is worse. You wouldn't be getting something for nothing by moving a fridge's hot side to a hotter outdoor location.
[1] Overall, including maintenance/replacement cost due to longer run-time
[2] or dumping, though "dump" suggest something more passive than what I believe is going on
Lol and the title of the piece is "Preventing visceral racism", its main thesis is about an experience that freaked him out and about how racism starts in groups. Your quote is cherry picked from where he is describing his freaked reaction.
An innovative "Air Conditioner" that could store the usually dumped heat for later use (Say in preheating water for a hot tap to lower costs of heating) would probably be extremely popular if it was a decent product otherwise (Cheap, durable, easy to install).
Effectively what is needed is a set of technologies that allow heat to be moved around and stored as easily as electricity and for a lower cost than generation.
If we had those then you'd have the best of both worlds, technologies that reduce climate change as well as allowing the non-first world to make life more comfortable in a warming world.