Title: Air conditioning energy: AC saves lives and causes less climate change than heating.
Headings: Hot and Bothered
Hot and Bothered
Air conditioning isn’t bad for you or even (relatively) for the planet.
By Daniel Engber
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Content: Preschool facts and utter nonsense get dressed up in the wooly scarf of scientific jargon. “ Since thermoreceptors (nerve cells that sense temperature changes) are on your skin,” she says for the benefit of no one, “the more of it you have exposed, the colder you are going to feel. Sixty-eight degrees feels a lot different if you are wearing a wool turtleneck, slacks and boots versus a poplin sundress and sandals.” So true! Advertisement
Advertisement
How does this relate to air conditioning? A blast of cold, like you’d get when you walk into a chilled lobby on a summer day, “may feel good at first,” she writes, but the rapid shift in temperature can make “the hypothalamus go nuts, intensifying physical and psychological discomfort when the initial pleasure wears off.” I’ll admit that does sound pretty bad—no one wants a nutty hypothalamus. But the essay doesn’t tell us if these rapid shifts in temperature cause the same derangement during winter. Would it discombobulate the diencephalon to warm yourself beside the fire on a frigid night, or sip a steaming cup of cocoa? The wrongness of the essay doesn’t end with awkward stabs at neuroscience.