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READ The "war" of air conditioning in the office, the golden rules for not to quarrel
For starters, US researchers have used five different climate models to simulate the changing summer temperatures of the present mid-century and the impact they are having. will have on the energy consumption of buildings. In fact, currently, buildings are the largest single energy expenditure item in the United States, and air conditioning is one of the most important factors affecting electricity consumption. Difficult to consider it as an option, especially with the expected temperature increases that will make summer more and more dangerous for the elderly, children and the most vulnerable population groups. But all at one price: air conditioning needs electricity and, to produce it, we risk further aggravating the pollution of our atmosphere.
"The danger is to replace one problem with another," says Jonathan Patz, environmental and public health expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who coordinated the research. "If we continue to use coal-fired power plants to produce our electricity, every time we turn on an air conditioner, we will only make the air quality worse and we will produce more illnesses and even more death."
Global warming: the fight against it is practical, especially in terms of health
Co2, Nox (nitrogen oxides), particles: all the main atmospheric pollutants will naturally increase as the temperature increases and higher energy consumption will only make things worse. . Quantifying the results in terms of mortality, we are talking about 13 thousand additional deaths related to atmospheric particles, and about 3,000 caused by ozone, taking into account only the cities of the east coast of the United States. And at least a thousand of them each year (in the eastern United States only) will be directly caused by the extra energy consumption needed to run the air conditioning.
If the energy in question continues to be produced by burning fossil fuels. "The right answer to the problem is renewable energy," concludes David Abel, the first author of the research. "It's a solution totally under our control, that would keep climate change and air pollution at bay." What is certain is that if no change occurs, they are both intended to worsening rapidly. "
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