One record that is broken is the Lake Erie water temperature record. Lake Erie is now 70 degrees , marking the first time Lake Erie is at 70 for the month of October, and the warmest Lake Erie has ever been on this date.
On the same day this month that the head of the International Energy Agency confidently declared that fossil fuel demand would peak this decade, the climate advocacy group Oil Change International found that the United States would be responsible for over one-third of all planned fossil fuel expansion through 2050. The following week, as President Biden emphatically called climate change an “existential threat” and announced the creation of a climate conservation corps, the United States broke a record for oil production.
It’s nothing new for climate ambition and climate hypocrisy to flicker back and forth like the two faces of a lenticular hologram. When the United States helped forge the Paris agreement in 2015, it still forbade the export of crude oil and was shipping a pretty trivial amount of natural gas overseas. But that legal ban was lifted the same month the climate agreement was reached, and today the United States — already the biggest producer of oil in the world and its biggest consumer — is also the world’s second-largest interregional exporter of crude. In 2015, the United States was shipping out just 1 percent as much liquefied natural gas as Qatar, the world’s biggest exporter; today, it is the world’s largest exporter, as well as the largest consumer and largest producer.
In this video we will be learning how refrigerants work in HVAC systems such as refrigerators, air and water cooled chillers as well as split a/c units. The refrigerant removes heat from the building and transfers it into the ambient outside air to produce air conditioning.
There is a lot of bemoaning of coming natural gas heating ban in New York State at least by conservatives. But it was a long time coming and gas heating makes less and less sense with changing technology — and our warming climate, which among other things makes extremely cold days rare. When winter days are mostly in the 30s and 40s, even the most basic two-mode air source heat pumps make a lot of sense. Most new construction already locally includes split level units, the code changes just reflect changes already under way in industry.
But there is another side to the mass adoption of split level heating – the end of homes without central air conditioning. There was a time when most homes in New York State didn’t have central air conditioning, though those days are somewhat behind us now. Yet, the All Electric Building Act almost completely mandates the end of buildings without air conditioning – it would be silly to build a building with a heat pump and no reversing valves. Modern all-electric buildings inherently have air conditioning.
The death of buildings without air conditioning may not be bemoaned by many. Air conditioning makes life much more comfortable, especially as 90 degrees days become more common. This year will El Niño, Albany may have it’s first triple digit day in 70 years. Sustaining life in New York State with the warming climate might require air conditioning, especially with the vulnerable, frail and elderly.
But it also means a loss in learning to cope with the heat and humidity, breathing in outdoor air and learning to adapt to ones surroundings. People having windows open for fresh air, especially in the suburbs and country might become rare as the split level units automatically cool the room in the summer, and energy conservation discourages people from opening windows. Some low cost new residential buildings might not even have windows that open, with the split level until doing all the work to keep the room comfortable at all times.
July will likely go down as the hottest month ever recorded in human history, and climate change is partially to blame. Researchers predicted the month would smash the previous record, set in 2019, before it even came to an end, according to a statement from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).