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Re:Is air conditioning making cities hotter? by y42 on Sunday September 10, 2023 @11:37AM (#37456856)
Wait what? An AC does not simply turn hot air into cold air. It "moves energy" from one place to another.

Indeed it would be nice to power the AC with solar power, but how does this help the city to cool down? You would cool down the houses, but the heat from the houses would remain in the city, it would even get hotter.

Re:Is air conditioning making cities hotter? by robotresearcher on Sunday September 10, 2023 @03:12PM (#37458971)
The argument is that you aren’t moving additional energy into the city from power stations to run the AC, which ends up as heat. Instead you’re using energy that’s already radiated into the city from the sky.

As others have pointed out, you might do better bouncing the incoming radiation back out of the city with white roofs. And still others say you can do a bit of both.

Re:Is air conditioning making cities hotter? by reportingsjr on Sunday September 10, 2023 @03:19PM (#37459033)
Exactly correct!

Also, you could definitely do well to reduce your roof albedo by switching to white/reflective roofs. This point has been made endlessly over the last 30-40 years. No one actually does it. People are actually installing solar panels.

Re:Is air conditioning making cities hotter? by crazygringo on Sunday September 10, 2023 @03:40PM (#37459217)
> No one actually does it.

To the contrary -- at least in NYC it's extremely common. The vast majority of "tenement" apartment buildings have silver roofs, for this reason.

Just fire up Google Maps in satellite view over Manhattan and see for yourself. White-looking roofs everywhere (but silver in reality).

New construction with roof decks tends to use things like white-ish floor squares as well. They're obviously much cooler to walk on in the summer.

Re:Is air conditioning making cities hotter? by wolverine876 on Sunday September 10, 2023 @08:24PM (#37461444)
Why silver and not white?
Re:Is air conditioning making cities hotter? by crazygringo on Sunday September 10, 2023 @10:41PM (#37462230)
Good question. I can't easily find an answer, but this page at least describes the type of silver roof common on old NYC buildings:

https://flatroofdoc.com/silver-coating-protecting-a-rubber-r...

Elsewhere I find a claim that the aluminum paint used was a 20th century thing, but now white paint is preferred as being more reflective.

Re:Is air conditioning making cities hotter? by andsoitis on Sunday September 10, 2023 @04:20PM (#37459634)
> No one actually does it.

Los Angeles has building codes for cool roofs:

https://www.ladbs.org/docs/default-source/publications/ordin...