this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 10 points 5 months ago (3 children)

They're heat pumps in a technical sense, but coloquial terms, a "heat pump" is a heat pump which can actually heat a space.

[–] MxM111@kbin.social 18 points 5 months ago

The outside is a space too.

[–] vividspecter@lemm.ee 15 points 5 months ago (3 children)

It's weird that there are any AC that can't function in heating mode at this point. In Australia at least, you'd be hard pressed to even find one that doesn't support heating.

[–] admiralteal@kbin.social 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I, for one, would support a law that requires any new unit over a certain size must be reversible and maybe even a tier where they must have variable speed compressors. But I can already hear the Republicans lying that the feds are coming to steal your window units.

[–] vividspecter@lemm.ee 7 points 5 months ago

But I can already hear the Republicans lying that the feds are coming to steal your window units.

Of course, even modern window units (and portable AC) support reverse cycle. But conservatives will find a way to complain about it, agreed.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

This way it's $5 cheaper! Profit.

[–] mean_bean279@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Here in Cali there are a ton of homes that have wood burning fireplaces in them so often that’s viewed as the “heater” if need be and the AC is for cooling.

[–] huginn@feddit.it 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

AFAIK most American AC units can be retrofitted to be heat pumps pretty easily. You're just making it flow in reverse, after all.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

In automotive at least, it's pretty common to size the evaporator and condenser coils based on their expected operating temperatures and (therefore) pressures. Usually this means condenser is a lot bigger than evaporator.

If you reverse the flow with the right valves and compressor setup, then the heat exchangers will still be sized wrong for efficiency. I suppose you could design a bidirectional system from the start that trades off for middling efficiency in both modes.

I'm not at all convinced that there are a substantial number of such bidirectional-sized residential systems installed in North America. But it's also possible that the residential folks don't care much about HX efficiency.

[–] huginn@feddit.it 0 points 5 months ago

That makes sense, but also most heat pumps I know of are also AC units - like those mini splits installed in new apartments these days.

Would that not also be a balanced system?

And even if we're talking about lower efficiency it's still more efficient than burning gas in a furnace right?