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Richard Branson (who asked for UK taxpayer money to repair his private island after hurricane Irma) Has set a climate change challenge:
As the world continues to warm, you can expect more and more folks to be turning to air conditioners to keep their living environments cool and comfortable. And in that sense, this energy-intensive technology will do plenty to exacerbate the very problem it is designed to solve. The Global Cooling Prize is a competition to help stop runaway climate change, by dangling US$3 million in prize money for the development of more energy-efficient cooling solutions.
The Global Cooling Prize is backed by the Indian government among other partners, with Richard Branson taking on the ambassadorial duties.
$3M could keep this site running for some time -- go team SoylentNews!
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Tuesday December 04 2018, @09:28AM
Doesn't help the vent is about 5 feet up, instead of towards the ceiling like it should be.
Umm, in my world, hot air rises, so the logical place to put a vent that blows hot air would be near to the floor, not the ceiling, unless you like your room temperature to be stratified.
I too have suffered from 'warm air central heating', which in my experience was (a) noisy (b) made the room air distressingly low humidity (c) draughty (both warm and cold) (d) did nothing to ameliorate the cold air sinking from the windows (e) subject to all the warmth disappearing up the (open) stairwell from the living area in the open plan house, so the bedrooms became too warm for my comfort while the living area still needed me to wear several layers. Apart from that, it was great.
My ideal heating arrangement would be under-floor heating, but it is disruptive to retro-fit, especially to flats (apartments), and in some cases the only viable choice is electrical-resistance underfloor heating, which gets a bit expensive in running costs, unless you are lucky enough to be somewhere with cheap electricity. I know someone with whole-house underfloor heating, which uses lukewarm water through the underfloor piping generated from a heat pump where the source is a rather large and deep lake - so the lake bottom water temperature is pretty much 4 Celsius year-round. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to do the same.