Submitted 1 day ago by Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone to worldnews@aussie.zone
https://ourworldindata.org/four-minutes-of-air-conditioning
An electric fan uses around 50 watt-hours of electricity per hour.
On one level, I do understand why the author wrote it this way, but man the way popular media complicates things by using units like “watt-hours per hour” (i.e., just plain old watts…) rankles me.
Just give the power consumption (watts or kilowatts) and then if appropriate relate that to the (kilo)watt-hour unit that we see on our power bill.
Interesting article, i’d only say the way Hannah Ritchie ended it feels a little lazy.
2nd last paragraph,
In colder countries, we wouldn’t accept people freezing in their homes. The opposite is also true: we shouldn’t accept people working and living in oppressive heat without ways to cool themselves down.
I think she’d have had a better ending at least acknowledging other methods people around the world use to cool themselves.
Not only because this ending makes it sound as if AC is the only option for all circumstances. But readers could take away a soft imperiousness that people from these countries can’t/won’t act in ways to improve their own lives.
This would be a fundamentally damaging assumption going both directions. It could mean aid people receive in these countries could be poorly targeted, and aid organisers could also forego the incidence of learning from people and their often ingenious strategies for dealing with life with the resources they do have.
No1@aussie.zone 19 hours ago
I’ll continue to do my best, but:
How many AI queries would it take to equate to 4 minutes of air conditioning?
DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 18 hours ago
Depends on the model, the size of the query and response, the hardware it’s running on (tpus are more efficient than GPUs), and many other factors. Also depends on the aircon.
Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 15 hours ago
I suppose not far off 4 AI cat videos worth? If i’s to assume from the below comment yesterday?
aussie.zone/comment/21542266