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Thank you for a very thorough reply. Interesting read. We very obviously read different things. Basically what I hear you saying is: we have the technology, we can do it. Please correct me if im reading you wrong. And sure, that is the hope, and I'm not saying that we wont be able to find solutions - simply that our current solutions wouldnt work if scaled to the world. My argument is simply that we're on a massive ecological clock, and I dont see our current political systems or power structures being able to support the necessary change. What I think your calculations miss is two things: 1) producing a fridge is harmful to the climate not just because it takes ressources to produce and ship and maintain, but because it uses limited ressources and pollutes after it is thrown away [1] and prices doesnt currently reflect the real cost on the environment. And 2) Technology is worth very little if politics and infrastructure doesnt support it. We could avoid a large part of the pollution of fridges if we recycle, but we need recycling plants, a government that mandates it, a culture of recycling, not to mention we need to share technology across borders. My argument is not that its physically impossible, but that it isnt realistic in any way to imagine we could scale our way of living to the entire world with our current political, tehcnological and cultural infrastructure. Right beside everything you describe, there is an on-going climate-crisis of extreme proportions going on. The way we live in the west is built historically on fossil-fuels and direct exploitation of other parts of the world, and it has led us to the brink of ecological ruin. Even if technology might be able to ensure that the rest of the world wont need to rely on fossil fuels in the same way we've done historically and still do, there is not the political will or the infrastructrure to do so. There will be, maybe, in 10 years - we'll see. So yes, my standard of living rests explicitly on poorer countries not living like me. Because we dont have the technology or infrastructure in place to support such a massive increase in living standard without it impacting the climate. It doesnt matter if we have the technology in ten years if its impossible to implement at scale. [1] The cooling industry play a huge part in glomal warming: "Part of the problem with refrigerants, however, is that much of the harm they cause is after we as consumers have finished using them. It occurs out of sight, and so largely out of mind." https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201204-climate-change-h... |
I think the case of refrigerators is particularly interesting. Other than energy, they don't consume limited resources; they just contain limited resources until they're thrown away. Some of those resources are scarce, like copper, aluminum, and the refrigerant itself, and because it's profitable, those tend to get recycled already, even without government mandates (though sometimes government mandates can prevent it, like the "steps to stop illegal trade in HFCs" mentioned in the article you link). Others are not scarce, like iron, fiberglass, and polyurethane, so it isn't a problem if they are locked up in a landfill. At some point mining landfills will be profitable when the mineral resources they contain are depleted in their original mine deposits.
The problem of leaks of fluorinated refrigerant is real, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Greenhouse_gase... says that total fluorinated gas (including refrigerants from air conditioners and refrigerators, propellants, sulfur hexafluoride, and others) is only about 3% of the total greenhouse forcing, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions#/medi... gives 2.1%. Plausibly this is the largest climatic effect of buying a refrigerator, even if it's manufactured with 100% coal energy, but in absolute terms it's not that significant. And I don't think the number of refrigerators is going to more than double; according to https://globaldatalab.org/areadata/fridge/?levels=1%2B2%2B3%... even in Bangladesh 40% of households have one, and 35% in India and 99.9% in China; and https://bigee.net/media/filer_public/2012/12/04/bigee_doc_2_... gives the number as 1.4 billion domestic refrigerators ten years ago. So we might see that 3% grow to 5% or something, but not a high enough level to make a real difference. I don't think it's accurate to describe 3%, or even the 10% in the article, as "a huge part in global warming".
I used to have a refrigerator that didn't use greenhouse-gas refrigerants. It was an ammonia-absorption refrigerator, using ammonia, water, and hydrogen. These are unfortunately not available in my country (illegal, I think), and it is not safe to have them inside a house, but it's perfectly reasonable to keep them out on the patio. One big plus is that they can run on stored fuel, whether natural or synthetic, which would be really nice with the frequent power outages where I live now.
Sort of by coincidence, I've been trying to figure out this month how far desiccant-enhanced evaporative cooling can replace conventional vapor-compression air conditioning. I think I've found ways to reduce the system cost low enough that multistage cascades are economical, which ought to make it possible to do not only air conditioning but even domestic food refrigeration with desiccants, though freezing will require a different approach. I found some really interesting research from NREL on this, mostly over the last decade. Desiccant-based systems have the potential to provide not only cooling but also humidity control, heating, food preservation, and household solid waste treatment, and they can run on stored energy for days, which is important both during power outages and to ameliorate the intermittency of solar and wind energy.