Hello Brent,

> "What kind of people think that the population of Americans will
only suffer if the climate heats up by a few degrees? If you were to
track the `average temperature' experienced by the `average American'
over time (which we did in an analysis a few years ago), based upon
population movements alone, you would find that the experiential
temperature is increasing at a rate that is greater than
many of the projected scenarios of climate change (Figure 1)."

Eh ... is this person unaware of the air conditioner's role in the
population shift of Americans to the warmer climate of Florida and
the Southwest?

"In 1922, Carrier had two breakthroughs - he replaced the ammonia
with the benign coolant dielene and added a central compressor to
reduce the size of the unit. The next advance was when Carrier sold
his invention to movie-theater operators, with a notable debut in
1925 at the Rivoli on Broadway in New York City. In a short amount of
time, air conditioners were installed in office buildings, department
stores and railroad cars. The United States House of Representatives
had air conditioners installed in 1928, with the Senate, White House
and Supreme Court following suit in the years after. After World War
II, window units air conditioners appeared, with sales escalating
from 74,000 in 1948 to 1,045,000 in 1953.

"Today, air conditioners have been said to be a partial cause for the
changes in the South, and for most of us who have experienced its
cooling benefits in times of searing heat waves, it is an invention
that is hard to live without."
http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/mvigeant/therm_1/AC_final/bg.htm

If you were to remove the air conditioner from the equation I am
quite certain that the populations of Florida, Phoenix and Las Vegas
would decline quite dramatically. There are plenty of people who
live in Florida who operate their air conditioners nearly year-round
and when their air conditioners break down they feel like they are
dying. This might also explain why so many cars idle in parking lots
since people cannot handle even a few minutes of Florida's climate.

Sincerely,

David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1