In an effort to combat rising temperatures, the Environmental Protection Agency is going to raise the cost of beating the heat. I guess it’ll all balance out in about 150 years, right?
“They’re stopping the production of the current refrigerant, R-410A. Those systems will no longer be produced after December 31 of this year…”
The Environmental Protection agency wants to replace the refrigerants with more eco-friendly alternatives.
“They’re trying to get to the lowest global warming potential number that they can. Unfortunately, it’s going to drive costs significantly up, and it’s going to impact homeowners,” Howard said.
Just keep smiling …….. They’ll never be done …until enough people lose it for the right reasons .
The replacements for Freon and its firefighting relative Halon, which were CFCs (chloroflorinated hydrocarbons if I remember correctly), were efficient and non toxic to humans. Changing to HCFCs made refrigerants toxic and Halon impossible. HCFCs also happen to be a smaller molecule which means it can leak through smaller holes. Propane is being used as a less efficient and flammable substitute.
Whatever they have planned will be another step backwards I’m sure.
And the divide between the 1st and 3rd world keeps expanding. And the divide between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots … keeps widening.
I look forward to all the taxpayer-funded programs that provide “FREE” AC units and eco-refrigerant to all the poor people and … newcomers. And the wealth keeps getting transferred from the middle class to the lower class. Hint: The wealthy are getting wealthier … their dollars ain’t getting transferred nowhere but into a new equities account.
And it is flammable.
Let’s insist on heat pumps for envelope heating.
Next item on list. Let’s increase the cost of refrigerants needed for heat pumps.
Has a government vibe to it doesn’t it.
And, was not the initial fear campaign against CFCs all about “Teh Ozpne Layer”.
I am still waiting for ANYONE to publish valid information about how these huge and heavy and incredibly “robust” molecules were supposed to find their way to the upper atmosphere above Antarctica, whereupon they would be smashed by Solar UV radiation and thus shed Chlorine molecules which, in turn, would destroy said Ozone layer.
I’m still waiting for the (natural) hole in the ozone layer to heal like they said it would.
But but but … that GIANT ozone hole the size of a thousand Texas’s … caused Australia to incinerate!! Right?
I propose all Democrats, Liberals, and NDPers give up their air conditioning.
To save the planet ( sarc… sort of)
Where Dems, Grits and NDippers are eventually heading air conditioning doesn’t exist and it is very warm. Wailing weeping and lamentations will not alleviate their lot….. or so I’m told 🙂
As well as their home heating in winter. There can be no half-measures.
I’m guessing that should turn about 40-60% libs to conservative. Meaningless virtue signalling is one thing, but minor sacrifices/inconveniences for their green religion is another matter.
Expensive groceries, fuel and electric cars are teaching some of the sharper commies a lesson already.
the iceman cometh…
Idiots. These days every environmental catastrophe is the result of a government policy.
They continue to claim that floods are increasing and that the most recent IPCC report supports that, even though the report says nothing like that.
Build your homes in flood plains and pave your entire community, and the result is obvious.
Excellent.
Being unable to keep food refrigerated should do wonders for our progressive comrades.
Should go real well with intermittent electricity supply.
Think food is expensive now?
Just wait until you cannot save your leftovers..
Meanwhile I am sure Canadian Tire will continue to sell airhorns using compressed refrigerant..same refrigernt every A/C tech has to report the most minute venting there of.
Then compound that with a 25% reduction in the load capacity of over-the-road trucks because they’ve all been mandated to be EV’s. It gets very ugly very quickly. What obesity crisis?
HVAC companies are gaslighting you. There is no need for higher prices. There are cheaper alternatives that work just as well as r-410a.
That isn’t to say r-410a should be banned (the HVAC companies have known this was coming for years), but at worse it means spending a bit of money retro-fitting a system to use another refrigerant.
Smart consumers will opt for systems for which they can buy the refrigerant themselves, without needing a license.
Well now, how many morons will comply. If no one does the the damage can be controlled.
The EPA has SWAT teams.
swat back.
Since so many EPA employees are in DC, this will work out great. Shut down the AC in all government office buildings. Washington DC is a miserable place to be in the summer without AC. Even Lincoln had a place to get away out of town in the summers, and that was before the town was so much asphalt and concrete.
And tear it out of all the government vehicles. Let the fed employees lead the way.
In the early 20th century, refrigeration was accomplished with either ammonia or propane. Neither were particularly efficient and both were problematic. Ammonia leaks were toxic as well as potentially explosive. Propane was explosive. As a result DuPont created Freon in the 1930’s. It was efficient and the volume required was unlikely to displace oxygen in a space volume nor was it explosive. It allowed refrigeration to become widespread improving food safety and thermal comfort in warm climates. It was a win – win.
Eventually it was portrayed as an evil ozone destroying gas and was legislated out of use. It’s been replaced by more expensive, less efficient and somewhat toxic alternatives.
Propane as well has returned as a refrigerant in “eco friendly” appliances. Strangely when a the external insulation cladding of a high tower in the UK caught fire and killed a large number of people, the resulting multi million British pound inquiry valiantly resisted identifying the cause of the fire which was ignition of propane from a leaky eco friendly propane refrigerator. All in the cause of insulating bad decisions made in a misguided effort to “save the environment”.
Remember the moronic Al Gore yammering away about the “ozone hole over Kennebunkport” during the 1992 American presidential election? It was all a lie and a propaganda attack on then President George H. W. Bush who happened to have a home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
This guy does some neat refrigeration work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rjwx5q2fVI
We have to admit that the choice of “man-made catastrophic climate change” was a brilliant choice by the globalists. The Club of Rome is often mentioned but I read somewhere that the threat was invented as far back as the mid-50s in the boardroom of the Rockefeller Foundation.
Is there anything “climate change” can’t do.
And whowill hold the patent on the new refrigerant?
DuPont?
Oops. I forgot to mention that When their Freon patent was about to expire DuPont was instrumental in having it declared an ecological devil. They then released new patented CFCs and will do it again