Written By : William Teach

Have you ever noticed that liberal whine a lot? The glass is usually empty in their world. Nothing is ever good enough. And, once they have beaten one thing to death, they find something else (though, they will come back to beating the previous thing when necessary). Now we have them whining about air conditioners

In the last half century, air conditioning has joined fireworks, swimming pools and charred hamburgers as a ubiquitous ingredient of an American summer. It’s no exaggeration to say it has changed the way this country functions, shaping everything from where we’re willing to live (Las Vegas, anyone?) to the amount of sex we have (more: It’s never too hot to get it on when the A.C. is blasting). Nine out of 10 new homes in this country are built with central air conditioning, and Americans now use as much electricity to power our A.C. as the entire continent of Africa uses for, well, everything. It has so thoroughly scrambled our way of life that when the National Academy of Engineering chose its 20 greatest engineering accomplishments of the last century, A.C. not only made the list, it clocked in ahead of spacecraft, highways and even the Internet.

Yeah, that pesky AC, which allowed people to live and work in comfort. How dare Ding Huan start it all off by inventing the rotary fan in the 2nd Century!

But as science writer Stan Cox argues in his new book, “Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer),” the dizzying rise of air conditioning comes at a steep personal and societal price. We stay inside longer, exercise less, and get sick more often — and the electricity used to power all that A.C. is helping push the fast-forward button on global warming. The invention has also changed American politics: Love it or hate it, refrigerated cooling has been a major boon to the Republican Party. The advent of A.C. helped launch the massive Southern and Western population growth that’s transformed our electoral map in the last half century. Cox navigates all of these scientific and social angles with relative ease, providing a clear explanation of how A.C. made the leap from luxury to necessity in the United States and examining how we can learn to manage the addiction before we refrigerate ourselves into the apocalypse.

I’ll tell you what, Stan, Salon writer Ryan Brown, and all the rest of you little climate alarmists: you give up your AC first. Walk the talk. Are you up for it? If you can all do it for several years, than perhaps we will start buying into your unhinged climate alarmism.

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