# South Florida heat/humidity

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/south-florida-heat-humidity/37776>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 21, 2000, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/south-florida-heat-humidity/37776 "2000-10-21T13:50:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![YvonneTheAmazon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/58f4c7/32.png) [@YvonneTheAmazon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YvonneTheAmazon)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2000, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/south-florida-heat-humidity/37776/1 "2000-10-21T13:50:35Z")

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I live in South Florida where it is hot and humid. Very humid.  
My question is: if everyone in South Florida turned the Air Conditioner to the lowest setting and opened the windows, would it succeed in cooling the weather, or would it create many tiny (or one huge) Tornado?  
This is something I would really like to try if I could get everyone to agree. 🙂

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**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2000, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/south-florida-heat-humidity/37776/2 "2000-10-21T14:03:03Z")

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Air conditioners produce waste heat, so the result (if any) is that the weather would get hotter.

Where do you live? I’m in Boca Raton.

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**Author:** ![YvonneTheAmazon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/58f4c7/32.png) [@YvonneTheAmazon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YvonneTheAmazon)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2000, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/south-florida-heat-humidity/37776/3 "2000-10-21T14:23:01Z")

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Ft Lauderdale.  
Why would it become hotter? What is waste heat? Please treat me as an idiot to explain this.

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**Author:** ![Arjuna34](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Arjuna34](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arjuna34)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2000, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/south-florida-heat-humidity/37776/4 "2000-10-21T15:11:45Z")

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Air conditioners don’t make things cold, they just move heat around. Your AC moves heat from inside your house to outside the house, so while it’s getting colder inside, you’re actually making the outside slightly hotter. Of course, the outside is SLIGHTLY bigger than inside, so the temperature rise isn’t too much 🙂

Anyway, if the AC were 100% efficient, and you put one outside, the net result would be no temperature change at all, since it would be cooling the front and heating the back. No AC is 100% efficient, so the net result is more hot air comes out the back than cool out the front, so you’d overall raise the temperature.

Arjuna34