Our body temp is 98.6 so why do we prefer temperatures around 70 degrees? Most people hate it when its 99 degrees out but you’d assume that would be a perfect temp.
Does the bodies production of ATP add a good deal of heat on top of environmental heat, which is why our preferred temps are 30 degrees below our core body temp?
Well, I don’t know if “production of ATP” is exactly the answer, but yes: we produce heat, and a temperature difference of about 28˚F is enough, on average, to shed it.
Well, I’m no biologist, but here’s my understand of it. Certain metabolic processes in our body require the 98.6 degree mark, and human beings as we know ourselves simply could not exist at a lower average body temperature. However, the average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere is not that hot, so evolution eventually conditioned us to accept a lower outside temperature. At any stage, individuals who were constantly seeking a climate that was on average hotter than any that really exists would have been selected against. Of course, heat tolerance does vary considerably among individuals.
A resting adult human puts out about 100 watts of heat. (there’s a GQ thread on this and candles, but I don’t feel like searching for it now, probably not indexed yet anyway).
I think the perception that 70 degrees is the preferred temperature is limited to us overheated, sedentary, central heating habituated, US types. Anywhere from the 50’s through the 80’s can easily be gotten used to as “normal.”
I’m quite comfortable in temperatures up to about 90º. But I’m relatively thin, in shape, and have spent much time in some very hot places. Since I spent a summer in Kuwait a few years ago, I have very high heat tolerance, but conversely, I have very low cold tolerance. So we are most comfortable with what we adapt to, within limits.
Temperature, eh? Fascinating.
I don’t really have anything to contribute to the discussion. I just wanted to bump this thread to put the threads about “Over-Jacking” and “Passion - what’s with the mopping up?” in sequence on the GQ menu. 
Carry on.
I recall from biochemistry that no reaction is 100% efficient. Gasoline (octane) to CO2 was in the 20-30% efficiency range with the rest of the energy released as heat. The body, in it’s conversion of glucose to energy, was somewhere around 30-40% efficient. But that’s still a lot of heat generated, and it has to go somewhere. 68 degrees (what I always heard was optimal, at least for test-taking) must be that temperature where a sedendary person is at equilibrium with the environment - the air at that temperature vibrates just slowly enough to absorb the amount of heat produced from basal metabolic processes. Air vibrating more slowly would remove too much heat and force the body to shiver to counter, air vibrating more quickly (and thus hotter) would force the body to release water to increase heat dissipation.
That’s a matter of geometry. Thin is a poor shape for retaining heat - lots of surface area. Rounder objects do a better job. So while there may be adaptation involved, there’s also quite a bit of physics.
We had a temp in our office once who was about that old, and she wasn’t comfortable at all. She could hardly make ends meet.