Sorry for the double post, I don't see an edit button.
This is actually how my buddy explained it.
the EER is basically the lay man version of te physical unit of effiiciency, which is essentially a ratio of the energy put out divided by the energy used. It's not so much an issue of the heat generated--its how efficient the AC is in turning the energy you put in (in, electricity) to energy out (cold air)
Efficiency is uaully a number from 0 to 1 (obviously, noting is 100% effiicient, some energy is lost. The EER takes taht decimal and makes it a rating, I think so an effiiciency of 0.5 (which means only half the energy is gets put out) is a rating of 5. So rating of 8-10 would mean 80%-100% efficiency (though I am pretty sure that no AC gets a 10, 9.9 maybe or 9.99999).
The total heat produced (not just passed through, i.e. hot air expelled from within to out) is generated by the engine. This heat is directly 3.41 BTU's of heat per watt used by the engine. So...a 10000 Btu air conditioner would need to have close to a 2932 watt engine to be taking a loss on a standard AC (which has an EER of about 16 these days, I am now finding). And this is assuming a high rate of efficiency.
Most air conditioners are under 100 watts. Which means, that in an inefficient air conditioner (100 watts and 10,000 BTUs), it is still generating a net of 9971 (appr) BTUs of cold. I'd say at a ratio of 341-1, that shitty air conditioner is definitely still generating far more cold than hot. There is still some lost due to unprocessed heat energy being leaked by the system, but that is generally little to none.
At this time another friend told me of a time when they forgot to stick the tube on one of those portable a/c's out the window and the room heated up quite a bit. I relayed that, to which he responded:
Alrighty, portable air conditioning units with the hose are not the same as older portable units, or window mounted/giant compressor-type air conditioners. The hose ones use a reservoir of water is used to cool and humidify the air through evaporation. Not sure on the details, but in the end it seperates the warm water (humidity) out of the air and kicks it out the hose, and then releases the cooler less humid air back into the room. Should you leave the hose in the room you get no heat removed, but a little more added from the machine.
Bigger types (like window units) are refrigerators, except smaller and with one added fan. This one sucks air out of the room, cycles it through the parts that need cooling, and then kicks it out the back at a hotter temperature. The temperature increase is not, however, significant enough to counteract the amount of cooling given.