Anything that doesn't kill you brings you closer to death in some way if it is hurtful.
Heatwaves push EVERYBODY closer to the edge and for many elderly and people with health issues the edge was already right there.
I don't care if a city can claim technically zero heat deaths in the immediate aftermath of a heatwave, people die indirectly from the pure body stress of it excaberating other pre-existing issues and the impact doesn't disappear the next day.
Anything that doesn't kill you brings you closer to death in some way if it is hurtful.
Uhhh exercise can be hurtful (muscle soreness) and I'm sure we can find other examples
Not that I disagree with the rest of your post. I love a good sauna, but the joy of it is that it ends when I get out (and maybe jump into a pile of snow). A heat wave is just... Taxing
I love it when OP adds their own clarification in the square brackets to de-clickbait a title
This is what we come to lemmy for!
Remember how they solved this in that one book that starts with the sole survivor of a massive heat dome?
That book was The Ministry for the Future (2020) by Kim Stanley Robinson and the solution involved assassinations at scale of oil and gas industry executives as well as destruction by drone of all fossil fuel tankers and egregiously polluting cargo ships. Also, massive releases of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, aggressive immobilization of Antarctic glaciers via water pumps, and the onboarding of all central banks to rebase currency according to how much CO₂ you can fix into the ground instead of capitalism's belief in endless future growth. It is a very optimistic story, but one we'll have to carry out eventually in some form to at least the degree described in the book.
Assassinations for non-compliant billionaires/oligarchs, which irl would be literally every single one! That was it! Thank you! Sorry for asking but it had been a while since i read that.
That was a surprisingly grisly start to an otherwise extremely disappointing book.
It really was. It had one good idea, though.
Kim Stanley Robinson is elderly now, time for him to put down the quill and pick up gardening. I'm constantly surprised that the people who are the most pro-tech and colonize space and "explore that" are never for the #1 most important thing: anti-aging and life extension research.
Hasn't it been like 20 years since Afghanistan was digging anticipatory mass graves before summer because of the expected number of routine deaths that would be caused by the heat?
We've been in the middle of the dystopian climate catastrophe for decades now. It's amazing some people haven't noticed.
In lieu of trees and shade, I've been told (by a woman that was almost 100 years old) that during a really miserable heat wave, (she hated being too hot) get into a basement or anyplace that has a first level that is in - not on - the ground.
Unfortunately, that’s just not possible everywhere. For instance, where I live the water table is like 6 inches below the ground. Pretty much every house here has a crawlspace foundation. The few that do have basements pretty much all have mold issues and need sump pumps, etc.
Sounds like a good source for water cooling! Dig a small well and pump the water around you to cook your room.
Not sure how effective this really is, should get some amount of cooling and have been curious to try it sometime.
That's the issue with high wet bulb conditions: they are too hot and humid to allow for evaporative cooling to work.
Good news, it isn't evaporative. It relies on the ground being cooler than the air.
Oh, you mean geothermal cooling. Yes, some buildings use that for heating/cooling by using vertical wells or buried horizontal loops coupled with heat pumps. It's fairly green, though can be an expensive investment up front if one needs to use vertical wells due to lack of real estate. It's still air conditioning, just coupled to underground water as a heat sink instead of outside air.
The DIY method I mentioned is just dumping heat into the ground using water to transfer it. No heat pump, just a pump and much cheaper. Of course anything with a heat pump is going to be more powerful.
Not sure how many watts of cooling something like that could realistically manage but I have been interested in the idea.
I'm picturing a Corsi-Rosenthal box with automotive radiators connected in series instead of air filters! The inlet hooked to a sink, and the outlet hooked to the drain. Heat losses would be introduced at the well's pump, and at the box fan motor. As long as nothing leaks, the only things to worry about would be the added power consumed, the added wear on the well pump, and the well water's rate of replenishment. Oh, and the condensation which may collect on the radiators. An interesting DIY idea. I wonder if anyone has already tried it.
Sounds like you are combining both ideas somehow? The Corsi-Rosenthal box radiator in your sink would absolutely work. Though I don't know how much water you would be going through for it.
If you instead used a closed loop and pumped water through the ground to cool off then the only thing going is the pump and fan.
Condensation is a possible issue, tray and bucket to collect it?
Hmm, let me elaborate. If I were to do it, I'd hook a hose up to the spigot on a basement sink. I've seen some that have external threads so one may connect a garden hose to it. I would then take my length of garden hose into a convenient space in the basement, perhaps one that helps maximise airflow or is close to a basement drain or some other available place. Then I would plumb the garden hose into the inlet of one of my radiators, and the outlet to the next inlet, and so on. As the relatively cool well water passes inside the radiators, my box fan draws warm humid air (almost 100% humidity on a dangerous wet-bulb day!) through the grilles of the radiators and exchanges some heat. In theory, the exhaust of the box fan/radiator assembly is now somewhat cooler and possibly drier. The now heated well water I would then plumb from the outlet of the final radiator to the sink so it could go down the drain. If the heated water were returned to the well, there are contamination issues as well as significantly more heat losses depending on the available water capacity and exchange rate of the well. Does this setup differ from what you had in mind?
to cook your room
I could think of better uses lol
This summer I may sleep in my smelly basement since I work nights. I'll get a cot so I don't have to be on dirt, but it's better than a room where the temperatures are over 30°C even on smelly wet dirt.
Look back on this moment fondly: the time before "wet bulb" became widely known...
Send the bill to those advertising O&G, they have plenty of money.
Careful, when I mention this I get downvotes and called a Doomer.
look just think positive thoughts!
humans have survived all previous challenges, we’ll be fine
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/s
That's the spirit!
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
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