Comment by boelboel
1 day ago
I've read before that a large portion of the warmest parts (Uttar Pradesh/Bihar) of India actually haven't had its temperature rise much because of coal power, farm burning and dust in general (a lot from construction) the particles block basically protect them against the sun.
Putting India in a spot where if it would cease relying on coal power in 30-40+ years it would cause the temperature to rise.
What a choice: heatstroke, or chronic respiratory disease?
Basically given the choice of one kills in hours and other in decades. Can we try to take option c?
I’ve wondered about that.
Even in rural towns, the midday sun in India feels “dimmer” on a clear day. Even for the winter, this seems odd as the relatively lower latitude should make for more direct sun.
It feels like the soft warm filters used in photography… Outdoor sun normally bothers me greatly, but there sunglasses don’t even seem needed…
Not sure what proportion is coal dust, dirt, or wood smoke but something major is definitely going on…
There is nothing stopping them from releasing sulfur dioxide into the air to have the same effect in an engineered and superior manner. Also, various surfaces can be painted white to reflect sunlight back into space. Trees also can be planted, and forests restored.
The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive indoor air conditioning.
> The good thing about green energy is that one there is a sufficient amount of it, it can also be used for extensive air conditioning.
The heat doesn't vanish with AC, at least not unless you use a very expensive deep-underground well as a heatsink instead of the open air.
Even if everyone has AC indoor - the air outdoor will still be too hot and, most likely, humid, with all the expelled heat from the ACs added on top of that. Animals won't stand a chance, especially wild ones, and humans that absolutely have to work outside (e.g. policemen, firefighters, EMS) will be just as impacted.
We have to face the reality: large parts of the globe, impacting billions of people, will be unable to support human and a lot of animal and plant life during the summer months if climate change continues at the current pace in a short enough time that most people reading this text will eventually witness this.
There's much more air outside than inside, so 15C colder inside does not mean that the entire city gets 15C hotter outside. And in a heat event, most people are inside, not outside. 1C hotter outside to make it livable for 99% of humans sounds fine. And this is only about cities, anything living outside cities will be fully unaffected.
For the people that have to work outside: air conditioning in the vehicle, frequent breaks in air conditioned areas, and I wonder if we could get proper air conditioned clothing at some point (currently vests with fans embedded are quite frequent in Japan, but that's the best there is as of today).
But I agree with the last paragraph. Air conditioning is the only countermeasure we have but in the end the fact remains that many cities will eventually become incompatible with human life in summer.
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There's PDRC, but we can't mass produce the "photonic metamaterials" that make it good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_daytime_radiative_cool...
It ought to be great. Takes no energy, sends heat through the infrared window back out into space where it came from.
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Bollocks. This is more eco-communist propaganda cope from German greens, to justify why their people should keep suffering hot summers living without AC while the other parts of the world and Europe do it just fine.
AC is heat pump like your fridge, it moves the heat from inside to outside, meaning the average between the two sides stays in equilibrium, it doesn't create new heat for the outside to be a measurable impact on the planet's heating. Everyone running refrigerators in their homes to keep the food cold, and transferring that heat to their kitchen, doesn't heat up the cities and planet.
You're also contradicting yourself. If the world is indeed getting fucked heating wise like you say, then at least it will be less fucked if you have AC where you live than trying to live without AC and being more fucked. The planet will not be saved if you give up on having residential AC, you'll just suffer more versus those with AC. So it makes sense form an individaul self preservation perspective.
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