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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday May 28 2015, @01:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-global-warming? dept.

The Hindustan Times reports:

An unrelenting heat wave has killed more than 1,100 people across the country over a fortnight with southern neighbours Andhra Pradesh and Telangana bearing the brunt, as torrid temperatures melted roads in the national capital and have forced people indoors.

Authorities said on [May 26] most of the victims were construction workers, the elderly, or the homeless, as the weather office predicted the mercury will continue to soar this week with substantial relief expected only when the southwest monsoon hits the Indian mainland around May 31.

[...] The meteorological department issued "red box" warnings for Odisha, Jharkhand, and coastal Andhra Pradesh, signalling high chances of heatstroke, dehydration, and fatality with temperatures inching upwards of 45°C and conditions worsened by constant dry, sweltering winds.

[The state of] Odisha continued to reel, with [the town of] Titlagarh in Balangir district clocking the highest temperature of 47.6°C [117.7°F], while authorities said they received reports of 67 deaths in the past week.

[...] Experts warned [that] no let-up in the heat wave would lead to large-scale power outages in several parts of north India, bringing back memories of a horrific blackout in 2012 that affected nearly 600 million people.

In a separate story, Arne Winguth, Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Texas-Arlington led a study on future environmental conditions in central Texas in the year 2100.

The professor was interviewed by KERA TV:

Winguth's study predicts more cracks and potholes, even buckling and melting of roadways in extreme 125-degree heat.

"The 125° Fahrenheit is a prediction for the future that is predicted for the year 2100. That would be the extreme temperature--that is based on most recent climate assimilation from the National Center for Atmospheric research."


[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 28 2015, @05:05PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday May 28 2015, @05:05PM (#189178) Journal

    Heat can do work, and we have had the means to move it around to where it can do so for some time. Why not, instead of radiating that waste heat back into the air, use it to heat the water in your hot water heater [google.com] or use it to run a small turbine [epa.gov] (or run a stirling engine)?

    So much of our world still relies upon wasteful, use-it-once-and-throw-it-away 19th century thinking. Closed-loops and sustainable cycles are just as possible if you go into a system with that ethos in mind. We're starting to change that a bit, with recycling becoming a normal part of societal waste management, and upcycling cast-off goods, but it remains marginal and incremental.

    I find it a fun challenge to try to get to zero waste, myself. My ultimate goal is to buy no food, growing all my family needs in a small footprint (aquaponics); buy no electricity, generating all we need through wind and solar; buy no gas, running an EV off the afore-mentioned solar/wind setup; buy no natural gas, getting all we need from a methane digester; and recycle everything we have that we no longer need in its initial form. We recently eliminated our paper waste stream by shredding it into bedding for the kids' guinea pigs (and saving money on the bedding in the process) and then composting that when it's done into garden soil to grow veggies & herbs; it's ridiculously satisfying.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by KGIII on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:23PM

    by KGIII (5261) on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:23PM (#189234) Journal

    When I drew my house plans (the existing house was not efficient nor what I wanted) I made sure to keep passive solar and other passive efficiency methods in mind. I ended up with a salt-box envelope that has trees to the SSE and an overhang that blocks the peak Sun during the summer months. In the winter the leaves are gone and the Sun is lower in the sky which means the overhanging second floor is not in the way of the lower arc of Sun. The differences these small changes make, such as the orientation of the house which makes solar ideal as well on the long portion of the roof, are immense. I would have liked to put some vacuum tubes down into a concrete pillar in the ground (going below another twenty feet beyond the basement floor) but I am already on ledge for the most part thus it would have been prohibitively difficult to get the size of the pillar as large as I wanted. I would have then circulated the water on a second closed system, given the temperature differences the water would have done most of the circulation on its own as well. Having the house be started at ~60f would be nice. I am not far from it much of the time so heating and cooling are pretty minimal costs financially and environmentally. I often heat with wood which is pretty efficient as I had a mason put in a large Russian fireplace with a bunch of niches in the front/sides for things like bread, warming ovens, and a place to dry out mittens and boots. I almost did a geodesic dome with movable panels that had the windows in them but I could not make efficient use of the space nor could I figure out a way to absolutely ensure that the panels with the windows would not leak for at least thirty years.

    Was this more expensive? Yes but not much. The stone and wood came from the property and I harvested the wood and gathered most of the stones myself and a Mr. Deere. The garage is separate and has an attached wood shop and is heated only with a wood stove so my mistakes in the shop make good kindling for my projects in the garage portion.

    You are very much correct in that it is a state of mind (much like computer security) and that the efficiencies are potentially significant. Not everyone can afford to do so but those who can probably should. I may even go so far as to say those that do, and who are not as financially capable, should be given a tax-break incentive much like one gets for solar panels or an electric car. While this should probably be done locally, many local governments are suffering financially, it may be better off done at a federal level with decent oversight and a limited scope/duration with the possibility of extending the tax-breaks out further if needed or are beneficial to those who could do the most with them.

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 29 2015, @03:28PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday May 29 2015, @03:28PM (#189702) Journal

      That sounds like an awesome setup. It's especially great that you quarried the stone and harvested the timber from the property itself.

      If you don't have enough subsoil to do a single pillar setup for a ground-source heat pump, there are also multiple, shorter pillar clusters or the trench method where you lay out your heat exchanging tubes horizontally. 6ft of soil on top is the rule of thumb for the latter.

      The geodesic dome made me smile because my architect father swore by them and used them wherever he could. Two other ways to regulate heat gain/loss are exterior, moveable louvers [iriswc.com] (which are better than the interior version that traps heat inside the space) and motorized roller shutters [somfysystems.com]. The former shows up on a lot of LEED-certified buildings, and the latter is quite common in Europe--a house I lived in in Germany had them and it made a big difference in how hot the interior got in the summer. The advantage of the latter over the former is that you can get insulated roller shutters that have a better R-value than even the highest end, argon-filled triple pane window; its keeps you warmer in the winter as well as cooler in the summer, and provides an additional security and privacy benefit.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 0) by KGIII on Friday May 29 2015, @09:07PM

        by KGIII (5261) on Friday May 29 2015, @09:07PM (#189844) Journal

        I passed over the shutter idea because of the harsh winters in this area of Maine (I am in the NW mountains, right next to Canada if right next to is some 40 miles as the crow flies). I would also want two of them so that I could adjust for the Sun's arc properly.

        I could still add a heat sink but, well, I am on ledge and would have to go some distance away to negate that. It is just not feasible for me. I am fortunate to have an artesian well and I require no electricity to have plenty of pressure. I do have a pump and a separate pump house but it has only been used for testing purposes. Life on the side of a mountain has some nice benefits.

        The original house on the property is still here, I have made good use of it and have guests that make use of it at times. Right now it is occupied by someone who was homeless this winter. He has not stolen (I knew him beforehand) my vehicles and he kept my home shoveled and plowed over the winter and kept it from being vandalized (an alarm is here but the police are a good half hour or more away and cameras are easily negated) while I was away for a while. He has done many other things that I would rather not do myself so it has worked out well. I may well encourage him to stay. I need only feed him and give him money when he seems to need some.

        As for your father, he was a brilliant man it seems. It is possible to make a geodesic dome too efficient (if there is such a thing) needing to vent air pressure at the top. My thinking was to use springs and/or weight to release the interior pressure but I, obviously, did not get that far. Way back when the Sun still had a price tag hung to its side I was fortunate to take some multi-class Architectural Drafting courses and would have become an architect but opted for Mathematics and Engineering instead. I do not regret it but I sometimes wonder where I would be had I continued on that bent.

        Finally, I did not quarry the stones so much as hunt for and pick them up and put them in a trailer behind the tractor. The mason (a very old semi-retired gent was the only one I found that actually knew what a Russian fireplace is) gave me a description of the stone he wanted and that is what I searched for. There is actually a very small quarry here. Many of the local towns had one as there is much granite to be had for the effort of taking it. I have had an offer to monetize it but I can not get past the fact that it is not needed now so the environmental impact is unjust. The company, from Canada actually, just bought a quarry down/over in North Jay, Maine (Google will help if you are interested) so they certainly did not need mine. I am not anti-quarry or anything, quarries are actually one of my favorite places to go when I have ingested hallucinogenics, but I did not see a reason to deal with the pollution or the noise pollution of blasting.

        This has been a most interesting conversation. Feel free to respond. Somebody does not like me so I got mod bombed last night (hard, too) but I will reply so long as it is not restricted.

        --
        "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:41PM (#189247)

    > I find it a fun challenge to try to get to zero waste, myself

    I hope you are documenting the shit out of your efforts and making them public in some long-term way - like a blog that is backed by archive.org.

    One man doing stuff in isolation makes no difference, might as well just continue to live the standard western lifestyle. Making it easy for others to do the same so they don't have to deal with all the trial and error is how you make a difference.