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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]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 29 2015, @03:28PM
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
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."