I would build down not up.
Underground is a great way to escape the heat.
How to build a city fit for 50℃ heatwaves
The Persian Gulf is already one of the hottest parts of the world, but by the end of the century increasing heat combined with intense humidity will make the region too hot for habitation, according to research published in Nature Climate Change. Heating and air conditioning currently permit humans to live everywhere from …
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Saturday 7th November 2015 11:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I would build down not up.
It's also unbelievably expensive. You have to dig all of that stuff out of the ground, build strong walls (far stronger than building up) to stop the sides caving in. You have to find clever ways to get sunlight down in to the depths. Cost, cost, cost.
Humans don't like living like that. They don't WANT to live like that. This is often the problem with such grand ideas. They rarely take in to account the humans at the centre of the architecture. It's why Brutalist buildings have been loved by academics and architects and universally despised by the people who actually have to live in or use them. Run the trains and buses and cars underground, fine. But don't expect humans to turn troglodyte.
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Saturday 7th November 2015 14:05 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: I would build down not up.
Close but no cigar.
It is extremely expensive and not particularly functional.
Stealing a few pages from the Middle-East Medieval Builder CookBook (especially as Russians used to define it - all the way to Kirgizstan/Tukrmenistan) is a better idea.
One neat trick is having two walls and a walkspace on the south side of all buildings (ala US condo). The inner wall is the normal apartment/house wall. The outer wall is not solid - it is a stone mesh. So you get 2m of shaded space between your house and the sun which is naturally ventilated by wind and convection. This alone gives you 10 degree drop (at least) in mid summer. There are other things like - the shiny glazing tiles on the outer walls are not just for decoration. They are functional too - reflect the sun. And so on.
Instead of that, the region is being overbuild with glass monsters which are clearly not fit for that climate. But they look kewl... Which is what is important in a regional culture ruled by "shopping show-off"
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Saturday 7th November 2015 18:26 GMT YARR
Re: I would build down not up.
If building down is so expensive, can the same benefit be obtained by artificially raising the surface? i.e. build sideways so that all buildings are joined together to become one large building. Then construct several insulating layers above all this - like multiple thin attic spaces. More insulating layers would allow a greater temperature gradient between the inhabited area and the exposed surface.
Of course all that solar energy going to waste could be converted to electricity by covering the deserts in solar panels. Then they wouldn't need fossil fuels to run the air conditioning.
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Saturday 7th November 2015 19:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I would build down not up.
There is a limit to how deep you can go before it becomes too hot that way too.
From Wikipedia
The TauTona Mine or Western Deep No.3 Shaft,[1] is a gold mine in South Africa. At 3.9 kilometers (2.4 mi) deep it is currently home to the world's deepest mining operations rivaled only by Mponeng gold mine with which it competes for #1 ranking.[2]
...
Air conditioning equipment is used to cool the mine from 55 °C (131 °F) down to a more tolerable 28 °C (82 °F). The rock face temperature currently reaches 60 °C (140 °F).
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Saturday 7th November 2015 14:21 GMT x 7
Re: I would build down not up.
"you can build under the Gulf/Indian Ocean/Red Sea/etc."
move the population of Dubai undersea and you need homes for one million people.
Do the same with Egypt and you need caves for 80 million, along with their donkeys, factories, workspaces......and then you need space for food production.
Add in all the other countries, and just how big a network of caves do you need? And that presupposes you can get them to live harmoniously in close proximity.
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Sunday 8th November 2015 00:53 GMT Graham Marsden
Re: I would build down not up.
> Underground is a great way to escape the heat.
As the Aussies have found in Coober Pedy
(And it was also done a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away on Tattoine ;-) )
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Saturday 7th November 2015 11:42 GMT beast666
Green Loons
"However the extreme heatwaves predicted for the Gulf, where temperatures will regularly hit 50℃ or even 60℃"
The global circulation models from the warmists "project" this does it? The same models that have failed to predict the total and utter lack of warming for over 18 years whilst CO2 levels have steadily climbed?
This article (and CAGW) is embarrassing to behold.
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Saturday 7th November 2015 14:16 GMT Burb
Re: Green Loons
When you say 'utter lack of warming' how does that square with 2014 being the hottest year on record by most measures, 2015 being set to be hotter still and, if the usual pattern of El Nino years is followed, 2016 being likely to be even hotter?
The fact is that the upward trend has not changed for the last few decades. There are variations around the trend but there is no statistical test you can do to show that the trend has changed. (Note that cherry picking a particular peak El Nino year is not a valid statistical test - you would be 'embarrassing' yourself if you were to claim otherwise.)
As for models, they are only supposed to give a rough idea of long term trends. They are not meant to model year to year variations or multi-year cycles such as ENSO as these have a random unpredictable nature. Models do demonstrate such random features but the exact patterns of the cycles will vary from run to run and usually model output is expressed in terms of averages over a number of runs. Of course, there is a single 'run' of Earth's real climatic system and one would not expect to be able to compare this directly against average results. Another point that is often forgotten is that assumptions have to be made about time-dependent boundary conditions for a given projection, which is another reason why it would be naive to expect exact correspondence between a projection and reality.
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Saturday 7th November 2015 21:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Green Loons
@Burb, you only get the hottest year if a) you don't read the information that it is only 37% likely and b) if you 'adjust' the figures you use to make that prediction.
After all why use the more accurate data from the ARGO floats which doesn't fit the warming dogma when you can fudge it with the much less accurate temperatures obtained from such things as engine cooling pipes and buckets and thermometers.
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Monday 9th November 2015 12:58 GMT Burb
Re: Green Loons
@Ivan 4: "you only get the hottest year if a) you don't read the information that it is only 37% likely"
Actually it was 38% for NASA and 48% for NOAA. Which makes it more likely than any other year that it was the hottest. And it wasn't even an El Nino like 1998.
"b) if you 'adjust' the figures you use to make that prediction"
I'm not interested in conspiracy theories about adjustments to data. Here's why:
1. The methods are openly discussed and/or are available in the scientific literature.
2. There are very few areas of science where raw data do not need some sort of processing to get meaningful results out of them.
3. Many temperature adjustments are in a downward direction.
4. The BEST study was funded to try to prove that the adjustments made thus far were erroneous. It ended up pretty much agreeing with earlier results.
I'm not saying it applies to you, but many people who spout off this conspiracy nonsense about adjusting surface temperature data tell us in the next breath that we should be trusting satellite data.
Forgive me if I'm unpersuaded. Write some papers if you are such an expert.
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Monday 9th November 2015 17:03 GMT Pompous Git
Re: Green Loons
"1. The methods are openly discussed and/or are available in the scientific literature."
Having studied climate at the tertiary level I possess TR Oke's Boundary Layer Climates; it's the standard text. Nowhere does that text discuss anthropogenic global warming. Had I answered some of my exam questions based on the assertions of the CAGW promoters, it's very doubtful I would have passed. I received a credit.
There was a CAGWer in the class. He was also a Creationist and Young Earther. He failed.
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Monday 9th November 2015 21:54 GMT Burb
Re: Green Loons
Bit of a non sequitur there Mr Pompous Git as we were talking about data analysis techniques, not physical models. In any case, T R Oke's speciality is in 'local climate' such as the climate of a city and urban heat island effects. The book you mention, last updated in 1987, seems mainly to be concerned with such issues and with climate near to the ground. I find it odd that you did not come across AGW in your 'tertiary studies', given that I first came across it in O Level Geography in the early 80's; it was certainly mainstream science by the end of the 70's.
Incidentally if we are doing anecdotes, the only person I can think of having any sort of argument in real life about mainstream climate science was also a creationist so I guess we are quits there.
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Sunday 8th November 2015 11:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Green Loons
"2014 being the hottest year on record by most measures, 2015 being set to be hotter still and, if the usual pattern of El Nino years is followed, 2016 being likely to be even hotter?"
Er not by most measures. By an extraordinarily few measures, which have been extensively 'normalised'...
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Sunday 8th November 2015 11:37 GMT Fluffy Bunny
Re: Green Loons
For a start, 2014 wasn't the hottest year on record. Try 1998, during the El Nino.
And secondly, I can make up any year to be the hottest on record, provided you allow me to rewrite the record books to cool the past. Check out the fraudulent rewriting of the temperature records in Paraguay, Greenland and even parts of Australia.
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Monday 9th November 2015 13:13 GMT Burb
Re: Green Loons
"For a start, 2014 wasn't the hottest year on record. Try 1998, during the El Nino."
Let's for the sake of argument assume that you are right and 2014 wasn't hotter than 1998. As others have pointed out there is uncertainty in all of these measurements, in which case I don't know how you can be so confident about 1998. But leaving that to one side, let's suppose 1998 was a bit hotter. 1998 was, as you say, a massive El Nino. 2014 wasn't even an El Nino and yet even you could not deny that it was pretty close to 1998. Does that not tell us anything?
This 1998 cherry picking 'argument' has run its course and is likely to be blown out of the water by 2015 temperatures (and possibly 2016 going by previous El Nino years). Will you reset the clock at 2015 then or will you finally see the fallacy of the argument?
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Saturday 7th November 2015 19:35 GMT Pompous Git
Re: Green Loons
"You don't want to believe everything Lewis writes!"
Indeed, you should not believe everything you read. "Global" warming = cooling for one third of the planet according to the BEST reanalysis. Further, nearly all of the actual warming is in wintertime and at night.
Tasmania was predicted by BoM to have a warmer than average winter just past. It was the coldest for 50 years. This morning we had a light frost at my place. Usually we have our last frost in late August. There are already a lot of dead tomato plants in the district from the last frost.
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Monday 9th November 2015 07:18 GMT dan1980
Re: Green Loons
@beast666
When it comes down to it, building cities that are more energy efficient and require less cooling is a good thing.
Building a new city from scratch is expensive and carries all sorts of problems but so does trying to 'convert' an existing city - especially one like London - but it can be done, gradually.
New buildings and refurbishments use their energy efficiency as a major sales pitch, as do many cars and appliances of all types and houses that need less cooling and heating are more attractive for buyers.
Even if you put aside climate change of any sort and make a for-arguments-sake assumption that the climate will stay exactly as it is today for the rest of time, there are still massive improvements that can be made that will benefit us all as world population increases and fossil fuel reserves are depleted.
And that's not surprising because the less energy you have to expend in achieving a result, the better.
In this specific instance, the Gulf is already bloody hot and reducing reliance on air-conditioning is a worthwhile goal even if average temperatures do not go up at all.
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Saturday 7th November 2015 12:00 GMT x 7
wrong problem
it doesn't matter what you do to the buildings......if the environment is too hot to grow food you can't live there anyway, irrespective of what technological tricks you use to cool down the living accommodation.
You are soon looking forward to a series of wars of migration as African and Asian populations migrate northward to escape heat and water shortage. The current flow of refugees across the Mediterranean is the vanguard army: over the next 20-30 years most of the population of the Sahel, Arabia/Middle East and northern Indian peninsula will looking to move north into Europe or Russia - by force if necessary. Living conditions in their homelands will become impossible - irrespective of any wars there.
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Saturday 7th November 2015 12:19 GMT JC_
Re: wrong problem
You are soon looking forward to a series of wars
It's quite ironic that the US military - not known for liberal tendencies - is forecasting and preparing for these situations as an outcome of AGW, while all of the supposedly pro-military Republican candidates for president flatly deny the existence of AGW.
It's going to be hellish in the worst-affected countries. Yemen is already a disaster heading for a catastrophe.
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Saturday 7th November 2015 13:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: wrong problem
You can import food, even if it's 'too hot' to grow food. Not that it's ever 'too hot', because plants cope with it. What they don't cope with is aridity. But it's easy to import food, particularly for a rich country like the UAE surrounded by poorer countries who can produce cash crops that can be exported.
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Saturday 7th November 2015 13:28 GMT JC_
Re: wrong problem
You can import food, even if it's 'too hot' to grow food
Only if you have something to pay for it with, which will be rather a problem when the petroleum runs out or becomes uneconomic, first.
The population of the UAE is 10 million, but only 1.4 million of them are citizens. Egypt, on the other hand, already has 82 million citizens and is a hell of a lot poorer.
The effects of climate change on these poor countries that are also utterly corrupt will be catastrophic.
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Saturday 7th November 2015 13:45 GMT x 7
Re: wrong problem
"You can import food,"
Where from? Where is the excess food production available? With China now a net importer of food, gradually acquiring the worlds grain, soy and oil futures, food availability is becoming a serious issue. There isn't enough to go round now. In the future it will become worse
"Not that it's ever 'too hot', because plants cope with it." Like in the Sahara for instance, plenty of plants there
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Saturday 7th November 2015 19:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: wrong problem
The EU is setting aside huge tracts of land for wildlife that could be taken in to production. Russian agriculture is 40 years behind us technologically and far more yield per hectare is available there. If the temperature is warming then Canadian production as well as Russian production will increase with the longer growing season.
That's not even starting to look at the possibility of production in the third world nations who, with the right technology and infrastructure, will produce huge surpluses. Look at Kenya for an example. They make large amounts of hard currency exporting high quality cash crops to Europe.
The Sahara's problem is aridity. The Brazilian rainforest rarely drops below 26C, but it's wet, so there is a profusion of life.
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Sunday 8th November 2015 14:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: wrong problem
Humidity is great for plants but not for animals. Many warm-blooded animals cool off by evaporating water off body parts (human skin, canine tongues, etc). But water can't evaporate if the air's already saturated. That's why it's worse to be hot and humid than hot and dry; at least when it's dry we can still sweat. That's why the study looks at "wet bulb" temperatures that account for humidity. Also recall: our natural body temperature is 37 degrees Celcius. If we get hot, we need a way to get the heat out. But if it's both too warm (meaning the heat transfer trends towards us rather than away) and too humid (meaning our sweat can't draw the heat out of our bodies), then we're literally baking with no way to stop it.
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Saturday 7th November 2015 19:42 GMT Pompous Git
Re: wrong problem
@ x 7
"With China now a net importer of food, gradually acquiring the worlds grain, soy and oil futures, food availability is becoming a serious issue. There isn't enough to go round now. In the future it will become worse"
From Time magazine:
"A new report suggests that some 1.3 billion metric tons of food in the world is lost (on the production side of the food supply chain) or wasted (on the consumption side) each year. That’s about one-third of total edibles produced for humans.
It’s not the only jarring statistic in the study conducted by the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology, on behalf of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). Consumers in industrialized nations waste nearly 222 million tons of food each year — virtually the equivalent of sub-Saharan Africa’s total net food production (230 million tonnes). And in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as South and Southeast Asia, individual consumers waste between 6-11 kg (13-24 lbs.) annually, while consumers in Europe and North America discard more than eight times as much: between 95-115 kg (209-254 lbs.)."
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Saturday 7th November 2015 22:50 GMT Captain DaFt
Re: wrong problem
-"Not that it's ever 'too hot', because plants cope with it." Like in the Sahara for instance, plenty of plants there-
You do know that North Africa was the wheat growing center of the World during the early Roman Empire, right?
It was increasing aridity that put an end to that. With shifting climate patterns, it may yet again emerge as a major agricultural center.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae
http://www.academia.edu/436589/Roman_Agriculture
http://www.travelhoppers.com/2012/01/20/the-bread-basket-of-the-roman-empire/
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Sunday 8th November 2015 08:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: wrong problem
@Captain DaFt.
Yes I did know that. One of the reasons for the rise in aridity was forest felling.
The same goes for Spain. Iberia was a very wealthy province and supplied vast quantities of grain to the late Empire. In the middle ages the forests were cut down to create grasslands for Merino sheep to graze. The rains washed the soils away and the grain production was lost.
In both cases the link is the removal of trees. North Africa is arid now but it doesn't have to be. Start with planting tough grasses, build up the topsoil. Dredge it from the sea if need be. Plant bushes, plant trees. And the aridity falls and you can grow more crops.
Expensive but certainly cheaper than the Paris Conference's plan for rich nations to give all of their money to poor nations as some sort of post-colonial guilt trip.
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Saturday 7th November 2015 12:40 GMT JC_
Re: May not be an issue
You're certainly right that with industrial monocultures, we're basically eating oil, but there are alternative methods of production that while more labour-intensive are still productive and certainly more sustainable.
Michael Pollan (he of "eat food, mostly plants, not too much" fame) has written a lot on this with Polyface Farm the best known example.
For all its horror, the casualties of WWII were 'only' 3% of the global population; going from the forecast 9 billion down to 2 would be beyond horrific and hopefully not likely.
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Sunday 8th November 2015 11:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: May not be an issue
WWI 18 million total dead. Worldwide.
1918 flu epidemic. 50-100 million. Worldwide.
However these pale into insignificance against the Black Death which it is estimated took out between 25% and 50% of the entire population of Europe.
Green energy policies could take out 90%, making the Greens the greatest killers mankind has ever known.
I'd rather take my chances with climate change. It might or might not kill me. Lack of electricity or any other energy I can afford definitely would.
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Sunday 8th November 2015 13:37 GMT JC_
Re: May not be an issue
I'd rather take my chances with climate change. It might or might not kill me. Lack of electricity or any other energy I can afford definitely would.
It's always astonishing that people can decide when it suits them that capitalism will selectively fail. Right now you can buy solar panels at a cost that makes them supply energy at a price more or less equivalent to fossil-fuel power stations.
Yet somehow if fossil-fuels are priced to include their externalities, alternative power sources will neither be developed nor grown, despite the fact that they already exist and are being used right now.
'Greens' have encouraged fuel economy in cars - do you see the complete absence of cars or simply more efficient ones?
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Sunday 8th November 2015 15:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: May not be an issue
"Right now you can buy solar panels at a cost that makes them supply energy at a price more or less equivalent to fossil-fuel power stations."
Do you mean TCO, including such matters as manufacturing costs (PV panels rely on rare earths), maintenance costs, and average working life, not to mention resilience in the event of inclement weather? A PV panel can be useful in a place where it's sunny most of the time, but many places can see little sun, not just because of the weather but simply as a result of its location and the changing dawn/dusk cycles.
We need something more consistent and yet local in nature (due to geopolitical obstacles).
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Monday 9th November 2015 08:20 GMT JC_
Re: May not be an issue
Do you mean TCO
Yes, because manufacturing is included in the price and installation and removal is not expensive and for small installations may even be 'free' if part of the roof for a new build.
Location is of course important. Here's a headline from Texas: A Texas Utility Offers a Nighttime Special: Free Electricity. It's for wind-generated power.
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Monday 9th November 2015 20:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: May not be an issue
"Location is of course important. Here's a headline from Texas: A Texas Utility Offers a Nighttime Special: Free Electricity. It's for wind-generated power."
Texas is in Tornado Alley and contains part of the Gulf Coast meaning it's prone to hurricanes, too (ask Galveston). A simple shingle roof isn't that great of an investment compared to a PV panel or windmill, but you have to consider the location: not just in regards to tapping resources but also disaster risks. Plenty of windmills have been literally blown down and PV panels ripped apart by disaster-class winds. Thinking green may not be such a good idea if you run a very real risk of getting your investment destroyed before full amortization.
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Monday 9th November 2015 16:20 GMT Pompous Git
Re: May not be an issue
I looked at purchasing solar panels when the Australian Labor government was about to phase out the substantial subsidy being paid. In order to achieve the cost savings claimed, they would have to output 140% of their maximum output! A realistic estimate of time to amortise the investment was 18 years. So I paid down the mortgage on a property I owned instead and saved far more than I would investing in solar PV.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
