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60,000 People Died from Blistering European Heat Waves, New Analysis Finds
(www.scientificamerican.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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The top priority should be remaking housing so it doesn't require power to keep up comfortable (and everything else so we don't need power to enjoy it).
Iran has had this knowledge for over 1000 years. Termites longer. It's utter insanity not to do this. We imagine we live in a fast changing high tech civilization but our 'solutions' are to pretend renewables will let us carry on like before. Rural folk in Bangladesh have adapted to seasonal flooding by taking to living on boats for part of the year, their gardens on them providing shade under the vines. They've already adapted. The West, not so much.
The price for adopting these types of construction in urban environments can be quite steep, especially if you’re trying to retrofit concrete buildings with new ventilation.
https://unusualplaces.org/the-underground-town-of-coober-pedy/
A standard three-bedroom cave home with living room, kitchen, and bathroom can be excavated out of the rock in the hillside for a similar price to building a house on the surface. However, dugouts remain at a constant temperature, while surface buildings need expensive air-conditioning.
This would be so cool, but it seems like it would only be possible in some places. Pretty much my entire state wouldn't be able to do this due to a combination of limestone letting water through and ungodly amounts of radon.
Also the no-sun depression would be absolute hell unless special attention was paid to it.
Earthship homes are also an alternative that are pretty decent at remaining a stable temperature. Plus, I think they look pretty cool!
There's also a lot that you can do within the bounds of more traditional architecture to control heat movement, and which are easy to retrofit onto existing homes. For example, there's the extremely rad sounding thermal labyrinth, and also lots of things without rad names like planting trees where they'll shade your building or painting your roof white. It's frankly kinda astonishing how much you can reduce your heating and cooling requirements with simple and (relatively) low cost changes like those.
Are you @[email protected] ?
If so, I've been following you on Mastodon for awhile.