Coping with Unusually Hot Days.

[jbeegoode]

15 or 20 years ago, I took some earth science classes to become "highly qualified" as a science teacher (George W. Bush was screwing with the education system). There, I heard about this following possibility. It was then refuted. It probably couldn't happen for a long time, like the next century.

Now, study, which was needed, is showing evidence that it MAY be happening much sooner. As early as 2025 to mid-century. Most of the climate predictions have been off and the changes are happening quicker and more dramatically.

So, Europe in an kind of ice age, Arizona in ridiculous heat and the tropics way off. The oceans today, this day, July 26th, 2023 in the Carribean have heated up to 101F!

Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39810-w

At least, I'll be naked out of doors, even in my 90's...80's...
Jbee 

[Greenbare Woods]

15 or 20 years ago, I took some earth science classes to become "highly qualified" as a science teacher (George W. Bush was screwing with the education system). There, I heard about this following possibility. It was then refuted. It probably couldn't happen for a long time, like the next century.

Now, study, which was needed, is showing evidence that it MAY be happening much sooner. As early as 2025 to mid-century. Most of the climate predictions have been off and the changes are happening quicker and more dramatically.
Jbee 

I ran across this science on You-Tube.  Actual Science, not Political Science.   Worth a watch.  I found the planetary motions and gravitational variation effects on volcanoes and climate very interesting, along with historic data of cyclical warm and cold times. 

This is stuff that scientists are not allowed to talk about or research until they retire from their government or university careers..

https://youtu.be/D_B10L9bV18

[jbeegoode]

Very interesting and fun observations indeed, yet he is dismissing, ignoring, a huge pile of information, that complicates his historic norms. Things aren't panning out quite like before.

also, I'm not sure where he got that any of the last few years have been cooler.

I have pondered curiously the effects on plates getting affected from the heat, and gravitational pull, but never read anything about that idea. Fun to hear someone mention that.
Jbee

[jbeegoode]

So I bought a new airconditioner to replace my blown compressor. It arrived yesterday and I must install it. Last night, my mini split in the back of the house lost a main board again. It is sooo hot and now humid. I have to rely on my portable swampbox. I'm dripping....

The installation is going to be so uncomfortable in this record heat. I'll just have to work in the cooler evenings and early mornings. Money, money, money, shower to shower. I went out for errands today in clean clothes. Less than an hour later, the sticky threads got peeled off for the laundry...at least I can be nude.
Jbee

[Greenbare Woods]

So I bought a new airconditioner to replace my blown compressor. It arrived yesterday and I must install it. Last night, my mini split in the back of the house lost a main board again. It is sooo hot and now humid. I have to rely on my portable swampbox. I'm dripping....

The installation is going to be so uncomfortable in this record heat. I'll just have to work in the cooler evenings and early mornings. Money, money, money, shower to shower. I went out for errands today in clean clothes. Less than an hour later, the sticky threads got peeled off for the laundry...at least I can be nude.
Jbee

The middle of summer is always hot in Arizona.  We're planning to have a working AC when moving to Arizona.   Our summer here has been colder than average, and not just here.  .

[jbeegoode]

A must have...probably have trouble finding a house without it.

FYI They quit allowing new construction fireplaces here. Insurance is much higher with one, too.

Jbee

[jbeegoode]

Ooh lala! Got the new air-conditioner installed...I can't believe how good it feels.

I notice that after sitting in the nice dry cool refrigerated air, when I return outdoors, it feels oven-like (the extreme temps are back, and a short monsoon stopped) out there, however, I feel better acclimated and comfortable after my body gets chilled down. It just isn't problem in the shade. It doesn't feel oppressive, if I just come in an chill periodically. Also, after the time suffering in constant high temps, my body seems to be acclimated better. The heat just isn't getting to me, or DF, like before. My whole attitude about being here in the new extreme heat has changed to tolerance and acceptance...I like it.

I have to wear shoes out of the shade. A guy in Phoenix fried a tortilla on the sidewalk inside of 15 minutes.

I do have a problem. It gets too cold in my house on my couch, especially at night. It is like a walk-in refrigerator. I had to cover up like winter the other night. So, I've got the thermostat set at 79. Naked me is very comfortable and I turn it off, if it gets to be too much.

On the other hand, I haven't gotten a bill for all of this pleasure from the utility company. It was nearly $100 when I wasn't even here during that month??

So, I found a movie on Youtube the other night about the gulf-stream shifting, called something like "The Day after." An ice age happened practically overnight...big mess. Everybody USA who didn't freeze moved to Mexico as refugees. Mass exodus across the Rio Grande!...maybe I'll try the thermostat in the 80F's...this feels sooo nice, naked.
Jbee

[Greenbare Woods]

I do have a problem. It gets too cold in my house on my couch, especially at night. It is like a walk-in refrigerator. I had to cover up like winter the other night. So, I've got the thermostat set at 79. Naked me is very comfortable and I turn it off, if it gets to be too much.

Jbee

I have that problem in hotels, especially when visiting Arizona.  They all seem to set their temperatures for 70F so I have to go outside to warm up.  In hotel rooms I up their thermostat for about 79 or 80 when I arrive.  Just comfortable.  Most people waste a lot  of money on AC and then wear shirts, pants, and sweaters from the cold.

We had 115 here in 2021, but this year the hottest it's gotten is 90 something.  Today, first week of August, it's only expected to get up to 80 max. The doomsday "news" people always whine about "hottest summer ever" but we haven't been as warm as a normal summer. 

As for pavement temperatures, the angle of the sun makes a big difference.  In this latitude we need to be careful from in June around solstice, but by August the sun starts moving back south so it has a lower angle on pavement.  Phoenix, being farther south, would have a longer hot sun period. 

[Peter S]

According to a recent statistic I saw quoted, the US uses more electricity powering aircon than all of Africa uses for everything. Can't be right, I thought. But it seems it might be right, if I'm counting the zeroes correctly. The US apparently uses 409 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year just on AC; sub-Saharan Africa uses 230 billion kilowatt hours of electricity on everything (the figure for all of Africa is much more, but the North African countries and South Africa are more industrialised and, taking in places like the Gulf States, are probably as air conditioned as the US).

[jbeegoode]

We could power this stuff with individual solar units on each home or business. The BIG banks could fiance it at about the same rate as what the current grid costs to run. Bills would stay the same, but electric "public utilities" would get transformed and phased out to some extent.

The big energy companies keep using the government help to build huge ugly less efficient central solar power stations to keep their control of the energy system and profits. I'm surprised the banks haven't cut their throats from behind to get at those trillions of beans.

Yes, I'm not surprised. We spend incredible amounts of energy to wear clothing indoors. We're rich and wasteful...spoiled. They are poor...or more efficient in their use of energy.

Tucson and Phoenix were just small, until the invention of the air-conditioner, then the population exploded. Air conditioning made it all happen. Since I got here in 1968, Tucson has exploded from 240,000 to one million and 240,000. It was 40,000 before in the 1940's. Phoenix was one million in 1960. It's a megalopolis craphola, now. The entire sunbelt was not a good place to enjoy life before that. Florida was many many long miles of free beaches when I visited as a boy in 1960.

Minus three weeks and three days, I just spent a lot of two months without a decent air conditioner in the hottest Tucson on record. It sucks. No point in moving here without plans to migrate in the summer, or "air-conditioning" (where's my heart shaped emojis and flowers, with Snow White Disney music around a white metal box?).

So, we migrated from Africa and the sunbelt where we were always naked. To survive, we invented clothing to live up north. Now, we need air conditioning to survive in our new digs, the sunbelt, when all we need to do is get naked again!...stupid, stupid, stupid...AND, we're burning more fossil fuels to cool the houses and cars, making it way hotter still! A downward spiral... get naked, turn the thermo up to 85F, and stick it to the exploitive energy barons...win, win, win!
Jbee

[Greenbare Woods]

According to a recent statistic I saw quoted, the US uses more electricity powering aircon than all of Africa uses for everything. Can't be right, I thought.

We are originally a tropical species, and our lack of hair demonstrates our adaptation to hot weather.  Of course our species lived naked in hot climates until quite recently.  The practice of putting on body covering and then using AC to force the temperature to be comfortable with all that covering makes no rational sense.   I suspect that many Africans still live without AC, and many don't have reliable electricity.  Even South Africa no longer has reliable electricity since they kicked out the former government. 

[Peter S]

I'd have thought that somewhere as well lit from above as Arizona, a decent solar array on the roof with a battery set-up to store the power for the evenings could make you almost free of the grid. Even here in the jolly old UK I have that set up, and on even averagely sunny summer days we use next to nothing from the mains (as long as we avoid using the oven and the tumble drier, both big hitters for power but not in daily use).

[jbeegoode]

There is a business that will install solar and the payments will be less or match the current average utility bill. They however, use the homeowner's credit and after ten years, still own the equipment.

It is something like this that needs to be done through the utilities and big banks. It shows me that it is doable, instead of those huge arrays that are far from the usage and squander power in transition and destroy natural treasures. The big guys, who are supposed to be regulated and a service to the public, are obliged to their stockholders and the big energy providers to keep control of a central energy source. Meanwhile, the grid degenerates and as more is demanded from it. They don't have the capacity for plug in cars, so their solution is to redo the grid with government subsidies.

Nobody talks about this. Nobody hears this. Nowhere, no how, never.

I'm impressed that your solar works in the cloudy raining place where you live. Where did you equipment come from? Germany, China, USA?

I'm currently sitting in the first cloudy (mostly) day is months! Stupid and backwards, created by greed by the same old crew and system.
Jbee

[Peter S]

The equipment is either Chinese or German, China for the solar panels and often Germany for the inverter. the new battery came from China. Very sad.

When the solar first got going here about 12 years ago there were two ways to get it for home use - buy it, or go rent-a-roof. Buying it obviously required a not inconsiderable capital outlay, but the government of the day was offering a decent subsidy that made it practical. The rent-a-roof mob were shysters, advertising free electricity when all they wanted was use of your roof so they could collect the subsidy. People fell for it without realising that the electricity was all being generated in the daytime when they were out at work, and it wasn't available in the evenings when they needed it. And it wasn't long before the mortgage providers threw in a wrinkle because they didn't want to give a mortgage on a home that someone else - the rent-a-roofers - had rights over, and home sales started falling through.

Nowadays the subsidy has gone away, but the installation costs are a lot less and if done with a battery, so you can store the unused daytime generation for evening use, it's a viable way to spend one's savings, especially with the low interest rates we've been having up till very recently (still far from brilliant).

We've got quite a few solar farms these days, often with sheep grazing between the arrays to make dual use of the fields.

Do I take it from your description, JBee, that you only have the rent-a-roofers where you are, and you can't invest in your own solar power plant?

[jbeegoode]

There are some government subsidies to paying for solar.
The excess power generated can be sold to the electric companies, as it is connected to the grid for backup.
The rent a roofers aren't tying up the real-estate market legalities at all. The systems come with batteries, inverters and what you would pay to the power company is the monthly balance for a system that works as one would expect. Sometimes, cheaper than power companies.
Jbee