[HN Gopher] A simple mistake that stuffed up world temperature r...
___________________________________________________________________
A simple mistake that stuffed up world temperature records for 90
years
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 94 points
Date : 2021-07-09 14:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.abc.net.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.abc.net.au)
| dpkingma wrote:
| Death Valley prides itself on being the hottest place on earth,
| based on the temperature record of 54.0 degC (air temp at 1.5m).
|
| However, DV does not come out on top when looking at temperatures
| measured by satellites (EDIT: ground temperature, and less
| reliable.) From Wikipedia [1]: "The highest recorded temperature
| taken by a satellite is 66.8 degC (152.2 degF), which was
| measured in the Flaming Mountains of China in 2008. Other
| satellite measurements of ground temperature taken between 2003
| and 2009, taken with the MODIS infrared spectroradiometer on the
| Aqua satellite, found a maximum temperature of 70.7 degC (159.3
| degF), which was recorded in 2005 in the Lut Desert, Iran. The
| Lut Desert was also found to have the highest maximum temperature
| in 5 of the 7 years measured (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009).
| These measurements reflect averages over a large region and so
| are lower than the maximum point surface temperature." According
| to [2], the record is 80.8 degC at Lut Desert.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_temperature_recorded_o...
| [2]
| https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/aop/BAMS-D-2...
| jandrese wrote:
| Death Valley: The hottest place on Earth where people can
| survive long enough to keep a temperature station manned.
|
| I am confused how 66.8C can be "the highest recorded
| temperature taken by a satellite", while the Aqua satellite
| found a maximum temperature of 80.8C.
| phaemon wrote:
| Imagine I was measuring the temperature in your home. I
| measured above your grill. Is that a good average for your
| home temperature?
| [deleted]
| ngngngng wrote:
| I once set my oven to 350F, does that mean my house holds
| the record?
| phaemon wrote:
| Not even close. What do you reckon the highest
| temperature was achieved in a house?
| rovr138 wrote:
| Forest fires have burnt houses. That's visible from space
| too.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| I heard the tungsten filament in old-fashioned light
| bulbs can reach 2800K.
| jandrese wrote:
| Did you measure it from a satellite?
| jandrese wrote:
| It doesn't say highest average measurement, it says highest
| recorded temperature. Plus, there is a 70.7 average
| measurement listed as well.
| [deleted]
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| You're comparing apples to oranges though. The 54.0 reading in
| Death Valley was measuring the temperature of the air - in
| particular, 1.5 meters above the ground. Satellites measure
| ground temperature - as in, temperature at the ground. Lots of
| things can affect ground temperature.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > You're comparing apples to oranges though. The 54.0 reading
| in Death Valley was measuring the temperature of the air - in
| particular, 1.5 meters above the ground. Satellites measure
| ground temperature - as in, temperature at the ground. Lots
| of things can affect ground temperature.
|
| Exactly. I have a radio thermometer in my attic whose
| readings max out at 140degF. During the summer it's
| _regularly_ maxed out, so the actual air temp is hotter still
| (and the actual surface temp of the roof must be even hotter
| than that). Outside air temp is _nowhere near_ any of those
| temps.
| dpkingma wrote:
| True, edited original comment to reflect this.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| I found it absolutely shocking that Furnace Creek has a (well-
| watered) golf course and a whole bunch of air conditioned hotel
| rooms, despite being in a clearly inhabitable location. Exiting a
| fully air conditioned room at 20 degrees into 45+ degrees heat
| feels like literally like opening a furnace door. The sheer waste
| of energy to keep that hotel cooled down to those temperatures
| and golf-course playable year-round is just ridiculous.
| samatman wrote:
| I have more respect for that than I do for, say, Phoenix AZ.
|
| It's quite the stunt to make a habitable vacation spot in the
| hottest place on Earth. There's only one Death Valley, and
| people want to see it. The golf course is... kinda pushing it,
| yeah, but I have respect for the sheer human ingenuity it takes
| to do something like that.
|
| Phoenix is more of a case of putting a bunch of people where a
| bunch of people probably shouldn't be. It can probably be made
| energy-independent, there is a _lot_ of sun to be harvested,
| but water is a different story.
|
| tl;dr scale matters.
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| to be fair; Phoenix has (had) quite a bit of its own water
| via the Salt River. And there was also quite a lot of ground
| water (which is nearing depletion now). The controversial bit
| is that Phoenix also ties in to the Colorado River system,
| via canals, and THAT is consuming far more water than can be
| sustained. Most of it for growing crops (not sustaining the
| massive population) - and I think that if the current drought
| situation continues, they're going to have to stop growing
| cotton and lettuce out here. Which . . . is fine.
| pnexk wrote:
| rather related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27555563
| hartator wrote:
| > The sheer waste of energy to keep that hotel cooled down to
| those temperatures
|
| Actually warming up cold places in winter is more energy
| intensive than cooling down hot places. Nordic countries should
| not exist by that logic.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I have to deeply question this.. it might take some
| research..
| fouric wrote:
| This is false. Heat is an incredibly common type of waste
| energy, and _far_ more common than waste "cold" (if such a
| thing exists at all), so most (if not all) heating devices
| are more efficient than cooling devices.
|
| Furthermore, heat is related to entropy, which in a closed
| system can only increase. We have many devices that can
| _generate_ heat where there was none previously (e.g.
| resistive heating elements) but none that can _destroy_ heat,
| only shuffle it around somewhere else.
| okareaman wrote:
| Let me tell you about a place called Las Vegas
| rootusrootus wrote:
| According to this [0], the water comes from a natural spring.
| The electricity could be generated on site with solar panels.
| Doesn't seem that outlandish to me.
|
| [0] https://www.greenlodgingnews.com/how-xanterras-furnace-
| creek....
| rurp wrote:
| It's not readily apparent but pulling water out of the
| regular ecosystem in a desert environment like this is
| crushing to the local wildlife population. I spend a lot of
| time in the desert in this part of the country and it's
| tragic how many springs are dry these days due in large part
| to ground and spring water being taken for things like this
| golf course. I absolutely think that having a golf course
| like this is a terrible waste.
|
| Not to mention that this is in a National Park; a place whose
| ostensible purpose is to protect and preserve nature! If you
| try camping outside of an official campground there
| (something totally fine and legal on the vast majority of
| public land) you'll get kicked out with a ticket. Meanwhile
| that same park is making a hard life even harder for local
| endangered plants and animals.
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| Nitpick, you mean "uninhabitable". I think the reversal here
| might confuse some people.
| vondur wrote:
| This is Las Vegas every summer. Out of a cooler, into an oven
| door being opened.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| King of the Hill:
|
| > Bobby: "111 degrees? Phoenix can't really be that hot, can
| it? Oh my god, it's like standing on the sun!"
|
| > Peggy: "This city should not exist -- it is a monument to
| man's arrogance."
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| It might be a "waste" but it doesn't have to be damaging. Air
| conditioners (a special case of heat pumps) are extremely
| efficient and could easily be powered from a solar array. The
| hottest places in the world tend not to be short of sunlight.
|
| Where they get the water from is another matter though. I
| always wondered how much you could scale up Air Well
| technology, which condenses water out of the air. I suspect the
| places that have lots of sunlight also don't have a lot of
| humidity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_well_(condenser)
| einpoklum wrote:
| Solar arrays you install in such an area can power useful
| activity elsewhere - and its not like we're at 100% renewable
| energy everywhere to obviate this. So The waste of energy
| _is_ damaging.
| thomasahle wrote:
| According to [1] Air conditioners use about 6% of all the
| electricity produced in the United States.
|
| I guess that's less than I had imagined. And apparently it's
| not just because northern houses don't have AC, since
| apparently [2] 87% of houses do.
|
| Edit: Then again a lot of energy is used by industry, so
| maybe 6% used by residential air conditioning is a lot. [3]
| suggest 17% of residential energy is AC.
|
| [1]: https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/home-cooling-
| systems/air-... [2]: https://www.eia.gov/consumption/resident
| ial/reports/2009/air... [3]:
| https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-
| energy/electricit...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The comparison I'd like to see is how much energy is
| consumed in a hot climate to keep a house cool vs keeping a
| house warm in a cold climate.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Unless you're using a heat pump for heating (we should
| be, but it's extremely rare), heating almost always uses
| more energy than cooling.
|
| This can be an unexpected problem with electric vehicles
| in cold climates, which have to waste a lot of power on
| heating the interior. Only recently have EVs started to
| use heat pumps for this purpose rather than resistive
| heating.
| tejohnso wrote:
| Can you explain why it is _extremely_ rare if we _should
| be_ using it? Is it politics? Branding?
| stormbrew wrote:
| There's a lot of inertia against heat pumps for reasons
| that are not at all clear. Where I live, in a pretty
| northern climate where until recently almost no one owned
| an AC but climate change is very visibly changing that,
| it's very difficult to get HVAC people to take you
| seriously if you say you want a heat pump even if you're
| getting an AC anyways.
|
| A lot of it seems to stem from the fact that most heat
| pumps operate poorly or inefficiently below about -10C
| (some higher than that). The fallacy that lies behind the
| inertia seems to be that "if you can't use it
| exclusively, you shouldn't bother at all". Since there's
| a non-trivial number of days below -10C where I live
| (about 1078 hours spread across 89 days here last year),
| it's considered frivolous.
|
| Of course, because we build our houses to hold in as much
| heat as possible for winter, now that it's getting over
| 20 and 30 a lot more a lot more people are buying AC,
| which is all of a heat pump other than a reversing valve,
| so to me it seems silly to NOT get a heat pump for the
| like 200+ days in between peak heat and peak cool
| seasons.
| war1025 wrote:
| The reason heat pumps have traditionally been untenable
| is that they are prone to icing over when below freezing.
| If the coils are covered in ice, then air can't be blown
| past them to get new heat to pull in.
|
| Further, in many cases, the heat pump wouldn't keep your
| house warm during the coldest period of the year, which
| meant you still needed a heater. Not a huge deal since
| you probably have an AC for the summer anyway.
|
| The issue as I understand it, was that the thermostats
| were not smart enough to know when to quit and so a heat
| pump would run until it literally could not keep up with
| demand, when it should have instead switched over to gas
| heat some time earlier than that when efficiency dropped.
|
| Modern heat pumps deal with all these factors to the
| point that I expect them to become standard fare as
| current ACs get upgraded over the next decade or two. I
| know that if we ever need to upgrade our AC it will be
| replaced with a heat pump.
| stormbrew wrote:
| Yes, these are all definitely issues. None of them should
| have been difficult to solve a long time ago though,
| there was just a lot of inertia behind it.
|
| And there still is. Even now I'm talking to an hvac guy
| who seems generally knowledgeable and even he said
| something to the effect that "there isn't any heat in the
| air below -10" which is just not true at all. It's less
| _efficient_ to pull it out for sure, but there 's always
| energy to suck out of air.
|
| Anyways, like I said, even up here where people barely
| know heat pumps exist there's still over 200 days of the
| year where even a shitty heat pump would do a decent job.
| Still people argue it won't get used.
|
| (all of this is ignoring the fact that we should be doing
| even moderately expensive things to get off using natural
| gas if we can)
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I think it's cost, especially in an area where A/C isn't
| needed (or at least, hasn't been needed in the past).
|
| I live in the Pacific Northwest and when I wanted to swap
| out my furnace for a heat pump, a few vendors aid that
| they don't install heat pumps, they could do a furnace or
| A/C, but not a heat pump. I have no idea why that is, I
| figured that heat pump installation is nearly identical
| to A/C. (I still use a furnace for emergency heat as I
| wanted to be able to run from a small generator if
| needed)
|
| The heat pump + furnace replacement cost 2 - 3X more than
| just a simple replacement furnace, so I can see why
| someone wouldn't want to spend the money if they didn't
| need A/C.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Cost probably explains a good chunk of it. Regardless of
| _why_ it 's more expensive. When our house was built in
| 2012, I looked into getting a heat pump. But it was a
| couple grand more than a high efficiency furnace with an
| air conditioner. Given that natural gas remains
| inexpensive compared to electricity, it wasn't an obvious
| win financially. And if we're being honest, for average
| people the hit to the pocketbook is going to take higher
| priority than considerations for the environment.
| burlesona wrote:
| I don't have good aggregate data on energy spent, but the
| relative expense is actually easy to understand since it
| mostly just comes down to the delta in temperature you're
| trying to achieve.
|
| In a moderately hot climate you may want to lower the
| temp 10-20 deg c, for example, from from 38 to 23c (~100
| to 73f).
|
| In a moderately cold climate you may want to raise the
| 25-35 deg c, for example from -10 to 22c (~14 to 72f).
|
| The latter requires about twice as much energy as the
| former.
|
| There's a common meme in the northern latitudes that
| people "down south" consume unreasonable amounts of
| energy on AC, but in many cases northern cities consume
| more energy in winter than southern cities do in summer.
| The truth is that just about every city uses large
| amounts of energy for climate control, and the actual
| expense varies more by microclimate than by latitude.
| There are only a few places on earth where people consume
| very little climate control, and those places tend to
| already be densely populated because "they're nice."
| pdonis wrote:
| _> it mostly just comes down to the delta in temperature
| you 're trying to achieve_
|
| Not for cooling; cooling also requires condensing excess
| water vapor out of the air (since the dewpoint of the
| cooled air is much lower than the dewpoint of the air
| before you started cooling it). Most of the energy
| expenditure for A/C is actually condensing water vapor,
| not cooling air. Air has a very low heat capacity
| compared to water (particularly water during the phase
| change from vapor to liquid).
|
| Off the top of my head I think costs about 6 times as
| much energy to condense water vapor as to cool the air
| for typical A/C conditions; if that number is roughly
| correct, then for the temperature differences you give,
| heating actually uses about 2/7 (about 30%) of the energy
| of cooling (if we let the energy required to cool the air
| be 1, then the energy required to heat the air is 2, but
| the energy required to condense water vapor is 6, so the
| total cooling energy is 7.)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > mostly just comes down to the delta in temperature
|
| Ah yes, this is a very good point, that does make it much
| easier to conceptualize.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| The difference is that most people heat their homes with
| gas or oil, which is significantly cheaper than electric
| heaters (heat pump or otherwise) and for some reason
| isn't considered as energy the same way electricity is.
| Air conditioners/heat pumps can only use electricity, and
| they use quite a lot of it.
| [deleted]
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > isn't considered as energy the same way electricity is
|
| That is a good point, I think you're exactly right. I
| just tried to figure out how many kWh is equivalent to a
| therm of natural gas, and the answer of course is 'it
| depends.' In round numbers it seems like 1 therm is about
| 30 kWh.
|
| Using myself as an example, during a cold month I might
| use about 90 therms. In a hot month I may use 1900 kWh
| for cooling. Gas is significantly cheaper indeed, though
| it's noticeably more energy (and that's after converted
| to hypothetical electricity, not the energy content of
| the raw gas).
|
| What a PITA to compare that. And it's a pretty rough
| comparison, indeed, because gas is predominantly going
| for heat in the winter, but I have a gas stove and a gas
| water heater too. And I have an electric car, which
| pushes the kWh total up a bit. I'd have to do a much more
| detailed analysis if I actually wanted to compare the
| energy usage.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > There's a common meme in the northern latitudes that
| people "down south" consume unreasonable amounts of
| energy on AC, but
|
| Depending on where "down south" you are, the AC could
| well be on eleven months of the year.
|
| I'm in Florida now, and you can usually turn it off for
| parts of November - February but never every day. I'd
| average it at 10 months of ac usage in a year
|
| When I was in NYC, the ac would be used for about 1.5
| months and the heat for ~ 3. By being temperate in
| spring, early summer and fall, little or no external
| energy needed.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I live in the PNW and heat dome notwithstanding very few
| homes have AC because it almost never gets above 90ish
| degrees in the summer. A good cross breeze is more than
| sufficient to keep cool in that case.
|
| Winters, though, need a lot of heating to keep the place
| comfortable and most homes due to lack of said AC use the
| highly inefficient baseboard heaters to warm their entire
| house 6 months or more out of the year.
| nkozyra wrote:
| I just spent awhile in Oregon (yes even during the heat
| wave) and will agree evenings with a breeze were totally
| fine even on the hottest days.
|
| The 110deg+ felt a lot like Florida when it's 92 and
| humid
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > very few homes have AC
|
| That's actually not correct, though I would have figured
| the same thing myself before the recent heat wave made it
| a discussion point. Seattle is among the lowest in the
| nation, but it's still just under half of all homes.
| Portland is about three quarters.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Heat pumps are amazing things, they are more than 100%
| efficient, since they use only n watt-hours to move >n
| watt-hours of energy from one place to another. Under ideal
| conditions they can move 3n while consuming only n.
|
| It's far more efficient to use a heat pump in reverse to
| heat a space than it is to use a traditional electric
| heater, which is "only" 100% efficient.
|
| (Perhaps I should have said joules, not Wh? Units are
| confusing.)
| hunter2_ wrote:
| When cooling a dwelling, the trick is figuring out where
| to move the heat. Typically we dump it outside (waste)
| but we should be heating our hot water tanks, swimming
| pools, or anything else that needs concentrated heat at
| the same time that we're removing it from the indoor air.
|
| Alec from Technology Connections recently made some
| videos about heat pumps on YouTube that touch on this
| sort of thing.
| amluto wrote:
| In very hot climates, swimming pools get too hot, and you
| might prefer to chill the pool water.
| nfriedly wrote:
| > Typically we dump it outside (waste) but we should be
| heating our hot water tanks, swimming pools, or anything
| else that needs concentrated heat at the same time that
| we're removing it from the indoor air.
|
| My house actually does that!
|
| I had never heard of the idea before moving here, but we
| have a geothermal system and in addition to the ground
| loop, it also dumps heat into the hot water heater when
| cooling the house. (Until the water reaches some maximum
| temperature.)
| rstupek wrote:
| In order to get the energy credit on install of the geo
| system the install had to include a hot water heater as
| part of the install
| BizarroLand wrote:
| And the cool thing is that the spare "coolness" of the
| water is released into the air, providing free Air
| Conditioning while also cheaply heating your water.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| This has always made me super grouchy-- I even have my
| house plumbed for hydronics!
|
| I wish I could tie the AC units into that, put all the
| rads in bypass during the summer, and use the hydronic
| water to preheat shower water before it hits the gas-
| powered on demand system.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >(Perhaps I should have said joules, not Wh? Units are
| confusing.)
|
| 1 Wh = 3600 J, so you're not _wrong_.
|
| It's the same thing as talking about using tonnes instead
| of kilograms, only the conversion factor here is 3600
| instead of 1000.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| It's only >100% efficient because % efficiency is defined
| in a goofy way: benefit/cost, instead of
| benefit/(cost+benefit). (Moving 3n requires moving 4n and
| wasting n: 75% real efficiency).
|
| This difference only matters for A/C, when cost is not
| much larger than benefit.
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| But only n has to be low-entropy energy, while the 3n is
| ambient heat that you're trying to get rid of. There's no
| scarcity of ambient heat when you're just trying to move
| it anywhere else but inside.
| mjmahone17 wrote:
| This doesn't make sense to me. You're saying a water
| heater that uses N joules to heat water by 0.5N joules is
| 33% efficient? That would be difficult for most people to
| translate: I use 100 wh to get 50 wh of heat, which
| should imply 50% efficiency. As the cost to gain the end
| state I want is what I care about.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The poster you are responding to was referring to heat
| pumps, not a resistive electric water heater like you
| assumed.
| rsync wrote:
| "The sheer waste of energy to keep that hotel cooled down to
| those temperatures and golf-course playable year-round is just
| ridiculous."
|
| A similar temperature differential exists in Minnesota and
| Wisconsin (and elsewhere in the US) for months in the
| wintertime.
|
| Unlike air-conditioning which can be powered by solar and wind
| produced electricity, most heating is done by directly burning
| fossil fuels on-site.
|
| I think we should all be very cautious with our energy
| scorekeeping ...
| aksss wrote:
| I agree with you about scorekeeping, but you did a weird
| comparison in your sentence about heating/cooling. You
| compared the potential of one with the reality of another. As
| in, AC _can be powered_ by [renewable] electricity, but that
| most heating _is [powered]_ by burning fossil fuels. It might
| be reasonable to ask how much AC actually _is_ powered by
| renewables vs fossil fuels. Heating can also be done
| electrically, and therefore could be done with renewables. We
| all know that it 's hella expensive at present to heat with
| electricity compared to natural gas, propane, or even wood in
| some places (at present).
| throwawaygh wrote:
| AC-heavy environs -- especially deserts -- are a better
| use-case for existing renewable solutions than colder
| environs. And, also, actual uptake is higher.
|
| Solar can be more easily used for AC in desert environs
| because peak demand coincides exactly with peak production.
| And, it actually is. At least in places with access to
| capital.
|
| The situation is sadly exactly the opposite up north. For
| everything except geothermal the peak production (both in
| time of day and season) doesn't match up well with the peak
| demand.
|
| Also, AC requires a lot less energy than heating,
| regardless of generation method.
|
| But deserts have other sustainability issues. Water.
| chemeng wrote:
| Agree with your points. Also, your comment reminded me that
| habitable, unhabitable, inhabitable, uninhabitable, is one of
| the most confusing situations in the english language.
| spidersouris wrote:
| Habitable and inhabitable mean the same, don't they? It's
| likely inflammable and flammable. Unhabitable doesn't exist
| though.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| > Unhabitable doesn't exist though.
|
| There's no reason why it shouldn't, though. It makes
| logical sense.
| chemeng wrote:
| Merriam-Webster seems to agree with you.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unhabitable
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Irregardless, it can be a word if enough people say so.
|
| (to be fair, by this definition, unhabitable is in fact a
| word)
| tomcam wrote:
| I'm taking you off my Hanukkah list for that one
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Habitable and inhabitable mean the same, don't they?
|
| Yes, though "habitable" is the normal word and
| "inhabitable" would be a nonce construction derived from
| "inhabit".
|
| > It's like[] inflammable and flammable.
|
| Not really; those words mean that something can catch fire.
| That's all well and good for "flammable", but it's bizarre
| for "inflammable", since "inflame" has no surviving meaning
| related to fire. If you wanted to express that meaning,
| you'd have to say "set fire" or "ignite".
| [deleted]
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I used to live just south of Death Valley. One summer, it was up
| around 115F every day for two weeks straight in July.
|
| An occasional spike in temps to that level was not a big deal.
| The houses were built to some degree for that environment and had
| , for example, narrow windows with some kind of architectural
| detail I've never seen elsewhere that helped shade the windows.
|
| But after days and days of such temperatures, the AC blowing cold
| air felt like a joke. The walls were hot. The floor was hot. The
| couch was hot.
|
| You learn to eat different and live different in an environment
| like that. You make sure you get enough to drink. You teach the
| kids to stay hydrated. You teach everyone the importance of
| electrolytes.
|
| I went for walks for exercise after dark when the temp dropped to
| 99F. There was precious little shade and I sunburned easily which
| is another serious health threat on top of the risk of heat
| prostration.
|
| Desert cities of old were built to keep things tolerable at
| street level. City location was chosen for ability to mitigate
| the heat, typically a plateau a little above the surrounding
| terrain. Streets were oriented to maximize the cooling effect of
| prevailing winds. Buildings were designed to reflect heat rather
| than soak it up, among other things.
|
| Humans used to work out in the weather much more consistently
| than we do these days and tended to primarily get around on foot.
| Now, we go from home to car to office to car to store to car,
| etc. We don't have the same relationship to the weather and we
| seem to have forgotten how to live with weather.
|
| At least in the US. Maybe other places are a bit better about
| such things.
| barrkel wrote:
| Houses - and especially high rise developments - are
| increasingly built according to global fashions or
| individualistic whims, divorced from regional styles which
| evolved with the local climate and available materials.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _regional styles which evolved with the local climate and
| available materials._
|
| That's often called _vernacular architecture_ and it
| typically innately includes elements of passive solar design.
| Such building styles were well-suited to local climate with a
| minimum of energy-intensive cooling or heating because people
| simply couldn 't afford it.
|
| Additionally, we had cultural practices rooted in staying
| adequately warm or cool without counting on an HVAC system:
|
| Tapestries on castle walls blocked drafts and provided
| insulation.
|
| A "three dog night" was a night so cold, the upper classes
| let three of their large hunting dogs sleep with them to stay
| warm.
|
| Siestas were naps taken during the hottest part of the day in
| place of working in the heat.
|
| Buildings routinely had windows positioned to create a cross
| breeze if you opened them.
|
| Windows routinely were positioned to provide adequate light
| for essential tasks without having to turn on any lights
| during the day.
|
| Etc.
|
| Now we build some awful little cardboard box and slap an HVAC
| system on it as if tech makes up for bad design. It doesn't.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| This reminds me of a story my dad used to tell. A friend of him
| was tasked by the wildlife protection agency to count the grouse
| population in the county every year.
|
| What he did was to walk a given path through the mountains at the
| same time each year, and count how many grouse he saw along the
| way. This was then used by the agency to estimate the population.
|
| One year he was unavailable, and as such he asked his friend to
| do it. He instructed him on the path, how to count and all that.
|
| Later that year the local paper's headline stated "Dramatic
| increase in grouse population!"
|
| Turned out his buddy didn't bother to do the long walk, and
| instead just came up with a number he submitted to the agency.
| sgt wrote:
| "Stuffed up" - had to be an Australian news article
| kevinpet wrote:
| This is a good illustration of a principle that when your sample
| contains the most extreme events you will find that measurement
| errors make up a much larger fraction of them than you would
| expect.
| [deleted]
| treeman79 wrote:
| How about when gravity and earth spin are sufficient to affect
| world records.
|
| https://xkcd.com/852/
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