Heat Wave Deaths

[ysabetwordsmith]

... are increasing as the climate warms.  Duh.  Regrettably, most of the suggested solutions are useless.  Planting trees, public drinking water, and reducing poverty are all good.  But keeping people alive means keeping them cool.  You have to provide public cooling sites and home air conditioning.  For broke nations and poor families, that's unlikely.

Comments

[kengr]

Yeah, regarding home air conditioning, I noted that at least one of my meds has documents that say "do not refrigerate" *and* "do not store at over 85F"

One of these days I'll track it down again and send them a letter inquiring just what exactly those of us who can't afford air conditioning are supposed to do?

And that's *trivial* compared to many problems with lack of air conditioning.

ps. If I redesigning things from scratch kitchens would have connection to an *external* radiator assembly and refrigerators would be designed to hook up to them. Dump that excess heat outside, not inside.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> One of these days I'll track it down again and send them a letter inquiring just what exactly those of us who can't afford air conditioning are supposed to do? <<

Go without. *ponder* Though if you only need a small reduction in temperature, there's always the old-fashioned desert fridge.

>>ps. If I redesigning things from scratch kitchens would have connection to an *external* radiator assembly and refrigerators would be designed to hook up to them. Dump that excess heat outside, not inside.<<

That's a great idea.

Re: Thoughts

[sporky_rat]

That only works if you have dry air, though.

Re: Thoughts

[kengr]

counter-current heat-exchangers are another good idea that many homes/buildings could benefit from.

Picture a long pipe or air duct. Put a divider down the middle, running the full length. The walls of the duct should be decent insulators, while the divider should conduct heat well (for best results, you want something that will conduct heat well from one side to the other, but not so well along its length.

Air coming in enters at one end, on one side. Air going out enters at the other end and on the other side.

So the outgoing air warms up (or cools down!) the incoming air by heat conducted thru the divider.

For actual use, they coil up the long duct.

It's possible to rig up something similar to deal with humidity mismatches. Not sure if you can do both at the same time, but I suspect with some clever engineering you can.

This requires some extra power for forcing the air (or water, or other fluid) thru the exchanger. But in many cases, I bet it uses less power than the heating/cooling costs.

Obviously, you still need heating or cooling to make up for heat generated inside and heat gained/lost thru the walls.

But it *helps* lot, and avoids the common problem in well insulated (and weather sealed) buildings of not good gases getting trapped.

*grin* it also has applications in stealthing secret installations. Reduces thermal signatures. Among other things.

[fred_mouse]

We also have to store a medication with those two stipulations (I'm guessing, because ours is in °C, and I don't remember what the number was). I queried that with a pharmacist. My interpretation of what they said was that the not refrigerating was about keeping it dry, and so wrapping it/storing it in plastic (possibly with desiccant?) in the fridge would be fine. Particularly because the temperature was the more important of the two for that particular medication. And at $15 a dose, I really want that one stored properly.

[siliconshaman]

More urban parks with lakes is a solution that might be more affordable for less affluent nations... transpiration and evaporation have a localised cooling effect.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

That's true, and why I cited trees as an effective step. As I like to say, "Transpiration: Trees sweat so you don't have to!" Our yard is 5-10 degrees cooler than the surrounding fields exposed to blistering summer sun. :D

This is also one of the few things individuals can do. Plant trees and provide water for wildlife. If everyone did this -- and voted for governments to do their share -- it would help quite a bit.

[erulisse]

Something cool (ahem, yeah....) that started happening in Dallas a couple years ago is that the downtown branch of the public library there changed some of its policies to be more actively welcoming to the homeless and unhoused folks who were congregating outside. It's certainly not a comprehensive solution but it *is* a good example of a way in which we can mitigate some of the issues using existing infrastructure in places that have it by making some relatively simple changes.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

That has its ups and downs. In many towns, libraries have become the de facto homeless shelters because as public places they can't kick out homeless people -- unlike private businesses, which can and do. That's good for the homeless, for a while. The catch is that most citizens don't want to be around homeless people. So then they avoid the library, and a library that doesn't get used by taxpayers doesn't get funded. Then a lot of libraries wind up cutting hours or closing.