Are we fucked as a species?

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Hosix

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Lambourne said:
Wouldn't put the heat messing up your sleep out of your head just yet, a lack of good quality sleep does strange things to a brain.

I'm in the Netherlands and we've been having that same heat wave, many days in a row of 35 degrees C (that's 95 F for muricans) and I'm guessing Sweden has even lower rates of residential air conditioning than we do. Most northern European houses are built to retain heat so it's really hard to get them to cool down once they heat up, even a few colder days won't get rid of the heat once it has built up in the structure.

I still don't have whole house AC but just getting a wall unit for my bedroom so I can actually sleep at night has been well worth the investment. Yea it's probably still a luxury for Northern Europe, but solid sleep is worth a lot to me.
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Fuck? 95? At night in Phoenix it stays above 100 so we can cook the transients off the street. At 95 I would turn off my AC.
 
Borzak

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Listening to a podcast this week they were playing clips from Europe about how all the old people are not made for the heat they are experiencing now and al lthe old people WILL DIE!!! I guess they never heard of Arizona or Florida which probably has the highest concentration of old people and heat.
 
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Aldarion

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Meanwhile, white people settled and lived in Texas something like 100 years before AC was invented.

I love AC too but the idea that "oh no its above 95 people cant survive that" is retarded. Do people die during 95°F weather? Yes. Is it inevitable without AC? Not at all.
 
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Lambourne

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It's probably partly people not being used to it, but a/c is still nowhere near as prevalent here as it is in the US. My grandparents lived in an old folks home that had no ac, and this was well after 2000. Even some older hospitals still don't have it. Houses are still not built with it apart from some upper market ones.

There was an actual spike in the death rate during the last heat wave, of course this was mostly people that weren't long for this world anyway getting pushed over the edge. It's not really causing deaths but why would the media shy a way from a good clickbaity title.
 
Dandai

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"Causing" deaths is definitely reaching, but house designs absolutely play a large role in how comfortable the occupants will be in extreme weather conditions. The reason people could settle in Texas 100 years before AC is because they built houses that were open and circulated air well. Modern houses are built designed to do the exact opposite and try to prevent any air ingress (so that you aren't expending a ton of energy with your climate control).

It's not exactly apples to oranges, but it's definitely not apples to apples either.
 
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Aldarion

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Dandai said:
"Causing" deaths is definitely reaching, but house designs absolutely play a large role in how comfortable the occupants will be in extreme weather conditions. The reason people could settle in Texas 100 years before AC is because they built houses that were open and circulated air well. Modern houses are built designed to do the exact opposite and try to prevent any air ingress (so that you aren't expending a ton of energy with your climate control).

It's not exactly apples to oranges, but it's definitely not apples to apples either.
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These are good points. House design makes a big difference.

But so does opening the windows and turning on a fan. I have lived in hot climates with no AC. When its hot in the house, there are things a person can do to mitigate it. Like go out on the porch, or open all the windows and turn on some window fans.
 
Borzak

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Aldarion said:
Meanwhile, white people settled and lived in Texas something like 100 years before AC was invented.

I love AC too but the idea that "oh no its above 95 people cant survive that" is retarded. Do people die during 95°F weather? Yes. Is it inevitable without AC? Not at all.
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Still have a log house that my great grandparents lived in at least during the early part of my om's life, or just before she was born. So 70+ years ago. They weren't insulated and sealed but houses then were built totally different to deal with the heat. Walkway for the wind between the 2 halves of the house. Built off the ground. Large overhang of the roof to provide some shade. Built in the shade. It's not AC but it beats the shit of being in a modern house with no A/C as far as being somewhat cool.

In East, Texas much like most of the southeast. Upland pine, high heat and humidity. 4' diameter long leaf pine had to have been a bitch to get to the site and made into a house with nothing more than a mule. But the longleaf appears to be on the way to lasting more than 100 years.
 
Caliane

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wormie said:
That's assuming intelligent life isn't incredibly rare.
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If humanity died oft, we would leave quite a bit of infrastructure, that a new burgeoning species would make use of, to adapt and evolve along intelligent lines quickly.
Basic systems of bioforming. we evolved in an environment, that was created by prior life. so too, have we created an environment beneficial to intelligent life. Obviously things like advanced mechanics, houses, etc would deteriorate. but, reservoirs, roads, dumps, etc would last quite a while, and spurn faster develoment of the next species.

Trash pandas would likely evolve intelligence very quickly in a world of dead humans, but left over human civilizations.
 
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wormie

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Caliane said:
If humanity died oft, we would leave quite a bit of infrastructure, that a new burgeoning species would make use of, to adapt and evolve along intelligent lines quickly.
Basic systems of bioforming. we evolved in an environment, that was created by prior life. so too, have we created an environment beneficial to intelligent life. Obviously things like advanced mechanics, houses, etc would deteriorate. but, reservoirs, roads, dumps, etc would last quite a while, and spurn faster develoment of the next species.

Trash pandas would likely evolve intelligence very quickly in a world of dead humans, but left over human civilizations.
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The assumption that anything we create on this planet is beneficial to intelligent life is just as weak as the assumption that intelligent life isnt incredibly rare.
 
3301

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Caliane said:
If humanity died oft, we would leave quite a bit of infrastructure, that a new burgeoning species would make use of, to adapt and evolve along intelligent lines quickly.
Basic systems of bioforming. we evolved in an environment, that was created by prior life. so too, have we created an environment beneficial to intelligent life. Obviously things like advanced mechanics, houses, etc would deteriorate. but, reservoirs, roads, dumps, etc would last quite a while, and spurn faster develoment of the next species.

Trash pandas would likely evolve intelligence very quickly in a world of dead humans, but left over human civilizations.
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Interesting concept, but it'd take a long damn time for anything else to rise up and become the dominate species, and intelligent and capable of tool use. By the time that happens, all our shit is reclaimed by the earth. Earthquakes, volcanoes, asteroids, rain/snow/ice/wind, it'd be like shaking an etch-a-sketch. If anything useful survives, it'll be covered in dozens of feet of dirt and not found until they start digging.
 
Screamfeeder

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Aldarion said:
These are good points. House design makes a big difference.

But so does opening the windows and turning on a fan. I have lived in hot climates with no AC. When its hot in the house, there are things a person can do to mitigate it. Like go out on the porch, or open all the windows and turn on some window fans.
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I think it was actually Tuco Tuco that made a few posts a long time ago (not sure if on FoHguild board or RR) about some complex air flow shit he did with fans and wet towels and shit to get perfect climate control in his place through airflow.

If you think of your house like the inside of your PC, you can come up with all kinds of creative ways to keep that shit cool without A/C.
 
ZyyzYzzy

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Caliane said:
If humanity died oft, we would leave quite a bit of infrastructure, that a new burgeoning species would make use of, to adapt and evolve along intelligent lines quickly.
Basic systems of bioforming. we evolved in an environment, that was created by prior life. so too, have we created an environment beneficial to intelligent life. Obviously things like advanced mechanics, houses, etc would deteriorate. but, reservoirs, roads, dumps, etc would last quite a while, and spurn faster develoment of the next species.

Trash pandas would likely evolve intelligence very quickly in a world of dead humans, but left over human civilizations.
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Damn. You are a powerful retard.
 
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Tuco

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Screamfeeder said:
I think it was actually Tuco Tuco that made a few posts a long time ago (not sure if on FoHguild board or RR) about some complex air flow shit he did with fans and wet towels and shit to get perfect climate control in his place through airflow.

If you think of your house like the inside of your PC, you can come up with all kinds of creative ways to keep that shit cool without A/C.
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Wasn't me! I do remember someone talking about a totally retarded home-built swamp cooling system that made as much sense as storing winter air in jars to release during the summer.

Closest thing I did to a tuco-rigged climate control was when I was 10 (no AC) and created a wind tunnel on my bed by affixing a light blanket to a floor fan and to the sides of my bed.

I also used water cooling for my PCs for about 5 years.
 
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Screamfeeder

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Tuco said:
Wasn't me! I do remember someone talking about a totally retarded home-built swamp cooling system that made as much sense as storing winter air in jars to release during the summer.

Closest thing I did to a tuco-rigged climate control was when I was 10 (no AC) and created a wind tunnel on my bed by affixing a light blanket to a floor fan and to the sides of my bed.

I also used water cooling for my PCs for about 5 years.
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Yeah maybe I was just thinking of someone else using like...frozen wet towels or some shit to cool a house and you commented on it.

Either way, pueblo peoples in the southwest have been building with mud for centuries (our ranch house back in Santa Fe has a full adobe first story) and we are still using that same kind of material (albeit a bit updated) for plenty of buildings to maintain stable temperatures inside. Triple Digit temps in the high desert and no one in our zip code had A/C.
 
Tuco

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Screamfeeder said:
Yeah maybe I was just thinking of someone else using like...frozen wet towels or some shit to cool a house and you commented on it.

Either way, pueblo peoples in the southwest have been building with mud for centuries (our ranch house back in Santa Fe has a full adobe first story) and we are still using that same kind of material (albeit a bit updated) for plenty of buildings to maintain stable temperatures inside. Triple Digit temps in the high desert and no one in our zip code had A/C.
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iirc someone was freezing towels in their fridge and then blowing fans on them in their living room. Which is retarded of course because fridges generate immense amounts of heat to cool stuff down.

There's a lot wrong with this, but I'd love it if The Boring Company's tunnel shit takes off and we get a hugely cheap source of compressed earth bricks that we can use to create mud houses.
 
Dandai

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Screamfeeder said:
Yeah maybe I was just thinking of someone else using like...frozen wet towels or some shit to cool a house and you commented on it.

Either way, pueblo peoples in the southwest have been building with mud for centuries (our ranch house back in Santa Fe has a full adobe first story) and we are still using that same kind of material (albeit a bit updated) for plenty of buildings to maintain stable temperatures inside. Triple Digit temps in the high desert and no one in our zip code had A/C.
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I've never lived in the desert, but aren't swamp coolers commonly used for climate control in arid climates? Given the choice, it seems like a swamp cooler would be the climate control of choice since it can remove a lot of heat with a little water and a big fan.
 
Screamfeeder

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Dandai said:
I've never lived in the desert, but aren't swamp coolers commonly used for climate control in arid climates? Given the choice, it seems like a swamp cooler would be the climate control of choice since it can remove a lot of heat with a little water and a big fan.
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Yup. And we have them but they are INCREDIBLY innefficiant in actually cooling down a space. They mainly just introduce humidity into the dry climate and blow that around. They are better than nothing, but I would rather live in a solid adobe home with no swamp cooler than a modern construction home with one. The difference is staggering.
 
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