= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
knb comments on Stupid Questions July 2015 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (122)
There was recently a lethal heat wave in Karachi.
If you go about 1000 meters below the surface of the ocean, the water gets very cold.
Why don't people try to cool off hot places by piping cold water up from the ocean? Or just bubbling air through the deep water?
About a quarter of people in Pakistan regularly practice "open defecation" due to lack of access to basic plumbing infrastructure, which probably causes a much higher casualty rate than lack of access to air conditioning (old people are usually the casualties in heat waves, so the number of QALYs lost is much lower.) I know this isn't directly an answer to your question, but I'm trying to illustrate that there is a huge infrastructure gap in there.
Also, I'm not sure how you envision this working; just having open trenches of cold evaporating saltwater throughout the city?
Sure, but people don't try this in rich countries either. Places like Texas or Florida would be a lot nicer in the summer if they were 10 degrees cooler.
I'm not sure about the specifics, but there must be some way to get that cold out of the ocean depths and up to where people can benefit from it. People have been transporting large volumes of water since Roman times, and we have huge multibillion dollar oil rigs that drill through the ocean floor.
Eh.. There is indeed work being done on this. Google seawater greenhouse - Which is basically a way to engineer a cooler, wetter micro-climate and turn a net profit.
There's a way to transport water but that doesn't mean it's cost effective.