Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Heat waves in Europe
This article is about the current heat wave that is now decimating parts of Europe, namely, in Hungary, Macedonia, and Romania. This is not the first heat wave to kill hundreds of people across Europe in recent years; it's happened the last few years consecutively actually. I believe this relates to international development because in order to provide citizens with safe living conditions, the governments and development agencies in these areas need to invest heavily in air conditioning units, something that has not exactly been common practice throughout Europe's history because it hasn't been until recent years that they have been so devastated by heat waves. It marks a new era in which Europe must develop new building mandates that include air conditioning to prevent this from continuing to happen each year.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I'm curious if you mean that government should put air conditioners in public buildings? Or that they should simply require they are installed in any new building that is built? Or that they should provide the air conditioning units to citizens who are with out.
This does seem like a broad suggestion to say that the government needs to take action, and the action should be in the form of air conditioners. Are there traditional methods or at least sustainable methods that the people in Europe can use? Air conditioners use a lot of energy, but it is true that the use of air conditioners can save lives.
I don't know if you have ever heard of this, but there is this cooling system that uses chilled ceilings to cool the room, essentially by radiation transfer. Chilled water circulates in tubes hung on the ceiling and the water temperature should be higher than dew point temperature of room air. Due to the relatively high water temperature in the ceiling, water sources such as the sea, river, lake, aquifer or water chilled by cooling tower can be considered.
(http://www.cenerg.ensmp.fr/english/themes/syst/index.html) (In case you are interested.)
To expand further on this idea, the question you might ask is how are people going to afford this? Well my solution would be the government create cooling centers that operate during heat waves and other hot summer days.
I find that interesting because although this time the heat wave hit middle income countries, the first one was mainly in Western Europe; it actually killed over 15,000 people in France in the year 2003 I believe. I agree with the previous comments that air conditioning is not only expensive, but also very energy intensive. The primary victims of the heat waves are elderly people so maybe funding air conditioning in retirement homes might help. Now, the climate seems to be changing (I wonder why) and the people of Europe are obviously not used to this kind of extreme heat so maybe these death are simply a sign of transition to a hotter climate... (sorry I found it so ridiculous that a country like France could not prevent 15000 people from dying that I have become rather cynical about the subject)
That is unfortunate that these people are killed in the heat waves in Europe compared to China or Thailand, which claimed to be the hottest weathers and have somewhat survived well with no air conditioning. I believe in Europe, they are not well prepared to protect themselves from the heat waves. Have you ever thought about the people in Thailand, China, or perhaps the hottest countries across the globe that are even hotter than in Europe?
I agree with Ms. Huang on this - I think it is very interesting that people in much hotter countries without air conditioning are mostly fine. It is probably because they are used to it, or adapted to it. Or maybe there are more elderly in Europe because they have better access to health care and stay alive longer, and (as Andre said) are more susceptible to a heat wave.
Post a Comment