Climate change: what do more resilient cities look like?

[rebeccmeister]

Just putting a handful of thoughts together here.

When I was reading about Arcosanti to prepare for my visit, some of the materials I read emphasized that the guest rooms don't have air conditioning, so guests should come prepared accordingly. So I was a little surprised when I showed up and discovered that my particular room did have air conditioning, after all. Thanks to the monsoon storm, I didn't actually need it at right that moment, but if it had been hot I would have needed to use it to help keep Emma and myself cool at night. Otherwise I would have left the door open and tried to use other cooling strategies; Arcosanti is sufficiently high-elevation and rural that it isn't Phoenix-hot.

Anyway, I finally just finished reading a NYT article about impacts of extreme heat waves, and also just finished reading another blogger's article about preparations for stay-at-home emergencies, and between the two of them, am doing some thinking.

From everything I've observed from the West Coast fires and more, regardless of where one lives, it seems certain types of preparation would be wise: be prepared for an extreme heat event/events where the power grid fails.

I don't completely know what this preparation looks like, just yet, but in part it involves knowing about things like sleeping porches, and also maybe setting up habitable* basement-type spaces where basements are popular/possible. Home solar arrays and power storage might also be a component; I'm personally iffy on gasoline-powered generators.


*Our current basement is absolutely NOT habitable! I would go so far as to say it's almost unbelievably uninhabitable!

Comments

[graydon]

More resilient cities have zero fossil carbon inputs. All the published stuff dances around this, which is a bit like the efforts to explain biology without foregrounding evolution.

Cities have to be powered at modern densities because waste heat from living is considerable. (Modern cities are also impossible to provision without refrigeration.)

The historical solutions to heat waves (with one exception) all fail if the wet bulb temperature hits 35; those solutions were devised at a time when you didn't have to worry about that kind of temperature excursion. (The exception is "a cave" (natural or artificial), but caves have heat buildup issues if you put too many people in them so you've suddenly got another problem if you're trying for a city on modern scales.)

[rebeccmeister]

Great points, all around. Thank you! Makes me think about the current temperature of the London Underground, heh.

So, with power requirements but also a need for zero fossil carbon inputs - what might that look like?

It still amazes me to think about how there was a period where a primary energy source was whale fat.

I get really depressed whenever I read about what's involved in mining for the resources that are used to produce electronics and batteries.

[graydon]

London Underground is a clear example of why "dig!" is not a solution at scale, all right.

Solar. Solar PV in conjunction with continental scale power grids -- there was a large careful study about how to do this that the Trump admin killed dead -- solves a lot of problems. Solar in conjunction with storage solves the rest of the problems for CONUS. Other places need to work on better-than-battery-density storage -- NH3 or methanol or aluminium -- and fuel cells. (Diesels are right out because no matter where you get the fuel, diesels produce black particulate carbon which is Not Helping.)

Batteries currently use a stupid chemistry; lithium is inherently rare and the batteries are inherently flammable. It's got a first-mover advantage and it's optimised for lightness. Grid storage batteries don't need to be optimised for lightness.

There are sodium solid-electrolyte chemistries out there, there are other battery chemistries (including aluminium-air, which has amazing energy density), there are flow batteries (not literally made from rhubarb but it's true enough to be funny), and there are molten salt batteries. Any serious public effort to solve the "storage problem" would succeed quickly. (The distinctly (from a funding perspective) mono-buttocked efforts currently ongoing are succeeding, just not fast.)

(Nickel-iron batteries could be used; the cost calculations work fine. It's not an optimal battery chemistry in any respect but it's a solid indicator that it's possible.)

Then you start designing for efficiency; lots of room there. Heat pumps are creeping up on 400% efficient if you compare them to burning natural gas as theoretically 100% efficient if you get all the heat from the combustion heating the building. Design for thermal mass. Grass roofing. Solar film on the windows. Electric trolley transportation; we have to move the cities way uphill anyway, we can put sensible infrastructure in when we do that. Everything has to be able to take 100 m/s sustained winds, a metre of rain in an hour, and five metres in a week. (Because Cretaceous aeolian deposits indicate you can get sustained winds that fast, and if the Arctic Amplification Hypothesis is correct (it's doing fine so far) we could see 8 C of warming by 2100 and be right back in the Cretaceous hothouse.)

From an engineering perspective, none of this is all that hard. The hard part is breaking the basis of power; the US was (and is) the Oil Empire, there's only ever going to be one, and deciding to be something else -- or, rather, the murderous refusal to be anything else -- has defined US and world politics since Reagan.

[threemeninaboat]

This year we invested in: black out curtains, an air purifier, more trees.
Last year during the "Denver has the worst air in the world" our house was uninhabitable. This year even John with his asthma is breathing fine in the house. We also have space to sleep downstairs and may long term think about moving the bedroom down there.

[rebeccmeister]

Yeah, we've got an air purifier but I should look at larger ones. Yours was a combination purifier-dehumidifier, IIRC - happy with it so far??

If we owned this place I suspect we would have put in a bunch of fruit trees already! Just yesterday a friend posted something really cool about someone who is working to track down Navajo peach tree varieties. It was really reassuring to read about, because as soon as the Navajo started growing peach trees, they started selecting for varieties that do well in Navajo country, which is relatively hot and dry. I don't know if anyone is doing anything to the point where it's possible to obtain seeds or seedlings, but it would be something to keep an eye out for.

[threemeninaboat]

I read that too! Our fruit trees really struggle. I know peach trees do not last that long anyways but they are just too sensitive for the back yard.

I have the humidifier-air purifier but they make one that is not a humidifier.
https://venta-usa.com/product-category/air-purifiers/

It WAS expensive on the front end but it does not need replacement filters and I don't need a second humidifier and it does actually do the whole house. (also it does not beep :) )

[rebeccmeister]

Yeah, I think you have a very challenging climate for fruit trees in general. It seems to me there are things that should do pretty well here in NY, though!

Thank you for the link, AND for the long-term feedback - I can appreciate why the humidifier component would be extremely useful for you! Not having to buy replacement filters is HUGE!