Re: whenwhen Skye was a sub-tropical paradise with warm shallow seas

Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com> wrote:

On 2024-07-27 21:11:56 +0000, J. J. Lodder said:
 

Bob Casanova <nospam@buzz.off> wrote:
 

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024 11:44:14 +0200, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by nospam@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J.
Lodder):
 

erik simpson <eastside.erik@gmail.com> wrote:
 

On 7/25/24 2:06 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

On 2024-07-24 22:52:47 +0000, Bob Casanova said:
 

On Wed, 24 Jul 2024 15:35:12 -0600, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by André G. Isaak
<agisaak@gm.invalid>:
 

On 2024-07-24 15:00, burkhard wrote:

It isn't any longer now, that much I can tell you - though we braced
the
cold and went for a swim yesterday. Not exactly Skye, though we
can see it from where we are (Malaig)

 
I envy you. It was 37° C here yesterday.
 

Oooh, a low-temp sauna! ;-)
 
It's varied form 42C to 47C (daytime highs) here this month,
with dew points from -5C to 23C. A "dry heat" it's not, at
this time of year. :-(

 
They've been predicting 33-35° for us for days, but it's never been

that > hot on our balcony -- maybe 31° maximum. > > A friend of mine
was injured in Italy and spend more time the he wanted in a hospital
there.  He complained about the lack of air conditioning even there.
I've heard that France is also air conditioner deficient.
Is that your experience?

 
Softies, you Americans,
 

I suspect that if the Netherlands had the climate which is
normal here in many places you'd be a "softy" too. Come to
Phoenix in July and go without AC for a few weeks, then
repeat that.

 
There you go again. It was Italy and France that we were talking about.
 

Why be intentionally uncomfortable?

 
Burning coal to feed air conditioners to combat global warming
is of course the way to go,

 
I can't find a reference to it now, but my recollection (possibly quite
wrong) is that in the 1930s there was a major exhibition in London
where the buildings were heated with a giant heat exhanger driven by
the flow of the Thames: no burning involved, even indirectly.

Quite possible in theory, and perhaps possibly practical,
in those long past days when grids hardly existed.
(each power station kept its own frequency and time, then)

These days it is more practical to derive power from the river current,
and to feed it into the grid, (if economical) [1]
and to drive a heat pump between Thames water and heating equipment,
with power taken from the grid.

Jan

[1] FYA, in the news recently, there is a highly original pilot project
to derive power from tidal currents using underwater 'kites'.
The kites are programmed to execute figure-8 motions,
and power is generated by reeling them in and out.