You know the Sun is hot when...

[red750]

It does this to a leaf on the bush.

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Jeepers.. What is the flashpoint of a gum tree leaf?

[onetrack]

You haven't seen real sun heat, until you've lived in Marble Bar, and experienced 47° to 49° regularly. You can fry eggs on a piece of steel lying on the ground by 9.00AM.

[Marty_d]

Who wants a hot breakfast when it's 49 degrees??

[Old Koreelah]

11 hours ago, Marty_d said:

Who wants a hot breakfast when it's 49 degrees??

I missed breakfast this morning, to get an earlier start to beat the heat. Might skip lunch was well. 

Been months since I fasted. Post Xmas dietary excesses, it’s sure to do me some good.

 

Dr. Micheal Mosely (in his Trust Me, I’m a Doctor TV series) covered various forms of fasting to lose weight and improve health. Seems that even half a day might have some benefits.

[facthunter]

Keep the water up though.  OLD people shouldn't lose weight quicky as the weight you lose may be MUSCLE as well as fat. Nev

[Old Koreelah]

11 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Keep the water up though.  OLD people shouldn't lose weight quicky as the weight you lose may be MUSCLE as well as fat. Nev

Hoo u calling old? 

I’ve never carried much extra weight, but belly fat from good living isn’t good for anyone.

Yep, drinking plenty of water is important, but some people can survive in deserts with very little. Robin Davidson, during her camel trek across Oz, was able to walk all day without drinking, but finished each day with copious mugs of tea.

[Yenn]

It is not the heat that causes the problem, it is the heat plus humidity. I gave up working outside at 0930 this morning. It was only 31 deg, but the humidity meant I was covered in sweat and I hadn't been working hard.

[facthunter]

Dehydration has many adverse effects and a lot of people don't drink hoping to not have to pee. . Double vision and loss of balance and more . Not what pilots/motorcyclists need. . Nev

[onetrack]

When I was younger (20's and 30's) I could go for quite a few hrs in hot conditions without drinking a great deal. Now I'm old and getting a little less robust every day, I find that I need to drink a lot more - and I find I'm also sweating a lot more in hot conditions, and I sweat a lot more easily, than I did when I was younger. Not sure if everyone else finds it the same. I think I now have less ability to cope with humidity, than I did when I was younger.

[nomadpete]

Absolutely agree, Onetrack.

I thought it was just me.

But my growing intolerance of heat and especially humidity is why I moved to Tassie.

[Old Koreelah]

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

… I find I'm also sweating a lot more in hot conditions, and I sweat a lot more easily, than I did when I was younger.

That’s good news, 1T; your cooling system is working fine, unlike a Royal currently in the news…

[red750]

Humidity! We have one of those portable air conditioners you can wheel from room to room if you have suitable windows/doors to put the heat extraction duct. I have to empty about two litres of water every 4 or 5 hours or so from humidity condensed. Seem to always show Tank Full.

[nomadpete]

You should be tankful to get all that free distilled water!

[Yenn]

I have found that as I get older it is harder to stand the hot days of Summer and also to stand the cold days of Winter.

As a young man I did physical work in N Qld and now I just stay in the shade when it gets hot.

I have never heard any medical evidence that age lowers our ability to handle heat and cold, but all older people seem to agree that it is so.

[nomadpete]

Maybe I'm just gettin more cranky as I get older........

[Jerry_Atrick]

Maybe?  🙂

 

This is an interesting story - the subject matter has been discussed here before.. but the video shows the stark reality of what modern suburbia of Australia is becoming. Of course, with all of those roofs, the bitumen and concrete, it is always going to be the heatsink without the circulation to cool it down. But, I can't help thinking we a rebuilding ghettos. High density housing can work well, but there has to be space for people to go to like parks and other facilities. These looked just like endless square kms of houses and streets -with very little open space.. it seemed claustrophobic. That can't be great for developing kiddies, unless we want them all to be device consuming zombies.

 

No wonder, since the pandemic, where corporations have learned to trust their minions, er, employees, to work from home (where they can), those employees are seeking to move to regional centres and rural/semi-rural locations. It is part of the reason we left London, and we lived ion a leafy area and had more back yard than any of those houses.. (For us, there were other reasons, such as the pollution, the insane competition between families to get their kids into the better schools, etc).

 

And the, FFS, artificial grass in a front or back "yard". Well, they look literally like they are a yard wide... Who on earth allows their community to lay that ecologically friendly material, which then goes on to have an ecologically friendly impact of further warming the local atmosphere?

 

As the late Sid Spindler said, most of the issues can be fixed with simple solutions.

 

 

 

BTW, while I live in a small village of c. 250 people, I took the dog for a walk on the outskirts of the nearest centre - Taunton.. The are in question is called Norton Fitzwarren, which has a large area of new estates.. much the same, but smaller blocks of land. Sadly, the warming effect wasn't evident that night.

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

his is an interesting story - the subject matter has been discussed here before.. but the video shows the stark reality of what modern suburbia of Australia is becoming

This is another of those examples of facts getting in the way of a good story. 

 

The "science" behind the microenvironmental climate change  as presented in the story is quite correct. If you cover forests and grasslands with tar and cement, the temperatures will get higher. Make it worse by having the tar and cement nearly black, and you push the temperatures up higher again. Then reduce the percentage of unsealed surface per hectare drastically and you not only hike the temperatures, but you also cause the stormwater drainage systems to fail when the rising very hot air induces the formation of severe thunderstorms. In the Sydney area now, it is almost as if a heavy fog will cause a number of roads to be closed due to flooding.

 

But to go to my point about good stories being ruined by facts. The reporter made much of the disparity between Sydney's North Shore suburbs and the far Western Suburbs (fringe areas). He tried to align temperature and income to say that poorer people have to live in the hottest suburbs. There is one good reason why the North Shore is cooler, apart from adjacency to the coast. That area was developed for housing before, say, 1975. In fact most of it was well before 1950. At that time, house blocks were the desired quarter acre (1000 sqr metres). There was room for trees in yards and along the streets. Those trees might have been saplings when planted long ago, but now they are mature. The original houses have been demolished in many areas, but the block size has not reduced.

 

As a result of the trees, these places are more pleasant to live in and that drives up the purchase price. To pay the price, you have to have a higher income. Therefore it is not the average income that reduces the suburb's temperature, but the maturity of its trees and block size.

 

Houses in my suburb range from 850K to 1.2M, and they are over 25 years old.  A new, cheek-by-jowl house in the next suburb, on a 375 sqr metre block with superturf in the backyard, currently rented for $650 per week (tenant is happy to stay or relocate) sold for 920K. It has views of trees on the far distant hills.

[facthunter]

Trees and REAL Grass make a lot if difference to the ambient Temperature. Airconditioners pump hot air into the exterior total as well. They are only heat pumps.

   Sydneys  North shore  always had a lot of trees. They  get blown over during storms still and cause electrical outages. These dense New all the same ticky tacky BOXES are going to be tomorrows slums. Places you just MUST have a Holiday from anytime you can arrange it. Sounds like FUN (NOT) Nev

Edited January 17, 2022 by facthunter

[Yenn]

There is one good thing about the overcrowded suburbs. There is more room for those of us who do not want to live in them. Just think if the population was spread evenly over Australias settled areas, I would have neighbours too close for comfort.

Those hot city areas do develope their own micro climate. I can remember how it affected london when i was a kid. London was a couple of degrees warmer than Hounslow, just a few miles to its West.

Not only do the suburbs heat up, they cause mini low pressure areas and steep isobaric gradients.

The runoff is many times more and what is worse it is faster, leading to floods. The new highways and railways built across watercourses also cause flooding. The answer to this in many cases is to increase the height of new sub divisions, which is really building more damming areas. new subdivisions were always built on nice level flood plains, because that is the cheapest option. never mind that they would be better used for agriculture. Now we have many new subdivisions in Qld with unsuitable types of housing. Low set on a concrete slab, rather than the old style Queenslander on high stumps. They also have to be air conditioned because the eaves are at most 600mm.

[facthunter]

The later Australian way IS the WRONG way.. Bamboo is the answer.  Nev

[spacesailor]

You know it,s hot ! .

When your Air Conditioning stops working !.

Then it,s blooody hot.

spacesailor

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Or the air conditioning unit could just be broken? 😉

 

Agree with Nev; the current Aussie way is definitely the wrong way. As OME points out, the wealth divide may not be the driver behind the differences at present, but I wonder if there are estates being built for the wealthy, whether they would be built the same  - after all the developers can charge more and make the same money per square metre.. And that is the rub - governments are giving more or less carte blanche to the developers to do what they want, and as evidenced in the council of Casey in outer Melbourne area, they are on the take from the developers. The council where my mother lives is obviously on the take as well, as the crap they allow through completely transforms the serene and quaint town into a virtual parking lot - there is little if any enforcement of planning breaches despite VCAT getting involved.

 

You can still have your cake and somewhat eat it, too, though. I recall on one of my "recent" mercy dashes back to Aus, my brother picked me up at Tullamarine and we headed straight out to the outer eastern suburbs via newer north-eastern suburbs - I can't recall the name of the areas, but they were around Plenty/Greensborough way.. The houses were large-sish and the sites weren't too big, but they were nestled in a decent cover of Eucalyptus trees, and various other, what looked like native species (e.g. bottle brush, etc). It really looked very well thought out and planned. However, hate to think how it would go in the bushfire season.

[spacesailor]

Millionaires housing estate ! .

MIDGEPOINT QUEENSLAND !.

Complete with expensive golf course. 

spacesailor

[old man emu]

Once again it's those with the access to big money who are responsible for the rape of the country. In the Camden Shire, one family owns thousands of hectares, and they are the ones who set up the Development companies which cut the land up into 375 sq metre (1/10th of an acre) postage stamps. The roads are so narrow that emergency service vehicles and garbage trucks cannot pass along them easily. Of course, when election time comes around, you know who these families are cavorting with.

 

Here's a new development right on the southwestern edge of Sydney at Menangle. In fact it is not even in the Sydney Metropolitan Area. Actually they call it Menangle Park