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From owning some of those old plantation houses and some modern "hotboxes," I've learned a few tricks for keeping the interior of a house slightly cooler than the outdoors...stack effect."
It is physically impossible to make the interior of a house cooler than the outside without the use of heat pumps or air conditioners. The best you can do is equalize the interior temperature within a few degrees of the exterior. Of course as the night goes on, the interior of the home will cool and by morning, all the retained heat inside the unit (and embodied in the structure) will have dissipated.
It is physically impossible to make the interior of a house cooler than the outside without the use of heat pumps or air conditioners. The best you can do is equalize the interior temperature within a few degrees of the exterior. Of course as the night goes on, the interior of the home will cool and by morning, all the retained heat inside the unit (and embodied in the structure) will have dissipated.
Agree, the best part of the day is the early morning at sunrise during September.
It is physically impossible to make the interior of a house cooler than the outside without the use of heat pumps or air conditioners. The best you can do is equalize the interior temperature within a few degrees of the exterior.
I believed that as well, until I learned about "passive cooling" and applied some of its principles in my houses
Since you know the girl who actually did the study, you are probably very well aware that these people need to substantiate their existence. They LIVE for this kind of sensationalist spread of information. Some science-centric/career people work decades just to have the opportunity to present a sensationalist white paper; they will do everything in their power to present/translate/interpret the data they've collected so that it raises alarms and increases human interest - simply because they want the attention, they want the exposure, they want the notoriety.
Try to read the paper again but this time ONLY focus on the data and plot charts. Allow yourself to use some logic and reasoning to interpret this data on your own and you will come to the same conclusion - it's all fluff.
I understand there are environmental changes that result from a more easterly wind flow than northeasterly wind flow but the azimuth (heading) change is insignificant. We are talking a 5-10 degree change in heading, not 45+ degrees. Such a shift will not have a dramatic impact on our weather patterns as you would suggest. Again, the sensationalist paper stated in its first paragraph that "at the Honolulu International Airport, northeast trade wind days usually occurred 291 days per year 37 years ago are observed to occur only 210 days per year in 2009." This represents a whopping 28% decrease and the headline to the article capitalized heavily on this "fact". In reality, it's a lie. This is where they lost all credibility right off the bat. First of all, the data previous to 1973 was "tweaked" in their favor to enhance the tradewind flow so the "291" figure was WAY too high to begin with. Then they cherry picked the 2009 year (with the lowest number of tradewind days in their sampling period) as the base for "recent" tradewind flow further cherry picking data points to raise alarms.
Sorry, this data won't work for us; we need something that shows trade winds are dying and dying fast... next
Well, this data is definitely not going to work for us either. Nobody wants to use "spurious" trends to come to a conclusion.
Translation "this data is preferred because it suits our agenda the best
Further, they state that wind pattern changes that last decades DO indeed happen -
So basically a benign shift of several degrees will turn "tradewinds" into "easterly" winds. OK.
Bottom line is this study proves nothing at all. Someone else could take all that data and say the complete opposite - and that trade winds are getting STRONGER.
Yes, we know the planet is getting hotter because we have 650,000 years (not just 30 years) of data and tens of thousands of agreeing scientists across the globe to prove it - nothing to logically refute that. And yes, these higher temperatures are indeed making things a little warmer here on Oahu but nothing you would actually "feel" and nothing that is changing weather patterns to create hotter environments in general. The difference in temperature increase over the last ~30-40 years is so insignificant that it's 100% imperceptible to a human. However, in the meantime, society has created more mechanically controlled climates (i.e. air conditioning) so humans spend more time in them than they have in the past. Air conditioners are proportionately inexpensive compared to 30 years ago. They are sold literally everywhere light bulbs are sold. New homes 30 years ago NEVER had air conditioning. Now all new homes have ac to some extent. People are more and more by the day becoming conditioned to these more prevalent/omnipresent mechanically cooled spaces. After sitting in a 75 degree air conditioned school, house, office for 10 hours straight, and step outside into 90 degree heat, of course people are going to say MAN IT'S HOT! In fact, I swear it was NEVER this hot before!
This is 100% a result of human conditioning to man-made, electrically/mechanically environments. The heat we are "experiencing" has nothing to do with changes in ambient exterior temperature do to weather changes but 100% to do with human conditioning. Humans are literally becoming acclimated to the man-made cold interior temperatures of buildings and are now suffering more when they go outside.
In 30 years when 5X more people will have solar pv on their homes, they will be introduced to the luxury of "free" air conditioning. And guess what, in 30 years everyone will say - damn it's so much hotter these days then it was in the mid 2010's. That's 100% guaranteed.
We'll just have to agree to disagree. P.S. Chu is the state climatologist and tenured faculty, he (and his grad students) are getting their money whether or not he comes up with sensational conclusions. LOL. Sure, she wanted an interesting thesis, but its not like she made any money from this. I already acknowledged that the article cherrypicking two endpoints is not solid science, but the paper itself is much more rigorous and Dr. Chu himself acknowledges that they can't make any solid conclusions from the results.
There are 2 components to a wind vector, magnitude and direction. The study showed that both have changed and both have an impact. We are actually under NE trade conditions right now but they are so weak that it doesn't help that much. Maybe the magnitude is more important than the direction.
If I were looking at this study with a skeptical eye, my criticisms would be the weak correlation coefficients, lack of observation points, and the fact that urban heat island (land use) effects are probably responsible for a lot of the increase in temperature. After all, concrete and steel is gonna heat up a lot more during a sunny day than jungle... and we have a lot more buildings and a lot less jungle than we used to. You are also right, it is a small change in the average direction of the wind which won't make a huge difference at the end of the day but it is a change none the less. It is cyclical, is it related to things like el nino and pdo, is it a larger trend that will continue? We don't know, and they are upfront about that.
To the point of my original post however, I disagree that 90 degrees and humid is comfortable under any circumstances though. It is and always has been hot. If I am sweating, in the shade, without moving around then it is hot. I don't need to get used to air conditioning for that to be considered hot and uncomfortable. These types of days occurred in the 70's too, but according to the data they were less frequent.. that is all I said. It was an aside anyways, just a response to another commenter not really part of my original post at all. I was just grumbling because I am sweating my ass off all day with a hot baby on my lap and can't do much about it. I'm still happy to be here visiting family and getting a break from work so it's all good.
Here's another good tip that might help some of you. If you want to feel cooler in warm weather, lose some weight. Sadly, most all of my friends and family who complain about warm weather are overweight. In fact, I don't know anyone who is in good shape that complains about the heat.
Oh, and drink lots of water.
haha, I'm 6' 1" and 170lbs... not sure if I have much to lose.
Aloha UHgrad! I haven't always agreed with some of your posts in the past, but I do agree with most of them. This weather is fr*ggin miserable! I went to a wedding on the North Shore yesterday with a friend, and when we left Makiki where I live it was 90 degrees!
In Punalu'u where the wedding was, the temperature came down to 84, but it was still uncomfortable. I had to take another shower later on after I got home.
I hope you're still able to enjoy your trip here anyway.
Aloha UHgrad! I haven't always agreed with some of your posts in the past, but I do agree with most of them. This weather is fr*ggin miserable! I went to a wedding on the North Shore yesterday with a friend, and when we left Makiki where I live it was 90 degrees!
In Punalu'u where the wedding was, the temperature came down to 84, but it was still uncomfortable. I had to take another shower later on after I got home.
I hope you're still able to enjoy your trip here anyway.
The weather looks to be more of the same next week. Hot and Humid. The natural A/C is Temporarily off line.
Make sure to drink lots of water. Enjoy the week.
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