Dam this weather! (Chicago, Phoenix: homes, living, store)

[BIG CATS]

Originally Posted by Bellamouse

But a person can survive in the hot without a/c, you cannot survive in the cold without heat. That is a fact.

Saying thats a "fact" is rather bold, wouldnt you say? W/o air conditioning, what can you do? You can only sit and sweat out precious water, risk heat exhaustion, and eventually die if its hot enough for long. In the cold w/o heat, you can at least light a fire and add layers. Id venture to say both are equally dangerous, especially if youre out in the elements w/o shelter and supplies. Youll die just as quick in AZ as you can in AK. Extreme heat or extreme cold are both deadly.

[DubbleT]

My point really wasn't even so much that one thing is better than the other. It's the fact that a lot of people seem to think that it's just a matter of jumping into the water when it gets hot and everything is great. Except for a lot of people that is a lot easier said than done. Unless you live on or very near the beach, going to the beach can be time consuming and possibly expensive. Public pools are an option but they can be inconvenient or expensive too.
So, yay, it's great if you have a private pool in your own backyard available to you 24/7, but other than that the dream of just just diving into the water to cool off whenever it gets too hot is not a reality for a whole lot of people.

[Bellamouse]

Originally Posted by BIG CATS

Saying thats a "fact" is rather bold, wouldnt you say? W/o air conditioning, what can you do? You can only sit and sweat out precious water, risk heat exhaustion, and eventually die if its hot enough for long. In the cold w/o heat, you can at least light a fire and add layers. Id venture to say both are equally dangerous, especially if youre out in the elements w/o shelter and supplies. Youll die just as quick in AZ as you can in AK. Extreme heat or extreme cold are both deadly.

Wrong. We live in a time/place where we can go down to the store and buy water or turn on the faucet. I'm just talking about normal living, not being stranded out in the wilderness.

In my house in Chicago, we had no fireplace, no way to generate heat without electricity. We lost power for 3 days once and had to leave the house and go somewhere else because it became too cold (and we had to worry about pipes freezing!). If there came a time when something happened and there was no electricity for an extended period, we wouldn't survive the whole winter in our house with no heat and no fireplace. That IS a fact.

Down here, if the electricity goes out for an extended period, I could still drink lukewarm water and open the windows and survive. No refrigerator would be a problem, but we wouldn't die from the heat.

Besides, it wasn't very long ago that a/c didn't exist at all. What did people do back then? Did the entire population in the south, or all the peoples living in areas near the equator all die? Of course not. Ridiculous notion.

In the north, you HAD to have a heater of some sort in your house, whether a coal burning heater or a fireplace or something. You cannot just live for the whole winter in an unheated home, while I, on the other hand, can live year round in a home down here without either heat or A/C if need be.

And as an aside, almost every home down here has a fireplace? I owned several homes in Chicago area, none of which had fireplaces, and I move to the south and I now have a fireplace? The irony makes me scratch my head...

[Bellamouse]

Originally Posted by DubbleT

My point really wasn't even so much that one thing is better than the other. It's the fact that a lot of people seem to think that it's just a matter of jumping into the water when it gets hot and everything is great. Except for a lot of people that is a lot easier said than done. Unless you live on or very near the beach, going to the beach can be time consuming and possibly expensive. Public pools are an option but they can be inconvenient or expensive too.
So, yay, it's great if you have a private pool in your own backyard available to you 24/7, but other than that the dream of just just diving into the water to cool off whenever it gets too hot is not a reality for a whole lot of people.

Also just nonsense. Almost every single subdivision has its own community pool. And you can always take a cool shower. Everyone has a shower.

[DubbleT]

Originally Posted by Bellamouse

Also just nonsense. Almost every single subdivision has its own community pool. And you can always take a cool shower. Everyone has a shower.

Boy you are awfully defensive. LIFESTYLE is what I'm referring to. A cool shower is not what most people think of when they dream of escaping to FL during the cold of northern winters, lol.
(and those community pools in subdivisions, yechhhh, never open when you want them to be and full of screaming kids at prime time, not for me thanks!)

[lycos679]

Originally Posted by Bellamouse

Wrong. We live in a time/place where we can go down to the store and buy water or turn on the faucet. I'm just talking about normal living, not being stranded out in the wilderness.

In my house in Chicago, we had no fireplace, no way to generate heat without electricity. We lost power for 3 days once and had to leave the house and go somewhere else because it became too cold (and we had to worry about pipes freezing!). If there came a time when something happened and there was no electricity for an extended period, we wouldn't survive the whole winter in our house with no heat and no fireplace. That IS a fact.

Down here, if the electricity goes out for an extended period, I could still drink lukewarm water and open the windows and survive. No refrigerator would be a problem, but we wouldn't die from the heat.

Besides, it wasn't very long ago that a/c didn't exist at all. What did people do back then? Did the entire population in the south, or all the peoples living in areas near the equator all die? Of course not. Ridiculous notion.

In the north, you HAD to have a heater of some sort in your house, whether a coal burning heater or a fireplace or something. You cannot just live for the whole winter in an unheated home, while I, on the other hand, can live year round in a home down here without either heat or A/C if need be.

And as an aside, almost every home down here has a fireplace? I owned several homes in Chicago area, none of which had fireplaces, and I move to the south and I now have a fireplace? The irony makes me scratch my head...

How do you know you wouldn't die from heat? Oh, I know, because you can go someplace that has ac. Lol. The chance of dying from hypothermia or hyperthermia is very low, but I would imagine that it is easier to get warm than it is to get cool.

Previously, before ac, people did not really migrate to the hot areas of the globe and cities did not really develop in the hot areas. Most of the development occurred in cold areas, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of that development was coincidental. At least a sizable portion was due to people preferring the colder climate - I would suspect so anyway.

[Bellamouse]

Originally Posted by lycos679

How do you know you wouldn't die from heat? Oh, I know, because you can go someplace that has ac. Lol. The chance of dying from hypothermia or hyperthermia is very low, but I would imagine that it is easier to get warm than it is to get cool.

Previously, before ac, people did not really migrate to the hot areas of the globe and cities did not really develop in the hot areas. Most of the development occurred in cold areas, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of that development was coincidental. At least a sizable portion was due to people preferring the colder climate - I would suspect so anyway.

I don't really think you know what you're talking about. Civilization started in warm climates. The middle east, Greece, Rome, Africa, the aborigines in Australia, etc. A few migrated to cold climates (think Eskimos), but the Eskimo are a very small people, not a majority of the populations of the earth. There is a reason people haven't lived on the tundra of Siberia for millenia...

All those people existed on the planet in WARM climates for thousands upon thousands of years. There are still people all on the planet RIGHT NOW (Billions) who live in hot climates - think of Mexico and Central and South America, Most parts of Africa, etc. - where they don't have any a/c.... they are all surviving just fine. There are NOT a lot of people living in Northern Canada.

Migration to the cold only came much, much later.

[lycos679]

Originally Posted by Bellamouse

I don't really think you know what you're talking about. Civilization started in warm climates. The middle east, Greece, Rome, Africa, the aborigines in Australia, etc. A few migrated to cold climates (think Eskimos), but the Eskimo are a very small people, not a majority of the populations of the earth. There is a reason people haven't lived on the tundra of Siberia for millenia...

All those people existed on the planet in WARM climates for thousands upon thousands of years. There are still people all on the planet RIGHT NOW (Billions) who live in hot climates - think of Mexico and Central and South America, Most parts of Africa, etc. - where they don't have any a/c.... they are all surviving just fine. There are NOT a lot of people living in Northern Canada.

Migration to the cold only came much, much later.

I said migrate, not start.

[Bellamouse]

Originally Posted by lycos679

I said migrate, not start.

?? Well that doesn't even make any sense!!

And anyway you have completely missed the point. Billions of people currently live and have lived in HEAT without dying for thousands of years (without A/C).

Billions of people did NOT live in COLD without dying for thousands of years.

End of story.

I'm done now.

[ChicagoMeO]

I like 60 - 78 degrees best. I've lived in Chicago all my life. I am grateful for no hurricanes or tornados to hit the city for the most part.. we don't get those hurricanes and tornados and mudslides like the people on each coast. I could not stand the humidity in Florida. I hate the ice here because im afraid of falling.. I fall very hard and its painful,, that's when I wish for spring. I can walk on dry cement or when its above freezing, but when it gets around that 30 degrees and you step outside and you don't know if its black ice or just wet pavement, it can be scarey for those of us who are not as mobile as when we were younger. i'd take cold with dry cement over thin sheet of ice.