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Mongolia Wants To Use Artificial Glaciers To Cool Capital
phaedrus5001 wrote in with a story about an unusual plan to regulate the temperature of Ulan Bator, the capital city of Mongolia. The article reads: "The city of Ulan Bator will attempt to capture some of the cool winter temperatures in huge ice blocks that will slowly melt over the summer and cool down the city. The aim is to build artificial ice shields — or 'naleds' — that occur naturally in far northern climates and can grow to be more than seven meters thick. They grow when river water pushes through cracks in the surface of the ice during the day and then freezes to add an extra layer of ice when night falls. Engineering consortium EMI-ECOS will try to replicate this process by creating holes in the ice that is forming over the Tuul river. This will be repeated over and over again until the ice is much thicker than it would be if left alone."
... in the summer, I'm not sure they need that much cooling. (That's slightly over twenty degrees for those of you who don't speak proper American).
Got to admit, that's the most realistic way to naturally cool an area I've heard of to date. I just hope it doesn't mess with any established order too much -like fish migrations or an increase in flooding.
Only downsides I see are flooding and water rights. But these should be no different from any resevour sceme.
"Solving the global warming problem once and for all!"
"But..."
"Once and for all!"
The Ice Must Flow
A smaller scale version of the idea has been kicking around in the renewable energy area for many years - see ice ponds.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
There was a story a few years back about a university (Scandinavia?) that spends the winter pumping water to freeze into a giant block on one part of campus, and then come summer, they just pump coolant through the block as it melts.
Pumping water is apparently much cheaper than traditional cooling.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_pond
An ice pond is a large volume of ice or snow produced and stored in the winter to be used for cooling/air conditioning in the summer. The best known experiment is the 'Princeton ice pond' by Ted Taylor in 1981. He then convinced the Prudential Insurance Company to use a bigger pond to provide air conditioning for a larger building.
If I remember my physics correctly, by inciting more ice formation during the winter, the freezing state change actually releases heat, which means winter will be marginally less harsh. Then, they'll take the extra ice and absorb heat during the winter. Win-win!
Tear Down Dis Shitty Wall!!!
The most prominent issue in our earth is global warming. we need to take a best step to control it. that's why because population is increase day by day.
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If done on a large enough scale, could it help reduce the threat of methane gas escape from permafrost melt?
Or perhaps are they just testing to help sustain ice flow reliant communities?
They are building an artifical flooding. In spring the ice will block the water and create a flood (which will then wash aways the ice).
I have lived several years in Canary Islands and Seville with up to 45 C and several years in Poland and Germany with down to - 30 C. After about 3 month your body gets used to the temperature and everything is OK, but during that acclimatisation period for example I was sweating when it was cold or felt terrible with anything over 20 degrees after getting used to cold weather.
Try DDR. Start with the 1 foot songs, and by the time you're doing things like Paranoia, you're in a lot better shape than you used to be.
I too was surprised, given that Mongolia has pretty normal temparatures of 70F. Anyway, here is an idea - maybe run it by Putin & Medvedyev. Ask them to trade land - take an area of 603,909 sq miles, which is the area of Mongolia, on Russia's northern coast in Krasnoyarsk Krai, and move everybody there, and in return, hand over all of Mongolia to Russia. I'm sure Russia will be happy with that trade, since that province is large but very thinly populated. Win-win situation - the Russians get a lot of habitable land (aside from the Gobi desert) while the Mongols solve their heat problem.
The Mongol can just retain some historic rights to some heritage sites, like Karakorum, Burhan Haldun (Chengiz Khan's birthplace) and maybe some others, but aside from that, the Mongols also get a coastline of their own (granted, they'd be better off flying a great circular route over the North Pole to get to countries outside Asia) and are no longer landlocked b/w Russia & China. Also, at one point in communist history, they were in danger of being swallowed by China, and were saved by the Soviets, but if they do this, they won't need to worry about China at all in the first place. In short, aside from the costs & effort associated w/ moving, I see few downsides to this.
Interestingly, hardly anyone in UB has air conditioning. We go play in the river to cool down. I guess that's over.