Hey, looky here, we have something new!
Underground climate change poses a ‘silent hazard’ in Chicago and other cities, researchers find
As the planet heats up due to global warming over much of the past century, so have spaces underneath the Loop. That’s a cause for concern around the impact on buildings, new research from Northwestern University finds — though it also presents an opportunity to reuse that heat.
Building basements, the subway system, parking garages and other below-ground areas generate a lot of heat. That combined with warmer air on the surface has made for a significantly hotter underground, something old cities across the world experience.
So Alessandro Rotta Loria, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, decided to find out how hot it gets under Chicago’s Loop, how that affects the soil and what that means in terms of potential damage to building foundations. After setting up more than 150 temperature sensors in underground downtown spaces, he found wide variations.
“The undisturbed ground temperature in the Chicago area is about 52 degrees Fahrenheit,” Rotta Loria said in an interview. “In the heart of the Loop, we measured a ground temperature exceeding 70 degrees. In some underground structures, we measured more than 97 degrees.”
He called those hottest areas “significant drivers” of “underground climate change.” That excessive heat causes layers of soil to expand or contract and the ground to swell. Building foundations slowly sink as a result.
So, see, it mostly has to do with the heat from the buildings and subways and stuff. You know how most of the infrastructure for moving water, sewage, steam, natural gas, electricity, and so forth is underground? And how all that asphalt, paving, and buildings soak up the heat from the Sun? But, this is still your fault. I suggest that the big, Democratic Party run cities do away with fossil fueled vehicles and electricity. Tear up the roads to just be dirt. And more. All to stop the fever.
The cult clarion call to push this bit of scaremongering went out, and Credentialed Media outlets responded, like here and here.
Meanwhile
This is so surreal. The socialist Spanish minister uses a private jet to attend a climate conference. 100 metres before the venue she gets out off the limo and takes a bicycle. The security cars follow her. pic.twitter.com/NkSF3hJrOH
— David Vance (@DVATW) July 11, 2023
