Cooling down without Air Conditioners

[kandrathe]

One point worth noting; Many modern office building have atrocious insulation, and especially the glass which has become very popular in modern office buildings. The microcomputer revolution has added a little 5 watt furnace to every cubical. So beyond lights and the heat of the humans, add the inefficient insulation and thousands of little CPU furnaces. The ecological point is that to solve this excess of greed expressed as heat, we may jeopardize the ecosystem of the lake. My opinion is that much of that heat could be reflected from the insides of these buildings with better insulated glass and polarizing filters. More efforts could be made to reduce the energy consumption of offices in general. It is sad to have to pay for energy twice, once to heat it, and once to cool it.

<devils advocate>

But, Bob has some valid counterpoints. Because of their frigidity, these lakes support very little life anyway. I dive in Superior, which in the height of summer even at the surface hardly breaks 60F. At 100 ft, the temperature is barely above freezing. (I see you asking why, why in hell would you do that?) There are very few fresh water lakes with 100+ feet of visibility. Humans have trashed these lakes for 100+ years, over fishing them, spewing sewage, taconite tailings, industrial pollutants, and god knows what all else into them. So, like lake Erie, whatever ecosystem they may have once had has most likely already been trashed and whatever fragile life they held has been disrupted. So would polluting them with heat hurt them anymore than they already have been? Maybe it would help them. The transplanted exotic eels and zebra mussels might thrive even better in warmer lakes.

</devils advocate>