What is Digg?26 Comments
- tlmac59, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17The timing yesterday couldn't have been worse because I am travleing this week with very limited access. Based upon an exchange of emails with Digg, they thought I was engaging Digg fraud (untrue). What triggered this was the fact that a few of my friends are co-workers. As a result, it appeared to digg that diggs were coming from a single IP. Basically, an honest and understandable mistake by Digg. They reacted to what appeared to be digg fraud, but also acted quickly to reinstate. Digg on!
- msaleem, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Hey, what happened yesterday? You gave us quite a scare here.
- Petrarch1603, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4the images would be better if they actually showed the area surrounding the metro area. I'd like to see that compared with more rural areas like upstate new york
- jigga, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Very cool, but I always thought that Brooklyn and Queens were cooler than Manhattan
- Desolite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4i think that half of the heat is cause by air conditioners which is a compounding effect because the hotter it is... the more people use their ACs. and generally, they don't use the efficient ones either - which are the central air units, they use the small box or window ACs, or of course, vehicle ACs.
on top of that, anyone that's taken thermodynamics knows that it takes a lot more energy to remove heat from a room than it does to put heat in. thats where the inefficiency comes in - the more inefficient an appliance is, the more heat it gives off during operation (most wasted energy is released into the atmosphere as heat). so while the giant heat sink that is the atmosphere can absorb absurd amounts of energy without there being much difference in average temperatures... there is a limit to how much any sink can hold before it begins to fill up and become as useful as a full landfill.
how do we solve it? i'm not sure really. probably some sort of "everyone needs to use efficient stuff" sort of thing that will never actually work unless the manufactures only produce efficient things... from cars to appliances to fans to computers to house insulation to area infrastructure. - nyccharlie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3its always hotter in queens & brooklyn than manhattan.
- CiXeL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3now we know where to plant the green roofs
- chandrasonic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Actually these studies could result on saving energy and thus reduce the economic cost:
"In a study funded by the U.S. EPA, the Heat Island Group carried out a detailed analysis of energy-saving potentials of light-colored roofs in 11 U.S. metropolitan areas. About ten residential and commercial building prototypes in each area were simulated. We considered both the savings in cooling and penalties in heating. We estimated saving potentials of about $175 million per year for the 11 cities. Extrapolated national energy savings were about $750 million per year."
http://eetd.lbl.gov/HeatIsland/CoolRoofs/ - Desolite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i think its because manhattan is surrounded by water, the air over the water is almost always cooler than the air in manhattan in the summer... which means the wind that goes through manhattan is always cooler air. think of it as a heatsink with fins that has a fan blowing cool air over it.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The point is in the terperature variation and not the specific temperature.
The point is to show the coolest temperatures occur where there is room for plants.
The actual temps are meaningless in this study.
see on the same site talking about the heat wave they have a scale from -10 to +10 c
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3
because temp is important when talking about how hot it is. - UncommonSense, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Seeing as we are short a few Diggers nowadays, it's good to know that you weren't caught in a Rig-A-Dig scandal.
- PhrosTT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2yeah, entropy and the A/C are killing us.
altho the subways here are air conditioned, when u get near a train from the outside, you're blasted with disgusting hot air. same goes for buses and whatnot.
the ridiculous part is tons of businesses here leave their doors wide open, just dumping cool air out into the street. that's just retarded. - biohzrd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I just noticed this while running last night. Running outside of town was significantly cooler (5-10degrees F), then I ran into downtown with no vegetation, and bam, heat wave. The guy I was running with felt the same thing.
- YumYumKittyLoaf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I thought it was common sense that when there is more vegitation, the cooler it is... Trees add natural shade and are basically like nature's AC unit. Although they keep wind from picking up (which is not that great if it's sweltering hot) it's still quite nice. Whole reason why i hate going near suberban wastelands... no trees, the wind is crazy, hotter than hell too.
Nice map though showing this. - nimski, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah and also some open cell roadways and sidewalks so grass can cover it without taking damage or getting muddy.
- usp8riot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2As one who lives in a rural area after living in a suburb/city half my life, it's no news to me. I'm with my PC, I hate hot weather.
- drjson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1To be fair, the temperature is going to based off of the temperature of the surface, not the temperature of the air around it (or what we'd feel). It's also not easy to estimate temperatures based off of the images. You can get a decent guess, but the precision isn't going to that great with 8 bit 30 meter pixels.
They have some images that represent the temperatures using a different sensor in the linked article. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/GreenRoof/ - violentvinyl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It'd be nice to know what the temperature difference is between the colors, if its 10 degrees, that's a lot of variation, if its a degree or two, it's going to be imperceptible by most.
- sonofagunn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I wonder what the cumulative effect of "heat islands" all over the nation/world are. Is it enough to contribute to global warming? The concrete/asphalt heat combined with ACs and heat from exhausts and what not may add up to a significant amount. Has anyone ever tried to quantify the amount of heat created by humans and try to determine how fast it radiates out into space?
- SmeRndmGy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I was thinking about that too. Almost everything we use puts off heat. The computer you're using right now, the monitor, your TV, your car. I don't think it is a significant contributor to global warming, the sun is clearly a much more significant heat source, but I would not be surprised to find slightly cooler temperatures in an Amish village or something like that just because they don't have all the TVs and computers and such heating the place up.
- SmeRndmGy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's really interesting to see how much cooler it is in areas that have trees. Makes me glad there are lots of trees in my yard. That and the air conditioner.
- DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Desolite, I don't think so.
They are measuring the heat stored in various materials and surfaces at night by measuring how much heat they radiate. Different materials store differing amounts of heat. A tree leaf absorbs a large portion of the energy from the sun that hits it and quickly gives the absorbed heat up the the air through (mostly) convection heat transfer. Thick concrete on the other hand, acts like a heat storage battery and the heat is slowly realeased during the night.
Air conditioners don't create a large amount of heat. They remove heat on one side and move it to the other. They are heat movers. They do create a little heat due to inefficiencies (friction, for instance) though but it's negligible.
This is mostly an issue of human confort (aside from larger power bills). I don't think it necessarily harms the environment. Of course more vegetation is always better. One way to improve this would be to increase the surface area or change materials of the surfaces that humans spend a lot of time on (sidewalks, streets, etc). It might be possible to create a type of concrete that does not store as much heat for instance. - JonDiggsIt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1why do you think hamptons real estate is so high? nyc in the summer is totally unbearable, and alot of apartments dont have AC!!... dear lord kill me now, i'll be drinking southsides on main beach
- CedEx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@nimski:
And where will the women who wear high heels going to walk? The heels are going to sink into the grass or holes if they were to do this. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2News Flash! Asphault, concrete absorbs energy, including heat, making the temperature hotter! Scientist baffled, kids say "Duh"!
Dateline: New York City. It was discovered today that the reason cities get really hot is that asphault and concreate absorb heat and release it slowly. This prevents the cities from cooling off at night. In turn, this increase the temperature of the city.
Scientist don't know why they didn't think of this sooner as they had known of this property for decades. When told of the situation, local children replied "Duh! Everyone knows that!" - stevers, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Nice Legend, the Temperature scale goes from warm to hot. Very scientific NASA!
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