by jdmartin » Mon 20 Aug 2007, 13:01:20
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('diogenes', 'M')any of you are criticizing this city for absolutely asinine reasons. Food production? No city does its own food production. How many grain-fields have you seen in Miami, Florida? Air conditioning? Air conditioning didn't exist a century ago, and people adapted by living in dense cities with tall buildings and narrow streets which were always shaded. Along with things like heat chimneys and high ceilings, this is the historically proven method of living in a hot climate. When oil skyrockets, these people will be more likely to survive than people in a Westernized city like Tehran... or a Western city like New York. Hell, they're probably more likely to survive than many of our resident survivalists digging themselves bunkers in Idaho.
Your thought that this city has a better chance of surviving skyrocketing oil than New York is ridiculous; UAE has almost NO freshwater sources to speak of - desalinzation is the only thing that allows the place to be inhabited by 4+ million people. The average summertime temperature there is about 115 degrees. NYC sees 90 degrees a few times a year, and 100 almost never. If skyrocketing oil is a detriment to survival - meaning, I presume, that disrupted/unavailable oil will mean lack of access to food & other products - then a "survivalist in Idaho" will have a lot better chance of staying alive than someone isolated to a desert bunker. And if tall buildings mean shade, and staying alive, what leads you to believe that NYC's tall buildings would be
less effective at reducing heat in a climate that's alread 30+ degrees cooler than UAE?
I think the criticism of the project in general comes not from the idea of the project but the location of it. UAE is, for the most part, an uninhabitable hellhole that's only become populated
because of oil. Making comparisons to walled cities in Europe makes no sense, because the basic climatology is completely different.
And one other thing - please provide examples that this is the proven method of living in a hot climate. The relatively few cities that existed in the Mesopotamian world were always clustered around an abundant freshwater source and did not include skyscrapers, which is a 20th century invention. Are you saying that 20th century inventions are proven methods of survival? Or are they anamolies, only made possible through abundant sources of cheap energy?
After fueling up their cars, Twyman says they bowed their heads and asked God for cheaper gas.There was no immediate answer, but he says other motorists joined in and the service station owner didn't run them off.
