I rarely stay up late to watch serious TV. However, this announcement, three years in the making, was something that I just couldn’t miss.
At Close Comfort, we sincerely congratulate the Global Cooling Prize 2021 winners along with all the judges and participating teams! Everyone involved in the Prize helped develop new green technologies that can cool people around the world without warming or harming our planet.
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It’s summer (but it’s not me in the photo): the magnetic needle inside my old-fashioned max-min mercury thermometer shows the temperature on my veranda reached 47°C recently. Close Comfort, an old PC8 model made in 2015 improved with the latest compact focus enhancer. It sits at the end of my bed each night and my Igloo tent is in the wardrobe should I need it. I move it to my study if I’m working from home.
As the inventor, it’s nice to be able to tell you that I use it practically all the time I need cooling.
It’s not just that I invented it. Or the knowledge that even one small tree absorbs more CO2 than is created at the power station by the electricity that it uses. Even less CO2 with solar electricity.
I have even noticed that I adapt to the heat more easily when using Close Comfort, so I don’t have use it all the time. There is evidence emerging from physiological studies that might support this perception. It’s good because my wife uses it too in her study: the kitchen where she just has to reach across to make herself cups of tea.
Continue readingThe Paris climate change agreement has received rather more praise than detailed explanations. Public discussion during the meeting seemed remarkably muted, perhaps for fear of reawakening ghosts of acrimonious disagreement from Copenhagen, 6 years earlier. I was in Paris on leave for the last few days of the meeting and far more media attention focused on European immigration, Syrian refugees, and the widely expected resurgence of the far-right National Front in local elections. The National Front lost, the Paris agreement was applauded: everyone sighed with relief and switched attention to Christmas and Star Wars 8. Climate Change quickly vanished as exhausted delegations left Paris.
Galleries Lafayette had this stunning Christmas play on Star Wars among
elaborately decorated windows to draw crowds of shoppers.
I believe that the Paris Agreement will soon re-emerge as one of the most significant developments influencing engineering in this century. It may not have received much media attention yet, but it demands close attention from all of us.
This agreement places enormous responsibilities on us as engineers and the world’s expectations are daunting. Continue reading
THE MAKING OF AN EXPERT ENGINEER 