The real burden of summer, for me, isn’t the heat. It is the people complaining about the heat. My wife has worked tirelessly to curb my sarcasm but when, in April and May—and sometimes even June!—someone pantingly declares the obvious about the ambient conditions, I can’t help but reply, “What were you expecting at noon and this time of year, a Siberian gust?”
In the summer, and in the tropics, it does get hot. This is because that is the time of year we are closest to the sun. Given the planetary cycles are fairly predictable, the arrival of this type of weather can be anticipated. Warmer summers due to climate change may be contributory to the apparently lessened climactic resilience of people around us. However, how we have chosen to live has more to do with this, in my view.
Clothing
Take clothing. Our forefathers understood the basic concepts of heat transfer and thermal flow and applied these to fashion. They only wore natural fibers, either cotton or linen. The weave of these fabrics allow air to freely circulate, promoting evaporation of perspiration and a cooler feeling. The color palette was limited to white and beige since these do not absorb the heat of the sun. Hair cover vanishing like the Amazon rainforest and thus exposing the scalp to excessive UV rays? Sporting a fashionable beige hat was the answer back then. Today, only the most seasoned and experienced mother can feel the difference between cotton and awful, sticky, and hot polyester. Worse, we see people wearing black beanies as they amble about our streets in the height of summer!
Cars
This is what most people do upon entering their sun-baked car: they crank up the aircon to full to overpower the 50-degree heat in their closed car. I always open all the windows (that’s what power windows are for) and the trunk (yes, the trunk is like an oven) before straining the car aircon. Maybe, just maybe, as I start to work with AboitizPower engineers familiar with boilers and heat transfer, I’ll start seeing more use of natural air flow and less strain on the aircon when dealing with a boiling hot car interior.
Homes
Home construction is where we have completely lost our true north as tropical human beings. Houses in the tropics used to be raised to deal with floods and to allow more cooled, ground-level air around the house interiors. Windows were large and oriented toward the northeast and southwest to follow nature’s preferred wind directions. Ceilings were high, and air vents existed between rooms to help evacuate hot air.
Instead, we took home designs from temperate first-world countries and made them our own. Smaller windows, lots of glass, no regard for air flow. If anything, our current building methods allow us to sell more electricity!
Those of the past really had so much wisdom in the practical things. See you soon, I in my de hilo suit and you in your white bowler hat.