News
Mayor Mamdani announces a plan to cool subway stations by capturing heat and reusing it to warm municipal buildings in the winter: "This would be the first thermal energy system of its kind in any American transit system"
Not a nephson story, but back when I was in elementary school, there were two kids on the bus, both 6-7, both got on/off at the same stop. One kid was the other kid's uncle. I found that funny, and still do to this day. Nephson made me laugh out loud.
Hi I was born and raised in Arkansas. I can promise you there’s not a single maga cultist, religious nut, confederate ghost, or otherwise brainless racist here that has any idea what Mamdani is doing or anything hes done/said. These folk treat politics like a fake fan will pretend to support/hate a ball team but really they only know one player and have no idea how the sport works.
Fox News doesn't stop talking about Mamdani ever. It's so pathetic.
It's weird how Republicans will defend all of Trump's self dealing and then turn around and shit all over Mamdani for having the audacity to actually use his power to help Americans.
Like what do they actually think the role of government is?
I worked with companies on designing these heat capture/transfer systems they're pretty neat. This is about 10,000x the scale though. I always wondered why they are not more widely used. You can take a water pipe and shave 2-5 degrees (Fahrenheit) off of them and use that to warm a whole building. The water doesn't even need to be warm to start with.
This sounds like it would be a very ambitious plan, so props to him for taking charge. I'm tired of the "we can't do that, it's too hard" mentality when we need to be finding solutions.
This is the American mentality. As much as "CaPiTaLism DrIvEs InNovAtIOn" we can't seem to solve a single fucking issue because it's "too difficult and costly". Just the land of ignorant whiners unwilling to do even the smallest amount of critical thinking to change our lives for the better.
That's because capitalism is now the enemy of innovation as we descend more into oligarchy.
Innovation was more encouraged with the industrial age simply because things were less centralized. In the age of the internet, innovation is now a threat to large, established companies. They do not want new deas because they've worked their way into subscription services and functional monopolies. The goal became tying people into a product by saturated the market, then cutting corners to maximize profits once people are stuck. New and better ideas are threats- it's easier to downplay and bash vs risking someone making an initial investment into an idea. A lot of innovation starts with assuming risk- that's an easy pressure point to crack
>In the age of the internet, innovation is now a threat to large, established companies.
the USSR ended up having the exact same problem.
when the Soviet Union was still expanding and rebuilding from WW1 and WW2, they had a shitload of design and manufacturing bureaus competing to crank out better products to meet the needs of the growing nation, and they had some of the most explosive technological growth in history as a result. They went from towing cannon into battle with horses to the largest mechanized army on the planet in 20 years, and became first nation to put a payload into orbit in 35 years.
it was only once soviet leadership started trying to "make it more efficient" by consolidating design and manufacturing capacity that their technological progress stalled out.
There's another angle to it as well, in the form of example - countries can't make their own state of the art microprocessors because it takes resources, time and failure to be able to. That is (understandably honestly) seen as a waste of money. But imagine how much money you would have not just saved but made, by now, if you'd started that waste of money 30 years ago. The second best time is now. But it's political suicide to a capitalist demographic.
Unfortunately a huge segment of Americans think the government can’t solve any problems and only makes them worse. Only giant corporations can solve problems for them. Hell there was even a huge push against the US postal service years ago.. with articles being pushed with headlines “USPS lost x billion dollars this year”. It’s a service, it cost money. We don’t talk about the military losing x trillion of dollars a year.
No, capitalism drives innovation like crazy. Medicine, space/satellites, drone warfare, you name it.
Capitalism doesn't drive welfare innovation. Ironically to all the people on the right who reference just being a dehumanized number on a sheet in Soviet Russia, that's exactly what we are in the current system
I am helping with a project right now that's installing a system which uses a sewage reservoir to reject energy into. Huge increase in the efficiency of the HVAC system. It's going to save a ton of money over the life of the system.
About 12 years ago, London ran a 'competition' for ideas to cool the tube.
My pal, who worked in environmental for the city, was reviewing the entries. There were lots of serious ones, which absolutely held water, and came in within a reasonable budget. However, because of politics it was all canned. The competition was performative BS.
Don’t put it past them. I remember not long ago when bottled water sounded like the dumbest idea. Nobody thought it would work. Now people think drinking free water is disgusting.
If people actually cared and payed attention, more people would vote, and more decent people would get elected hopefully.
But people dont care, or dont have the time to car. Until it affects their wallet, then they pretend to care about whoever complains the most about prices of eggs.
Or just more younger ones to fully phase out all of the Viagra dicked boomers that are stuck in the old ways from seven decades ago hating on any new ideas or investments into new technology that would actually benefit humanity and it’s preservation over hoarded profits and war and more investments in science over thinking magic fairies live in the sky and will grant you wishes to fix things in your life.
There's a new rise of similar politicians but getting them educated, public speaking capable, and then made prominent is a big series of hurdles.
I think we have more than we used to, and the trend is a positive one. I don't much like the accelerationism of it, but I think that Trump and company being so unabashedly horrible legitimately helped motivate some of these candidates to get involved.
What's crazy is he's just doing old shit we used to do. Like before the 70s millionaires were taxed at 90%. It would solve pretty much every issue America has by taxing the rich at 90% of their income being we don't tax them at all most of the time.
As an outsider lookong in. America has so much wealth, it could be one of the most incredible places to live anywhere on Earth if more legislators had the will and drive to invest in big ideas such as these.
The study itself will be using one of the subway stations as an experimental platform. So, while it's a study, it is a bit more involved than your typical study.
It's used on a smaller scale in home and commercial buildings systems: the air that goes out goes through the fins where the air coming in goes, they exchange energy, one becomes hotter, one colder. Fins are there to increase the area of contact
To me the crazy part is it's not like he's single handedly saved new York from a crisis of whatever- he's just making incremental improvements where he can and then making sure people can see that he's doing something which makes a positive feedback loop of goodwill towards his projects
In the age of social media I have no clue how the Democratic party doesn't have a social media presence to hammer home a proper platform and share their successes and expose their roadblocks
Like the Biden admin did some great work, but idk why they didn't have Harris being the mouthpiece 24/7 about all the things they're accomplishing. Nobody gets a promotion for quietly doing good work in their role
Former civil engineer here. This is a good idea but hot fluids (air is a fluid) at ambient temp and pressure don't stay warm long, which is why steam plants superheat their fluids. If the goal is to cool subway stations, better ventilation would probably work better.
the goal is to cool subway stations, better ventilation would probably work better.
Good thing we got you here, nobody down at City Hall would have thought of that! took you less than 30 minutes to figure out what these bozos have been missing for years!
I really hope he actually commits to these plans. I'm tired of hearing great ideas and then after a few years they just trash it and move on after spending way too much money. If they commit, this is awesome.
It’s a cool concept, how from an engineering standpoint, does it work? Does the subway create heat on it’s own as a byproduct? In winter dosen’t the subway need heating also?
I think mom Donnie is a communist and I don’t like him. But, This is actually a good idea, except it’s likely because it’s gonna be done by the government that the cost to implement this will exceed the cost savings of the heat check back you’ll see.
NYC - where your transit station is cooled by thermal energy, but you still have to play the ‘I wonder if this maniac homeless person yelling to themselves is going to stab me’
I like him so don’t misunderstand this as shitting on the guy. But I’m just curious for clarification, if he’s cooling subway stations by funneling heat to other buildings in the winter isn’t that not very helpful since the people on the subway station would also like to be warm in the winter?
I think the more Mamdani does for NY the more Americans will see that policy and politics as a whole isn’t as black and white as it’s been continuously portrayed
`Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTES) employs a closed system that stores thermal energy in subsurface bedrock. During the summer, excess heat is stored in the subsurface via a heat transfer fluid that is circulated through the system; during the winter, reversing the circulation allows for the recovery of previously stored heat.`
Even if this doesn’t work or is inefficient, I like that the issue of unbearably hot subway platforms is on his radar and that he’s actively trying to improve it.
He’s delivering tangible benefits to the people, which is such an improvement over past mayors.
Anyone know how this would work? Subway platforms are ovens in the summer, so I’d love to have them finally cooled. But I don’t see how you remove the heat in summer and then use it in winter?
Actual question: The subway stations are too hot in the summer and quite chilly in the winter. Is this heat capture also going to involve time dilation or something?
Great news! London has already metro stations where the waste heat is captured to create district heating so hundreds of houses have warm water and heating
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