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Viridian Note 00326:  Air-Conditioned Tokyo
From bruces@yami.57thstreet.com  Tue Aug  6 23:43:54 2002

Key concepts:  Tokyo, urban overheating,
The Viridian Furniture List is now online in the
"Recommended Products" section of the Viridian website.
David Bergman did a yeoman-like job assembling this list
and adding comments. He's also mirroring the list on his
Maybe you'll find a woven bamboo buffet or a biopolymer
From: R. Charles Flickinger <idlewild*mac.com>
"I  nominate Rop Gonggrijp's Secure Notebook, which was
shown recently at H2K2. (http://www.h2k2.net).
"The premise is both important and hilarious. The Secure
Notebook provides a Secure Windows XP installation.
Windows has a long history of being secure neither from
attack nor privacy incursion, so this is something.
"Nothing gets in and nothing gets out, without it being
firewalled,  filtered, proxied, and encrypted. How is this
done? A modified Debian  Linux boots first, running custom
NAH6 crypto device drivers, and then  boots XP within
This contest expires in nine days:  August 15, 2002.
"Cooler Tokyo summers may be just a pipe dream away
"TOKYO == In what could be the ultimate in public works
projects, a Japanese panel of experts has proposed
relieving the misery of steamy Tokyo summers by cooling
the huge city with sea water and a labyrinth of
"Though summers are hard in any city, Tokyo's narrow
streets, hordes of people and clusters of massive
skyscrapers, largely unrelieved by greenery, produce a
"And it gets worse every year.  (((Oh yeah.  You bet it
does.))) The number of nights when temperatures stay above
25 Celsius (77 Fahrenheit) in Tokyo has doubled over the
last 30 years, while average temperatures have shot up by
2.9 degrees C over the last century. Relief, however
distant, could be on the way.  ((("Great news, weather
sufferers!  We live in the high-tech capital of a G-7
"At the behest of the Construction Ministry, the panel
has drawn up a plan that would use a network of buried
pipes, and water pumped from the sea, to cool things down.
'In the very best conditions, certain areas could in
theory become as much as 2.6 degrees Celsius cooler,' said
"The huge air-conditioning systems currently used to
cool buildings get rid of the heat they take out of the
structure by venting it into the outside air, raising
temperatures still further and creating a 'heat island'
phenomenon in large cities.  (((Soon whole *cities* will
do it and vent their heat straight into the rising seas!
"Under the plan, this heat would be transferred to
water in large underground tanks, and the water then
pumped through a six-km (3.7-mile) network of underground
pipes to a cooling plant on the Tokyo waterfront.
"There the heat from this water would be transferred
to cooler sea water before the then-cooled water was
pumped back through the underground pipes. The sea water,
now warmed, would be released into the waters of Tokyo
"COSTLY PLAN.  (((That's unsurprising.)))  Minobe said
the plan would cover some 123 hectares (304 acres) in the
centre of Tokyo, including the Marunouchi business
district and the posh Ginza shopping area, and would
initially cost around 41 billion yen ($344 million).
"'Savings on reduced energy usage would eventually
help pay for this,' he said.  (((A real nest of ironies
here, folks.))) Officials quoted in the English-language
Japan Times said energy savings would total more than 1
billion yen a year, meaning the system would pay for
"However, Minobe said many problems remained with the
plan, which has only been under discussion since April
last year. One of the most serious problems is whether
warmer water being returned to Tokyo Bay would damage the
fragile marine ecosystem, a point Minobe said still
required more study.  (((Give it 30 years and there won't
"He said the average temperature cut is likely to be
only around 0.4 degrees. 'I'm not even sure people would
be able to feel that difference,' he said. Any such plan,
however, would likely produce a gleam in the eyes of
Japan's huge construction industry, known for its
propensity for public works projects. Although several are
decried as wasteful, public works projects have long been
used by the government in attempts to stimulate the
economy.  (((Nice use of the word "attempts.")))
"Frankly, I think this plan is still really more of a