Tag: climate

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Climate Awareness

The Musée d’Orsay has prepared a wonderful walk through its permanent exhibition of late 19th and early 20th century installations to reflect upon climate and climate change. Raising awareness about the treasures lost and those we are about to lose in the next few years. Impressionist painters have depicted landscapes, cities and monuments covered in snow, which the next generations will no longer be able to enjoy the same way. The roofs of Paris covered with snow has become a feature of a distant past. Additionally, the impression of the massive steam trains crossing metal bridges appear as the daunting future of technical progress. Mixed feelings of fascination and risk associated with those machines were captured by those painters’ eyes. Nowadays we are aware of the consequences of this technical progress for our planet. The walk through museum with a focus on climate related paintings is eye opening indeed. (Image: Extract of Éduard Veuillard, Le jardin des Tuileries, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) 

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Home cooling 2

As a consequence of global warming architecture has to cater for the cooling of our homes as well. The 1st option is to keep the heat outside. Isolation is key in this respect as well. Colors outside have a long tradition in protecting against heating up due to abundant sunshine. Doors and windows ask for additional protection as well. Historically, trees have been instrumental in providing shade for homes. Greening of facades is another natural option. For a long time homeshomes have been built above an underground floor or a cellar. Originally these naturally cool rooms served as storage rooms for food and drinks. Nowadays, such basements offer additional cool space during (exceptionally) hot summer days. The distribution of cool air from basements to upper floors is an alternative way of cooling, which uses little energy. For newly built homes this is another reason to drill builders drill. Even office space has been built in this way, much appreciated during the warm seasons. (Image: Paris UNESCO headquarters office space). 

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Global warming

The annual update of the global warming indicators (source: Earth system science data 2025-6) gives more reasons to worry about the future of our climate. The objective to limit global warming to +1.5°C, established at the Paris climate agreement in 2015, is no longer achievable. This is the hard evidence based on the global network of scientific data collections and their projections. Fossil fuels are a major cause, deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions as well (Forster et al. 2025). As a consequence, human-induced warming of average surface temperatures and flows of heat into oceans continue. The first consequences, we witness in many parts of the world already. France is particularly affected (Le Monde 2025-6-20, p.7). What used to be called “natural disasters” is better described as long-term consequences of human-induced global changes like global warming. About time to take our CO2 footprint even more seriously. The “All electric society” can reduce reliance on fossil fuels considerably, as of now.

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Home cooling

In the summer months, in Europe, the concern shifts from heating your home to cooling your home. For generations this has been possible without use of air conditioning. A natural way of cooling has been for centuries to dig into earth to take advantage of the rather stable and cool temperatures underground. In home building this has also been a tradition for centuries to build cellars underneath a home.
Wine growing regions have used the cellar as a natural cooling facility for long and short term storage of wine. Digging into a mountain of a valley offered a natural cool storage solution for years without additional energy consumption. Modern buildings should return to this practice and gain cold from below the surface to cool buildings in the warm or hot seasons. Good isolation combined with the cool temperatures from below the surface in summer months will substantially save energy and thereby CO2 emissions. Circulation of the cool air from below to the upper floors is the issue as well as dealing with differential humidity levels. The wisdom of previous generations in home building with no access to air conditioning (avoiding the air conditioning paradox) is likely to experience a revival in the coming years.
Coolness is the new and old wisdom.

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Warming continues

The global warming continues to change our landscapes. Heat waves, droughts and flooding become more often. Average temperatures keep rising. The evidence from meteorological data is showing this beyond doubt. Our forest take the toll and reports document the worsening situation for many trees (Germany and Switzerland). An adaptation will take years if not decades. In the region around Paris some home owners have started or been forced to adapt their gardens to the warming weather conditions. Trees that do not support the consequences of warming die and we witness the changing of the landscape. Palm trees near Paris have survive for years by now near Paris and can grow rather tall.
Like it or not, the visual landscape will change despite the many great initiatives launched by the city of Paris to stop the warming of the city.

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Permanently anxious

„There’s a set of forces that want us to be permanently anxious“, is the phrase chosen by Tony Cokes in the exhibit just outside the „Palais Populaire“ in Berlin in 2025-5. International politics and the economic upheaval caused by Trump’s tariffs contribute to the already existing other sources of anxiety like nuclear energy and warfare. Global warming causing more extreme weather events add more man-made reasons for anxiety. The next generations will have to foot the bills we have left to them unpaid. Our current shortsightedness increases anxieties which previous generations have not known of a similar kind or in that combination. 

Community building and solidarity are ways to overcome such overwhelming anxieties. Supranational organizations like the European Union have an even stronger role to play to reassure its people with credible signs of solidarity. We are not alone in the struggle to overcome the anxiety that is creeping up around us. We are certainly stronger together than individually dealing with unspecified fears. „We shall overcome …“

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Archi health

The links between architecture and human health are manifold. There are direct effects of healthy versus unhealthy materials in construction. For the purpose of making buildings fire proof or more resistant to heat asbestos had been used for decades which still causes health hazards nowadays in the removal of this cancerous material. Paint has to be chosen wisely as well as isolation materials. Indirect or second round effects of materials have to be considered additionally. Cement in construction uses a lot of energy in its production and has only been recycled since a few years in significant amounts. Room climate or even psychological effects of architecture have been considered to be important more seriously in recent years. A new discipline entitled “neuro-architecture” may be developed soon. Schools, sports facilities, hospitals or community centers benefit from healthy architecture. Cost benefit analyses which take into account long term effects and even recycling of materials shift the balance much in favor of health considerations also in architecture. “Fast and dirty” will be much more expensive than “slow and healthy”. Future generations will be thankful. (Image: Spreewald Primary school Berlin).

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Blue Sky

In the period of romanticism the associations with a blue sky were very different from today. Getting out into the sun was a kind of privilege for the “leisure class”, of people who could afford to enjoy time outside for boating, walking or other pleasures. In our technology-driven 21st century the associations with Blue Sky are more like a technically enhanced view through for example “Windows” at the news and opinion platform or “Bluesky”.
Several scientific websites that report data on blue skies and air quality more generally across the world report indicators like ozone values O3, sun intensity, micro particles 2.5µm and 10µm, Nitrogen Dioxid NO2 to name the mostly quoted indicators. Hence, just enjoying the blue sky outside isn’t the same as it was before. People working outside in the sun or at times of a blue sky but with high air pollution levels are incurring severe medium-term health risks. The Ozon layers at very high altitudes protect our skin and eyes against high UV-radiation, but O3 on the ground is tough for eyes and lungs.
Technology has come with many blessings, but the negative effects on a global scale become also more evident. Getting used to a particular lifestyle, which produces lots of emissions of aggressive fine particles will make it more difficult to just simply enjoy a blue sky.
In consideration of all these background data with regional variations, we surely need an AI-system which we can ask for advice, whether we should go outside and enjoy the blue sky with or without respiratory mask.
Romanticism has led us all the way to Californication and dangerous enshittification of the air that surrounds us. Youth and the next generations will have very different associations with Blue Sky than we have the chance to, at least, have had.

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January Spring

The early signs of spring in Europe usually show up in March. The monthly data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) show that „average temperature over European land for January 2025 was 1.80°C, 2.51°C above the 1991-2020 average for January,“ (Link). The warming throughout January has several consequences. Vegetation starts into spring earlier. This means that people with allergies of early flowering suffer earlier during a year. Winter rest in animal lives will be shorter. The risks of droughts in some regions combined with floods in other regions is increased as well. Rockslides in the Alps and flooding in Italy and the Baltic states add to the costs of climate change. 

Western Europe, witnessed a relatively „dry January“, even for those who kept drinking alcohol throughout the month. Heating and heating costs came down a bit and friends of gardening were surprised by some early showings of flowers of spring even in Paris neighborhoods (image below) as early as the first few days in February 2025! Strange new world. It all seems to happen a bit faster than most scientists expected. Time for adaptive behavior is shortened as well.

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Passing Disasters

We live in rather cynical times. Just like the practice to scroll through hundreds of newspaper pages or social media entries we pass over the reports of of disaster after the other. Whole industries live from the reporting of disasters in a sensational manner. As the speed of reporting via social and online media has increased over the last few years the time to reflect what are the reasons for the multiple disasters has moved backstage. On the forefront are journalists and life bloggers who gain from increased reach and with the duration of their reporting of disasters. These are the first round effects. Second in line are people proposing fast fixes of what seems to be the problem at first sight. A more thorough analytical approach has little chance against the overwhelming effects of disaster imagery. Before the necessary dara and analyses have been carried out by scientists the next disaster already dominates the headlines and images. Flooding and droughts come and go faster due to climate change, but the reactions just del with reporting and capturing of attention rather than analyses. Next follows the blame game. Rather than unity to deal with consequences responsibility gets pushed from one instance to the next. Another cynical twist is the rise in insurance premiums to be paid by all, because the reporting hypes have increased the cost of repairs for insurance companies and after all more people shall seek insurance and have a higher readiness to accept higher rates for disaster insurance. Maybe this is just another more recent chapter of Sloterdijk‘s „Kritik der zynischen Vernunft“, which we witness currently. The effect of passing disasters is often a feeling of helplessness or powerlessness although we need to do just the opposite. Get together and act together after adequate analyses of underlying mechanisms. (Image Aristite Maillol Brussels, MRBAB)