sweatbag notes

Hello!
I've been having some sort of holiday for the past two weeks. With second year now firmly behind me, the trials and tribulations of third year awaits (it actually have started quite gently this summer.) My academic course leader sternly told us to 'get fit and start going to the gym now' because third year would be like a boot camp... although I prefer swimming over treadmills. I would use the Eurostar more often. And I would probably sport this kind of expression more often:


That aside, I have been holidaying on the right side of the Channel last week. It... was....... niiiiiice. I like it! :D Although this year it was quite hot in summer with temperatures reaching (and occasionally exceeding) 30°C, which means I was walking around like a sweatbag. Not an appetising description, I know, but illustrative and quite accurate. It was like Jakarta minus the smoke and abang-abang.

One thing that I really liked about summer, despite the temperature, is the amount of extra sunlight we get. In London, the sun rises up before 5AM in high summer. When he was around, my father made a remark about how I was late for work because it was already 6:30 in the morning and I was still in bed (the plan was to 'tube' for 20 minutes to catch a train departing Waterloo at 6:50AM.) To which... I sleepily told him that it was still 4AM. Bright, blue-sky 4AM. Well... the sunset helps too - it's still quite bright at 9PM, the darkness only setting in about half an hour later. Summer equals a whole lot more of sunlight.

Which bring me to the point of An Inconvenient Truth. I borrowed this book from the library out of unplanned curiosity, and read about Earth's annual cycle of 'breathing in' and 'breathing out'. Since most of the landmass (and by implication greeneries) are north of the equator line, and since there is more photosynthesis happening at summertime due to increased sunlight, there is more CO2 absorbed from the world during the northern hemisphere's spring and summer seasons. Vice versa, there is less CO2 absorbed during the winter seasons. This may partially explain why I feel so energised in spring and summer... maybe it's psychological and physiological after all.

There were a few solutions I was thinking of as well: meltwater pools absorb more heat and fasten the disappearance of icebergs... use mirrors? Reflect more light back into space?? This kind of solution is BandAid-style and would probably mitigate very little problems.

Anyhoo, that's probably what I have to say for now.
Comments?