A few weeks back, while we were discussing Ukraine, Joseph pointed out that, given its role in climate change and the energy economy, heating and cooling played a huge roll but got a fraction of the attention compared to personal transportation. (At this point, long time readers of the blog are expecting a lecture on ground source heat pumps, but we'll save that for another day.)
Hopefully, we can get Joseph to make a serious deep dive into the subject. In the meantime, I thought I'd have some fun with it. I've always believed that, when wrestling with a big topic, there's a lot to be said for wandering off the path occasionally to check out the dead ends, the cool but non-scalable, and the quirky.
Like a heating system based on candles.
There are lots of basic lessons to be learned from the previous video about the science of heating: start with as small a space as possible; insulate well while maintaining good ventilation; minimize waste heat.
The next video isn't nearly so practical but it is much cooler. It's from a highly recommended channel (if you're into this sort of thing) called the Outdoor Boys and it approaches the challenge of making it through a cold Alaska night not as a matter of woodcraft but as more of a physics problem.
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