Facing unbearable heat, Qatar has begun to air-condition the outdoors
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-qatar-air-conditioning-outdoors/Qatar, the world's leading exporter of liquefied natural gas, may be able to cool its stadiums, but it cannot cool the entire country. Fears that the hundreds of thousands of soccer fans might wilt or even die while shuttling between stadiums and metros and hotels in the unforgiving summer heat prompted the decision to delay the World Cup by five months. It is now scheduled for November, during Qatar's milder winter.
The change in the World Cup date is a symptom of a larger problem — climate change.
Already one of the hottest places on Earth, Qatar has seen average temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times, the current international goal for limiting the damage of global warming. The 2015 Paris climate summit said it would be better to keep temperatures "well below" that, ideally to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
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To survive the summer heat, Qatar not only air-conditions its soccer stadiums, but also the outdoors — in markets, along sidewalks, even at outdoor malls so people can window shop with a cool breeze. “If you turn off air conditioners, it will be unbearable. You cannot function effectively,” says Yousef al-Horr, founder of the Gulf Organization for Research and Development.
Al Janoub stadium is one of eight soccer stadiums that Qatar is prepping for the 2022 World Cup.
Engineering professor Saud Ghani designed the open-air stadium’s air-conditioning system.
Small vents push cool air at ankle level inside the stadium.
So far, Qatar has maintained outdoor life through a vast expansion of outdoor air conditioning. In the restored Souq Waqif market, a maze of shops, restaurants and small hotels, three- to four-foot-high air-conditioning units blow cool air onto cafe customers. At a cost of $80 to $250 each depending on the quality, they are the only things that make outdoor dining possible in a place where overnight low temperatures in summer rarely dip below 90 degrees.
Recently, the luxury French department store Galeries Lafayette opened in a shopping mall that features stylish air-conditioning grates in the broad cobblestone walkways outside. Each of the vents, about 1 by 6 feet, has a decorative design. Many of them hug the outside of buildings, cooling off window shoppers looking at expensive fashions. Though nearly deserted in the heat, by 5 p.m. some people begin to emerge to sit outside places like Cafe Pouchkine.
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climate denial could not have occurred without attached garages. 
I could live in the NM mountains. We love the desert. Our son moved to GA, so we have a winter place in Florida instead. Very nice, thogh. We're eating seafood salad on the patio while people up north are inside with bowls of squash soup. 
Summer's the killing season, but half of that 72' mobile home is shaded almost all day by a giant old live oak, and that's where we AC if we go down there in summer, not the large pretty sunroom that isn't shaded.
It's, amazingly, still common for people to cut down and refuse to plant trees because they don't want to rake the leaves. By far the best heat control is to stop the sun's rays before they hit the building, something anyone who walks into shade on a hot day could understand immediately if pointed out, but instead air conditioning what amount to sealed ovens baking in the sun is still SOP.
That'll change in large part. Where people have the water to keep trees alive.
endemic diseases like malaria preceded population influx. There was a reason why the few who could took the children to the mountains for the summer. But of course it was also with air conditioning that industry and middle class jobs moved in.
Very interesting about energy use in cooling down versus heating. I'd heard something but not that it was that dramatic. We use open windows and ceiling fans, and vent heat up and out, which do great things, but in summer the AC usually comes on in the afternoon.
We built this house several years ago, and the trees we added for the house finally have some useful height, but a lot more height and spread are needed on the west. The difference between now and when they were planted around our baking oven is extremely dramatic, though. And I'm so glad I only once cut down the hickory sapling I didn't want "there" to the east, a major climate attack the next summer forcing a rethinking. Its established roots meant its new trunk shot right up, and its current, spreading 40' are in the perfect place to shade the kitchen on summer mornings. I took down the curtains I made to keep the counters, and us, from getting hot a long time ago.
The way one could in the USA?
How big is Qatar? How many climates?
Jesus.
Sports stadiums can be roofed with solar collectors. Their parking lots are abominations and should be planted with trees. There are better ways of parking cars than paving over the landscape.
Temperatures not far below the surface hover near the annual average of a region. You can pick your comfort zone. 
Most stadiums are so ugly to go to. The Rose Bowl where we used to live, a real exception.
But where it'd still be lacking and in congested areas, how about cars and stadium under the park? I remember long ago an urban studies professor at UCLA (the odd class, I didn't major) pointing out that we've always built on and paved over our best land that should have been preserved for other uses. Perhaps in future we'll undo that to some degree, and moving development out of the fertile valleys and onto the hills wouldn't be the only way.
Without heating, our basement here in north GA wouldn't drop below about 50 in the worst winters, and it used to drop into single digits here for relatively brief periods.
used to be freeways cutting through and dividing them. Every decade now humanity has never been here before, but we keep learning and keep progressing.
I don't know why it won't open, but this happy place in Seoul is worth smiling at.
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/lbe5zrodzjmlucs123s7.jpg
I saw your car parking link. That's terrific. The car silo is actually pretty at night. And they do have to be kept lit.
This the one? Looks nice and green around there.
They're guaranteeing that the planet's ultimate climate disaster happens sooner. Humans! 
