Heat Wave and Blackout Would Send Half of Phoenix to E.R., Study Says

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/climate/blackout-heat-wave-danger.html

by crazygringo • 3 years ago

38 49 3 years ago

Electricity is critical infrastructure and the same thing could happen anywhere. If you had a multi-day electric or gas outage in New York in mid-January, you'd see exactly the same thing happen.

JimtheCoder• 3 years ago

Maybe not?

People could use things like blankets to stay warm and light things on fire for heat. I think they did this before electricity...a relatively new invention.

What is the equivalent for cooling off that doesn't require electricity? In Phoenix, specifically...

fooker• 3 years ago

People have lived in hot and dry places without electricity for thousands of years.

You drink a lot of water, don't go out in the sun, cover your body with proper clothes (counterintuitively), hang wet fabric in small ventilators, use hand fans, stay in a basement/underground/lower floors of a building, cover your roof with thick organic material.

nradov• 3 years ago

Texans literally froze to death during a utility outage in 2021. Most modern homes have no place to light a fire for heat, and blankets only do so much.

https://www.foxweather.com/extreme-weather/great-texas-freez...

gdubs4• 3 years ago

I'd be curious to see a side by side comparison, but I've always found it harder to cool down than to warm up.

lemmiwinks• 3 years ago

If you had a multi-day electric or gas outage in New York in mid-January, you'd see exactly the same thing happen.

No: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_...

Multiple weeks without electricity for some, but only 34 deaths. (And in Quebec, most people heat their houses with electricity)

"Fun" fact: In Montreal, more people die in heatwaves than of cold. Unless you're a drunk hobo that is: because they are shelters in winter, but old people die in summer in crammed apartments without AC.

chrismcb• 3 years ago

Washington Post send to think that child is far more freaky. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interacti...

fzeroracer2• 3 years ago

Nope. I was in Austin during the winter storm in 2021 and lost power for a fair chunk of it plus was stranded in my apartment with little food. There was nothing I could do as the roads were filled with snow and ice and the city had no infrastructure for clearing the roads or dealing with the problems.

In comparison if something happened in my home town of Bellingham on the west coast, they'd be prepared by having the roads salted, making it reasonably clear and that I would've still be able to get supplies even in the case of a blackout.

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

There's an odd two-sided dynamic around resistance to implementing adaptation measures as a response to fossil-fueled global warming.

One group (representing fossil fuel-linked economies) doesn't want to admit that adaptation is necessary, as that entails accepting that the scientific understanding of our current climate trajectory is robust, and another group (representing politically-minded climate activists) seems to think accepting the necessity of adaptation means 'giving up' on stabilizing the climate and getting off fossil fuels.

Neither of these are rational viewpoints - the tipping point for the climate transition has come and gone, and even an immediate cessation of fossil fuel use would still entail 100+ years of warming at rates comparable to the past 40 years (likely greater) due to the lag in the system (ocean response times) as well as to permafrost thaw. Claiming this isn't the case is really just another kind of denialism.

On top of that, existing fossil fuel infrastructure and production appears set to continue for the next 30 years at current rates (just look at all the new fossil-fuel burning cars, trucks, jets, etc. coming off the production lines each year, or at the business model projections of all the major fossil fuel producers) and despite the political posturing of some politicians in the USA and other fossil fuel producers, there's no real interest in replacing fossil fuels with renewables on an accelerated timeline, except in those countries that have to import all their fossil fuels from abroad, and even there progress is fairly slow.

The only response that makes any sense is a massive nationwide infrastructure development project designed to mitigate heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods, extreme storms and seawater incursion.

wizofaus• 3 years ago

It's hard to see how adaptation won't end up being far more disruptive to the lifestyles we currently take for granted than if we'd actually put in place measures 20+ years ago to gradually phase ourselves off fossil fuels. It's hard to imagine that in 30 or 40 years areas like that around Phoenix will be capable of supporting large populations at all for a start, so adaptation is going to look a lot like mass migration away from such regions. That, or living underground...

gmuslera• 3 years ago

Dealing with the symptoms without addressing the disease won’t work, specially when things will keep becoming worse, far worse, than what you imagine.

Feedback loops and tipping points will make things to change far past what it did in the last 40 years.

The past emissions will remain in the atmosphere for at least another century (and will remain in the carbon cycle, so they will be a new stable), you will have more nature emissions (the permafrost thawing that you mentioned, more forest fires, more activity from microbes in wetlands and so on), and more things that will increase warming (like ice melting, and incoming blue ocean event, and more). And all of that, even if we stop all civilization emissions by tomorrow.

We may not survive with mild measures, you are ready to prioritize economy or even civilization over full extinction?

nicenewtemp842• 3 years ago

I think this is fear mongering. Last summer my father was saying it was too hot to function and we should put off the interior house project we had planned.

It was 108.

As he said this, we were at a stop light next to a Speedy Oil Change facility. Shop doors rolled open, guys in long pants, thick shirts, changing oil and rotating tires.

People that don't work physically underestimate what the human body can do.

chomp• 3 years ago

Your logic is faulty, unless the population of Phoenix is comprised of 1.6 million (presumably able-bodied) mechanics.

nicenewtemp842• 3 years ago

Well I sure didn't think it was comprised of 1.8 million weak ill people, hence why I thought saying HALF of the population would need medical care was fear mongering.

dendrite93• 3 years ago

People who spend all their time inside with AC would not do well if suddenly they had to deal with 108. But people who spend more time outside can adapt better and learn methods to help cope. Of course that has a limit, the discussion about wet bulb temps in India and Pakistan last year was about the limit of where healthy people can function. But it doesn't take that much heat to make life hard for old people.

I have family in a place that is ususally above 100 in the summer. When I go there from a temperate location I struggle. But after a week or two I am more able to help with yard work, or taking the kids out to the park. If I spend a month the high temperature becomes fairly normal.

treeman79• 3 years ago

Spent a couple hours in 95 degree heat full humidity. Had partial but not full shade. Full heat stroke. Took hours to get my heart rate below 130. Many days to recover.

I’ve done more time in the sun working out (moving) and been totally fine. Difference is I drank huge amounts of Gatorade.

earthling8118• 3 years ago

I spent 9 months in a location where it would commonly get to 110 by 10am. I was generally outside and commonly doing manual labor. I didn't acclimate at all. It isn't a universal thing.

To this day I don't handle hot weather well, and I don't mean 110. Anything above mid 70s is very uncomfortable and I sweat profusely and get irritated. This includes sleeping, during the warmer months I always get soaked in my sleep. I drink a lot of water too but it doesn't help.

fzeroracer2• 3 years ago

It's funny to see people normalize increasing temperature extremes. It's not going to help you when summers become longer and hotter over time and people become physically unable to work as a result.

The limits of the human body and our ancestor's ability to survive in these heat waves were dependent on the waves being far shorter and less intense.

ultrarunner2• 3 years ago

I run all summer in the afternoon. Up to 106°F is fairly comfortable, 107°F feels tolerable, and >108°F is very difficult. It really does feel like it falls off that quickly.

However, I have done this for years. I sweat a lot more, and a lot more quickly, than I used to. There have definitely been both long-term and beginning-of-the-season acclimation periods, and it's a bit of an understatement to say that not everyone is interested in pursuing this. The result is major trailheads being closed in certain conditions due to tourists routinely collapsing, needing rescue, or sometimes passing away. This despite the fact that there are many of us locals who are fine within our limits (that we know and have learned to respect).

Those guys in the Quickielubes have a swamp cooler going at minimum, are acclimated, out of the sun, and are still uncomfortable. The landscapers are up at 5am and disappear as the temps climb. We'll be in the half that don't end up in the ED.

paulryanrogers• 3 years ago

Different people have different thresholds. I cannot function well above 80F in humid weather. I get dehydrated very quickly with a small frame and heat exhaustion in short order.

maxlamb• 3 years ago

There is a huge difference between one afternoon hitting 108F and then going back down to the 70’s after midnight, and a situation where for multiple days temp reaches upper 110’s in afternoon and still being in the upper 90’s at 3-4am, like it can be during a Phoenix summer heatwave

molticrystal• 3 years ago

The Hohokam tribe lived there for at least 2000 years and westerners have been established there for over 150 years. Since only 10% of the people are over 60, does this mean the constitution of adult's have become very much poorer?

gdubs4• 3 years ago

The indigenous people of America had a much more intimate understanding of how to live on the land and survive. Kind of precisely the point is how our way of living relies on technology and infrastructure that we take for granted.

dendrite93• 3 years ago

Even then major loss of population seems to have occurred in the southwest at various times possibly connected to climate and droughts. Even with newer technology I suspect many houses built in Phoenix are dependent on AC, rather than being designed to have AC as a supplement.

A number of years ago we had an HVAC issue at work on a sunny week. It was shocking how much harder it was to focus and work in the afternoon as the air got stuffy and hot. Our office had some options for airflow, but not many. I've been meaning to look into what ti would take to put some tints on the windows to reduce the heat in the summer.

TheChaplain• 3 years ago

People adapt. When I moved to south asia the heat and humidity really strained me, but after almost a year my body had adapted and I could easily wear a full suit without sweating liters.

givemeethekeys• 3 years ago

If 30% of Arizonians are fat, and many others are above 65 years of age, then maybe Phoenix is fucked.

Source: https://patch.com/arizona/phoenix/how-obesity-rate-arizona-c...

yamtaddle2• 3 years ago

There's also such a thing as acclimatization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_and_heat_adaptations_in_h...

If you're living in a hot area but used to AC, you're far less able to cope with loss of AC than someone who's been living without it the whole time.

Further, modern dwellings are build with AC in mind. Older ones—by which I mean 50+ years ago, let alone dwellings the native people of the area lived in—were built with airflow & cooling in mind. They might be situated to take advantage of local conditions like shade or prevailing wind. Building for AC means some of that's less important, so gets ignored, and other aspects are deliberately broken to improve AC efficiency (window sizes shrink and there are fewer of them, maybe with none at all on some entire exterior walls, open paths to attic areas that allow up-and-out airflow are avoided, et c). Modern houses become traps in extreme heat if the AC is off, not shelters.

morgango• 3 years ago

A simple answer is that there was more surface water and helped keep it cooler 150 years ago.

For example, I lived in Tucson, AZ and there was a road nearby called "Silverlake" that at one time led to a silver lake with enough power to support a flour mill (see https://tucson.com/news/blogs/streetsmarts/street-smarts-sil...). Now it leads to apartments and houses and an Air Force base.

More people + less water = hotter environment, even before climate change is factored in. A huge amount of the water in the area goes to agriculture as well.

lotsofpulp• 3 years ago

More paved surfaces too. Roads, driveways, highways, parking lots, etc.

syngrog66• 3 years ago

The fragility of US infrastructure and its vulnerability to the accelerating effects of climate change is a minor theme in a sci-fi post-apocalyptic game I've been building. [Slartboz: see my profile if curious]

On one level its goal is to entertain but its also designed to educate about the likelihood and consequences of the carbon climate crisis causing crazy weather and ecosystem collapse. Especially if we dont Go Big soon enough.

deceptionatd3• 3 years ago

The novel "Ministry For The Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson starts out in a similar fashion, with 12 million people dying in a heat wave. It's a great read, albeit disturbingly plausible at times.

I suspect most of the worst climate impacts in the coming years will be from issues much like this, with an interplay of factors. We've built a society with many complex systems, and the assumptions those systems were built on (e.g intensity and duration of heat waves) will no longer be valid. I'm skeptical we'll be able to adapt such large-scale systems to the increasingly rapid changes induced by climate change.

P.S: At 100% humidity in shade with unlimited drinking water, a human will die in about 2 hours at 35°C (95°F). The combination of heat and humidity is called the heat index, and those temperatures had already been seen in Iran 3 years ago, when this paper was written: https://phys.org/news/2020-05-potentially-fatal-combinations...

flangola7• 3 years ago

How does air remain humid at the temperature? I've seen over 100° where I live but that pushes humidity to <15% levels.

deceptionatd3• 3 years ago

You're right, a temperature rise without a corresponding increase in water vapor content does reduce RH (relative humidity). It does not, however, remove any water from the air in terms of mass (absolute humidity). So if water vapor going into the system increases RH faster than temperature rises can decrease it, RH will continue to increase. In your case, water isn't being added to the system fast enough to outpace the changes from temperature.

According to the article I linked:

Not surprisingly, incidents tended to cluster on coastlines along confined seas, gulfs and straits, where evaporating seawater provides abundant moisture to be sucked up by hot air. In some areas further inland, moisture-laden monsoon winds or wide areas of crop irrigation appear to play the same role.

In other words, this problem is worst where a lot of water vapor is being added to the system.

candiodari• 3 years ago

This is not the result of Climate change. Yes, it's definitely not helping. This is the result of communities growing in places where it is just not realistic for them to do so. It's not like there's any shortage of places where these people could live without the situation getting this precarious ... just not right there.

But if global warming hadn't happened at all, there would only be a very small change in the conclusion of this study.

It seems to be extremely unpalatable for people to consider that there are some limits to scale, imposed by our environment.

kelseyfrog• 3 years ago

It's important to understand the limitations. The first being that the scenario falls outside of the range of data used to create the model. This is necessarily an extrapolation and like all extrapolations, subject to more critique than an interpolative prediction.

Next, from a methods perspective, while a single-value estimate is convenient, a distribution, in this scenario, would be much more useful to understand the range of possible deaths and their associated probabilities.

As for the rest of the author's own critiques, I'll lay them out here. One of the most important one is that the population's behavior and government responses are not taken into account. There is, of course, debate as to how much this affects the prediction.

Our estimates do not account for individuals’ behavioral adaptations or the actions of first responders during such a severe heat crisis. In reality, if a blackout event was regionally localized, many individuals would be able to leave their homes and travel to cooler locations. We also do not account for potential governmental responses to a concurrent heat wave and blackout, such as evacuation of the most vulnerable to heat illness or the deployment of mobile power generators for cooling centers. Other important sources of uncertainty in our analysis include (1) the degree to which measures of relative risk based on outdoor temperatures are reflective of indoor heat exposures, (2) uncertainties in the precision of the ambient and indoor temperature models used for the study, (3) uncertainties in behaviors and locations of individuals throughout the day and hence their daily IETs, and (4) uncertainties in the exposure-response functions in the applied epidemiology studies (including the changing nature of population susceptibility with a period of prolonged heat exposure).

throw9away6• 3 years ago

Everyone could just get into one of the 2 cars they own and cool down intermittently. Those that can’t could ride a bus or ask a friend. Some people would choose poorly but most would mitigate the worst heat.

deceptionatd3• 3 years ago

While that might be true of Phoenix (if the cars aren't electric, and gas station pumps continue to work during this hypothetical blackout), US car ownership rates are _insanely_ high compared to the rest of the world. India is a good example, where car ownership rates are about 12%.

onecommentman• 3 years ago

The forecasted health impacts seem extremely high.

Coping strategies:

* drive a couple hours North and camp in the mountains. 3.5F drop/1000 ft elevation. Flagstaff’s highs in summer are 25F cooler than Phoenix and is a two hour drive away. (You do have at least one gasoline car that will work during an outage, don’t you?)

* swimming pools/water parks/water sprinklers/tepid baths…Salt River 40 minutes drive away. Very low humidity (i.e. Phoenix heatwave) + tepid water + cotton clothing + air drying with any breeze = very cool.

* free-standing evaporative coolers for outdoor sleeping. A 2kWh lithium battery would power a 90W free-standing (4 ft high) evaporative cooler for 20+ hours and blow a continuous 70 degree directable breeze during a 95F (and thus a very low humidity) night. A gas-powered generator would handle a few coolers simultaneously and continuously for not much gasoline. Maybe require such coolers and generators/batteries for any facility housing elderly and other vulnerable. Such coolers are about $200 US. Requires refilling with water every two-three hours, but larger units can be hooked up with a hose to public water utilities, and a float valve in the unit lets them run without intervention.

* adobe buildings

* shade, shade, shade (mad dogs and Englishmen…)

It is worthwhile to highlight the dangers from heat events (recent event in Chicago killed hundreds) and plan mitigation strategies, but making scary predictions outside the realms of common sense is counterproductive. Creative adaptation must be modeled too, for the actual forecasted impacts to be accepted as credible.

Heat Wave and Blackout Would Send Half of Phoenix to E.R., Study Says

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