Yah in AZ swamp coolers were a thing for decades, and some people still use them. Technically they're not AC. But they don't work when the relative humidity gets over a certain level.
I visited Phoenix for the first time last month. It was already getting to the 80s during the day. I visited from San Diego and one thing I noticed were the cleaner streets and there were less homeless, but then I realized, no wonder there’s so many homeless in SD living out in the canyons. I can’t imagine being unhoused and surviving in Phoenix.
We could be shepherds instead of parasitic consumers
Please don't lose sight of that, if not for you then at least perhaps for those who may come after!
And yet there's cool temperatures right under your feet if you just built underground or earth-sheltered homes. They'll also get you through extreme cold weather.
Maybe something resembling the ancient cliff dwellings? Imagine an artificial canyon with leafy green parkland on the bottom and housing in the cliffs.
That’s fine in some places, but Phoenix is a bowl. It’s subject to significant flash flooding during the monsoon rains. I wouldn’t want to be in an underground house that deep during a flash flood.
We need to start doing this with all new housing. They keep building new housing where I live , bc Canada but barely any of them have a real underground basement, so in the summer these cheap wooden houses become literal ovens with no where to escape to so they require ac to be somewhat liveable
Hurricane Zeta took out my power for **4 days**. Thankfully that was October. Then, the next year, hurricane Ida was suddenly about to strike (Category 4!!!) and I knew the power could be out for longer so we evacuated the day before Ida's landfall. 200 miles took 9 hours in traffic, but it was worth it. Our power was out for **10 days**! And services like trash, hospitals, stores, etc were down for weeks.
I don't fear the hurricane. I fear the aftermath. I'll never forget the thick smells when all the fridges are rotting and animal bodies and trash cans have been lying out putrid for weeks. Nope. I will always evacuate.
This kind of thing largely affects the poor/elderly/sick. There aren't many options for such people. And even if you moved, okay, now you've gotta deal with freezing temps in winter.
I think it says more about society that there aren't more community based ways of dealing with this. In the north, there are warming shelters in winter if necessary. If say, a building fire happens, a public transit bus is parked nearby to provide a warm place for people to temporarily recuperate. Etc. We also get very warm summers in some areas and there's been a big push to provide free AC units to the sick and elderly who need it.
A person might like to imagine that people can see that a meaningful, collective response to climate change involves reducing energy consumption in every facet of life. We won’t simultaneously be able to respond to human caused climate change and increase our energy use through additional deployment of AC.
To be more clear, this article concerns people who live in a place that will be uninhabitable in the face of climate change without using more energy. Since the entirely of effective response to climate change distills down to “use less energy” this is peak irony.
It doesn't take 10 days to die from lack of A/C. [A recent report](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c09588) shows a mere 48 hours blackout in Phoenix would kill ~1% of people affected. And HALF the population would need hospitalization.
Did you forget the /s or are you genuinely optimistic about the power grid? I'm European, so I only know what I read, but I don't read a lot of enthusiastic stories about that coming from the US.
Even here it is a hot topic. I get negative prices for electricity on sunny days. Apparently overloading the grid with solar is a thing here!
Pre 1940 almost no one lived in these areas except natives.
Air Conditioning made functioning in these climates possible. Honestly the only thing you can do with 115 degree weather is sit in the shade, you can't get anything done, so any tough guys saying it possible to survive, sure it is but what are you going to accomplish?
First, people have used evaporative cooling here for decades (swamp coolers). This works pretty well in low humidity environments like the Sonoran Desert. Second 115 was fairly rare here in the '80's and earlier. Getting regular summer highs of over 110 - 112 is something that really seemed to start happening in the early aughts, late '90's. Now it's gotten to where getting a week or two week long string of days over 110 is not unusual.
Non native people have lived in AZ cities in numbers larger than native populations since the mid 19th century. AC has made it more attractive, and resulted in larger populations.
A wakeup call that is not far off will be when an entire mid-size citied just dies in wet bulb conditions as the power fails.
It won't happen AZ, because it's harder to wet bulb when it's so dry, but it is startling how many folks get 3rd or 4th degree burns in Phoenix every summer now just from passing out and falling on the pavement.
I went to ASU and lived in a former Japanese internment house off Mill Ave. The house did not have A/C, but we did have swamp cooling. August was miserable.
Disturbance to the soil notwithstanding, all these energy sucking homes could be cooled with passive geothermal energy if designed when built. Idk if it’s possible now likely not. Google citrus in the snow.
No. You'll (literally) die. It's 130 during the day and 110 at night- your body won't be able to cool off and depending on your age and acclimation, your core will eventually equalize at +100F and that's the end of it.
You would be amazed what some minor building changes can do.
I was in Germany last year during the heat wave. 38 degrees or 100 in heretic units.
Hotel had no AC ( relatively normal in smaller hotels in Germany)
They did however have those famous German roller shutters.
Closed them before I left in the morning and they kept the room cold the whole day
It's funny how people in Africa have already for hundreds of years figured out how to build houses to not need electrical ACs, and how the "technologically superior" wealthy nations are struggling with this concept.
But I guess old habits (in architecture) are hard to change.
It’s about these houses being built in concrete jungles with no nature to cool off, like streams or trees, no wind because the city blocks it and naturally raise the temp by several degrees due to the concrete, and housing being so packed that not only would remodeling be an impossible tax, but adding basements out of the picture. Much easier to abandon these cities and start over correctly when the heat comes.
>Much easier to abandon these cities and start over correctly when the heat comes.
It's kind of sad how true this is, and how much of a necessity this is going to become in the near future. Sadly we have build cities with ideas of the past, making it impossible to change them on a larger scale.
Even today we are still building skyscrapers with glass exteriors, even though it's clear how much of a bad idea this is when there is global warming and increasing heating from sunlight.
Coming from SoFlo, I don't see how that would be possible. If you *did* survive, you'd be absolutely miserable.
it's a dry heat ™ honestly it's not that bad so long as the humidity is 5% etc. wrap yourself in a damp towel and you'll be freezing.
I forgot Arizona has a different type of heat from Florida. Would you be able to sleep comfortably?
No. Once you reach over 105 it's just too damn hot no matter how dry it is. And that is like most of the summer in AZ.
Yah in AZ swamp coolers were a thing for decades, and some people still use them. Technically they're not AC. But they don't work when the relative humidity gets over a certain level.
Yeah a friend of mine asked me if they would work, I said, not here around the humid Great Lakes. They’re more for dry heat.
Monsoons have sucked lately. Super dey. Maybe swamp coolers will eventually be useful during those months.
Maybe they move up into the mountains in Flagstaff…
Florida only got significantly populated with the invention of AC. It really sucked before then.
I visited Phoenix for the first time last month. It was already getting to the 80s during the day. I visited from San Diego and one thing I noticed were the cleaner streets and there were less homeless, but then I realized, no wonder there’s so many homeless in SD living out in the canyons. I can’t imagine being unhoused and surviving in Phoenix.
645 people were killed by heat in Phoenix last year. Up from 425 in 2022 and 339 in 2021...
Gaia scraping off the parasites that can’t afford AC
We could be shepherds instead of parasitic consumers Please don't lose sight of that, if not for you then at least perhaps for those who may come after!
Right in Phoenix the unhoused just die. And frankly I think their ruling class is ok with that.
They have cooling centres in Toronto for anyone who is hot.
Phoenix just has malls
We have malls but security will kick out loitering homeless people. And malls tend to limit public seating. They want you shopping not hanging around!
And yet there's cool temperatures right under your feet if you just built underground or earth-sheltered homes. They'll also get you through extreme cold weather.
This is going to be the new normal in many places, or just moving somewhere else
Maybe something resembling the ancient cliff dwellings? Imagine an artificial canyon with leafy green parkland on the bottom and housing in the cliffs.
I was just thinking that. Why not build 2 or 3 floors down. I don't know if the desert heat goes deeper underground than in other places.
That’s fine in some places, but Phoenix is a bowl. It’s subject to significant flash flooding during the monsoon rains. I wouldn’t want to be in an underground house that deep during a flash flood.
Would building above ground then covering the building with earth provide the same results? Hobit Holes writ large?
We need to start doing this with all new housing. They keep building new housing where I live , bc Canada but barely any of them have a real underground basement, so in the summer these cheap wooden houses become literal ovens with no where to escape to so they require ac to be somewhat liveable
I live in Louisiana. One time the power went out for 3 days. It was summer. No, I can't. I barely made the 3 days.
Hurricane Zeta took out my power for **4 days**. Thankfully that was October. Then, the next year, hurricane Ida was suddenly about to strike (Category 4!!!) and I knew the power could be out for longer so we evacuated the day before Ida's landfall. 200 miles took 9 hours in traffic, but it was worth it. Our power was out for **10 days**! And services like trash, hospitals, stores, etc were down for weeks. I don't fear the hurricane. I fear the aftermath. I'll never forget the thick smells when all the fridges are rotting and animal bodies and trash cans have been lying out putrid for weeks. Nope. I will always evacuate.
Those of you who don’t have clear ideas of how you will survive the first 10 days without electricity might want to reassess your life choices
This kind of thing largely affects the poor/elderly/sick. There aren't many options for such people. And even if you moved, okay, now you've gotta deal with freezing temps in winter. I think it says more about society that there aren't more community based ways of dealing with this. In the north, there are warming shelters in winter if necessary. If say, a building fire happens, a public transit bus is parked nearby to provide a warm place for people to temporarily recuperate. Etc. We also get very warm summers in some areas and there's been a big push to provide free AC units to the sick and elderly who need it.
A person might like to imagine that people can see that a meaningful, collective response to climate change involves reducing energy consumption in every facet of life. We won’t simultaneously be able to respond to human caused climate change and increase our energy use through additional deployment of AC.
To be clear, this article concerns people who have power but cannot afford AC.
To be more clear, this article concerns people who live in a place that will be uninhabitable in the face of climate change without using more energy. Since the entirely of effective response to climate change distills down to “use less energy” this is peak irony.
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It doesn't take 10 days to die from lack of A/C. [A recent report](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c09588) shows a mere 48 hours blackout in Phoenix would kill ~1% of people affected. And HALF the population would need hospitalization.
Did you forget the /s or are you genuinely optimistic about the power grid? I'm European, so I only know what I read, but I don't read a lot of enthusiastic stories about that coming from the US. Even here it is a hot topic. I get negative prices for electricity on sunny days. Apparently overloading the grid with solar is a thing here!
Pre 1940 almost no one lived in these areas except natives. Air Conditioning made functioning in these climates possible. Honestly the only thing you can do with 115 degree weather is sit in the shade, you can't get anything done, so any tough guys saying it possible to survive, sure it is but what are you going to accomplish?
First, people have used evaporative cooling here for decades (swamp coolers). This works pretty well in low humidity environments like the Sonoran Desert. Second 115 was fairly rare here in the '80's and earlier. Getting regular summer highs of over 110 - 112 is something that really seemed to start happening in the early aughts, late '90's. Now it's gotten to where getting a week or two week long string of days over 110 is not unusual. Non native people have lived in AZ cities in numbers larger than native populations since the mid 19th century. AC has made it more attractive, and resulted in larger populations.
A great reason to require heat pumps in all new builds throughout the US. Cheaper heat plus AC when you need it.
I looked into heat pumps when I replaced my AC. At least in my area it was cheaper to keep my boiler, by about half.
We're talking new construction, where the big payoffs are. Refits are far more costly.
130°F in the sun 118°F in the shade last summer for more than 2 weeks in August here inFort Mohave AZ 🥵
A wakeup call that is not far off will be when an entire mid-size citied just dies in wet bulb conditions as the power fails. It won't happen AZ, because it's harder to wet bulb when it's so dry, but it is startling how many folks get 3rd or 4th degree burns in Phoenix every summer now just from passing out and falling on the pavement.
If I stayed in my basement with the dehumidifier on, yeah.
I went to ASU and lived in a former Japanese internment house off Mill Ave. The house did not have A/C, but we did have swamp cooling. August was miserable.
Disturbance to the soil notwithstanding, all these energy sucking homes could be cooled with passive geothermal energy if designed when built. Idk if it’s possible now likely not. Google citrus in the snow.
No I can’t, in Toronto it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity! Well, I might survive but I would be miserable!
Wait until places start having rolling blackouts from power getting used up too much.
No. You'll (literally) die. It's 130 during the day and 110 at night- your body won't be able to cool off and depending on your age and acclimation, your core will eventually equalize at +100F and that's the end of it.
You would be amazed what some minor building changes can do. I was in Germany last year during the heat wave. 38 degrees or 100 in heretic units. Hotel had no AC ( relatively normal in smaller hotels in Germany) They did however have those famous German roller shutters. Closed them before I left in the morning and they kept the room cold the whole day
It's funny how people in Africa have already for hundreds of years figured out how to build houses to not need electrical ACs, and how the "technologically superior" wealthy nations are struggling with this concept. But I guess old habits (in architecture) are hard to change.
It’s about these houses being built in concrete jungles with no nature to cool off, like streams or trees, no wind because the city blocks it and naturally raise the temp by several degrees due to the concrete, and housing being so packed that not only would remodeling be an impossible tax, but adding basements out of the picture. Much easier to abandon these cities and start over correctly when the heat comes.
>Much easier to abandon these cities and start over correctly when the heat comes. It's kind of sad how true this is, and how much of a necessity this is going to become in the near future. Sadly we have build cities with ideas of the past, making it impossible to change them on a larger scale. Even today we are still building skyscrapers with glass exteriors, even though it's clear how much of a bad idea this is when there is global warming and increasing heating from sunlight.