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Well this was an oddly terrifying introductory paragraph for an IEEE article: "... half of Phoenix residents are at risk of an emergency room visit or worse if

Well this was an oddly terrifying introductory paragraph for an IEEE article: "... half of Phoenix residents are at risk of an emergency room visit or worse if their electricity fails during a future heat wave, according to a recent study. Air conditioning is what keeps people there comfortable—and alive—a growing fraction of the year. The extreme heat already kills hundreds of Phoenix-area residents every year, a number that went up by 25 percent from 2021 to 2022."

silisili 3y ago
Sure, but it can happen anywhere. I was just reading yesterday about a person who died in Portland of heat during the dome. Same with cold weather, if the gas/electric goes out during the winter. There's really only a few places one can live with moderate enough weather to avoid those scenarios.
- tiahura 3y ago
  Half of Phoenix vs A person in Portland. It seems like there’s an important scale issue there. So the risk isn’t really the same everywhere.
  - RationPhantoms 3y ago
    Good point on the scale. However, Phoenix is also a retirement destination so you're looking at a larger portion of the population being susceptible to heat waves.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      > Phoenix is also a retirement destination People who retire there most likely go up to Flagstaff in the summer, or further north. Or they just have good A/C.
- zht 3y ago
  what? do you really not see a difference between a place where the event is much more likely to happen for a much longer % of the time than another place where the same event is much less likely to occur?
- ericd 3y ago
  And that's why you see fireplaces/stoves in a lot of houses in the northeast, even if they have gas/electric heat.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  >>Same with cold weather, I 100% disagree with this... Heat is made by everything, waste heat is a byproduct of all modern things, and there are TONS of easy low cost ways to make heat even it is just as simple as burning something. Also the body makes head naturally so adding layers to trap this heat does not require continual inputs from an outside resource Cooling on the other hand is MUCH harder, and electricity is really the only avenue to make cooling. Even if you say use ICE, well that Ice was made at some point by a freezer running on Electricity IMO hot climate is MUCH MUCH more dangerous than cold, which is why I choose to live in an area where there are only 1 or 2 months of even remotely hot climate. As I told my last HVAC... Heat I can make 100 ways... Cooling I need central air for...
  - silisili 3y ago
    For a young/healthy person, sure. But these aren't generally the at risk people in the first place. I grew up around the 38N parallel, gross enough to get too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. Every winter people froze to death, just the same. It's not as bad as Phoenix percentage wise, but it's still a risk in the vast majority of places that people in the US live.
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      Of course people can and do die from cold, that was never my claim My Claim is providing people with emergency heat is FAR FAR FAR FAR easier and cheaper than providing people with emergency cooling. Do "at risk" people die in the north from the cold, absolutely but I am not sure how that means the cold is worse As it stands right now, just from my daily activities my waste heat in my home makes my home about 10-15 degrees above ambient. Meaning in the winter if my target temp is 65deg, it would have to be 50 degrees or colder outside before I would even think about running my heat. In the winter time that means my AC is working hard to not only combat the outside temp but the internal waste heat from computers, cooking, TV's, humans, etc.
  - nerdbert 3y ago
    > Cooling on the other hand is MUCH harder, and electricity is really the only avenue to make cooling. Gas-powered fridges and coolers have existed for about two hundred years and are still a normal technology today - often used for camping and off-grid life. Here's a whole bunch of propane fridges for your viewing pleasure: https://bensdiscountsupply.com/collections/propane-refrigerator https://bensdiscountsupply.com/collections/propane-refrigera...
- colechristensen 3y ago
  Eh, it is much much easier to keep warm when it's -40 outdoors than it is to keep cool when its 120+ outside. Unless you have a terribly insulated shelter, blankets, coats, and friends will keep you warm enough to the extent that unless you are not really capable of taking basic care of yourself, you're not dying of the cold when your heat goes out. You can always do more insulation, and you only need so much for your body to keep you warm. With heat though you run out of things to do. There is a difference between an impaired person or a person doing something unwise dies of the heat or cold... and there being an environment where there's nothing a healthy adult can do to survive without powered heating/cooling.
  - nerdbert 3y ago
    Part of this is because we build houses that are terribly suited for warm climates. I used to work in the Middle East, and their traditional structures with central pool and windcatcher/chimney design remained quite livable even when it was over 45°C outside, with zero active cooling.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
I've read a few times that the population of the entire US south only really started to grow in earnest once AC was invented. Ah, here's an article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/upshot/the-all-conquering-air-conditioner.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/upshot/the-all-conquering... It's pretty crazy because growing up in central/northern Alberta, I never even really encountered air conditioning until I was into my early 20s and moved to southern Ontario (where living without it would be complete hell in the summer, hot humid disgusting "I feel like I'm being smothered in someone's armpit" summers). Our cars never had it and our houses certainly didn't need it; just an open window. Summers were mild and the heat when it came was a dry heat. But now when I go home to visit there, A/C is everywhere there, and it's frankly needed; the last summer I spent time out at my parents west of Edmonton there were multiple days in a row over 30C and it was frankly quite hellish and them having a ground source heat pump that cooled the house was a godsend. Just the 2-3C difference in peak temperatures from the 80s til now is enough to push it over the edge into new territory.
- retrac 3y ago
  I've likewise read arguments that AC is linked to the substantial economic growth in the second half of the 20th century, in regions like southern France, southern Japan, and the southern United States. All regions that historically lagged economically behind their culturally and economically similar more northern counterpart regions. Hard to say how much of a factor, but there has to be some truth to it: just imagine productivity in a Texas factory at 40 °C and 90% humidity vs. 25 °C and 50% humidity.
  - kalleboo 3y ago
    The man credited with making Singapore the powerhouse it is today has also been adamant that without Air Conditioning, tropical countries couldn’t develop https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew-air-conditioning https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew...
afavour 3y ago
I've only ever visited Phoenix but when I did it was mid July and being outside genuinely did not feel hospitable to human life. That statement doesn't surprise me at all. Unless you're employed in, I dunno, the solar power industry I really feel like you shouldn't be living there. It should be like living on an oil rig.
- melling 3y ago
  Can’t deal with a little extremes on earth? Sort of makes one wonder how we’re ever going to colonize Mars so we’re not a single planet species.
- brabel 3y ago
  Do you think people shouldn't be living in Chicago (or most of Canada and the US midwest for that matter) because without heating it's just completely inhospitable to human life during the winter? Or pretty much all Australian cities in summer?
  - pkulak 3y ago
    Relying on a coat for survival is very different from relying on an HVAC system. One has no moving parts, requires no external inputs, and is routinely handed out for free to those who can’t afford them.
  - afavour 3y ago
    Heating is considerably more energy efficient than having to run ACs all over the place. And if you need to go outside when it's cold you can: you add layers of clothing. In Arizona, in the middle of summer, you could be buck naked and you'd still overheat (and get burnt, to boot).
    - rcme 3y ago
      Until the widespread use of heat pumps, AC was much more energy efficient than heating.
    - triceratops 3y ago
interestica 3y ago
Time to start calling it Life Support Systems
ashconnor 3y ago
I would imagine solar panels would be a good investment in a climate like this.
- genmud 3y ago
  There is actually efficiency issues with the high heat... but they do help offset the AC requirements, so overall even if the efficiency is down 20-40% because of heat, you require potentially 20-50% less A/C because it shades the roof.
- willis936 3y ago
  Or a solar boiler connected a refrigerant compressor. The hotter it gets the more cooling power you have. Steam punk for the 21st century.
genmud 3y ago
Luckily, the local grid here in AZ is fairly robust, probably one of the best in the US. During the 3 years I lived in DC area, I probably had 3 or 4 power outages due to weather (ranging from a couple hours to multiple days). In the 30+ years I have lived in Arizona, I have experienced probably 2 outages, lasting a total of a few hours (one was when a car hit a transformer, the other was when a microburst knocked a bunch of aging poles down). The last outage I had was like 6-8 years ago.
londons_explore 3y ago
It raises the question of if we should deploy 'emergency coolers' - perhaps single-use barrels of some chemical that gets cold when a pull-tab is pulled. To be a workable solution, it needs to be more reliable/cheaper/more effective than just a regular gasoline generator powering a regular aircon unit. After a flood/hurricane/nuclear strike, they would provide enough coolness to keep people alive for a few days.
- sigilis 3y ago
  Water can be used for this purpose, and swamp coolers are something that can be pretty trivially implemented by people in relatively dry areas. For very humid places you generally need energy input for cooling.
- mindslight 3y ago
  I believe the straightforward answer is to dig a hole. But it would certainly be interesting to calculate exactly how much cooling capacity you could get out of one or two 55 gallon drums of some endothermic precursors. Bonus points for being easily reversible when the electricity comes back on (like those sodium acetate heating packs).

silisili 3y ago

Sure, but it can happen anywhere. I was just reading yesterday about a person who died in Portland of heat during the dome. Same with cold weather, if the gas/electric goes out during the winter. There's really only a few places one can live with moderate enough weather to avoid those scenarios.

tiahura 3y ago
Half of Phoenix vs A person in Portland. It seems like there’s an important scale issue there. So the risk isn’t really the same everywhere.
- RationPhantoms 3y ago
  Good point on the scale. However, Phoenix is also a retirement destination so you're looking at a larger portion of the population being susceptible to heat waves.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    > Phoenix is also a retirement destination People who retire there most likely go up to Flagstaff in the summer, or further north. Or they just have good A/C.
zht 3y ago
what? do you really not see a difference between a place where the event is much more likely to happen for a much longer % of the time than another place where the same event is much less likely to occur?
ericd 3y ago
And that's why you see fireplaces/stoves in a lot of houses in the northeast, even if they have gas/electric heat.
phpisthebest 3y ago
>>Same with cold weather, I 100% disagree with this... Heat is made by everything, waste heat is a byproduct of all modern things, and there are TONS of easy low cost ways to make heat even it is just as simple as burning something. Also the body makes head naturally so adding layers to trap this heat does not require continual inputs from an outside resource Cooling on the other hand is MUCH harder, and electricity is really the only avenue to make cooling. Even if you say use ICE, well that Ice was made at some point by a freezer running on Electricity IMO hot climate is MUCH MUCH more dangerous than cold, which is why I choose to live in an area where there are only 1 or 2 months of even remotely hot climate. As I told my last HVAC... Heat I can make 100 ways... Cooling I need central air for...
- silisili 3y ago
  For a young/healthy person, sure. But these aren't generally the at risk people in the first place. I grew up around the 38N parallel, gross enough to get too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. Every winter people froze to death, just the same. It's not as bad as Phoenix percentage wise, but it's still a risk in the vast majority of places that people in the US live.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    Of course people can and do die from cold, that was never my claim My Claim is providing people with emergency heat is FAR FAR FAR FAR easier and cheaper than providing people with emergency cooling. Do "at risk" people die in the north from the cold, absolutely but I am not sure how that means the cold is worse As it stands right now, just from my daily activities my waste heat in my home makes my home about 10-15 degrees above ambient. Meaning in the winter if my target temp is 65deg, it would have to be 50 degrees or colder outside before I would even think about running my heat. In the winter time that means my AC is working hard to not only combat the outside temp but the internal waste heat from computers, cooking, TV's, humans, etc.
- nerdbert 3y ago
  > Cooling on the other hand is MUCH harder, and electricity is really the only avenue to make cooling. Gas-powered fridges and coolers have existed for about two hundred years and are still a normal technology today - often used for camping and off-grid life. Here's a whole bunch of propane fridges for your viewing pleasure: https://bensdiscountsupply.com/collections/propane-refrigerator https://bensdiscountsupply.com/collections/propane-refrigera...
colechristensen 3y ago
Eh, it is much much easier to keep warm when it's -40 outdoors than it is to keep cool when its 120+ outside. Unless you have a terribly insulated shelter, blankets, coats, and friends will keep you warm enough to the extent that unless you are not really capable of taking basic care of yourself, you're not dying of the cold when your heat goes out. You can always do more insulation, and you only need so much for your body to keep you warm. With heat though you run out of things to do. There is a difference between an impaired person or a person doing something unwise dies of the heat or cold... and there being an environment where there's nothing a healthy adult can do to survive without powered heating/cooling.
- nerdbert 3y ago
  Part of this is because we build houses that are terribly suited for warm climates. I used to work in the Middle East, and their traditional structures with central pool and windcatcher/chimney design remained quite livable even when it was over 45°C outside, with zero active cooling.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

I've read a few times that the population of the entire US south only really started to grow in earnest once AC was invented. Ah, here's an article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/upshot/the-all-conquering-air-conditioner.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/upshot/the-all-conquering... It's pretty crazy because growing up in central/northern Alberta, I never even really encountered air conditioning until I was into my early 20s and moved to southern Ontario (where living without it would be complete hell in the summer, hot humid disgusting "I feel like I'm being smothered in someone's armpit" summers). Our cars never had it and our houses certainly didn't need it; just an open window. Summers were mild and the heat when it came was a dry heat. But now when I go home to visit there, A/C is everywhere there, and it's frankly needed; the last summer I spent time out at my parents west of Edmonton there were multiple days in a row over 30C and it was frankly quite hellish and them having a ground source heat pump that cooled the house was a godsend. Just the 2-3C difference in peak temperatures from the 80s til now is enough to push it over the edge into new territory.

retrac 3y ago
I've likewise read arguments that AC is linked to the substantial economic growth in the second half of the 20th century, in regions like southern France, southern Japan, and the southern United States. All regions that historically lagged economically behind their culturally and economically similar more northern counterpart regions. Hard to say how much of a factor, but there has to be some truth to it: just imagine productivity in a Texas factory at 40 °C and 90% humidity vs. 25 °C and 50% humidity.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  The man credited with making Singapore the powerhouse it is today has also been adamant that without Air Conditioning, tropical countries couldn’t develop https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew-air-conditioning https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew...

afavour 3y ago

I've only ever visited Phoenix but when I did it was mid July and being outside genuinely did not feel hospitable to human life. That statement doesn't surprise me at all. Unless you're employed in, I dunno, the solar power industry I really feel like you shouldn't be living there. It should be like living on an oil rig.

melling 3y ago
Can’t deal with a little extremes on earth? Sort of makes one wonder how we’re ever going to colonize Mars so we’re not a single planet species.
brabel 3y ago
Do you think people shouldn't be living in Chicago (or most of Canada and the US midwest for that matter) because without heating it's just completely inhospitable to human life during the winter? Or pretty much all Australian cities in summer?
- pkulak 3y ago
  Relying on a coat for survival is very different from relying on an HVAC system. One has no moving parts, requires no external inputs, and is routinely handed out for free to those who can’t afford them.
- afavour 3y ago
  Heating is considerably more energy efficient than having to run ACs all over the place. And if you need to go outside when it's cold you can: you add layers of clothing. In Arizona, in the middle of summer, you could be buck naked and you'd still overheat (and get burnt, to boot).
  - rcme 3y ago
    Until the widespread use of heat pumps, AC was much more energy efficient than heating.
  - triceratops 3y ago

interestica 3y ago

Time to start calling it Life Support Systems

ashconnor 3y ago

I would imagine solar panels would be a good investment in a climate like this.

genmud 3y ago
There is actually efficiency issues with the high heat... but they do help offset the AC requirements, so overall even if the efficiency is down 20-40% because of heat, you require potentially 20-50% less A/C because it shades the roof.
willis936 3y ago
Or a solar boiler connected a refrigerant compressor. The hotter it gets the more cooling power you have. Steam punk for the 21st century.

genmud 3y ago

Luckily, the local grid here in AZ is fairly robust, probably one of the best in the US. During the 3 years I lived in DC area, I probably had 3 or 4 power outages due to weather (ranging from a couple hours to multiple days). In the 30+ years I have lived in Arizona, I have experienced probably 2 outages, lasting a total of a few hours (one was when a car hit a transformer, the other was when a microburst knocked a bunch of aging poles down). The last outage I had was like 6-8 years ago.

londons_explore 3y ago

It raises the question of if we should deploy 'emergency coolers' - perhaps single-use barrels of some chemical that gets cold when a pull-tab is pulled. To be a workable solution, it needs to be more reliable/cheaper/more effective than just a regular gasoline generator powering a regular aircon unit. After a flood/hurricane/nuclear strike, they would provide enough coolness to keep people alive for a few days.

sigilis 3y ago
Water can be used for this purpose, and swamp coolers are something that can be pretty trivially implemented by people in relatively dry areas. For very humid places you generally need energy input for cooling.
mindslight 3y ago
I believe the straightforward answer is to dig a hole. But it would certainly be interesting to calculate exactly how much cooling capacity you could get out of one or two 55 gallon drums of some endothermic precursors. Bonus points for being easily reversible when the electricity comes back on (like those sodium acetate heating packs).