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I’m a little perplexed by the heat wave coverage of late. I get that there are a lot of places that are experiencing unprecedented temperatures for uncommon le

I’m a little perplexed by the heat wave coverage of late. I get that there are a lot of places that are experiencing unprecedented temperatures for uncommon lengths of time. But a lot of the headlines, like this one, are broadcasting pretty normal temps for their places. Phoenix is having a a pretty normal Phoenix summer. So is Death Valley. Both may be hotter than they were 100 years ago, and both may be seeing consecutive 100F days for longer than they’d seen 30 years ago, but the current temps aren’t particularly comparable with respect to places like southern Europe which are seeing things they’re not used to seeing. There a story there, but not the ones the MSM keep pushing. EDIT: I’m not disputing that Phoenix is hot and getting hotter (I graduated high school and college there and visit family there every year), nor am I disputing climate change. But the focus on heat in Phoenix is a little misplaced relative to the extremes happening elsewhere. Phoenix is having an incremental increase to its norms, per: “There are days when the mercury climbs to well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in the summer here. But over the past two weeks, the mercury has hit 110 degrees F (43 C) or higher every afternoon, a streak of extreme temperatures that could stretch into next week, breaking Phoenix's 1974 record of 18 consecutive days, forecasters say.” https://www.reuters.com/world/us/summer-tested-phoenix-braves-relentless-wave-extreme-heat-2023-07-15/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/summer-tested-phoenix-brave... Phoenix set heat records a long time ago (even before adding millions of people and the houses, offices, roadways, and parking lots that were built for them). There are places in the world right now seeing temperatures they’ve never seen before. I think there’s a difference between the phenomena.

ttfkam 3y ago
53° C (127.4° F) is extreme, even for Death Valley. We're rapidly approaching the point where larger and larger areas will be uninhabitable for humans, not just uncomfortable.
- falcolas 3y ago
  > 53° C (127.4° F) is extreme, even for Death Valley. This. And we're not even in the hottest part of the year yet. I'd like to see the wet bulb temperatures too, but I'm guessing they're in the low 70's because of their low humidity. So it's technically possible for humans to survive that level of heat there given enough water and shade, though we'd probably see deaths in the eldest and youngest populations regardless. But should you move the location much in any direction, and you'd have conditions which would require artificial cooling for any human to survive.
  - baggy_trough 3y ago
    Do you consider an area uninhabitable if it requires artificial measures to survive there?
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      I think that's all of Earth when it comes to a population of give or take 10 billion people. It really feels like all the stuff that people said wasn't sustainable when I was a kid wasn't sustainable and it's all starting to come apart.
      - baggy_trough 3y ago
        I don't know what you mean by "sustainable". I look around and I see people are fatter and richer than ever before.
        AlexandrB 3y ago
        I guess it depends where you live. I see record numbers of unhoused people and young adults living with their parents into their 30s.
        titzer 3y ago
        Sustainable means "we could keep doing it this way indefinitely" and the answer...no, we absolutely cannot keep doing it (i.e. producing energy) this way indefinitely. It never was sustainable, we just live in a system with a huge amount of inertia and big reservoirs that allows us to imagine things are sustainable when they aren't.
        baggy_trough 3y ago
        Since the Earth is finite every use of raw materials is unsustainable eventually. That's not something I worry about because costs will shift around and new ways to meet needs will be found.
- baggy_trough 3y ago
  What would be an example of a large area that will be uninhabitable for humans soon?
  - zardo 3y ago
    For the right definitions of "soon" and "uninhabitable" most of the Indian subcontinent and south east Asia.
    - baggy_trough 3y ago
      I would like to know what the right definitions you have in mind are.
      - goerz 3y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
  - falcolas 3y ago
    With only a little bit of snark: if you listen to insurers that would be Florida.
  - solardev 3y ago
    (Not the OP) "Uninhabitable" is a vague word, but I found it useful to think about this in terms of global stability. The US Dept. of Defense (not a traditionally environmentalist group, though perhaps traditionally alarmist) did a series of studies on this. Here's a recent summary: https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/21/2002877353/-1/-1/0/DOD-CLIMATE-RISK-ANALYSIS-FINAL.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/21/2002877353/-1/-1/0/DOD... Basically habitability and stability isn't just a matter of "will this land burn you alive" but also access to cropland and rangeland, clean water, or avoiding negatives like increased hurricanes and wildfires, or simply floods and droughts. Migration out of increasingly harsh areas is expected to fuel global instability, across large regions of the world at a time, often in some of the most populous or contentious areas. While the DoD's regional analyses aren't released to the public, there are similar studies in academia... https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10297292&hl=en&ei=PYG1ZL_QL_GB6rQPj--j4AI&scisig=ABFrs3yfL46tXFKZjq7rG-3iQXr6&oi=scholarr https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://par.nsf.g... (that one does go into detailed definitions of habitability). Basically the hot and humid areas of the world, like Southeast Asia and Sub Saharan Africa, are expected to spawn a lot of climate refugees. I believe more detailed models are out there, but I haven't looked too deep.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > We're rapidly approaching the point where larger and larger areas will be uninhabitable for humans, not just uncomfortable This is hyperbole. Unaided? Sure. But few in the developed world bear these conditions without access to air conditioning.
  - solardev 3y ago
    There's a lot of people living without air conditioning, in the developed world or otherwise. They also tend to be in many of the hotter and poorer areas around the equator. It's not a good combo :/
  - ttfkam 3y ago
    This is not hyperbole. We are already seeing heat indexes above 160 degrees. Even if everyone in these areas had air conditioning or heat pumps—which they don't—it's far more likely a power grid failure will rear its ugly head with all of them turned on to the max. There's also livestock and crops to consider. Do they have air conditioning too? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/07/30/iran-city-hits-suffocating-heat-index-of-154-degrees-near-world-record/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/... Remember, solar can't keep up with that due to the solar constant and cell efficiency dropping with extreme heat. Even fossil fuels can't track as well because they're governed by Carnot efficiency where the cold sink is largely affected by ambient temperatures. The world is heating up, and there only needs to be a few days at 160 to kill all the cows, goats, chickens, start fires, and overwhelm the power grid. In the past few years we've seen the old and vulnerable die in European summers. As it gets hotter, the threshold for "vulnerable" expands to include larger and larger portions of the population. Pretending the problem doesn't exist or is not going to be serious will not help anyone.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  A large part of the inhabited world is absolutely uninhabitable for humans without the aid of technology, due to the cold. I'm no fan of extreme heat, but people come up with solutions for any environment.
  - goerz 3y ago
    It’s much easier to heat something than to cool it. You can build a fire without any technology at all, but you can’t do anything about unsurvivable heat without a working power grid.
    - solardev 3y ago
      Not dismissing your overall point (it's certainly easier to just combust something for heat) but it's not strictly true that you can't cool without electricity. There are techniques both modern and ancient that can help, though sadly most structures aren't built this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_cooling?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_cooling?wprov=sfla1 Where it gets really problematic is places that used to have a moderate climate (vs always having been hot) so the people and structures have no adaptations for the sudden extreme heat.
      - goerz 3y ago
        Yes, you can absolutely (and we will have to) mitigate hot temperatures with building design, but only up to the point where you have wet bulb temperatures >35C over several days. There are heavily populated areas that are in real danger of having something like that happening, and this is what that would look like: https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-the-future/ https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-t...
    - wongarsu 3y ago
      Heating is much easier, but in the right conditions you can still do a lot without power. - The simplest is just having thermal mass to average day and night temperature. As long as the night is cold enough you can just stay in a brick or clay building with thick walls, preferably painted white. - If you want to get a bit more advanced, you can use evaporative cooling, like Persian Yakhchāls [1]. - If you go high-tech, certain paints can cool surfaces down by a couple degrees (by radiating heat at frequencies that don't get absorbed by the atmosphere, thus breaking the equilibrium between heat absorption and heat emission). Of course there is a point where those fail. Evaporative cooling is dependent on a low wet-bulb temperature and fails quickly in humid climate. Thermal mass needs temperature differences. Paints only buy you a couple degrees. In contrast an AC can be scaled to much higher temperatures. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l
AndyNemmity 3y ago
Phoenix is having anything but a normal summer. The beginning was was cooler. Now it's way hotter than normal and breaking records for consecutive days. The humidity is so high we should be in monsoon season, but it's so hot there is no cloud formation. I don't watch the MSM, and I don't know what they are pushing, but it's absolutely no where near a normal Summer in Phoenix. Edit: Evidence from NWS The record longest number of days in a row with low temps in the 90s in Phoenix has been reached at 8 days! The low this morning at Sky Harbor was 95 degrees which breaks the previous record warm low of 93 degrees. Another hot day (and week) ahead, with today expected to tie the record for Phoenix of most consecutive days of high temperatures reaching or exceeding 110 degrees at 18 days.
- browningstreet 3y ago
  116-118F is pretty normal summer temps for Phoenix wrt “heat wave”. Not sure how this in dispute.
  - falcolas 3y ago
    FWIW, it's only mid July. Not the hottest part of the year typically. Yet we're hitting historical records. The thing I'm concerned about is that it is likely going to get even hotter. What happens if - when - we see rolling power outages required to support the increased power demands is an open question. Historical graph of sea temperatures (since energy in the sea goes into the atmosphere) for giggles: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
  - AndyNemmity 3y ago
    A few days having that temperature in a row is normal. this many is not. If you're not sure how it's in dispute, the fact it's records is the reason. Records dispute normal.
    - ihumanable 3y ago
      Sure you have records which compare the current facts with historical facts to see if what Phoenix is currently experiencing is normal or not. But the person you're replying to has anecdotes about how it's hot in the summer in Phoenix. So we are at a stalemate it seems :P
david2ndaccount 3y ago
The coverage is strange as the reason Death Valley is so hot is due to its particular geography. With Telescope Peak at 11,000 feet on one side of the valley and a steep drop to Badwater below sea level the hot air is unable to escape/disperse and is instead repeatedly heated like an oven. Panamint Springs in the neighboring Panamint Valley is not nearly as hot.

ttfkam 3y ago

53° C (127.4° F) is extreme, even for Death Valley. We're rapidly approaching the point where larger and larger areas will be uninhabitable for humans, not just uncomfortable.

falcolas 3y ago
> 53° C (127.4° F) is extreme, even for Death Valley. This. And we're not even in the hottest part of the year yet. I'd like to see the wet bulb temperatures too, but I'm guessing they're in the low 70's because of their low humidity. So it's technically possible for humans to survive that level of heat there given enough water and shade, though we'd probably see deaths in the eldest and youngest populations regardless. But should you move the location much in any direction, and you'd have conditions which would require artificial cooling for any human to survive.
- baggy_trough 3y ago
  Do you consider an area uninhabitable if it requires artificial measures to survive there?
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    I think that's all of Earth when it comes to a population of give or take 10 billion people. It really feels like all the stuff that people said wasn't sustainable when I was a kid wasn't sustainable and it's all starting to come apart.
    - baggy_trough 3y ago
      I don't know what you mean by "sustainable". I look around and I see people are fatter and richer than ever before.
      - AlexandrB 3y ago
        I guess it depends where you live. I see record numbers of unhoused people and young adults living with their parents into their 30s.
      - titzer 3y ago
        Sustainable means "we could keep doing it this way indefinitely" and the answer...no, we absolutely cannot keep doing it (i.e. producing energy) this way indefinitely. It never was sustainable, we just live in a system with a huge amount of inertia and big reservoirs that allows us to imagine things are sustainable when they aren't.
        baggy_trough 3y ago
        Since the Earth is finite every use of raw materials is unsustainable eventually. That's not something I worry about because costs will shift around and new ways to meet needs will be found.
baggy_trough 3y ago
What would be an example of a large area that will be uninhabitable for humans soon?
- zardo 3y ago
  For the right definitions of "soon" and "uninhabitable" most of the Indian subcontinent and south east Asia.
  - baggy_trough 3y ago
    I would like to know what the right definitions you have in mind are.
    - goerz 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
- falcolas 3y ago
  With only a little bit of snark: if you listen to insurers that would be Florida.
- solardev 3y ago
  (Not the OP) "Uninhabitable" is a vague word, but I found it useful to think about this in terms of global stability. The US Dept. of Defense (not a traditionally environmentalist group, though perhaps traditionally alarmist) did a series of studies on this. Here's a recent summary: https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/21/2002877353/-1/-1/0/DOD-CLIMATE-RISK-ANALYSIS-FINAL.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/21/2002877353/-1/-1/0/DOD... Basically habitability and stability isn't just a matter of "will this land burn you alive" but also access to cropland and rangeland, clean water, or avoiding negatives like increased hurricanes and wildfires, or simply floods and droughts. Migration out of increasingly harsh areas is expected to fuel global instability, across large regions of the world at a time, often in some of the most populous or contentious areas. While the DoD's regional analyses aren't released to the public, there are similar studies in academia... https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10297292&hl=en&ei=PYG1ZL_QL_GB6rQPj--j4AI&scisig=ABFrs3yfL46tXFKZjq7rG-3iQXr6&oi=scholarr https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://par.nsf.g... (that one does go into detailed definitions of habitability). Basically the hot and humid areas of the world, like Southeast Asia and Sub Saharan Africa, are expected to spawn a lot of climate refugees. I believe more detailed models are out there, but I haven't looked too deep.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> We're rapidly approaching the point where larger and larger areas will be uninhabitable for humans, not just uncomfortable This is hyperbole. Unaided? Sure. But few in the developed world bear these conditions without access to air conditioning.
- solardev 3y ago
  There's a lot of people living without air conditioning, in the developed world or otherwise. They also tend to be in many of the hotter and poorer areas around the equator. It's not a good combo :/
- ttfkam 3y ago
  This is not hyperbole. We are already seeing heat indexes above 160 degrees. Even if everyone in these areas had air conditioning or heat pumps—which they don't—it's far more likely a power grid failure will rear its ugly head with all of them turned on to the max. There's also livestock and crops to consider. Do they have air conditioning too? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/07/30/iran-city-hits-suffocating-heat-index-of-154-degrees-near-world-record/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/... Remember, solar can't keep up with that due to the solar constant and cell efficiency dropping with extreme heat. Even fossil fuels can't track as well because they're governed by Carnot efficiency where the cold sink is largely affected by ambient temperatures. The world is heating up, and there only needs to be a few days at 160 to kill all the cows, goats, chickens, start fires, and overwhelm the power grid. In the past few years we've seen the old and vulnerable die in European summers. As it gets hotter, the threshold for "vulnerable" expands to include larger and larger portions of the population. Pretending the problem doesn't exist or is not going to be serious will not help anyone.
carlosjobim 3y ago
A large part of the inhabited world is absolutely uninhabitable for humans without the aid of technology, due to the cold. I'm no fan of extreme heat, but people come up with solutions for any environment.
- goerz 3y ago
  It’s much easier to heat something than to cool it. You can build a fire without any technology at all, but you can’t do anything about unsurvivable heat without a working power grid.
  - solardev 3y ago
    Not dismissing your overall point (it's certainly easier to just combust something for heat) but it's not strictly true that you can't cool without electricity. There are techniques both modern and ancient that can help, though sadly most structures aren't built this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_cooling?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_cooling?wprov=sfla1 Where it gets really problematic is places that used to have a moderate climate (vs always having been hot) so the people and structures have no adaptations for the sudden extreme heat.
    - goerz 3y ago
      Yes, you can absolutely (and we will have to) mitigate hot temperatures with building design, but only up to the point where you have wet bulb temperatures >35C over several days. There are heavily populated areas that are in real danger of having something like that happening, and this is what that would look like: https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-the-future/ https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-t...
  - wongarsu 3y ago
    Heating is much easier, but in the right conditions you can still do a lot without power. - The simplest is just having thermal mass to average day and night temperature. As long as the night is cold enough you can just stay in a brick or clay building with thick walls, preferably painted white. - If you want to get a bit more advanced, you can use evaporative cooling, like Persian Yakhchāls [1]. - If you go high-tech, certain paints can cool surfaces down by a couple degrees (by radiating heat at frequencies that don't get absorbed by the atmosphere, thus breaking the equilibrium between heat absorption and heat emission). Of course there is a point where those fail. Evaporative cooling is dependent on a low wet-bulb temperature and fails quickly in humid climate. Thermal mass needs temperature differences. Paints only buy you a couple degrees. In contrast an AC can be scaled to much higher temperatures. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l

AndyNemmity 3y ago

Phoenix is having anything but a normal summer. The beginning was was cooler. Now it's way hotter than normal and breaking records for consecutive days. The humidity is so high we should be in monsoon season, but it's so hot there is no cloud formation. I don't watch the MSM, and I don't know what they are pushing, but it's absolutely no where near a normal Summer in Phoenix. Edit: Evidence from NWS The record longest number of days in a row with low temps in the 90s in Phoenix has been reached at 8 days! The low this morning at Sky Harbor was 95 degrees which breaks the previous record warm low of 93 degrees. Another hot day (and week) ahead, with today expected to tie the record for Phoenix of most consecutive days of high temperatures reaching or exceeding 110 degrees at 18 days.

browningstreet 3y ago
116-118F is pretty normal summer temps for Phoenix wrt “heat wave”. Not sure how this in dispute.
- falcolas 3y ago
  FWIW, it's only mid July. Not the hottest part of the year typically. Yet we're hitting historical records. The thing I'm concerned about is that it is likely going to get even hotter. What happens if - when - we see rolling power outages required to support the increased power demands is an open question. Historical graph of sea temperatures (since energy in the sea goes into the atmosphere) for giggles: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
- AndyNemmity 3y ago
  A few days having that temperature in a row is normal. this many is not. If you're not sure how it's in dispute, the fact it's records is the reason. Records dispute normal.
  - ihumanable 3y ago
    Sure you have records which compare the current facts with historical facts to see if what Phoenix is currently experiencing is normal or not. But the person you're replying to has anecdotes about how it's hot in the summer in Phoenix. So we are at a stalemate it seems :P

david2ndaccount 3y ago

The coverage is strange as the reason Death Valley is so hot is due to its particular geography. With Telescope Peak at 11,000 feet on one side of the valley and a steep drop to Badwater below sea level the hot air is unable to escape/disperse and is instead repeatedly heated like an oven. Panamint Springs in the neighboring Panamint Valley is not nearly as hot.