“Let us merely focus on the not unlikely scenario that summer as we know it is over.” Niall Ferguson
The Washington Post published a rather hopeful response to global heating by suggesting that training your body with small exposure to intense heat can build up a tolerance to the increasing heat crisis. The article primarily highlights the work of Stefan Wheat, a critical care physician at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
“Our bodies are well adapted to be able to acclimate to heat under the right circumstances.”Now Wharton doesn’t recommend exposing yourself to deadly heat without having an air-conditioned space to retreat to, but rather he recommends short exposures that will build acclimation.
Allowing your body to experience heat through these repeated and controlled exposures, especially if you’re doing physical activity, can trigger physiological adaptations that improve your ability to withstand hotter temperatures and can help lower the risk of heat-related illness and death, he said.
For one, the body’s plasma volume expands, increasing blood volume, he said. That means your heart doesn’t have to work as hard and your body has more fluid to support sweating, a critical function to keep you cool, he said. As your body becomes more accustomed to heat, you should also be able to sweat more efficiently and retain electrolytes better.
Some hallmarks of heat acclimatization include maintaining a lower heart rate and core temperature, as well as sweating more, particularly on your arms and legs, Kenney said.
“People who live in hot environments for most of their lives are already acclimatized,” he added. But those who live in cooler environments can get there with some training. It can typically take about a week or two to become fully acclimatized, experts say.
Now a body that has lived in hot locations can deal with todays heat without immediately dying. India, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan come to mind when climate science predicates when these regions become uninhabitable. Extreme heat can challenge the body to keep itself alive. When humidity and hot temperatures combine into what is known as a wet bulb temperature, there is a point where the human body will shut down. Like other species fleeing the effects of global heating, people are and will move in greater numbers poleward to find a new habitat conducive to life. Will these climate refugees be welcomed to areas already swarming with large populations? Probably not.
For myself, I won’t be training my body by immersing myself in sauna-like heat, and neither will you if you are elderly, have a child, are pregnant, are disabled, have medical conditions, or if you live in a city. Being young and healthy does not make anyone immune to rising temperatures.
So no, we can’t adapt to these changes. How do we adapt once the food baskets fail simultaneously? Or the power goes out. Do we survive once the biosphere is decimated? Life in the Oceans will be without fish; already, corals are dying en masse. You get the idea. But the Washington Post piece did not once mention any inconvenient truths. The Twitter universe is rightly destroying the story.
Meanwhile, the Navajo Nation has declared a heat emergency where many have no electricity or air conditioning.
The extreme heat has prompted officials on the Navajo Nation to declare a state of emergency. The Navajo Nation Commission on Emergency Management passed the declaration on July 25, and Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren and Vice President Richelle Montoya signed in agreement on the same day.
The declaration allows the Navajo Nation Commission on Emergency Management to seek assistance from federal, state, other tribal governments and local or private agencies to address emergency and disaster-related situations caused by the extreme heat.
In the declaration the Navajo Nation states that “heat extreme events present risks to human health and well-being of people, ecosystems, agriculture, property, livestock, pets, infrastructure, homes, roads, heat dries up sources of surface water for wildlife, the potential for wildland fires increase, and existing drought conditions become exacerbated from extreme heat conditions.”
What we need is a plan to wean us off fossil fuels immediately. Regulations that protect outside workers require cooling center access for daytime and nighttime.
Heat is what melts the glaciers, heats the atmosphere and oceans, disrupts rainfall patterns, sparks wildfires and mass mortality events. The situation is worse than what you are being told.
The most important graph you will see today.
As temperatures hit 119 degrees in Phoenix last week, doctors at Valleywise Health Medical Center saw a patient whose internal temperature was at least 110—the maximum registered by its thermometers.
Needing to cool the patient down as quickly as possible, the emergency medical team turned to a technique they had designed and honed themselves: immersing the person in a body bag filled with ice. It worked. In less than half an hour, the patient's temperature was down to about 102, low enough to move on to further treatment and observation. The next day, the medical team had to pull out a new body bag.
For years, the Valleywise emergency medical team treated patients suffering from heat illness using what's known as "evaporative cooling." That could mean spraying a patient with water while a fan blows on them, for example. "It works but it's not really efficient," Comp says.
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The hospital's staff and students wanted to find a better way—and felt they needed to, given Phoenix's propensity for extreme heat and the vulnerability of some parts of its population. Many of those who come into the hospital with heat stroke are also suffering from substance abuse.
In 2020, Comp says a resident at Valleywise suggested treating heat illness by immersing patients in ice. Although uncommon in hospital settings, the practice is ubiquitous in professional sports. The following year, the medical team, including Comp, started experimenting with body bags full of ice.
Big business lobbies against heat protections for workers as US boils
It could take years for the federal regulator Osha to set new heat rules as excessive temperatures are killing Americans at work
Big-business lobbyists, including big agricultural and construction groups, are pushing to water down or stymie efforts at the federal and state levels to implement workplace heat protection standards.
This summer, millions in the US have been exposed to some of the hottest days on record, inciting renewed urgency for federal protections from heat exposure for US workers. The Biden administration has proposed federal heat protections for workers. But those rules face stiff opposition and could take several years to be finalized under current rule-making processes and laws. They could even be scrapped depending on the outcome of 2024’s election.
Your moment of cute.