Arizona is boosting efforts to protect people from the extreme heat after hundreds died last summer

FenrirIII@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 205 points –
Arizona is boosting efforts to protect people from the extreme heat after hundreds died last summer
apnews.com
42

Meanwhile, in Florida...

"Wanna see how many folks we can kill? Let's repeal requirements for employers to provide adequate cooling!"

What they did is so much worse than repealing something. They crafted a new law making it illegal for local city/county governments to enact their own protections for workers during extreme heat. They literally took away these people's agency to make decisions for themselves just to get some headlines before the election.

The spirit that enabled slavery never died. Angry, hateful people gonna be angry, hateful people.

And angry peoe will vote for them.

John Browns spirit is still marching as well. The problem is that those who march in contrast are cowards who hide behond legalism and state sponsored thugs. Used to be you could just kill them and their bitches, now thered be an investigation and thats assuming they dont catch ya thrpugh security cameras or some shit

How do you think John died?

He was hung by that bastard Lee, the failure of Brown was neither spirit or tactics it was method. He shouldve kept at bleeding the slavers and eventually he may have killed enough to succeed at starting a slave revolt. The problem is he jumped two steps ahead.

He was hanged for committing crimes against the United States. He was one of the sparks of the war yes, but Grant would’ve executed him too.

Don’t forget that the heroes of the civil war immediately went west to commit a horrific genocide.

Even if global warming wasnt a thing, just dont live in a fucking desert.

I would but I was born here and don't know of anywhere better that has legal weed and not a completely out of control cost of living.

Give Michigan a chance! Sure winter sucks but it doesn't really kill like the heat, I think?

It is no longer a signpost on the way to oblivion, but a neon billboard sitting in your living room

I like to mention that even my Trump supporter coworker admits climate change is real. Can't deny it in our line of work.

What do you do

Engineering, mostly government infrastructure.

Areas are flooding that are not supposed to be flooding, equipment is overheating that shouldn't. It's a big deal in this sector now especially because the dumb shit PEs don't want to account for it.

If only there some way to keep it from getting so hot - oh, well.

While I’m all for helping avert the inevitable disaster from human caused climate change. Most of the parts of Arizona where it gets hot AF have always been deadly and like this. The difference for a long time was less concrete and asphalt, and less people. Honestly a lot of the areas around here in the Nevada/California/Arizona desert regions were nomadic areas with people coming to live here during more pleasant winter months. Living here in the summer is still a bad idea.

They water the air in Sedona. Let that sink in for a minute. They use machines to spray water into the air, and no, I’m not talking about a humidifier. Like over-the-door air conditioning units that just piss water all over the sidewalk, except it evaporates before it ever makes it to the concrete, just to keep people from passing out while walking to the corner store.

That's not air conditioning, at all.

That's evaporative cooling, and it's been used for hundreds of years in cultures worldwide to help reduce heat. Adding humidity into dry air naturally reduces the heat index. It's not supposed to make it to the ground, the entire point is for it to evaporate and increase ambient humidity in the air.

It's extremely energy efficient, but is limited to very dry environments. Above about 30% ambient humidity it quickly stops being effective at cooling the air, and at around 60% ambient humidity it's just no longer noticeable. So for a desert area, it is an ideal, cheap and easy way to cool an area.

There are evaporative systems designed for homes and businesses that use the same principle. A box with an opening on one side for airflow, a large wet pad and a fan combined with ducting, will cool an entire home. It uses remarkably little water, and power only to run a simple pump to keep the pad wet and the fan spinning. It uses a fraction of the power and air conditioner uses and is a lot more effective when humidity is low.

For most of the summer an air conditioner isn't even needed to cool a home. Central ducting with an evaporative cooler will work for 90% of the summer. Only during the monsoons where the humidity is too high for it to be effective is an AC system really necessary.

Source: I live in AZ and my home has both an evaporative cooler and an air conditioner.

Yup. Evaporative cooling was popular in AZ before electricity was available. In the late 1800s to early 1900s there were many homes and building with cooling towers on them. People would hang wet sheets across them and the cooling effect would create a current as it fell down the tower which would on turn create more draft across the cooling cloth.

Do you have separate discrete units to pull that off? Or are they both tied into the same air circulation system?

Discrete units but both attached to the same ductwork.

Since A/C needs to operate on a closed system there's a one-way damper just below the Evaporative cooler where it attached to the duct work. The evaporative cooler on the other hand works best in an open system, so you can direct airflow best by opening windows in rooms that need more cooling.

Two separate controls as well. The A/C is attached to a standard thermostat. The Evaporative cooler is simple by comparison, just a manual knob with Off, High Fan, Low Fan, High Cool, Low Cool, and Pump only. The last three run the pump to keep the pad wet.

At night, Low Fan might be all that's needed even in the summer, just moving air. The cooler moves A LOT more air around the house than the A/C does since it has a massive spinning drum fan and an open airflow system.

That's a clever arrangement! Thanks for sharing. I'm in Colorado and we get dry enough that evaporative cooling is effective, but home came with AC, which means everything just gets dry and you static shock all your electronics to death as your power bill spins up to infinity. I never considered that one could have a dual system to switch between. What is your temperature differential with the evap operational? 20 degrees or so?

Yeah about 15-20 normally, but can get up around 30 around peak summer with zero humidity. Above about 100 outside though it just can't keep up and the AC is needed even with low humidity.

So basically above 100 and above about 40% or so humidity, the AC is needed, otherwise the evap cools better and is a lot cheaper to run.

I meant “like” as in similar to, not as a filler word. I know they’re not air conditioners. I was likening the design for descriptive purposes for people who live in less arid regions. It was especially surprising to see them aimed outdoors when I visited. When I asked a shop attendant about them, he said they were to keep tourists from passing out because they drink too much alcohol and not enough water. Haha

That's just evaporative cooling. People have been doing that for thousands of years. It's pretty damn effective at lowering the temperature a good amount in dry climates.

Totally. It’s very surprising for people who aren’t familiar with it to experience for the first time. Especially aimed outdoors.

I hope these cooling stations are just something they are planning to buy and run, not something they are designing. Arizona has the second worst run infrastructure teams in North America in my experience dealing with them.