signalmankenneth
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Phoenix could soon become uninhabitable — and the poor will be the first to leave
As climate change worsens, desert cities like Phoenix must adapt, or face a mass exodus
As climate change continues to bake the Earth, it is not merely the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that is heating our cities. In many cases, human-made infrastructure is exacerbating or even making our cities more uninhabitable.
Indeed, as the world warms, something called the "heat island effect" is a major threat to countless cities. The heat island effect is a phenomenon in which urban areas experience higher temperatures than the areas adjacent to them.
It is typically caused by infrastructure, like buildings and roads, absorbing excess heat; they retain that heat that they absorb during the day and keep cities hot, even at night time.
This is why the summer overnight low in cities like Phoenix, Ariz., is often 90° Fahrenheit or higher.
For sprawling cities with lots of paved land, the heat island effect is going to be pervasive — and in the United States, this is true perhaps nowhere more so than in desert cities like Phoenix.
As a result — and in the not-too-distant future — Phoenix will likely be uninhabitable. Scientists can not say for sure when that will happen, but they do know what the signs will be — and they even have a vague sense of how a depopulation scenario might play out.
B.D. Wortham-Galvin, Director and Associate Professor at Clemson University's Master of Resilient Urban Design, observed that "what the science does say is that the temperature limit of human tolerance is around 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Above that temperature humans cannot shed heat well enough to maintain core temperature ... if you can't cool down that is when brain and organ damage begins."
https://www.salon.com/2022/07/31/ph...ble--and-the-poor-will-be-the-first-to-leave/
As climate change worsens, desert cities like Phoenix must adapt, or face a mass exodus
As climate change continues to bake the Earth, it is not merely the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that is heating our cities. In many cases, human-made infrastructure is exacerbating or even making our cities more uninhabitable.
Indeed, as the world warms, something called the "heat island effect" is a major threat to countless cities. The heat island effect is a phenomenon in which urban areas experience higher temperatures than the areas adjacent to them.
It is typically caused by infrastructure, like buildings and roads, absorbing excess heat; they retain that heat that they absorb during the day and keep cities hot, even at night time.
This is why the summer overnight low in cities like Phoenix, Ariz., is often 90° Fahrenheit or higher.
For sprawling cities with lots of paved land, the heat island effect is going to be pervasive — and in the United States, this is true perhaps nowhere more so than in desert cities like Phoenix.
As a result — and in the not-too-distant future — Phoenix will likely be uninhabitable. Scientists can not say for sure when that will happen, but they do know what the signs will be — and they even have a vague sense of how a depopulation scenario might play out.
B.D. Wortham-Galvin, Director and Associate Professor at Clemson University's Master of Resilient Urban Design, observed that "what the science does say is that the temperature limit of human tolerance is around 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Above that temperature humans cannot shed heat well enough to maintain core temperature ... if you can't cool down that is when brain and organ damage begins."
https://www.salon.com/2022/07/31/ph...ble--and-the-poor-will-be-the-first-to-leave/
Carry on, Primo.
