After yet another steamy week, I’m thinking of my friend’s warning before we rolled out on a recent ride. “It might be hot today. But it’s gonna be hotter in the future, so we need to learn how to deal with this heat.”
It might be the hottest summer of your life thusfar. But it’s likely, especially if you’re already approaching middle age or beyond, for it to be the coolest summer of the rest of your life.
Better Like It Hot
That ride, the one with my friend warning us before we clicked in, was ok for me. But two of my chain gang suffered from the heat, getting weak and light-headed, and we probably should have stopped several miles before we did for quick improvised showers and fluid replenishment.
Humankind can’t turn global warming around in a year, few years, a decade. We can, however, work to minimize the temperature increase for the short term while taking steps to reduce or retard warming in the long term. Adapting is what humans are good at. It’s how we took over the world. And why we’re such a threat to not only ourselves, but the world. Adapting doesn’t necessarily mean changing ourselves; we got to this hot point because we changed our surroundings to make it easier on ourselves.
Las Vegas is about as genuinely fake as it comes. It’s the fastest-warming city in the United States. If it weren’t for the Hoover Dam providing electricity and the resulting Lake Mead providing water, it couldn’t exist as it is today. And the people there depend on massive amounts of energy to exist there in the summer—lots of air conditioning wherever they go and massive hotels that are basically giant refrigerators. Ironically, they can get much of their energy needs taken care of by renewable energy—so long as the water doesn’t run out. Las Vegas is hardly alone in being a place that depends heavily on air conditioning. The Sun Belt states accounted for almost half of the United States’ population growth in 2020. And these are all energy-intensive places—new single-family homes built around minimal insulation and safety standards with an expectation of air conditioning and long car commutes between home and work. And too much damn parking, creating heat islands.
Too Much Air Conditioning
The United States leads the world in air conditioning. 90% of households in the US have the energy-hogging room coolers. For one’s immediate needs, it’s a great thing. But, currently, it’s a terrible thing for the planet (too bad externalities are a thing). Just keeping humans cool, including the expected increase in air conditioner use will take a massive 130 gigatons of CO2 emissions between 2019 and 2050, unless something is done to change this trajectory.
It’s important to realize there appears to be a hard limit to the amount of heat humans can endure. Scientists now put it at a “wet bulb temperature” of 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) for six hours. This refers to a thermometer wrapped in a damp cloth, thus accounting for both heat and humidity. It normalizes temperature; a place at 95-degrees and high humidity might have the same wet bulb temperature as a place 115 degrees and low humidity.
There are other problems that only appear in the heat. For example, extreme heat leads to less dense air, making it harder for airplanes to fly. And afternoon thunderstorms, once a feature of the tropics, are migrating north and eastward, interrupting business and endangering life in many ways. Much like how extreme cold keeps people indoors in the winter, extreme heat will do this in the summer. At the moment, extreme heat is the most deadly weather in the United States. Extreme heat leads to more droughts, more wildfires, and, yes, more extreme rain storms. And more deaths. Nights are getting hotter, and this is seen as another problem—as mortality risks increase by 50% if temperatures stay hot into the night.
We Can’t Solve It Alone
This is a problem we can’t solve alone, or even with a small group. Society-wide action, almost certainly coordinated by government, is necessary. But that doesn’t mean that individual efforts are pointless. Talking is a start, but action influences friends, neighbors, co-workers, bosses, businesses, legislators. And many individual efforts can be win-win, which makes the efforts easier. Saving money while reducing one’s carbon footprint, for example. Planting trees cools a place and absorbs CO2 and helps get people outside, and in cities, increased tree coverage correlates with reduced crime.
Whatever we do to adapt needs to be less carbon intensive than installing more of the current-design air conditioners and/or running the air conditioner in a car (to be fair, the ‘cost’ of running the car’s AC is probably less than the cost of running your tires at the wrong air pressure or speeding) The problem is that the big savings comes from things like improving insulation and air flow in buildings, but that pales in comparison to building right in the first place. And air conditioning has to get far more efficient and far less environmentally damaging because the current projection is that two-thirds of the world’s homes will be installing them. Same goes for driving; driving less is probably far more significant than any improvement in car design.
We’ve got to get better at spending more time in the heat. It’s particularly true on the bike. I used to think the idea of “summer jerseys” was silly. Now I have a hard time seeing a “standard jersey” as something I want to buy again. I’m even thinking that having a few pair of “summer shorts” might be a good idea. I haven’t been impressed with insulated bottles thusfar, but the technology has moved forward some and I think I’m ready to try again. I have an “ice vest” I got for riding indoors in the winter. It’s currently in the freezer for getting my core temperature down after hot rides. And for super-hot afternoons.
Stop Making Make Someone Else Hotter
It might just be me, but one summer, I spent what felt like most of my days in an air-conditioned office. I seemed to feel the hot days more intensely as a result. Later, I had another building’s, a church, air conditioner exhaust close enough to my window to hear it whenever it turned on, and it was controlled by a thermostat, so it would be running even when no one was there, which was most of the time. The idea that I had to close my window and raise the temperature of the room I was in because someone else was running their air conditioner felt perverse. It also seemed like an apt way to understand air conditioning; someone else is always paying the price.
Europe, for better or worse, barely utilizes air conditioning. Europeans, by contrast, have only about 10% of their homes cooled by air conditioners. The reasons are many, including greater electricity costs. Another is that they haven’t embraced remote work, and many of their work places are cooled. But even in the places that are cooled, they often keep the temperature higher, like 80° Fahrenheit.
It’s the home that is the big challenge. At one time, homes in hot climates were designed to minimize heat buildup because air conditioning didn’t exist, and some places weren’t populated because summer heat was a problem they couldn’t design around. Many older homes didn’t need to be designed for so much cooling because the hot days weren’t so hot. More recently, older homes didn’t have central air conditioning in many places because it wasn’t necessary, and having several room air conditioners, even if new, is energy-intensive. And new homes are often built with the assumption that central air conditioning will be used. Rebuilding is very expensive, so is retrofitting. And for many, buying new air conditioners can be a big expense, along with the electricity bills they generate.
Mission Difficult
The mission, which we’re stuck with, is getting greater cooling without making the planet hotter. In the bigger picture, The Inflation Recovery Act of 2022 has many built-in rebates for home improvements that increase energy efficiency. But that’s down the road. For the moment, I’m doing searches for ways to beat the heat without air conditioning or remodeling. Hacks, to bring up an overutilized term. There is no shortage of them. There’s my own explainer video for riding and post riding. NPR has advice from someone who grew up in India. And adds reader suggestions. Slate suggests embracing siestas, but it doesn’t seem practical if people are driving to work. There are tips for keeping an apartment cool, with “window hacking” being interesting, though a bit complicated. There are simple tips for houses. Wikihow has ways to keep yourself cool. And lots more.
One bit of advice is misplaced. Drinking copious amounts of water is often suggested. Drinking too much water is a bad idea. The result is hyponatremia, which basically means your blood has too little salt for its volume can, in certain circumstances, kill. One solution is salty snacks, along with the water. Another solution is to make sure you’re getting some salt. I find an easier way to use electrolyte tablets like those from Nuun, Zym, and Science in Sport. They’re also small and portable, making them easy to take them on the road, or in a backpack. Sporty drinks like Gatorade are also sporty, but for sitting around, I find them too high-calorie, and when dehydrated, they’re both too caloric and not salty enough.
Whatever. Wherever you live, you better like it hot. Because there’s no escaping the heat.
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