extreme heat

How Workers Are Winning Fans, Air Conditioning, And Even Heat Pay

June 21, 2024 Keith Brower Brown, Labor Notes. Resist! extreme heat, health, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

If you’re dreading summer on the job this year, you’re not alone. Every month last summer was the most scorching on world record. Trapped under heat domes, dozens of metro areas busted their longest streaks ever of highs over 100 degrees. Phoenix afternoons were over 110 for a month straight. On asphalt yards nearly hot enough to melt, bonus-hungry managers forced workers to keep up the usual pace. The results were lethal. In 2022, the latest year for which we have data, 43 U.S. workers lost their lives to heat on the job. That’s up from 36 in 2021, and we can expect this cruel number to keep climbing.

Arizona’s Health Department Adds Chief Heat Officer

March 10, 2024 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. Organize! Arizona, climate crisis, extreme heat, Public Health

Following the hottest year on record, complete with a megadrought in Arizona that led to construction restrictions to reserve groundwater around Phoenix, Arizona has added a new chief heat officer to its Department of Health Services. The officer’s role is to help with extreme heat preparedness in the state. Dr. Eugene Livar, a physician who was formerly the assistant director for public health preparedness for the Department of Health Services, has been chosen for the role. Dr. Livar had helped in developing the Arizona heat preparedness plan in his former role, The Associated Press reported.

Global Heat Record For September ‘Shattered’ By Wide Margin

October 5, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! climate crisis, extreme heat, Global heating

Earth’s average temperature has “shattered” the previous record for September by more than 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, the biggest monthly margin ever recorded. According to separate analyses by climate scientists from Japan and Europe, last month temperatures all over the world were more like July, reported The Washington Post. “It’s astounding to see the previous record broken by so much,” said Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, as WIRED reported. “And astounding to see that the global temperature this September is on par with what we normally see in July — the hottest month of the year, typically.

As Heat Islands Worsen In Baltimore, Local Composting Can Relieve It

September 16, 2022 Alondra Sierra and Sophia Hosain, Institute for Local Self Reliance. Create! Baltimore, climate crisis, Composting, Environment, extreme heat

The urban heat island effect emerges when the temperature in a metropolitan area is significantly hotter than in surrounding areas. Heat islands are largely a result of urban development, where materials like concrete and asphalt replace natural vegetation. In a city’s concrete jungle, materials found in buildings, roads, and sidewalks absorb the sun’s heat and emit it back into the air, raising the surrounding surface and ambient temperatures. Waste heat generated from vehicles, industrial facilities, and other human sources also add to the higher temperatures, leading to greater emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gasses. Urban heat islands pose a serious public health threat to those living in these zones―often people of color, low-income communities, and vulnerable age groups.

Keeping Cool Without Costing The Earth

July 5, 2022 Rapid Transition Alliance, Resilience. Create! Architecture, climate crisis, extreme heat, Renewable Energy

In May 2022 temperatures in India and Pakistan reached 50°C. Heat this fierce causes chaos to infrastructure, water security and also triggers irreversible cell damage within the human body. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported that this extreme event, which plunged nearly a billion people into heat stress, was made 30 times more likely due to climate change. And with extreme heat comes the need to keep cool. As the heat waves in India and Pakistan showed, the response for those that can afford it, is to buy an air conditioner (AC).

Climate Experts’ Predictions Come True With US Heatwave

June 19, 2021 Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams. Educate! climate crisis, Drought, Environment, extreme heat

As what the National Weather Service described as "dangerous and record-breaking heat" affects 50 million people across the Western United States even before the first day of summer, climate experts and activists are using the hot conditions to reiterate warnings and calls for policy change as scientists are seeing their dire predictions come true. "The current heatwave and drought leave no doubt, we are living the dangerous effects of the climate crisis," activist and former Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer tweeted Friday. "Action is urgently needed." Steyer shared a Thursday New York Times report on the extreme heat that also caught the attention of Campaign for Nature director Brian O'Donnell, who warned that in the absence of bold action to address the climate emergency, "this will all get much worse."

Ten Days Of Climate Extremes

August 31, 2020 Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News. Educate! climate crisis, Drought, extreme heat, Fires, Flood, Hurricane, Tropical Storms

Pick almost any slice of time in the recent past and you can find clues to how climate change is jacking up dangerous weather extremes. In the 10 days after the potential global heat record in Death Valley, an unusual lightning storm blasted California with more than 11,000 lightning strikes that sparked hundreds of fires; more heat records were set in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres; unprecedented flooding in Asia washed away villages and threatened China's Three Gorges Dam; and twin hurricanes threatened the Gulf of Mexico, with Hurricane Laura generating a storm surge as high as 11 feet that pushed far inland along the Texas and Louisiana coast.

As COVID-19 Stalks Florida’s Inmates, So Does Another Plague

July 21, 2020 Shirso Dasgupta and Samantha J. Gross, McClatchy DC. Educate! extreme heat, health, Prison, Prisoner rights

“They are dying in the heat,” said the distraught mother of an inmate at Dade Correctional Institution south of Miami. “What have we done to deserve this. … How is it possible, knowing how hot it is here?” “We have gone an entire week without a set of showers ⁠— two were turned off last week because one of them wouldn’t turn off, so they just turned the water off and have not been back to fix it,” wrote an inmate at Avon Park Correctional Institution, a prison in Highlands County, in an email shared with the Miami Herald. “Plus the water temp is too hot to stand under and they won’t turn it down.” As temperatures in Florida soar into the 90s, accounts by inmates and their loved ones, shared with the Herald on condition of anonymity, provide a glimpse of the condition of inmates housed in overcrowded prisons without proper ventilation.

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