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Old 11-30-2006, 01:21 PM
 
Location: NW Las Vegas - Lone Mountain
15,756 posts, read 38,129,998 times
Reputation: 2661

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You misunderstand the cost of water. It is virtually all in the distribution and treatment system. An order of magnitude increase in the cost of water would hardly move the bill of the consumer. He may well be paying, at peak rate, $800 or $900 an acre foot...but of this less than $10 is the cost of water. So large increases in water cost do not flow through...unlike energy.

Los Angeles is such a different case from other SW areas that it is difficult to deal with in the context and is certainly irrelevant. Los Angeles suffer from rust beltitis....the loss of a large number of well payed manufacturing jobs over the last 20 years.

Further the population of Los Angeles has gone majority foreign born...a first for a major US metropolitan area. Hispanics are now the largest group and will soon obtain majority status. Asians have also vastly increased. The effect has lowered the average wage significantly...Though it is not clear that a lot of this has had the middle class impact that the loss of manufacturing has had.

Note that Los Angeles County is about as well fixed with colleges and universities as any state in the great lake area. So if the strategy works in the Lakes it should work in LA as well.

Finally I would note that the population of Los Angeles county is still increasing...at least according to LA county.
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Old 11-30-2006, 03:26 PM
 
Location: 5 miles from the center of the universe-The Superstition Mountains
1,084 posts, read 5,781,577 times
Reputation: 606
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ponderosa View Post
Just a thought. Sheriff Joe keeps hundreds of inmates out in tents in the heat of summer. No AC, no coolers, just water. None die (except from the tasers or choke holds).
Sorry, but tasers don't kill people. I've been 'tased' a couple times. IT HURTS! But I didn't die. Neither have tens of thousands of other police officers who have taken that exciting "5 second ride" in training. It may be because we weren't "tweaking" (meth and coke users) at the time. Choke holds, if applied wrong or held way too long, yea they can kill anyone. If done correctly, they are "carotid restraints" - not applied across the windpipe. They are being banned by some agencies just because of the risk.

Back to the point: People lived here many years before a/c was invented. High ceilings and adobe walls kept people cool in the territorial days. Swamp coolers work fine except during high humidity months and are much more cost efficient. I'll take the "risk" of heat exhaustion over hypothermia any day.
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Old 12-03-2006, 11:27 AM
 
435 posts, read 1,574,210 times
Reputation: 330
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ponderosa View Post
First, "scores" of homeless do not die from the heat. Give me your source for that please. A handful are found dead, usually exhibiting severely compromised health from drugs or alcohol or malnutrition. AC is a comfort, but hardly a necessity. Properly hydrated, one can tolerate far more than this climate can dish out. People die from the heat because they can't cool and that is a humidity issue. Try getting yourself wet and stand in front of a fan in Phoenix summer. Getting out of the pool even in the hot summer nights puts goose-bumps all over you. It's coooold! All you need to survive here is a bottle of water and a shady spot. I worked in construction while I was in college building houses in Tucson. This was in mid-suumer in full sun. It was nasty, but you actually get used to the heat when you are outside of the AC.

AZ does not have refineries but neither do many states. Everybody has to import something that is needed for modern life. As for fossil fuels, we have an abundance in the Black Mesa area of NE AZ. There are several power plants in the SW that are fueled by Black Mesa coal - won't go into the environmental issues. AZ generates a significant portion of electricity for AZ and CA in the nation's largest nuclear plant, Palo Verde. Uranium that fuels the plant also comes from the Navajo Reservation in NE AZ/NW NM. The region also produces oil and natural gas. Much of the US copper comes from Arizona and virtually all of the winter lettuce. No salads for you Steve22 this year.

Anyway, hey if posting some trash about the sunbelt is going to keep people away, I say have at it. Lord knows, there are too many of them rust-belters and California dreamers here already. Katie, bar the door!
First of all, I'm sure you'd have to admit that daytime highs in Tucson run a good 5-10 degrees on average cooler than Phoenix in the summer. The difference in comfort and safety between 105 and 115 degrees is huge. Also, Tucson doesn't experience, at least not yet, the phenomenon we know in Phoenix as the "heat island effect"- the trapping of solar radiation by acre upon acre of concrete and asphalt, which has driven up overnight temps in the valley over the past decade or so about 10 degrees higher than what they used to be. Neither, for that matter, did the inhabitants of this region 50+ years ago, before the advent of a/c. Back then, it would have been possible to shade oneself during the daytime from the miserable heat, and look forward to much cooler temps once the sun set. Not so anymore.

Anyway, here's a link to a CDC report on heat-related deaths in the U.S. from 1979-2002.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5425a2.htm

Here's an excerpt from that report:

"Findings indicated that, during 1979--2002, a total of 4,780 heat-related deaths in the United States were attributable to weather conditions and that, during 1993--2002, the incidence of such deaths was three to seven times greater in Arizona than in the United States overall."


Here's another link to an article by the NOAA, showing that heat is by far and away the deadliest weather-related hazard to humans, statistically speaking.

http://www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/mag208.htm

An excerpt from that article: "According to NOAA scientists, a Mean Heat Index above 85 degrees Fahrenheit is considered dangerous."
Phoenix, for those keeping score, therefore violates the danger threshold pretty much daily for about 6 straight months.

And finally, per your request, an article reporting the number of heat-related deaths among the homeless in Phoenix (and yes, it is quite a bit more than a "handful"). I work in an E.R., by the way; I don't just make this crap up, for future reference.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/ju...heat-j26.shtml

Bottom line: you may think extreme heat is more comfortable than dealing with cold and snow, which is your prerogative. But don't kid yourself into thinking that the human body deals with extreme heat nearly as well as it's equipped to deal with cold. It isn't. Sweating is, compared to shivering, a very inefficient way of regulating body temperature, and it only works at all within a certain temperature range. Heat kills. Cold can be tamed, much more easily. That's just a scientific truth.
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Old 12-03-2006, 11:52 AM
 
Location: Sonoran Desert
39,026 posts, read 51,082,683 times
Reputation: 28222
Quote:
Originally Posted by steve22 View Post
First of all, I'm sure you'd have to admit that daytime highs in Tucson run a good 5-10 degrees on average cooler than Phoenix in the summer. The difference in comfort and safety between 105 and 115 degrees is huge. Also, Tucson doesn't experience, at least not yet, the phenomenon we know in Phoenix as the "heat island effect"- the trapping of solar radiation by acre upon acre of concrete and asphalt, which has driven up overnight temps in the valley over the past decade or so about 10 degrees higher than what they used to be. Neither, for that matter, did the inhabitants of this region 50+ years ago, before the advent of a/c. Back then, it would have been possible to shade oneself during the daytime from the miserable heat, and look forward to much cooler temps once the sun set. Not so anymore.

Anyway, here's a link to a CDC report on heat-related deaths in the U.S. from 1979-2002.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5425a2.htm

Here's an excerpt from that report:

"Findings indicated that, during 1979--2002, a total of 4,780 heat-related deaths in the United States were attributable to weather conditions and that, during 1993--2002, the incidence of such deaths was three to seven times greater in Arizona than in the United States overall."


Here's another link to an article by the NOAA, showing that heat is by far and away the deadliest weather-related hazard to humans, statistically speaking.

http://www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/mag208.htm

An excerpt from that article: "According to NOAA scientists, a Mean Heat Index above 85 degrees Fahrenheit is considered dangerous."
Phoenix, for those keeping score, therefore violates the danger threshold pretty much daily for about 6 straight months.

And finally, per your request, an article reporting the number of heat-related deaths among the homeless in Phoenix (and yes, it is quite a bit more than a "handful"). I work in an E.R., by the way; I don't just make this crap up, for future reference.

(broken link)

Bottom line: you may think extreme heat is more comfortable than dealing with cold and snow, which is your prerogative. But don't kid yourself into thinking that the human body deals with extreme heat nearly as well as it's equipped to deal with cold. It isn't. Sweating is, compared to shivering, a very inefficient way of regulating body temperature, and it only works at all within a certain temperature range. Heat kills. Cold can be tamed, much more] easily. That's just a scientific truth.
Pure poppycock! Your "facts" distort the true picture by focusing on a single event that caught local agencies offguard because it had not happened before (and has not again despite the heat) and including large numbers of illegals who perish when subjected to summer temps of the desert without water. Your premise that people can't survive here without ac is utter nonsense. The requirement for survival in the desert is water - plain and simple.
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Old 12-03-2006, 12:46 PM
 
Location: NW Las Vegas - Lone Mountain
15,756 posts, read 38,129,998 times
Reputation: 2661
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ponderosa View Post
Pure poppycock! Your "facts" distort the true picture by focusing on a single event that caught local agencies offguard because it had not happened before (and has not again despite the heat) and including large numbers of illegals who perish when subjected to summer temps of the desert without water. Your premise that people can't survive here without ac is utter nonsense. The requirement for survival in the desert is water - plain and simple.
Actually the quoted article says it pretty well...

"Cities in the northeastern and midwestern United States typically have the strongest weather mortality relationships because weather variability, rather than heat intensity, is the single most important factor in defining human sensitivity to heat. People living in highly variable summer climates are not well adapted to extreme heat, mainly because it occurs irregularly. As a result, temperate cities like Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and New York exhibit extreme increases in the number of deaths reported when an intense heat wave occurs compared to many more tropical cities. This is one reason that early season heat waves are associated with higher mortality — because people within the city population acclimate to the heat as the hot season continues."
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Old 03-15-2010, 03:08 PM
 
2 posts, read 3,740 times
Reputation: 10
Hey California, it IS HOT AS HADES here in the summer. Tucson about 7-10 degrees cooler, has mountains surrounding, Phx has what I call little hot rocks, very low with no vegetation. It's always hotter than news reports.Those who work out in heat have to acclimate to it gradually and drink tons of water. Illegals are smart and teach locals to wear hats and cotton scarfs underneath to cover their neck and mop sweat with. Regardless of above posts, people do die here from the heat, illegals crossing, homeless who don't seek shelter, and kids left in cars by idiot parents; and just regular folks, working in the garden etc. You learn to drink gallons of water, avoid alcohol, and stay indoors if possible during hot months.
Higher than usual unempl, I know people out of work 1 1/2 years, no jobs at all, always lower pay if there are jobs.Phx and Tucson has a lot of population sprawl, cheaper housing in Phx, tons of foreclosures in both, but you have to compete with rich investors to buy. Very depressed economy, we stay for the winters, laid back lifestyle. I would not live in Calif for love or money.
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