Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's chucking. It's just us, but that's okay because
Speaker 1: we today are doing stuff you should know. The heat
Speaker 1: wave addition, that's the heat brows of the fact. Have
Speaker 1: you been singing that song all day? I've been trying
Speaker 1: so hard not to and it's not working. How about you?
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's Martha Invent and the Vandellas. How can
Speaker 1: you not? Yeah? The problem is is all I just
Speaker 1: it's just this constant loop of heat wave like heat wave,
Speaker 1: I know, heat wave. Just that's it over and that's
Speaker 1: the only part I know. And it's terrible. I think
Speaker 1: I know that. One of the first lines is uh
Speaker 1: whenever we oh near me. Oh, that's the same song.
Speaker 1: I think, so right, because I'm I thinking of something. No,
Speaker 1: I think it is. But every movie that ever uses
Speaker 1: it just uses that first line and then starts to
Speaker 1: fade out before they get to the heat wave card.
Speaker 1: So I never put two and two together. A great song,
Speaker 1: great song, for sure, But you don't want just heat
Speaker 1: wave on a loop in your head. I can tell you.
Speaker 1: Uh no, No, I just looked at the lyrics and
Speaker 1: I'm wrong anyway, But whenever I'm with him, Okay, but
Speaker 1: it's that's what you're talking about. It's not like a
Speaker 1: totally different song or something. Whenever I'm with him, something
Speaker 1: inside starts to burning and I'm filled with desire. Heat wave?
Speaker 1: Could it be a devil in me? Heat wave? The
Speaker 1: way love is supposed to be? He'd wave, Yes, All right,
Speaker 1: let's done. Let's never speak of that again. Sexy song.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was that sexy. Well, sure, she
Speaker 1: talking about getting all hot for a dude, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's your over. That's not what There's nothing
Speaker 1: sexy about the heat wave that we're talking about. No,
Speaker 1: deadly maybe the antithesis of sexy. Yeah, they think about
Speaker 1: it heat wave sex. And there's such a thing as
Speaker 1: cold waves, which will touch on briefly. They are very
Speaker 1: much related to heat waves are kind of its polar opposite,
Speaker 1: if you'll excuse the pun, but the you could make
Speaker 1: a case that that would be far sexier than a
Speaker 1: heat wave. Yeah. At least you're you know, warming yourself up, right,
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Uh, And boy, we we used a
Speaker 1: lot of great weather website references for this one, right, Yeah, yeah, great, great,
Speaker 1: great segue there, chuck. So, um, we got some info
Speaker 1: from from Noah j No. Actually, the thing is, I
Speaker 1: can't even be taken seriously when I'm trying to be
Speaker 1: serious and genuine like that was genuine. I'm still learning.
Speaker 1: So that was so Noah gave us a bunch of information,
Speaker 1: your nephew. Um. There's also the Center for Climate Change
Speaker 1: and Energy Solutions. Is this my cue? Yep uh, World
Speaker 1: Weather Attribution, the New York Times, the failing New York Times, NASA,
Speaker 1: ACU Weather, Yeah, and a bunch more, but those are
Speaker 1: the ones that we got the meat of this stuff from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about heat waves, which is the I
Speaker 1: was about to call it a phenomenon. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it is categorized at that, but it's a weather event.
Speaker 1: It's a natural disaster. Well yeah, and as we'll see,
Speaker 1: one of one of the worst. It is when there
Speaker 1: are consecutive days where the temperature is higher than usually
Speaker 1: is that is to say, higher than the historical average.
Speaker 1: But there's no like it depends on where you are.
Speaker 1: What is uh, what a heat wave is like, It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily like three days and it's eight degrees hotter
Speaker 1: than usual for those three days. Now, because it varies
Speaker 1: region to region, like in New Hampshire, a heat wave
Speaker 1: of two days, two days or two consecutive days where
Speaker 1: it's ninety degrees fare hight or more is a heat wave.
Speaker 1: And that's just like yawn to those of us down
Speaker 1: in the southeast. That's like a fairly nice day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's regional, like spices that go in hot dogs, right.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is like that depends the reason
Speaker 1: that they do that. The reason there's no single definition
Speaker 1: for heat waves because people are acclimated to different kinds
Speaker 1: of weather, and if you're not acclimated to warm weather,
Speaker 1: it's going to affect you and your body a lot worse.
Speaker 1: So it makes a lot of sense. But the two
Speaker 1: days in a row as low as ninety degrees fair
Speaker 1: at height, that's the minimum that I've seen in the
Speaker 1: United States that constitutes a legit heat wave. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, a legit heat wave. Oh boy, we're gonna
Speaker 1: do that the whole time. I think I'm going to okay. Um,
Speaker 1: this one speaks to my heart because, as everyone who's
Speaker 1: ever listening to the show much knows and as you
Speaker 1: my friends certainly know, I am a I'm a polar bear.
Speaker 1: So the sun and humidity is not good for Chuck.
Speaker 1: I hate it. I hate it. I grew up in
Speaker 1: the South, and it's it's worse now. It feels like
Speaker 1: it's not like I've gotten acclimated, Like you know, it's
Speaker 1: easy to say you get acclimated. But even as as
Speaker 1: much as I sweat, which is a I can't imagine
Speaker 1: how hot I would be if I didn't sweat like
Speaker 1: I sweat. Well, yeah, you'd be like one of those
Speaker 1: people who can't sweat and can die from it. But
Speaker 1: when I lived in l a uh, it can get
Speaker 1: very hot out there, but generally if you can park
Speaker 1: it under a tree, you might get a breeze and
Speaker 1: you can sweat and you're cooling down pretty good. But
Speaker 1: it's it's there's no relief when you live in the
Speaker 1: South because of humidity. We're going to talk about all that,
Speaker 1: but I just want to kind of set set up
Speaker 1: my personal involvement with heat waves, which is boo thumbs down.
Speaker 1: You're personally involved through sweatiness, is what you're saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when those heat waves, especially the late heat waves
Speaker 1: in the summer when it should be cooling down come through.
Speaker 1: It's just it makes me mad. Yeah, those are not
Speaker 1: fun because your your bodies in your mind has been
Speaker 1: like okay, great, it's fall, and then you're just dog
Speaker 1: days summer again. It's terrible. I'm with you on that.
Speaker 1: But how did these things come about to begin with?
Speaker 1: Why is it hot for a week straight way hotter
Speaker 1: than it normally is, and why doesn't is just cool
Speaker 1: down every night? Well, first we should say, because I
Speaker 1: don't want to lose anybody this early on if they're like, uh,
Speaker 1: two days in a row of ninety degree weather? Why
Speaker 1: are you guys even talking about this? The reason we
Speaker 1: are talking about this because, like we said, Chuck, Noah
Speaker 1: classifies heat waves as a disaster, and a lot of
Speaker 1: really terrible stuff can happen during a heat wave, even
Speaker 1: of just a few days. Like it's it's a an invisible, silent,
Speaker 1: deadly natural disaster that we're only beginning to awaken. Too,
Speaker 1: silent but deadly. So as you're saying how do heat
Speaker 1: waves work, you're kind of set me up for that one, right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I thought you were going to hit him with
Speaker 1: the big stat which is heat waves kill more people
Speaker 1: than all other natural disasters combined. Um or I think
Speaker 1: you saw somewhere else all but hurricane. But point being,
Speaker 1: they kill a lot of people, like way more than
Speaker 1: you think. Yeah, and even if they don't necessarily kill
Speaker 1: more than uh, kill more people at least in the
Speaker 1: United States. That it was just the statistic I saw.
Speaker 1: Um then all other natural disasters combined, that at the
Speaker 1: very least, it kills more people per year than all
Speaker 1: other natural disasters. It's the deadliest kind of natural disaster.
Speaker 1: The thing is is it doesn't happen all at once,
Speaker 1: like say a flood that takes a bunch of people's
Speaker 1: lives in a very a very acute area, right concentrated area. Um.
Speaker 1: It happened slowly over the course of days in a
Speaker 1: very large region, and people just kind of die. And
Speaker 1: it's not immediately apparent like like, oh, I found you
Speaker 1: in floodwater, you drowned in a flood. It's I found
Speaker 1: you dead on your sofa, you know, in your apartment.
Speaker 1: And I'm not maybe you had a heart attack or
Speaker 1: something like that. It's it's not That's what I was saying.
Speaker 1: We're just beginning to awaken to it because it's not
Speaker 1: an obvious natural disaster, but it is most decidedly a
Speaker 1: natural disaster. Yeah, that's a good point. Like it's not
Speaker 1: quite as grabby in the news. I mean, they certainly
Speaker 1: report on it, but it's not and you know, the
Speaker 1: news is is well, I don't want to talk about
Speaker 1: the news. Um, let's talk about heat waves. Heat waves,
Speaker 1: that's right. So the whole thing about a heat wave
Speaker 1: is it's a basically a warm mass of hot air
Speaker 1: that's a just a lope or no, a high pressure system.
Speaker 1: So let me just restate that less confusingly. It's a
Speaker 1: high pressure system that's made up of very stagnant, still
Speaker 1: warm air that kind of finds its way over a
Speaker 1: region and doesn't move for a little while and things
Speaker 1: get really oppressive during that period. Yeah, And these high
Speaker 1: pressure systems are just part of the normal weather patterns
Speaker 1: and they generally kind of circulate clockwise and kind of
Speaker 1: move on through. Uh. The jet stream takes care of that, thankfully.
Speaker 1: That that west to east air current that moves pushes
Speaker 1: all the weather around, always shoving the weather around in
Speaker 1: the northern hemisphere at least. Yeah, well, come on, is
Speaker 1: there any other hemisphere, sorry, America's centric or anything. No,
Speaker 1: not at all, but are in the northern hemisphere. The
Speaker 1: jet stream hits us about at the belt between Canada's
Speaker 1: shirt and America's jeans. And like I said, it usually
Speaker 1: pushes stuff around and it'll get hot and then it'll
Speaker 1: push that hot stuff out. But during the summertime, the
Speaker 1: jet stream slows down. Uh. They have found that overall,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk, you know, quite a bit about
Speaker 1: climate change. Overall, it's slowing down period some, but in
Speaker 1: the summertime it's it definitely slows down from its you know,
Speaker 1: two and fifty mile per hour or so peak. And
Speaker 1: that's gonna obviously keep that hot weather there a little longer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even under normal conditions, let alone climate change conditions. So
Speaker 1: when all of the all those factors are are kind
Speaker 1: of falling into place where the jet stream is feeling
Speaker 1: a little logy and not moving too quickly, and there's
Speaker 1: a big mass of hot air that kind of moves
Speaker 1: up as a high pressure front and just settles in
Speaker 1: over a region, you've got everything you need for that
Speaker 1: massive hot air to just stay put and continue heating up,
Speaker 1: which is the big problem because a high pressure um
Speaker 1: weather system forces air downward and it's hot air too. Normally,
Speaker 1: you have hot air at the surface, or air that
Speaker 1: warms up at the surface and it moves upward, it
Speaker 1: floats upward, and it's replaced by cool air that comes in,
Speaker 1: and you've got breezes. Well, one of the things that's
Speaker 1: the hallmark of a high pressure system is there there
Speaker 1: ain't no breezes because it's just sitting there pushing the
Speaker 1: air downward towards the surface of the Earth, which prevents
Speaker 1: that air from rye eazing, so there's no cool air
Speaker 1: to come in, so there's no breeze. But also because
Speaker 1: that air is just sitting there at the surface, it's
Speaker 1: just getting warmer and warmer and warm warmer. And the
Speaker 1: surface air temperature is what we're concerned with, because it's
Speaker 1: the temperature of the air about two meters above the
Speaker 1: Earth's surface above the ground, so it's about six and
Speaker 1: a half feet, which is where a lot of us
Speaker 1: are trying to take a breath in this really hot air. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of you taller people, sure, but even still,
Speaker 1: if you stood on your tippy toes, it would affect
Speaker 1: you a lot too. Well, the other thing that happens
Speaker 1: to because that air isn't rising, that means it's not
Speaker 1: gonna rain. Uh, and rain obviously can be away to
Speaker 1: cool things down. So it just it's sort of acts
Speaker 1: as this uh, it's sort of like a feedback loop
Speaker 1: basically where the hotter it gets, the hotter it's gonna get. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And even the other thing about a high pressure front
Speaker 1: is it pushes like air away from it, outward from
Speaker 1: the edges of it, so there's no fronts coming in
Speaker 1: to like kind of relieve it. It's so the stronger
Speaker 1: they get, the more all of these factors contribute, and then,
Speaker 1: like you said, creates this positive feedback cycle and basically
Speaker 1: you're just totally at the mercy of the jet stream
Speaker 1: to move this thing away eventually, and it can take
Speaker 1: some time. And so that's what a heat wave is.
Speaker 1: It's when one of these like all these factors kind
Speaker 1: of come together and this massive hot air settles in
Speaker 1: over a region and just keeps getting hotter and hotter.
Speaker 1: And in the daytime, that's that's the like the money
Speaker 1: time as far as people are concerned with heat waves,
Speaker 1: because the sun's out, it's really really hot. The temperatures
Speaker 1: are really high, and it's pretty bad. No one's going
Speaker 1: to argue that the daytime during a heat wave stinks,
Speaker 1: But it's the night time that's the more insidious part.
Speaker 1: That's the real problem with the with the heat wave, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, even if it gets really hot, but it's
Speaker 1: not a heat wave. The earth helps itself out by
Speaker 1: cooling down at night. Your body, like everything cools down
Speaker 1: at night. It's a it's a great chance to just
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, kick off your shoes and like
Speaker 1: relax and recharge. Yeah, like humans, the human body needs it. Uh,
Speaker 1: Animals bodies need it. The earth itself needs it. The
Speaker 1: buildings and the concrete and the asphalt and the steel
Speaker 1: and the glass. It all depends on cooling down some
Speaker 1: at night. So it can be like, well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get hot again tomorrow, but at least I cooled down
Speaker 1: tonight and you know, kind of relaxed and like you said,
Speaker 1: repaired my energy. But when a heat wave comes, it's
Speaker 1: not cooling down at night. So I mean, just imagine yourself.
Speaker 1: If you never get a chance to cool down at
Speaker 1: night and you stay hot, then that sun comes up
Speaker 1: the next day, it's gonna be twice as bad, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're starting from a higher set point at the beginning,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's one of the hallmarks of a
Speaker 1: heat wave is it's hot even before the sun comes up.
Speaker 1: That's which is not pleasant, and it's certainly not good
Speaker 1: sleeping weather. Those are the worst, man like, especially here
Speaker 1: in the South, when you go out, like you go
Speaker 1: to let your dog out at eleven o'clock at night,
Speaker 1: and it's like eighty seven degrees or something, you just
Speaker 1: start sweating immediately before that. It's just brutal. It's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, let's take a break. I need to
Speaker 1: go I don't know, soaking a bathtub or something. I'm
Speaker 1: getting a little hot down here. Uh, And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about the dreaded humidity right after this. Learn it's stuff
Speaker 1: with Joshua John Okay, Chuck lay it on him that
Speaker 1: very famous phrase that actually holds true. Um, youth has
Speaker 1: wasted on the young, sure that one, but also early
Speaker 1: bird gets the worm and UM never say candy man
Speaker 1: into a mirror. Well, it's certainly not three times in
Speaker 1: a row. It's not the heat, it's the humidity. There's
Speaker 1: the one I was looking for, right that's the one,
Speaker 1: and that's true. I mean we were talking about humidity earlier.
Speaker 1: That is what you know the humans have as this
Speaker 1: great mechanism built in a kind of a self contained
Speaker 1: air conditioning system which is called sweat. And if it's
Speaker 1: if the air is fairly dry outside, and like I
Speaker 1: mentioned getting under that shade tree in Los Angeles, you
Speaker 1: can sweat and that water is gonna evaporate off of
Speaker 1: you and a cool breeze will come through and it
Speaker 1: actually feels good. And that is how you regulate and
Speaker 1: cool down. When the humidity happens, it's hard to near
Speaker 1: impossible for that sweat to really cool you down. You'll
Speaker 1: still be sweating, but it won't have that same effect, right, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's just there's no place for that sweat to go.
Speaker 1: It doesn't just move into the air because there's already
Speaker 1: so much water vapor into the air. So the higher
Speaker 1: the humidity is, the worst off it is for you.
Speaker 1: And then if you take high temperatures as well, that
Speaker 1: combination of high humidity and high temperature can be really bad.
Speaker 1: And back in the seventies there was a guy, actually
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, somebody named R. G. Steadman. They
Speaker 1: came up in nineteen seventy nine with assessment of sultry nous,
Speaker 1: which we call today the heat index. It was the
Speaker 1: paper that put the heat index out there, and the
Speaker 1: heat index is basically, yeah, it really is. You know,
Speaker 1: it sounds it sounds like a Tennessee Williams play or
Speaker 1: something like that. So the heat index makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense because when it's really humid out and it's
Speaker 1: high in temperature, that humidity makes it feel even hotter
Speaker 1: because we have trouble sweating. So so R. G. Steadman
Speaker 1: came up with the heat index that kind of gives
Speaker 1: you a much better understanding of what the actual temperature
Speaker 1: as far as your human body is concerned. That's why
Speaker 1: they also call it the apparent temperature or the fuels
Speaker 1: like temperature. Yeah, and that's the only one I care about.
Speaker 1: I don't even know why they less regular temperature. It
Speaker 1: should just be heat indecks and wind chill in the winter,
Speaker 1: because that's the only thing that matters. And I guess
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's like showing your math or something.
Speaker 1: So they have to go through it all, but as
Speaker 1: far as your human body is concerned, those are really
Speaker 1: the only two measures that matter, or at least for me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know how sometimes you can end up down
Speaker 1: a rabbit hole and like not find a way out
Speaker 1: and you have to just crawl backwards out of it,
Speaker 1: and you're you're kind of worse off for the wear
Speaker 1: because you went a little mad in there. Sure that
Speaker 1: happened to me. With humidity, heat index, evaporation, condensation, I'm
Speaker 1: like researching it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, And I'm like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's some some connections here between
Speaker 1: all these things that my brain is not making. I'm
Speaker 1: just sensing that it's all very much connected, and I'm
Speaker 1: even reading stuff that's saying it's connected. I just can't
Speaker 1: figure out how it's all connected because it's not as
Speaker 1: simple as like humidity or you know, the heat index
Speaker 1: is humidity times temperature divided by two or something like that.
Speaker 1: That's not how it works. It's way more sophisticated than that,
Speaker 1: and it takes into account a lot of different stuff
Speaker 1: so that if you if you actually put a lower
Speaker 1: temperature in with higher humidity, it will bring the temperature down.
Speaker 1: And then there's some temperatures like say seventy degrees where
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter what you do with the humidity,
Speaker 1: it's still just gonna feel like seventy degrees. So there's
Speaker 1: like a lot of different weirdness in there. But the
Speaker 1: thing is the upshot of all this. I was just
Speaker 1: kind of confessing and getting off my chest that I'm
Speaker 1: a little obsessed with this and if any any meteorologists
Speaker 1: or climatologists can explain all this to me, I would
Speaker 1: love to hear it. But as far as heat waves
Speaker 1: are concerned, if you have high temperatures and high humidity,
Speaker 1: some really astounding stuff happens when you put those together.
Speaker 1: As far as the heat index is concerned. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: just not to harp on my personal um sweating issues.
Speaker 1: We've talked about it a lot over the years, but
Speaker 1: it's the embarrassing thing for me is not that I've
Speaker 1: sweat a lot, because a It's that's why I never
Speaker 1: had like acne growing up, because I'm just constantly sweating
Speaker 1: everything through. We've got like the cleanest pores in the world,
Speaker 1: um and it you know, it helps cool me down,
Speaker 1: But it's when it's like seventy six degrees and super humid,
Speaker 1: and other people are like or even in the sixties
Speaker 1: or fifties, and they're like, it's really cool. Why are
Speaker 1: you sweating, like because it's humid. I don't care if
Speaker 1: it's forty degrees. If it's super humid, I might break
Speaker 1: a sweat. Yeah, it gets through. If you're sweating at
Speaker 1: forty degrees, that's that's some sweaty us for sure. Maybe
Speaker 1: not forty fifty. We could do some tests, all right,
Speaker 1: let's do oh yeah, let's do some science. I'm gone up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a humidity lab or something. Okay, but I still
Speaker 1: get to get a lab coat, right Sure of the
Speaker 1: color of my choosing. Um, I'll let you select from
Speaker 1: three colors of my choosing. What are they? Cinnamon, powder, blue,
Speaker 1: and orange? Okay? Great, okay, any one of those, then
Speaker 1: that's mine. It's mine. Banana yellow was going to be
Speaker 1: in there, but you missed. You missed the boat. At
Speaker 1: least you didn't make me dress up in a banana costume. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. It's funny. I was shopping for Halloween for
Speaker 1: this year and I kind of didn't want to go
Speaker 1: is a devo, and so I was looking up for
Speaker 1: those yellow jumpsuits and I was waylaid because you kind
Speaker 1: of end up having to be whatever your kid says
Speaker 1: you have to be. So I think we're all gonna
Speaker 1: be spooky things this year, but I had to put
Speaker 1: the devo thing on the back burner. You could be
Speaker 1: like zombie Divo. Not a bad idea, No, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's a great idea. Yeah, you can be zombie anything.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the beauty of the zombie Zombie b York,
Speaker 1: Zombie Mark Mother's Ball, Zombie b York. I like that,
Speaker 1: Just wear that Swan dress and walk around saying I
Speaker 1: was trying to think of how Buyork would say brains
Speaker 1: but not of my head. Couldn't put it together. That
Speaker 1: was perfect thing. Uh. So you mentioned insidious effects and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about those because, uh, very wide reaching.
Speaker 1: It's not just people get hot and people die. Uh.
Speaker 1: It affects kind of everything on the planet. And it's
Speaker 1: easy to kind of think of heat stroke and dehydration
Speaker 1: and something like that during the day, like you said,
Speaker 1: because that's when you count on it, and that's when
Speaker 1: you might take precautions, which, by the way, to go
Speaker 1: listen to our Desert Survival episode for that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, good tips there, but not like you said,
Speaker 1: it's that's when it's really bad because the human body
Speaker 1: really depends on that rest and that reset and that
Speaker 1: cool down. And if you stay hot, your body and
Speaker 1: is you know, especially if you have like high bread
Speaker 1: high blood pressure or like heart issues, it's working overtime
Speaker 1: at night when it should be cooling down because you
Speaker 1: I think you're like lowest body temperature of the twenty
Speaker 1: four hour cycle is during sleep. So if you're not
Speaker 1: hitting that cool down cycle, then everything is just doing
Speaker 1: a lot of extra work. Yeah, in particular your heart is.
Speaker 1: And when your heart is working hard and then it
Speaker 1: has to work hard again the next day, it's like
Speaker 1: that that set point doesn't ever or the set point
Speaker 1: starts higher the next day. So after a few days
Speaker 1: of this, especially if you have a bum ticker to
Speaker 1: begin with, UM, it can be quite dangerous for you.
Speaker 1: And so people like the elderly, UM children, like very
Speaker 1: young children, they're usually the first casualties of UM of
Speaker 1: a heat wave. But there are a lot of other
Speaker 1: people who are susceptible to UM, especially people who don't
Speaker 1: have easy access to air conditioning UH, people who are
Speaker 1: of low income, who very sadly might even have air conditioning,
Speaker 1: but don't have power right then, or don't have the
Speaker 1: money to to to run their air conditioner. The homeless,
Speaker 1: um people who work outside and sorry, I gotta I
Speaker 1: gotta work no matter what to keep food on the table,
Speaker 1: whether it's a heat wave or not. They can be
Speaker 1: in big trouble as well. But then so can any
Speaker 1: of us, especially when that heat index starts to jump.
Speaker 1: Like when you have like a hundred degree temperatures with
Speaker 1: um like fifty five percent humidity. You put those together,
Speaker 1: it's suddenly a hundred and twenty four out. That's not
Speaker 1: good for anybody, you know. No, And you know I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that it's like people and animals and buildings
Speaker 1: and everything. The infrastructure takes, you know, it takes a hit.
Speaker 1: Um like railway railroad tracks can literally up and buckle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they won't run trains during a heat wave a lot
Speaker 1: of times for that reason because they could derail. Yeah, concrete,
Speaker 1: an asphalt, any kind of metal and glass on a
Speaker 1: building you've uh, I mean, buildings can like their shape
Speaker 1: can briefly change and expand and contract or I guess
Speaker 1: expand and not contract for a little while, all due
Speaker 1: to this heat wave. And you know, we talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about the urban heat island effect at some point, um,
Speaker 1: but this is you know, this is why you got
Speaker 1: to New York City and a heat wave and it's
Speaker 1: it's one of the hottest places on the planet. It
Speaker 1: feels like, yeah, because it actually is way hotter than
Speaker 1: other places because of all those building materials number one,
Speaker 1: that are excellent absorbers of heat, all that blacktop and
Speaker 1: asphalt and um, all that steel, but also chuck like
Speaker 1: the distinct lack of vegetation like trees and stuff that
Speaker 1: actually helped cool the air. Like it's not just shade
Speaker 1: that they do, Like they actually release water vapor into
Speaker 1: the air and actually cool the nearby air. So the
Speaker 1: more trees you have, the lower the urban heat island effect.
Speaker 1: But that's just not like a huge, huge um trait
Speaker 1: of the average city. Like somebody actually wrote a book
Speaker 1: called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. That's how significant the
Speaker 1: idea of a tree in Brooklyn was. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. That's funny. Uh. Energy takes a big wall
Speaker 1: up to um for the obvious reason and more um
Speaker 1: obvious when being that you know, everyone's cranking those air
Speaker 1: conditioners everyone's refrigerators and freezers are working over time. Um.
Speaker 1: Industrial refrigeration is working over time. And you combine that
Speaker 1: with the fact that transmission capacity is reduced during these
Speaker 1: high temperatures, it's gonna strain the electrical grid even more. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's just nothing is running with any kind of efficiency.
Speaker 1: And if you want to really have some people die quickly,
Speaker 1: you have an energy power outage during a heat wave
Speaker 1: because of these overstressed systems. And that's when all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, like nobody has refrigeration or air conditioning, and uh,
Speaker 1: it can get brutal pretty quickly. Yeah, because I mean,
Speaker 1: if you, if you think about it, you've got incredible
Speaker 1: demand on the system. And then the system itself can't
Speaker 1: really um, it can't get rid of its you know,
Speaker 1: waste heat like it needs to, just like a human
Speaker 1: body does. So Yeah, if the system blacks out or
Speaker 1: even browns out, it's that's not the time to do it,
Speaker 1: but that's when it's most likely to happen. And then
Speaker 1: on the same on the opposite side of the same coin, chuck,
Speaker 1: are those cold waves I was talking about? Um, And
Speaker 1: that was what happened in Texas. Uh this past winter
Speaker 1: it was a high pressure front, but instead of a
Speaker 1: mass of like super hot air, it was a massive
Speaker 1: super cold air and it just settled in and stayed
Speaker 1: there and froze Texas and Texas infrastructure suffered. I think
Speaker 1: we talked about in the electrical grid episode. Um. And
Speaker 1: it was the same thing. They just couldn't keep up
Speaker 1: with the demand, and the weather itself was taxing the
Speaker 1: system too. And uh, it's the same thing in a
Speaker 1: heat wave. It's just for the opposite reasons, but the
Speaker 1: same outcome, right. Uh. And if you're thinking, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: look at the bright side, warmer winters mean we're not
Speaker 1: going to be using as much energy in the wintertime
Speaker 1: to heat our homes, so it all balances out. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's not true. They've done a lot of studies and
Speaker 1: they're pretty much coming to the conclusion that the heat
Speaker 1: is out is tipping that scale too far in the
Speaker 1: other direction. And even if we are saving a little
Speaker 1: bit of energy and or even a great deal of
Speaker 1: energy in the wintertime due to warmer temperatures, it's not
Speaker 1: going to balance it out. Um. Water is another big
Speaker 1: one to chuck, which makes a lot of sense, Like
Speaker 1: people drink more water they need more water. Uh, they
Speaker 1: might take cool baths to cool down, but not just humans.
Speaker 1: Livestock need more water during this time. Um power plants
Speaker 1: need more water to stay a cool, crops need more water.
Speaker 1: Everything needs more water. But the problem is is during
Speaker 1: heat wave when you need water the most, that's when
Speaker 1: it's like the least available because it becomes pretty scarce.
Speaker 1: Because drought and heat waves are they work really well together.
Speaker 1: They kind of go hand in hand. Actually in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases. Yeah, I mean that kind of creates
Speaker 1: a similar feedback feedback loop, and that when there is
Speaker 1: moisture in the ground thanks to rain and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: even when it gets hot, the earth is going to
Speaker 1: soak up a lot of that sun and use some
Speaker 1: of that energy to get rid of that water and
Speaker 1: turn it into water vapor. If that ground is already
Speaker 1: super dry because of a drought, then it's just it's
Speaker 1: basically just baking like an oven, and that energy has
Speaker 1: no other use. It doesn't have the use of turning
Speaker 1: it into water vapor, so it's just baking, yeah, just
Speaker 1: heating that ground up instead, so it just gets hotter
Speaker 1: and hotter, which is terrible stuff. So UM plus also
Speaker 1: with drought stricken landscapes. Those are more susceptible to wildfire.
Speaker 1: So as there's more and more heat waves, we can
Speaker 1: expect worse and more widespread wildfires. Basically too, we talked
Speaker 1: about animals, it's not animals. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people forget about animals and situations like this. Uh. I
Speaker 1: think people think more about animals when it gets super
Speaker 1: super cold and like really bad cold. Friends come in.
Speaker 1: But they're susceptible to the heat too. And it's not
Speaker 1: just you know, our little you know, domesticated pets that
Speaker 1: we love and and unfortunately some of the street animals
Speaker 1: like really suffer. But livestock, you know, if you're on
Speaker 1: a farm, those cows and chickens don't like that kind
Speaker 1: of heat either. Uh. Sometimes it can affect their mortality rates. Uh,
Speaker 1: it can affect things way downstream because uh they might
Speaker 1: be rep you know if they don't want to have
Speaker 1: that heat wave sex either, so that they might be
Speaker 1: reproducing less, which is gonna have a down on stream effect. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you know all the crops are going to
Speaker 1: be affected too, Yeah, especially the ones that cops when
Speaker 1: it comes snatch that what cops want to come and
Speaker 1: snatch my crops. I don't what is that? You do
Speaker 1: remember that as a Cypress Hill lyric, a very famous one.
Speaker 1: I don't. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, I remember. Now, boy,
Speaker 1: we mentioned cypers Hill a lot on the show. They're
Speaker 1: kind of like, uh, they're like a mascot now, like
Speaker 1: Frank the Chair. I knew that sounded familiar. Cops come
Speaker 1: and try to snatch my crops. Here it is, and
Speaker 1: then that has to be followed, of course by heat Wave. Boy,
Speaker 1: somebody should sample that on a on a hip hop tune.
Speaker 1: That'd be great. What heat Wave? Yeah, I bet it
Speaker 1: has been sure. I could see Puff Daddy sampling that.
Speaker 1: That'd be up his alley. Oh yeah, did ever tell
Speaker 1: you I went to his house one time. It sounds
Speaker 1: vaguely familiar, but I'd like to hear it again. It's
Speaker 1: not the biggest story, but I ran an errand as
Speaker 1: p a over to his house one time and had
Speaker 1: to drop something. Now, so I had to go go
Speaker 1: knock on his door and walk inside the front and
Speaker 1: drop something off. Something was something in air quotes. No,
Speaker 1: it was some for the job. It wouldn't a big deal,
Speaker 1: but it was like clothes or something. But it was.
Speaker 1: It was just very shiny and white. Everything was shiny
Speaker 1: and white. I can imagine, which is you know, it's
Speaker 1: a way to go, I guess, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a look it's too much. It's too much. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, there's a long time ago. He
Speaker 1: may not be into that now. But white couches and
Speaker 1: big white marble floors, I mean, I like white couches
Speaker 1: and and I do like white stuff, but it's also like,
Speaker 1: gotta have lots of color. Like the white stuff is
Speaker 1: just a it's just a backdrop for your color. That's
Speaker 1: in my that's my opinion. We are too messy. We
Speaker 1: can't have white things. I understand, you know. Yeah, told
Speaker 1: well you need to have if you have a white couch,
Speaker 1: it's got to be a uh slip cover because you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to wash it, yes, if you drink red wine.
Speaker 1: But but there is one that we haven't covered you.
Speaker 1: I think we should before we take a break, and
Speaker 1: it is air pollution, which uh might be overlooked by
Speaker 1: some people, but it really makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1: because number one, we're like demanding way more from power
Speaker 1: plants than usual during a heatwave with all that a c.
Speaker 1: So those power plants are putting out more emissions than usual.
Speaker 1: But then the actual like conditions of the heat wave
Speaker 1: itself make the air pollution worse, does it not? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean that that same cap that uh kind of
Speaker 1: forces all that air down and keeps everything stagnant, that
Speaker 1: same cap is in place for uh, these emissions that
Speaker 1: are going up into the air. So it's just it's
Speaker 1: just like bottling it all up. It's gonna make things
Speaker 1: a lot worse. Yeah, and so, and also ozone is
Speaker 1: more easily produced. You've got ozone and like particulate matter
Speaker 1: from from emissions, all combining to make your breathing much
Speaker 1: more difficult. Danger. Right, So let's take a break, man,
Speaker 1: and then we'll talk about some couple of famous heat
Speaker 1: waves and what the future holds. How about that, let's
Speaker 1: do it. Learn it's stuff with Joshua John stuff all right.
Speaker 1: So if you were alive on the earth this summer, um,
Speaker 1: you might remember and said, all you almost started with it,
Speaker 1: and you didn't. You've really come a long way John
Speaker 1: with what you almost said, unless you're living under a rock.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no, no, it really wasn't all right, Um,
Speaker 1: so between June and June, Uh, something was brewing down
Speaker 1: in Mexico that was very hot, and this big, massive
Speaker 1: warm air moved up and kind of settled over the
Speaker 1: middle of the United States and and didn't move for
Speaker 1: a while. And uh, it was just sort of your
Speaker 1: classic heat wave. But even in places like where that
Speaker 1: they're used to the heat in the summertime, it got
Speaker 1: exceedingly hot. Like if you were in Arizona and Phoenix,
Speaker 1: you're used to hot weather for sure, but it it
Speaker 1: cracked a hundred and fifteen degrees for six consecutive days,
Speaker 1: which is a record for even Phoenix. That is not
Speaker 1: okay for anybody, no, but so so it's bad enough
Speaker 1: for Phoenix. But still, I'm sure the people of things
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, it's kind of hot, but come on,
Speaker 1: we could we could handle worse. Um, it was play
Speaker 1: this is where it's not normally hot at all. That
Speaker 1: really took the brunt of that heat wave. And as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, the heat wave is generally called
Speaker 1: referred to as the Pacific Northwest heatwave because that's where
Speaker 1: it really stunk the worst. Yeah, I can't believe Portland,
Speaker 1: Oregon got up to a hundred and twelve degrees. That
Speaker 1: is bananas. Yeah, And we should say when you're talking
Speaker 1: about air temperatures and you are seeing the temperature on
Speaker 1: the news or whatever, that measurement was taken in the shade.
Speaker 1: That's not the sunlight sunshine temperature. That's what that the
Speaker 1: temperature is in the shade. Okay, So wrap your head
Speaker 1: around that one. Yeah. So a hundred and twelve in
Speaker 1: Portland's hundred and four in Seattle, which broke a record.
Speaker 1: Um it was. It was bananas and and that kind
Speaker 1: of like a lot of people in that part of
Speaker 1: the country. I don't really know percentages, but there are
Speaker 1: there are people who don't have h VAC units. They
Speaker 1: count on opening their windows and stuff like that. There
Speaker 1: are places in the United States, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: that don't have HVAC and that that use ceiling fans
Speaker 1: and stuff and they just don't eat. Yeah, for sure. Um.
Speaker 1: There was another town too that we have to mention,
Speaker 1: chuck Lytton, British Columbia, which is north a couple hundred
Speaker 1: miles north of Seattle. They hit a hundred and sixteen
Speaker 1: and set a new record not just for themselves but
Speaker 1: for Canada as a whole and then the town burned
Speaker 1: down from a wildfire right afterward. Very sad, so like
Speaker 1: it was a really big deal. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that that I think this the Pacific Northwest heat
Speaker 1: wave in June, and I think there were multiple ones
Speaker 1: around that region over the well not just in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest, but in like the Midwest States in particular
Speaker 1: U this year. But what I think these the heat
Speaker 1: waves in the U s s you're kind of woke
Speaker 1: people up to, is like these things are like really deadly.
Speaker 1: They looked at excess deaths, which they kind of take
Speaker 1: the background number of deaths, the deaths you'd expect, and
Speaker 1: then see how many more occurred on a particular day
Speaker 1: or over a particular period or during a heat wave.
Speaker 1: And they've concluded thus far that in Washington State alone,
Speaker 1: six people died from that heat wave over the course
Speaker 1: of a few days. Yeah, like thousands of people total
Speaker 1: um all over that region. And you know this is
Speaker 1: that's a little bit of a squishy number because it's
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit about this, like people
Speaker 1: who study is kind of stuff, they're doing the best
Speaker 1: they can. They can't necessarily say like every single one
Speaker 1: of those deaths was because of the heat wave. But
Speaker 1: it is a really good measure. Um, And if you're
Speaker 1: if you're just looking at sort of round numbers, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's not the kind of thing that you can dismiss.
Speaker 1: And Plus, if history is any kind of guide that
Speaker 1: those numbers will probably be revised upward in the next
Speaker 1: year or so, I would guess. Yeah. And it's not
Speaker 1: just the United States. There was a heat wave in
Speaker 1: Europe in two thousand three that was it was the
Speaker 1: warmest summer on record since the fifteen forties. And I
Speaker 1: was like, how do they know that? I don't know.
Speaker 1: So I looked, there's a bunch of different ways they
Speaker 1: can kind of miss us out. Yeah, parchment is the answer. Um,
Speaker 1: there's there's They take bore holes is basically one of
Speaker 1: the best ways I saw, where when when it's hot
Speaker 1: on on this Earth's surface, that temperature radiates downward through
Speaker 1: the Earth. And if you take a core sample, a
Speaker 1: borehole sample sample, you can actually kind of deduce from
Speaker 1: whatever temperature a specific moment in time is, like say
Speaker 1: like in the fifteen forties, this would have been at
Speaker 1: the surface, that it actually that you can actually get
Speaker 1: the temperature roughly from that era. I think we talked
Speaker 1: about that before. This was really familiar. Okay, well it
Speaker 1: sounded new to me. I had no idea, But I
Speaker 1: think that's pretty interesting because there was nobody in fifteen
Speaker 1: forties saying, oh, it was eighty degrees celsius it was
Speaker 1: super hot, which I think that's like really really hot,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. But um, nobody was recording temperature
Speaker 1: like that. Some people did record the weather, but it
Speaker 1: was just like a smattering of observations and nothing scientific.
Speaker 1: Because this is pretty scientific. Um, so they have to
Speaker 1: use even more scientific stuff today to kind of deduce
Speaker 1: what it was before. Right. You might see, like it
Speaker 1: was very hot the day we burned this person at
Speaker 1: the stake, right, and we made even hot glancing reference.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean Milan, Paris, London, all these places
Speaker 1: broke record temperatures, uh, temperatures, temperatures. I can say that
Speaker 1: like a lazy Southerner temperature temperature because of hookworm, you
Speaker 1: say it like temperature. Yeah, but in the you know,
Speaker 1: in a couple of years after they calculated that, about
Speaker 1: thirty thousand people died all over Europe, and then later
Speaker 1: on they said that could have been as high as
Speaker 1: seventy tho people when they studied it. Years after that,
Speaker 1: seventy thousand people died from a two week Hey wave
Speaker 1: in Europe in two thousand three, and this may be
Speaker 1: what we're looking at going forward. Yeah, so we talked
Speaker 1: about you were you were saying, like, um, that there's
Speaker 1: there's people who like are trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: much this is increasing, how much of it has to
Speaker 1: do with climate change. There's a it's a new branch
Speaker 1: of science called attribution studies, and it's pretty much in
Speaker 1: league with climatology. I get the impression that it's made
Speaker 1: up of climatologists and it's a brand new type of
Speaker 1: science and it's really hard to do. Um. But they're
Speaker 1: they're starting from an article I read the data set
Speaker 1: post climate change. Basically this this one point to degrees
Speaker 1: celsius that has risen since we started keeping records in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty. I believe it's like the benchmark here that
Speaker 1: it's starting to happen, like weird stuff is starting to
Speaker 1: happen in more and more frequency, that this data set
Speaker 1: is growing. And then they have since the eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: to compare it against and so using a lot more
Speaker 1: sophisticated statistical analysis that I can quite wrap my head around. Um,
Speaker 1: they're figuring out how to say this weird weather event
Speaker 1: like the one in the Pacific Northwest had ex chance
Speaker 1: of happening had climate change never happened, had we never
Speaker 1: started releasing greenhouse gas emissions during the industrial age. And
Speaker 1: they've actually done that. There was a study that that
Speaker 1: actually kind of came to some pretty interesting conclusions about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They you know, they you hear about like a hundred
Speaker 1: year storm or something like that. Uh, they did a
Speaker 1: calculation and they said, you know, this was that that
Speaker 1: heat wave in this year in the United States was
Speaker 1: in a one thousand year event. And that's factoring in
Speaker 1: like the current climate that we are already in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like if we frozeur if our climate did not get
Speaker 1: any hotter or change in any way than it did
Speaker 1: now for from now on, that it would have been
Speaker 1: a thousand year event like now basically right, And then
Speaker 1: they can further extrapolate and say with this was pre
Speaker 1: um pre end of the nineteenth century, I guess, Yeah,
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty that's that benchmark date when everyone around the
Speaker 1: world started to keep like pretty accurate weather records from
Speaker 1: that point on. They said that that would have been
Speaker 1: about a hundred and fifty thousand year event back then,
Speaker 1: and in the future it might become like a five
Speaker 1: or ten year event. Yeah, by the twenty fifties maybe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think that it's like thirty or forty years
Speaker 1: from now, the overall global temperature there it is again,
Speaker 1: is gonna rise in another two degrees celsius. No, two
Speaker 1: degrees celsius total since eighteen eighty Okay, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: that would be catastrophic. Yeah, I don't know what would happen.
Speaker 1: I think we should do an episode explaining temperature rise
Speaker 1: in like what effects it's going to have and all
Speaker 1: that sure sot into our doomsday series. So even even
Speaker 1: taking aside like climate chain UM and an increase from
Speaker 1: climate change, UM, there's there's a lot of data that
Speaker 1: just says, yeah, we're actually seeing a lot more heat
Speaker 1: waves than we used to just in the past, like
Speaker 1: fifty sixty years UM, and just taking data starting in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty I think UM the weather the National Weather
Speaker 1: Service to a study that basically said, UM, looking at
Speaker 1: fifty cities in the United States, forty six of them
Speaker 1: have seen a signific statistically significant increase in heat waves
Speaker 1: since the nineteen sixties, so much so that like during
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties they could expect about two heat waves
Speaker 1: per year these fifty cities in the United States. Now
Speaker 1: they're averaging about six per year. And the season for
Speaker 1: heat waves in these cities is on average forty seven
Speaker 1: days longer than it was in nineteen sixty. So there's
Speaker 1: definitely a big upward trend in heat waves. It's becoming
Speaker 1: this new normal for us. Yeah, and it's it's really
Speaker 1: all about data. Um in more data you have, because
Speaker 1: they you know, there are still freak weather events that um,
Speaker 1: they don't want to just throw everything in there and
Speaker 1: say it's all caused by the rising climates all over
Speaker 1: the world. Uh. But the more time goes on, like
Speaker 1: the more of this data set is enriched and the
Speaker 1: the wheat is separated from the chaff just sort of naturally,
Speaker 1: the more data you get, and those statistical anomalies will
Speaker 1: they will be revealed, yes as such. Yeah, well, which
Speaker 1: I think it behoo's us to say, like any good
Speaker 1: attribution um climatologists is going to tell you like that
Speaker 1: that heatwave in the Pacific Northwest could have just been
Speaker 1: statistical bad luck. It may have had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with climate change. It could have just been like that
Speaker 1: was the one we drew. Because a thousand year event
Speaker 1: means you have a one in a thousand chance on
Speaker 1: any given year of that you could happen next year. Again,
Speaker 1: statistically is unlikely, but it's possible just from statistics that
Speaker 1: it was just bad luck that it happened. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: what you were saying is actually totally accurate that the
Speaker 1: more unfortunately weird freak weather events go on, the bigger
Speaker 1: the data set they're going to have to compare to
Speaker 1: pre you know, climate change times and see what is
Speaker 1: actually trending upward. And it looks like they're probably right
Speaker 1: about heat waves. Yeah, and they you know, people should
Speaker 1: feel good knowing that they're really trying to get good
Speaker 1: accurate data. It's it's not they don't want to just
Speaker 1: be doomsday uh people and say, you know, they want
Speaker 1: to really get good accurate numbers in there. So if
Speaker 1: you're a person who thinks climate change is bogus or
Speaker 1: it's not human caused or whatever, or they're just trying
Speaker 1: to scare you, and you know they're going to throw
Speaker 1: everything in there that happens and say it's because of this.
Speaker 1: They're not doing that. They're really really working super super
Speaker 1: hard to get a super accurate record and picture of
Speaker 1: what things are like now and and what they're like
Speaker 1: moving forward. You're not being good winked. I think people
Speaker 1: who are still saying that are basically like standing in
Speaker 1: a burning house being like, the house isn't on fire,
Speaker 1: It's fine. Yeah, Um, so what can we do to
Speaker 1: stop this stuff? Well, you can't stop it. What can
Speaker 1: we do to help ourselves out in the meantime. No,
Speaker 1: eventually we probably will be able to control the weather,
Speaker 1: which sounds like Bond villain esque, but we'll probably be
Speaker 1: able to control it to our benefit and the benefit
Speaker 1: of the planet I'm guessing in the next like hundred
Speaker 1: years possibly. But until then, we can do absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: about this except kind of try to mitigate the effects
Speaker 1: of it. One of the things that's starting to happen
Speaker 1: our local governments are starting to get a little more
Speaker 1: hip to the idea that they need, you know, plans
Speaker 1: in place so when a heat wave comes along, because
Speaker 1: they're actually pretty easy to forecast by many days out,
Speaker 1: so you can give people a lot of warning and
Speaker 1: then if the government has this plan in place, they
Speaker 1: can open up cooling center. So you've got a convention
Speaker 1: center is not being used well that now is a
Speaker 1: cooling center where you're running lots of ace for residents
Speaker 1: who don't have a c to come cool off. You
Speaker 1: can start um reroofing buildings in your city with you know,
Speaker 1: green roofs or even like like um cool roofs, which
Speaker 1: is basically a roof that's not black and that's all
Speaker 1: it takes to to cool that roof by fifty degrees
Speaker 1: sometimes on a sunny day. Um. There's just a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff where if you just stop and look at
Speaker 1: the infrastructure and even the color of the infrastructure use
Speaker 1: in cities, just changing it to lighter colors would have
Speaker 1: an enormous effect on the urban heat island effect. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: plant more trees. I love those green roofs are good
Speaker 1: looking anyway, Sure they look like Hobbit houses, a Hobbit skyscraper.
Speaker 1: No less uh, making the electrical grid more efficient because again,
Speaker 1: if you've got a heat wave and that thing breaks down,
Speaker 1: it's just exacerbating the problem. So those are all things
Speaker 1: we can do to help out a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll probably figure it out more as it goes on,
Speaker 1: but does it's a pretty good start. And the other
Speaker 1: thing that you can do is you can actually if
Speaker 1: you watch your local news and the weather person says
Speaker 1: there's a heat advisory today, like that means that it
Speaker 1: could be dangerous to be outside. Like they're not just
Speaker 1: whistling Dixie there, hope. I had a borderline heat stroke,
Speaker 1: uh this summer, first time in my life. What I
Speaker 1: was playing golf, I got I was able to play
Speaker 1: the historic East Lake Golf Club near where I live,
Speaker 1: and I it was brutally hot. It is a walking
Speaker 1: only course, so it's not like you're riding around a
Speaker 1: golf cart. And you know, golf courses aren't their trees
Speaker 1: on the edges, but you're out on that sun if
Speaker 1: you're hitting them straight, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: I started feeling funny. I got a little dizzy a
Speaker 1: couple of times. And I'm at the age now where
Speaker 1: I'm smart enough for where I was like, I gotta
Speaker 1: do something here, dudes, Like this isn't right. I don't
Speaker 1: feel right. I've been hot all my life and I
Speaker 1: don't feel right, So I they called sort of embarrassing,
Speaker 1: but they called a golf cart out and I went
Speaker 1: back to the clubhouse for like three holes in cool down,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, and then went back out. I missed those
Speaker 1: three holes, but I rejoined my buddies and uh and
Speaker 1: finished out the back nine. But you had the lowest
Speaker 1: score of all then, exactly it was. But I'm glad
Speaker 1: that I was smart en if I was like, well,
Speaker 1: this is a little embarrassing, but I just I've got
Speaker 1: to take care of myself, Like not dying of pete
Speaker 1: stroke is much better than you know, playing on to
Speaker 1: not be embarrassed. I mean, that's come on, because you
Speaker 1: know what's really embarrassing is dropping dead. Of course it is.
Speaker 1: And then it would think about how it would affect me, chuck,
Speaker 1: I would have to explain it to all of our listeners. Man. Uh.
Speaker 1: It took me a long time to cool down. Like
Speaker 1: I went in the icy, coldest clubhouse I've ever been
Speaker 1: in and it was just pounding water and it took
Speaker 1: me fifteen minutes to feel normal. And then I took
Speaker 1: a cold shower upstairs in the clubhouse. In the clubhouse
Speaker 1: and the bought a new shirt in the clubhouse nice
Speaker 1: and um, and then came back out and I was like,
Speaker 1: I felt normal again. But it took a half hour.
Speaker 1: There there's your answer. That's why it's an all walking course,
Speaker 1: because they want to move those replacement shirts unsuspectingly eive. Wow. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you made it, buddy, and you did the
Speaker 1: right thing. And I hope everybody learns a lesson from you.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if it's embarrassing. We're talking about your
Speaker 1: life and your health here. You just go cool off,
Speaker 1: or you stopped playing, or you just don't gotta do
Speaker 1: it like you gotta look out for yourself everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's just dumb golf. Yeah, who cares? Okay, Uh,
Speaker 1: you got anything more on heat heat waves? Nope? Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know some more stuff about saving
Speaker 1: your took us from heat stroke and stuff again, go
Speaker 1: listen to our Desert Survival episode. And since I said that,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this Merchant's
Speaker 1: house museum. This from the Embalming episode. Hey, guys, been
Speaker 1: listening since you started when I was in high school.
Speaker 1: You've been a real comfort more than ten years and
Speaker 1: You've kept me company, distracted me, and made me laugh.
Speaker 1: I'm emailing you because Josh mentioned the Merchant's House Museum
Speaker 1: in the Embalming episode. I work at the Merchant's House
Speaker 1: and it was so cool to hear you guys mentioned
Speaker 1: the museum. I'm impressed Josh even remembered Seabury Treadwell's name.
Speaker 1: It's a great small museum in the Greenwich Village East
Speaker 1: Village area that most New Yorkers and tourists don't even
Speaker 1: know about. I wanted to see if you could plug
Speaker 1: the MHM a bit because for the last ten years
Speaker 1: has been fighting a real estate developer who wants to
Speaker 1: do construction on the site next to the house, and
Speaker 1: now it would endanger the hundred and eighty nine year
Speaker 1: old building. Enforced UH force it to close temporarily, if
Speaker 1: not permanently. Our small staff are always looking for more visitors, volunteers,
Speaker 1: and donors interested in saving the landmark. Thank you for
Speaker 1: mentioning the Merchant's House Museum. And this is from Lizzie
Speaker 1: in Deck UH. She her and Lizzie and everyone else
Speaker 1: out there doing the work at the Merchant's House Museum.
Speaker 1: Thank you, And if you go to New York City.
Speaker 1: Go visit the Merchant's House Museum. If you can't go,
Speaker 1: maybe go in line and make a donation. Yeah, nicely done, Chuck,
Speaker 1: Thanks again for writing in Lizzie. That was good stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you did. Um and who could ever forget
Speaker 1: Sea Barry Treadwell's name, Come on, great name Well. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us like Lizzie
Speaker 1: did and help you fight off a real estate developer
Speaker 1: who wants to ruin your museum or historical location, we
Speaker 1: want to hear from you. You can send us an
Speaker 1: email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows,