‘A Week from Hell’

We see daily stories about heat records being broken, in various southern states like Arizona and Florida. Foor example, Arizona had 31 straight days of temps over 110 degrees, a streak that just came to an end. That has become expected. We usually hear less from overseas, perhaps because we Americans are rather provincial, or I am at least. Even from other parts of the world, we can see alarms being raised if we bother to look. Chile has broken heat records for early August, winter on that side of the equator. UK boy scouts were evacuated from South Korea because of debilitating heat. If there is one certainty about climate change, it is the inconvenient reality (to steal a pithy phrase from Al Gore) that it is a global phenomenon, not merely a local irritation.

The title of this blog, ‘settimana infernale’ is Italian for a phrase heard often in that country this summer … a week from Hell. That is, it has been damn hot there recently, even for a people used to intense summer heat. Then again, so much of this is relative. Those not ordinarily exposed to hot or humid weather will react when their typical norms are replaced with something different. It will be easy to dismiss such changes as temporary anomolies … until it is too late.

Had we paid attention to what matters as opposed to Megan and Harry or Hunter Biden’s laptop, we would notice many other disturbing reports. The U.K. hit 40 degrees Centigrade for the first time last year (104 F) and recently had its hottest June on record. In southern Europe and around the Mediterranian area, temps have been hitting 50 degrees (122 F) with alarming regularity this summer. Stories have emerged about hospitals in China and the U.S. immersing patients in bags filed with ice to lower body temps. Last year, some 60,000 deaths in Europe were attributed to abnormal high temps. Stories are coming out of Central America that local farmers are migrating since they no longer can live off their parched lands. Many fear that this is the tip of the iceberg (pun intended) where masses will begin to move as their traditional homes become uninhabitable. This is a challenge that goes beyond nation, ethnic group, or tribe. It is global in character and thus will demand, guess what, a global response.

Here’s the thing. Hot weather is more than an irritation or an inconvenience. It can, and already has, become a mass killer though the body count has yet to attract widespread attention. Too many eyes remain fixed on the shuffling of College football teams among the power 5 conferences in search of more media money … what a joke in the larger scheme of things. Short of mass deaths, rising temps are an affliction that can cause serious health issues, especially for those already vulnerable, as well as significant social and economic dislocation.

We can see impending disaster about us. Many Americans hibernate for several months out of the year since daily temps heading north of 110 degrees Farenheit (now 120 degrees) make life outside uninhabitable. In the desert southwest, this has become routine. Arizona recently ended a 31 day streak of 110 plus temps. Florida has somewhat lower temps but dew points high in the70s, an unlivable experience for a delicate flower like myself.

Many, of course, cannot stay hidden away in air-conditioned comfort. They must work outdoors or are sensitive to heat due to age or some other condition. And what happens when prolonged heat waves of historic proportions tax our energy grids to the breaking point or water supplies dry up or all other sorts of anticipated disasters become relality. Where can those facing sustained periods of fettimana infernale hide then? The Covid pandemic might look like a walk in the park compared to what is just around the corner. But let’s obsess about Hunter Biden’s business deals?

This raises an interesting question. Just how vulnerable are we as human organisms to excessive heat, foregoing for the moment all the ancillary consquences of a climate disaster (crop failures, coastline cities disappearing under water, deserts replacing arable land, wild fires ravaging life-giving forests, and devastating storms, to name a few).

Let’s just focus on the heat question as it affects our bodies. From what I’ve read, we can expect something like the following. Our bodies are an amazing machine, working hard to achieve a homeostatic state where there is some constancy of critical internal properties. One key to this is our hypothalamus which acts as a thermostat of sorts. This organ sends signals to various parts of the body to react when external conditions push our internal body temperature outside the normal range of roughly 37 degrees C (our normal 98.6 F), plus or minus a degree or two.

Of course, my normal is more like 36 C, but then there has always been some question as to whether I am a mammal or not. If your internal temp rises to 40 (C), or about 103 (F), you will experience physical changes like faintness at the very least. At 42 (C), or 107 (F), you are close to buying the farm, if you are not already arguing to St. Pete about your reservation within the Pearly Gates. If you have some condition that renders you vulnerable, age or pre-exisiting health issue, your ticket almost certainly has been punched.

The body does put up a fight as external conditions wage war on these internal regulatory responses. Given exposure to prolonged heat, your body temp will start to rise. Your heart begins to work harder as blood is pushed to the skin surface as a way of expelling excess inernal heat. An extra liter of blood circulates the body each minute, pushing one’s heart rate from a more normal 55 beats a minute to 87 beats (in a test case). Breathing rates increase from 10 per minute to 15 or higher as stress levels increase. Blood flows to the brain lessens by 8 to 9 percent, and therefore short term memory loss becomes measurable. This is not good for old geezer like me who normally forgets why I just walked into a room to get something very important that I can no longer recall. Soon skin temperature rises some 4 degrees (C). One’s body will put up a good fight but without relief or medical help, a typical person will progress from heat exhaustion to heat stroke to death.

That is the micro-impact on the individual unless, of course, science comes the rescue. And it is not inconceivable that there are technical solutions to many, of not all, of the challenges we can easily anticipate. I feel, though, that our dowmfall will be the result of a more predictable human failure. Look at the American response to a global pandemic. We fought over the science, over government regulations to save lives, over the costs both direct and indirect. The possibilities of political conflict and a failure of human will is much greater in this climate arena. Pandemics do exhaust themselves. This will not go away on its own.

Hell, Rand Paul, chief Libertarian nutcase, is trying to get authorities to throw Dr. Anthony Fauci in prison for, in his warped mind, lying to him. I can still see the Republican member of Congress arguing that there is no global warming as he brandished a snowball in that august chanber … compelling evidence indeed (that he should be held for a 72 hour psych evaluation. And these are the leaders who will lead us out of the greatest potential natural disaster since that big meteor hit the earth 60 plus million years ago and wiped out most large species on earth. The big diference is that T-Rex could do nothing about it. We can!

I will say this one more time, but surely not the last time … I am so glad I’m old.