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Phoenix's Too Hot Future
Topic Started: Mar 15 2013, 02:04 AM (302 Views)
Brewster
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Los Angeles Times
 
Look no further than the aptly named Valley of the Sun to see the brutal new climate to come.

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Phoenix sits in a bowl in a hot desert; heat waves and windstorms visit its 4.3 million residents regularly.


If cities were stocks, you'd want to short Phoenix.

Of course, it's an easy city to pick on. The nation's 13th-largest metropolitan area crams 4.3 million people into a low bowl in a hot desert, where horrific heat waves and windstorms visit it regularly. And it depends on an improbable infrastructure to suck water from the distant (and dwindling) Colorado River.

If the Gulf Coast's Hurricane Katrina and the Eastern Seaboard's Superstorm Sandy previewed how coastal cities can expect to fare as seas rise and storms strengthen, Phoenix — which also stands squarely in the cross hairs of climate change — pulls back the curtain on the future of inland empires. If you want a taste of the brutal new climate to come, look no further than the aptly named Valley of the Sun.

In Phoenix, the convergence of heat, drought and violent winds is creating an ever-more-worrisome situation. Let's take heat first. If, in summer, the grid there were to fail on a large scale and for a significant period of time, the fallout would make the consequences of Sandy look mild. Phoenix is an air-conditioned city. If the power goes out, people fry.

In the summer of 2003, a heat wave swept Europe and killed 70,000 people. The temperature in London touched 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time since records had been kept, and in portions of France, the mercury climbed as high as 104. Those temperatures, however, are child's play in Phoenix, where readings commonly exceed 100 degrees for more than 100 days a year. In 2011, the city set a record for days over 110. There were 33 of them.

It goes without saying that Phoenix's desert setting is hot by nature, but humans have made it hotter. The city is a masonry world, with asphalt and concrete everywhere. The hard, heavy materials absorb daytime heat more efficiently than the naked land, and then give it back more slowly after the sun goes down, preventing the cool of the desert night from providing much relief.

Sixty years ago, nighttime lows never crept above 90. Today such temperatures are a commonplace, and the vigil has begun for the first night that doesn't dip below 100.

And heat is a tricky adversary. It stresses everything, including electrical equipment. Transformers, when they get too hot, can fail, and thermoelectric generating becomes less efficient.

And the great hydroelectric dams of the Colorado River, including Glen Canyon, which serves greater Phoenix, won't be able to supply the "peaking power" they do now if the reservoirs behind them are fatally shrunken by drought, as multiple studies forecast they will be. Not to worry, say the two major utilities serving the Phoenix metroplex, Arizona Public Service and the Salt River Project: Much of this can be mitigated with upgraded equipment, smart-grid technologies and redundant systems. And they have managed to keep outages brief.

So far.

But before Katrina hit, the Army Corps of Engineers was similarly reassuring to the people of New Orleans. And until Superstorm Sandy landed, almost no one worried about storm surges filling the subway tunnels of New York. Every system, like every city, has its vulnerabilities. Climate change, in almost every instance, intensifies them.

One looming vulnerability for Phoenix is that the beefed-up, juiced-up, greenhouse-gassed overheated weather of the future is likely to send the city violent dust storms of a sort we can't yet imagine, packed with ever greater amounts of energy. Already Phoenix is seeing more intense dust storms that bring visibility to zero and life to a standstill.

There is also, of course, the problem of water. In dystopian portraits of Phoenix's unsustainable future, water — or rather the lack of it — is usually painted as the agent of collapse. Indeed, the metropolitan area, a jumble of jurisdictions that includes Scottsdale, Glendale, Tempe, Mesa, Sun City, Chandler and 15 other municipalities, has tapped groundwater supplies at unsustainable rates.

All along, everyone knew that couldn't last, so in the early 1990s, a new bonanza called the Central Arizona Project (CAP) was brought on line — a river-sized, open-air canal supported by an elaborate array of pumps, siphons and tunnels to bring Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson.

Today, the project is the engine of Arizona's growth. Unfortunately, to win authorization and funding to build it, state officials had to make a bargain with the devil, which in this case turned out to be California. The concession California forced on Arizona was simple: It had to agree that its CAP water rights would take second place to California's claims.

A raw deal for Arizona? You bet, but not exactly the end of the line. Arizona has other "more senior" rights to the Colorado, and when the CAP water begins to run dry, you may be sure that its masters will pay whatever is necessary to lease those older rights and keep the 330-mile canal flowing.

Longer term, if habits don't change, the Colorado River poses issues that no water claims can resolve. Beset by climate change, overuse and drought, the river and its reservoirs, according to various researchers, may decline to the point that water fails to pass Hoover Dam. In that case, the CAP system would dry up, but so would the Colorado Aqueduct, which serves greater Los Angeles and San Diego, as well as the All-American Canal, on which the factory farms of California's Imperial and Coachella valleys depend.

These are giant problems that cities and the region as a whole must rally to face, a prospect that brings up another issue: Communities that survive stern challenges are those that learn how to pull together. Phoenix's winner-take-all politics, exemplified by Sheriff Joe Arpaio's storm-trooper tactics, give little cause for optimism. A few decades hence, after the climate screws have tightened with excruciating force, don't be surprised if the drivers steering U-Hauls out of town are spurred along as much by discord as by drought.

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That's OK one of its most outspoken residents, newt, will still be saying there is no problem.
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Neutral
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:bounce:
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Pat
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Now let's apply some facts. To begin with, the desert cities in Arizona have a very modern and efficient canal system that runs from as Brew says, the Colorado River. It's true that water use has limited the river's water resource, but if you look at your map, you will see that the Colorado runs through Nevada and Arizona before it ever reaches water thirsty California to the west. And you are nuts if you think Nevada and Arizona are going to sit back and go dry at the usage of California. California has been over using their allegation by a very high percentage, and they are breaching the agreement every day. No federal court would uphold a claim by California if push comes to shove. that canal system can be shut of like a spigot by either Nevada or Arizona.

Secondly, the so called bowl is a series of mountain ranges, not as depicted, a close in encompassing bowl. And sure the mountain affect holds in heat. But this also means warmer winter months. I will put Arizona and Nevada water quality up to any other region in the country. Rivers are used all over the continent for water. It's what they do, provide water.

There is a reason why people flock if they can to those regions, there are no snow drifts, hurricanes, tornadoes, and yes, a few flash floods, but everybody knows about staying out of gullys when a storm is approaching. I would rather take my chance down there than up here if severe climate change is in the works. And i put my money in property there as a hedge. I've go twelve houses in and around Tucson which we could hole up in, and 40 acres of orchard in Benson with a house. all leased, but if again push comes to shove, someone's lease would not be renewed. :smile:

I hate it when authors spout out who obviously have no first hand experience with living or staying for any length of time where they are dishing.
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Mountainrivers
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Pat
Mar 15 2013, 03:02 AM
Now let's apply some facts. To begin with, the desert cities in Arizona have a very modern and efficient canal system that runs from as Brew says, the Colorado River. It's true that water use has limited the river's water resource, but if you look at your map, you will see that the Colorado runs through Nevada and Arizona before it ever reaches water thirsty California to the west. And you are nuts if you think Nevada and Arizona are going to sit back and go dry at the usage of California. California has been over using their allegation by a very high percentage, and they are breaching the agreement every day. No federal court would uphold a claim by California if push comes to shove. that canal system can be shut of like a spigot by either Nevada or Arizona.

Secondly, the so called bowl is a series of mountain ranges, not as depicted, a close in encompassing bowl. And sure the mountain affect holds in heat. But this also means warmer winter months. I will put Arizona and Nevada water quality up to any other region in the country. Rivers are used all over the continent for water. It's what they do, provide water.

There is a reason why people flock if they can to those regions, there are no snow drifts, hurricanes, tornadoes, and yes, a few flash floods, but everybody knows about staying out of gullys when a storm is approaching. I would rather take my chance down there than up here if severe climate change is in the works. And i put my money in property there as a hedge. I've go twelve houses in and around Tucson which we could hole up in, and 40 acres of orchard in Benson with a house. all leased, but if again push comes to shove, someone's lease would not be renewed. :smile:

I hate it when authors spout out who obviously have no first hand experience with living or staying for any length of time where they are dishing.
I doubt that. Look at the battle between Georgia, Alabama and Florida over the Chattahoochee River, or the battle between Kansas and Nebraska over the Republican River. All states will be required to share in whatever water resources there are. You can't just shut off someone's water supply at will.
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Pat
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You are correct Neal, shutting it off would be a violent and outrageous act, but if Phoneix, Las Vegas, Tucson and other metro areas become truly threatened with water issues, the lettuce farmers and LA swimming pools will be first to go.
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tomdrobin
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I wonder if they could produce enough solar in the desert to power the AC requirements of the city? Also, AC expells the heat from buildings. If enough AC is running wouldn't that raise the temperature in the city?
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Neutral
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This Valley will be here for a long time to come regardless of the alarmists.
We're probably selling electricity to that idiot author in LA.
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tomdrobin
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I was in the Pheonix area for a couple of weeks in July, a few years ago on business. It was hot. It seemed everyone stayed inside all day and came out after dark.
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Neutral
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Hardly, life goes on as normal, construction workers are out there every day. Some start early and quit early. No big deal actually but yes about everyone has AC.
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