Posted on 07/09/2014 2:02:17 AM PDT by Up Yours Marxists
Nine out of ten hospital wards may be at risk of overheating, increasing the dangers for vulnerable patients who are left sweltering in temperatures of more than 26C (78.8F), government advisers have warned.
Poor ventilation, thin walls, low ceilings and big windows that can barely be opened are contributing to temperatures far exceeding acceptable levels during hot weather, according to the Committee on Climate Change.
One fifth of domestic properties could also already be overheating, with flats especially vulnerable, it finds.
The number of people dying prematurely from overheating could triple to 7,000 per year by the 2050s as global warming makes deadly heatwaves of the kind seen in 2003 the norm, unless housing and hospitals are adapted to cope with the heat, the CCC says.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
More chicken little malarkey from the global warming scaremongers.
What a bunch of cr**. How much did they get paid for this study?
” sweltering in temperatures of more than 26C (78.8F)”
Sweltering at 78.8F?
In Texas, that’s called “balmy”.
you have to be a total marx-sucking dope to be on the “committee for climate change”.
And yet our stupid governments keep pushing electric utilities to shut down coal plants and keep push forward on renewable energy sources.
Coal produces cheap electricity and renewables produce ludicrously expensive electricity.
What is the primary cause of people dying in heat waves?
It is that people have had their electricity shut off because of non-payment or they would not run the air conditioning because they were afraid of high electric bills.
Why is electricity expensive? Well DUH!
If the Libs are really worried about people dying they should get out of the way of new coal fired and nuclear power plants. A market flooded with new electric plants will bring down the price of electricity and people will be able to heat and cool their homes with out breaking their budgets. Cheap electricity saves lives.
Yes, unfounded hysteria on climate effects, yet curiously not one thought about the millions of untreated illegals that are entering this country, each day with increasingly more complex medical problems.
What hospital opens their windows? The proper ventilation system in a hospital or in patient multi story health care facility is not the same as typical commercial building or residential systems. First of all there is no return air system. It works with outside air at the intake going across the coils and the cooled sir distributed throughout the ventilation system. No air return is done as a hygiene measure. You don't want virus and bacteria in your air. The building is slightly pressurized and that pressure is released through entrance doors and the elevator shafts.
The biggest thing that hurts hospitals is under sizing the capacity of the A/C plant itself as an initial cost cutting measure in construction. In a typical US hospital we're likely talking anywhere from 300-1000 tons of cooling needed depending on how large the facility, what type of equipment is operating in the way of electronics, and if adjoin office buildings are hospital physical plant dependent. In other words adding say a CT Scan machine, etc would add to heat load. The UK is likely adding equipment but not increasing their tonnage capacity in cooling.
Heat loads on these buildings by outside weather factors have not gone up. Many things can substantially increase or decrease the heat load though such as overcast skies, closing curtains on the side of the building the sun is hitting allows for significant lower temps.
The biggest risk to a hospitals A/C isn't global warming. It's power failures that are the threat and most generator can not cover the large power capacity to run the units. After about 12 hours of no A/C in a hospital with a concrete floor the floors begin to sweat. That too is dangerous. But if the unit itself break down or units and need several days to repair them that generally can be remedied within about 12 hours by bringing in a flatbed tractor trailer with a portable chiller on it. Most hospitals have set up to allow for this remedy in the US.
This article makes a little bit more sense once you realize few buildings the UK have A/C.
True but that's not due to Gorebull Warming or climate change. The issue can be resolved by upgrades. I would question their health care practices like open windows as being a much greater threat to patients.
Or you could turn up the air conditioning a notch.
Finding a way to blame the ills of socialized medicine on climate change.
These bureaucrats must have given themselves an orgasm.
The Telegraph: Aborted Babies Incinerated To Heat UK Hospitals
Coming from the south, I’m always amazed at how cold Europe is during the summer months.
I guess 78 is hot to them where I’m comfortable at 90.
Fascinating. Notice what’s missing?
Any documentation of increased heat waves in Britain over the last few decades.
I don’t know enough to say they aren’t happening, but it’s really odd they don’t bother to put in statistics showing it is. The assumption is apparently that “everybody knows” the whole world is getting hotter, therefore UK is, therefore UK hospitals are.
And you know what they say about assumptions.
Uhh, don't know where you live, but that's not the way the hospitals work here in FL. I spent three years consulting for a problem hospital in South FL, and I can guarantee you the building has lots and lots of return air ducts in it.
The building is slightly pressurized and that pressure is released through entrance doors and the elevator shafts.
If a large building is cooled using 100% fresh air, it won't be "slightly pressurized," it will be highly pressurized, and there will be pretty much a gale exiting whenever an outside door is opened.
Not saying it wouldn't be a good idea to operate hospitals this way, simply that it's not actually how they work.
In fact, here in FL the state regulatory agency has a requirement that hospitals operate at neutral pressure to the exterior. It's a remarkably stupid requirement, since among other things it's just not possible, but the requirement is there.
In a hot/humid climate, hospitals, like all other buildings, should operate on a slight positive pressure to help prevent intrusion of humid air, and to ensure that building envelope cavities are generally filled with dry "inside air" rather than humid "outside air."
Properly run hospitals do, of course, have specially pressurized rooms for immune-compromised patients (positive pressure) and highly infectious patients (negative pressure).
Not sure what they do when the patient is both immune-compromised and highly infectious. Start making funeral arrangements, I guess.
BTW, for a large building to operate on conditioned 100% fresh air, it would have to be designed to allow for exhaust from all over the building, not just at doors and elevator shafts.
Otherwise, air would stagnate in the center of the building and contaminants would build up.
“The environment is suffering damage that could be irreversible — global warming, the greenhouse effect, the melting of the polar ice caps, the rising sea level, hurricanes — with terrible social occurrences that will shake life on this planet.”
“I believe this idea has a strong connection with reality. I don’t think we have much time. Fidel Castro said in one of his speeches I read not so long ago, ‘tomorrow could be too late, let’s do now what we need to do’.”
“I believe it is time that we take up with courage and clarity a political, social, collective and ideological offensive across the world — a real offensive that permits us to move progressively, over the next years, the next decades, leaving behind the perverse, destructive, destroyer, capitalist model and go forward in constructing the socialist model to avoid barbarism and beyond that the annihilation of life on this planet.”
—Hugo Chavez, at the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students, held in Caracas on August 8-15, 2005
_____________________________
Bin Laden blasts US for climate change
CAIRO – Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape released Friday.
In the tape, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.
_____________________________
“Charles Manson, the notorious cult leader, has broken a 20-year silence in an interview from his prison cell to warn the world of an impending apocalypse due to global warming.
[snip]
“Everyone’s God and if we don’t wake up to that there’s going to be no weather because our polar caps are melting because we’re doing bad things to the atmosphere,” he said.
“The automobiles and fossil fuels are destroying the atmosphere and we won’t have air to breathe.
Chavez, bin Laden and Manson are (or were) warmists. This does not of itself disprove that AGW is happening.
Implying that it does is the logical fallacy known as (or perhaps that should be known as) reverse appeal to authority.
Can't speak to UK hospitals or buildings in general, but in USA, at least in FL, a much more common problem is oversizing rather than undersizing AC systems for the load.
Doing so greatly reduces the ability of the system to control humidity, which, regardless of what this article implies, is much more important to the health of the occupants (and the building itself) than the temperature.
BTW, in any large building, opening windows around the perimeter will do little or nothing to control temperatures in the center of the building.
“...unless housing and hospitals are adapted to cope with the heat,...”
Don’t they have AC across the pond? Just wondering...
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