Science Snippets: Buildings Collapsing Due to Climate Change

Draft script:

I lived in Tucson, Arizona for 20 years. During most of that time, Tucson was the world’s largest metropolitan area surviving strictly on groundwater for its municipal water supply. About halfway through my two decades in Tucson, a serious problem emerged: buildings were collapsing due to subsidence. Pumping groundwater led to differential subsidence, which caused different parts of a building to subside at different rates. When the northeastern corner of a building remains intact while the southwestern corner is subsiding, the building rapidly falls apart.

The temporary solution, which is still being used, is to pump Colorado River water a few hundred miles uphill across the desert. This water is allowed to infiltrate and percolate in large ponds in the Sonoran Desert a few miles west of Tucson. After the soil filters the water, it is pumped out and distributed throughout the area.

As it turns out, Tucson was leading the way with respect to collapsing buildings. This expensive problem subsequently became a worldwide issue.

From Bloomberg on 21 October 2024 comes a story headlined Climate Change Is Killing Buildings in Slow Motion. The subhead: “It’s not just storms and floods: Wild temperature swings, severe heat and drought are exacting an invisible toll on the built environment.” The initial two paragraphs provide a superb example, although the toll is not invisible and the building mentioned is not being killed “in slow motion.”

“Soon after it opened in 2001 as part of a massive waterfront development on the River Clyde, Glasgow’s Science Centre became a top attraction. Queen Elizabeth opened the sleek crescent-shaped complex, which featured a titanium-clad IMAX theater and exhibits that promised to unlock the mysteries of science and the promise of emerging technologies.

But the future — in the form of a shifting climate — quickly caught up. On the Scottish city’s hottest-ever June day in 2018, the building’s stainless-steel roof started to seep black goo, as sealant intended for cooler weather liquified in temperatures that hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 Celsius).”

The paragraphs that follow indicate the scope of the ongoing disaster. “The Science Centre’s meltdown offered a particularly graphic illustration of the usually invisible toll that climate change can exact on buildings. It’s not just the brute impact of wind, flood and hail; there’s also the insidious, slow-motion damage triggered by weather that no longer matches the conditions for which the built environment was built.

Longer, more severe heat waves degrade roofs and strain air conditioning and HVAC systems. Wild temperature swings bring thermal cycling that expands and contracts concrete and masonry walls, hastening cracks and water intrusion. Asphalt shingles, the most common covering on residential homes in the US, warp under unrelenting sun, while pavement buckles, steel rails kink, and siding suffers ‘solar distortion.’ Foundations can shift in drought or high temperatures, leading to cracked walls, burst pipes and serious structural problems.”

A cofounder and president of Runwise, a smart heating controls company in New York City, is then quoted: “All of the cracks and issues that are now getting exacerbated by climate are coming to the surface. It’s like we’re throwing Band-Aids on, instead of actually trying to bring some transparency and sunshine on what’s actually happening, and then fix the core issues.”

Wait, what? A corporate media outlet publishes a story about climate change and includes mention of “transparency and sunshine on what’s actually happening”? Kudos to Bloomberg for publishing this expensive example of the costs of climate change.

After mentioning Scotland and the U.S., the story in Bloomberg includes stories from around the world. These examples indicate why HVAC workers and plumbers are in demand. They also indicate why these and other workers in the trades are becoming millionaires in the U.S. That’s according to The Wall Street Journal in an article published on 12 October 2024 and headlined America’s New Millionaire Class: Plumbers and HVAC Entrepreneurs.

The article in Bloomberg points out that buildings have not been designed for current conditions. Imagine when the future holds, considering Earth is amid abrupt, irreversible climate change, even according to the designed-to-fail Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In any event, after the mention of Band-Aids comes these two paragraphs: “Buildings constructed and maintained for one climate scenario are rapidly finding themselves experiencing another one, with the expense of adaptation borne by property owners, renters and taxpayers. While annual climate damages from wildfires, hurricanes and other destructive incidents will soon reach hundreds of billions of dollars a year, according to the National Climate Assessment, it’s near impossible to estimate how much more is lost to this kind of incremental harm resulting from a changing climate. But it’s adding up, and it’s making it even harder for cities to make any progress on their housing affordability goals.

Trepp, a real estate analysis firm, found repair and maintenance costs up 30% last year in many major US markets, including Dallas, San Francisco, San Diego and Houston. One study by Atlas Real Estate found the average cost of repairs in rental property — driven by material costs, inflation, and labor costs — rose from $290 per incident in 2018 to $501 in 2024. And, unlike floods or storm damage, these problems often aren’t covered by insurance.”

The chief operating officer of Toggled, a smart building control system company, is then quoted: “Heat is the killer of everything. Heat causes everything to be less efficient.” Although heat is, indeed, the destroyer of buildings, it is not the killer of everything. This reminds me of the July 2023 book by Jeff Goodell titled The Heat Will Kill You First. Had Goodell checked with an ecologist, he would have known that loss of habitat, not the heat, will kill you first. Abrupt, irreversible climate change is causing some areas to experience withering drought and others to experience extreme flooding. Humans and other organisms are dying as a result. In many cases, the heat is not killing anyone, human or otherwise.

Systems meant to heat and cool buildings operate on decades-old assumptions about temperature. They are working harder, consuming more energy, and breaking down faster than before. As motors and condensers overheat and fail, strain on the grid leads to power outages, the likes of which we have already seen in several countries. The global head of sustainable operations for the international brokerage firm JLL describes the effects of chronic exposure to extreme weather as setting off a long line of falling dominos: “I’m paying more for the equipment, replacing it more often, paying more for water and energy, and I’m seeing decreased resiliency. Every time you have an outage event, it costs buildings money. And letting a building go into an unconditioned state in a heat wave means even more damage.”

The world we inhabit is falling apart. It’s not only the buildings and other infrastructure. More importantly, it’s habitat for humans and the myriad organisms on which we depend for our continued survival. As much as I enjoy a well-designed and well-built building, I’m an even bigger fan of the living planet.