At least 19,000 people died in this summer's heat wave in Europe. France alone currently counts some 14,000. Spain lists about 4,000, Italy 1176, and the toll is bound to rise; Germany has only listed 40 deaths as due to the heat, a figure which is all but certainly due to extremely narrow criteria. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/212073349 responses total.
Yep, it's all due to global warming, because lawdy we've never had heat waves before thisun...
Obviously it's all a plot by those opposed to business.
Yes, the same way it was a *plot* to bring in labour laws.
Not that I'd say that the heat wave definitely *wasn't* caused by global warming, nothing in the news story cited in #0 ties it to that.
Since records began more or less in the industrial era, who's to say from a priori evidence that *all* of the previous heatwaves *weren't* caused by a combination of global warming and weather patterns, hmm?
What was the maximum temperature in Europe this summer? And people mostly died of heat strokes? In India, people die of heat strokes, mostly at places where temperatures go above 50 degree celsius. 19000!!! Wow!!! Thats a pretty big number. But it didn't make that big in the news somehow (compared to other disasters). And what are the governments doing about it now?
19000 people, mostly elderly/frail/etc., dying here & there over a period of time is just not very interesting mass-media news. Society doesn't value such folk's lives very highly (which is why they were mostly left to die.) No excitement of shooting/fire/crash/etc. No deranged killer stalking his next victim. Those at high risk themselves are a market demographic that big advertisers don't much care about reaching. Last i heard, the governments are mostly doing political damage control and spin. They didn't care either until it became a scandal.
Mr. russ takes first place in the conclusion jump.
Now would be a good time to buy stock in air conditioning firms in europe.
Re #9: But not in the UK. There's a good chance the ocean current that currently brings warm ocean water past Britain, warming the climate there, will shut down; it's already slowed.
I was watching a program on the History Channel about the Bubonic Plague of europe in the 1300's; afterwards there was a time of great economic prosperity. Currently europe's unemployment rate tends to be higher (~8-9%) than the U.S. (~3-5%) Maybe this is the proverbial shot-in-the-arm the EU needs. Hoorah for CFC's!!!
You're confusing two issues. CFCs are related to the ozone hole, but have nothing to do with global warming as far as I know.
(CFCs deplete ozone and trap heat. carbon dioxide traps more heat in the atmosphere, probably due to its relative volume. HCFCs and HFCs also trap heat, but don't deplete ozone.) http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/archive/page.cfm?pageID=547
While there are many chemicals that can act as greenhouse gases, the most important currently in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere are water, carbon dioxide, methane, and CFCs (see http://www.ieagreen.org.uk/ch4-1.htm). The warming itself increases the water in the atmosphere, giving a positive feedback that enlarges the effect of the others.
re resp:11: The Plague in Europe, in three years (1347-1350), killed maybe a third of the people in Europe. This led in turn to labor shortages, which led to a lot of other effects, such as greater value for laborers, a vast disruption in the existing social structure, and eventually, popular rebellion, political upheaval, and more individual rights. When Patrick Henry said, "...give me liberty, or give me death!" he was expressing what is perhaps a valid equation. If something killed off 1/3 of the population of the world right now, in another 50 years there'd probably be a lot less concern about the totalitarianism of conglomerate corporations. The economic value of every person would increase by a lot and the wealth would get a lot more spread out as a result. There'd be more resources for everyone, too. Prices would drop; those who lived would be able to buy a lot more stuff. Get rid of 50,000 people at random from Ann Arbor and there'd be some pretty swank houses left for the rest, for not much money.
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Call for volunteers?
Mr. jep: If population were to decline by 1/3 how, would you suppose, the level of economic output would be sustained in order to achieve the result you assume?
Maybe the 1/3 that die off would be the least productive third.
(just like alcohol and brain cells!)
(Wouldn't matter; the equipment would still be there, the knowledge to run it would still be there, so it won't take long to train up the survivors. Besides, one of those megatrends is that fewer people are needed to keep up modern production rates.)
if two poitns makes a straight line, it would tehn seem to be true that france has as much concern for its elderly as it does for the iraqui peopole - off on holiday and let the weak die. /
your logic seems less than compelling..
...or logical...
After the plague there were a lot less people per acre and nobody had to try to farm the really bad land.
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Might this be a good place to campaign for the legalization of drunk driving?
For its Malthusian benefits?
...or Malt-ian benefits ....
abotu the logic missed above ....
franch concern for elderly: zero therefore go off on holiday and
do nothing when they start dying in large quantities.
french concern for iraqui peopoe: zero therefore stay out on 'holiday'
(holiday umbrella created by others' wwii sacrifice)
and do nothing when/while iraquis continue dying in
large quantities - by gassing adn slaughter and
created famines
ignoring genocide 'over there' has been a vicious chrarcteristic of
most of the planet for most fo the history of mankind.
however, that is slowly coming to an end, thankfully.
'it takes a planet' to protect the family of mankind - and now the
capabilities exist to do so.
we 'missed' teh pogroms, teh ukraine, rwanda, cambodia, teh armenians,
ans several others (larger and/or smaller) but 'we' did stop
hitler, japan (see china, et al.), bosnia ... and now saddam.
verrrrrrry slowly we are, as a planet, getting this thing right.
logic problem? i think not.
comments?
Perhaps I should just count my blessings that our noble and fearless leader is apparently unaware of this dastardly French geriatricide, for there's no telling what could happen if he took an interest in liberating the suffering aged masses of France..
Does France have oil? If not, I wouldn't worry.
It's a good thing the Bush administration sees no need for collaboration with France (or, really, much of anybody). This way, when we decide to liberate France's oppressed Octagenarian minority, there's no risk of having embarrassing pictures of Rummy shaking hands with French diplomats surface. I mean, it would be tragic if evidence surfaced that the Reagan and GHWBush administrations exported huge quantities of thermal underwear and space heaters to France to be used in that nation's oppression and slaughter of its elderly. Hmmm. The analogy wears thin...
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These days I find myself disturbed by anything Bush does, no matter who he's doing it with (or without). Aside from that, I think my level of disturbedness depends more on what exactly the collaboration is on than who it is with. While I don't see China as somebody we should be chumming around with< i'm perfectly happy to work with them to prevent the War to End All Nations That End in "Korea". Russia's higher on my list of acceptable allies than China, but I'd be happiest with a collaborator like, say, the UN.
re33 putin frightens me.
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and everso much smarter than our kaiser.
Knowledgable, wily, and well-connected where it counts might be more accurate. I'm sure Putin knows the spy game like the back of his hand if he was head of the KGB. I'm sure there is a lot of covert politics that he would know infinitely better than Dubya. Thing is, I would imagine Russia may have more restrictions than our Patriot Act.
Earlier this summer there was a yacht visiting Ketchikan which belonged to Roman Abramovitch, Russian oligarch and political crony of Putin. It was 200+ feet long, had a helicopter, a motor launch, and a 70 foot sailboat all perched up on top. It looked exactly like the sort of thing a James Bond supervillain would use to travel around the world and it occurred to me that that impression might not be completely baseless..
France has plenty of oil. They buy it from Libya.
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/trall/2003/trall031002.gif
Ah, but does it have a submarine? ;> "No longer is the turbine-powered helicopter the ultimate accoutrement for a megayacht." -- U.S. Submarines ad brochure.
re #41: I definitely wouldn't rule it out.
thankxx slynne .. #41
Whores make a warming in my PANTS.
Did they suffer?
And this, just in (Well, actually, it's from August on Space.com): (Discussing snow on Mars) "Yes, surprisingly, but you wouldn't want to ski on it. And it's melting, perhaps due to global warming." Quick! Somebody call Kyoto to do something about those emissions from Martian cars and factories!
Hey! did you hear about the new study released that says the Neanderthals (early man) actually began global warming? Seems the fossil records show gradual warming over the last 100,000 years. Death to the nean... wait,...never mind.
Hmm...it seems to me that these arguments are along the lines of, "Floods often occur naturally. Therefore if my neighbor builds a dam downstream and floods my house, I can't blame him; it's a natural process."
You have several choices: