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Summer heat killed nearly 1,500 in France, officials say

bbc.com

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Re: Summer heat killed nearly 1,500 in France, officials say

#81

Post by Symmetry »

justsubmit wrote: post #69
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“So you know, a warming of 1 degree Celsius, which is what we’ve seen thus far, can lead to a 10-fold increase in the frequency of 100 degree days in New York City for example,” said Dr. Mann. According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, since the 1960s the average number of heat waves — defined as two or more consecutive days where daily lows exceeded historical July and August temperatures — in 50 major Am…

You pasted a quote of Michael Mann, aka the hockey stick guy, a known scientific fraud. Doing things like that is why people don't believe alarmists and the NYT anymore.

If you think the entire discipline of climatology is a fraud that's fine but mainstream climatology says that the hockey stick graph was accurate.

Re: Summer heat killed nearly 1,500 in France, officials say

#82

Post by skohan »

roywiggins wrote: post #42
geomark wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would people be able to physically adapt to longer periods of higer temperatures? I mean, it is around 40 degrees every day for most of the two months of hot season where I live. And a lot of people don't have air conditioning. On the hottest days they sit around in the village in the shade, drinking a lot and not moving much. Lots of complaining but we don't hear much about heat related deaths.

Adaptation works until the wet bulb temperature is above human body temperature, at which point you'll just slowly broil since you can't lose energy by sweating. Not very likely to get there in Europe, but other (hotter, wetter) countries may.

I was in Doah recently, and people live almost their entire lives indoors. We even went to the main street market after dark and it was too hot to stand without sweating. It's hard to imagine what would happen there if the temperature were to increase by even a few degrees.

Re: Summer heat killed nearly 1,500 in France, officials say

#83

Post by TulliusCicero »

dalore wrote: post #46
zadkey wrote: post #34

I live in Texas. The heat wave that France is experienced this summer is like maybe 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than a normal summer for us. Preparedness for summer is deeply ingrained in everyone's minds here. Many Apartment complexes treat issues with AC units as emergency situations, reach out to on-call handymen and give high priority to their fix. In the city of Dallas, city code requires that property owne…

It doesn't make sense to have AC preparedness when it's only used for 1 week out of a year. Also the environmental impact of everyone having an AC, that's not good. In France and the UK hardly any has an AC because it's not really needed. Your suggestion is that they spend billions of dollars for this? Who buys everyone the AC? I lived in PNG which is near the equator and hot. It's not the temperature that's the true…

> It doesn't make sense to have AC preparedness when it's only used for 1 week out of a year.

If that one week a year can kill people, still think it doesn't make sense?

Re: Summer heat killed nearly 1,500 in France, officials say

#84

Post by Scoundreller »

My experience with a lot of French people isn’t just “we don’t need air conditioning”.

It’s that “air conditioning makes you sick”.

Even though most EU cars now come standard with AC, my experience is that the French would rather open the windows on the autoroute than turn hit the AC.

Re: Summer heat killed nearly 1,500 in France, officials say

#85

Post by paulsutter »

skohan wrote: post #78
paulsutter wrote: post #31

France population is 67 million and life expectancy is 82 years, so about 2000 people die every day. Over the 20 days of high heat, that’s about 70 extra people per day, or about 3 percent, just to put it in perspective. What percent of ordinary deaths would we expect to get attributed to high heat? Especially among the elderly? Disappointed in the 0% effort journalists make to put things in perspective.

I would consider a 3% increase in mortality rate to be quite alarming.

No information is provided whether the rate changed, only that the deaths were attributed to heat. This is the sort of homework I would expect of the journalist

EDIT: regarding CNN, 9% doesn’t add up and the quote is vague. I know I’m crazy to expect journalists to care about numbers but it just bugs me

Re: Summer heat killed nearly 1,500 in France, officials say

#86

Post by brewdad »

qazpot wrote: post #24
ainiriand wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, and yes. Heatwaves like the one experienced in Spain have been extraordinarily long. We experience heat waves all summers and they usually last 2-3 days. This one lasted 1 week. And last year we had 2 heat waves 5 days each. I am talking about ~40 degrees every day. At night barely 28. You can compare historical data here (es) http://www.aemet.es/es/idi/clima/registros_climaticos You can look at the median yearly…

> I am talking about ~40 degrees every day. At night barely 28. Where I come from that's not called a heat wave that's called summer.

And your buildings have been adapted for that environment. If Paris was relocated to North America it would lie a bit north of halfway between Seattle and Vancouver (Right about Bellingham, WA). Those cities would suffer quite a bit as well with long sustained temps that high.

Re: Summer heat killed nearly 1,500 in France, officials say

#87

Post by cryptoz »

dalore wrote: post #46
zadkey wrote: post #34

I live in Texas. The heat wave that France is experienced this summer is like maybe 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than a normal summer for us. Preparedness for summer is deeply ingrained in everyone's minds here. Many Apartment complexes treat issues with AC units as emergency situations, reach out to on-call handymen and give high priority to their fix. In the city of Dallas, city code requires that property owne…

It doesn't make sense to have AC preparedness when it's only used for 1 week out of a year. Also the environmental impact of everyone having an AC, that's not good. In France and the UK hardly any has an AC because it's not really needed. Your suggestion is that they spend billions of dollars for this? Who buys everyone the AC? I lived in PNG which is near the equator and hot. It's not the temperature that's the true…

> In France and the UK hardly any has an AC because it's not really needed

Thousands of people just died. It is clearly needed.

Re: Summer heat killed nearly 1,500 in France, officials say

#88

Post by Someone »

dalore wrote: post #46
zadkey wrote: post #34

I live in Texas. The heat wave that France is experienced this summer is like maybe 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than a normal summer for us. Preparedness for summer is deeply ingrained in everyone's minds here. Many Apartment complexes treat issues with AC units as emergency situations, reach out to on-call handymen and give high priority to their fix. In the city of Dallas, city code requires that property owne…

It doesn't make sense to have AC preparedness when it's only used for 1 week out of a year. Also the environmental impact of everyone having an AC, that's not good. In France and the UK hardly any has an AC because it's not really needed. Your suggestion is that they spend billions of dollars for this? Who buys everyone the AC? I lived in PNG which is near the equator and hot. It's not the temperature that's the true…

By that logic, it doesn’t make sense to fit a building with a sprinkler system when it’s only used for one hour out of a century.

The question should be whether AC would be used much, but whether it has a net benefit. And yes, the environmental impact should be taken into account.

To me, that depends (a.o.) on whether those 1,500 excess deaths get ‘compensated’ by lower death rates just after the heat wave (which would mean many of those who died lost ‘only’ a few weeks)

Re: Summer heat killed nearly 1,500 in France, officials say

#89

Post by war1025 »

tlb wrote: post #20
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that extreme temperatures certainly contribute to the death of people who would not have otherwise died I don't think it's that cut and clear. In many cases of heat death there is shared responsibility. To lump them all together as heat deaths is sensationalist. If it's 100deg out then you shouldn't be doing things that require massive amounts of PPE. If someone dies because they were improperly clothed…

I grew up in the Canadian prairies where people frequently did die from the cold. If your car broke down on a lonely road in midwinter, there was a real prospect of freezing to death. People there carried extra parkas, blankets, and thermal candles, but those could only keep you warm for several hours. If you freeze to death in -10C weather, you were improperly clothed. But if you freeze in -50C weather, there's no a…

That's a powerful story... dang.

Re: Summer heat killed nearly 1,500 in France, officials say

#90

Post by C1sc0cat »

ramblerman wrote: post #59
throwaway5752 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people of France aren't ignorant. They have just acclimated to a climate that is rapidly getting hotter. It would be patronizing if French people offered basic advice on not building on floodplains and storm preparation after Harvey. People just plan based on their prior experiences.

Im from Belgium and like France we are completely unprepared when it comes to these summers. The Texas model offers some good ideas to think about. Why must you get so offended, I didn’t.

No they go on holiday in august - the last time this happened it was mostly older people who stayed behind in the city who died.
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