[pp.int.general] (no subject)

[Maxime Rouquet]

On 07/25/2012 06:05 AM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Thousands of people died in France 2 or 3 years ago because of great heat.
> That will happen more, and more often, as heating proceeds.

I would be careful with such argument. It is true that the death-rate
increased during the heat wave you speak about, but anybody could
explain to you we had summer heat waves long before the human
industrialization could cause global warming.

Official death number increase is something like 20'000 in 2003 France,
while 500'000 people have died in the 1636 heat wave for example.

Most of the persons who died were particularly vulnerable to the heat
and lived alone, a large majority of them were old people with a low
life expectancy. After that, authorities and media took the use to warn
people about heat dangers, the need to drink water regularly, etc.

This heat wave took us by surprise, but if it had any significant
impact, it is unlikely that a new one would have the same anyway. Plus,
given we have had overall a bad weather during summer since then, French
people might not all be receptive to an argument like "global warming
will make 2003's summer heat wave more likely to happen".

I believe the impacts on developing countries would be much more
significant. They are much more vulnerable to the potable water problems
on the short-term, and desertification is putting a lot of Saharan
African countries in a very difficult situation for example.

But sadly, having a few old people dying of heat in France is much more
interesting for the medias than millions of African people dying and
African children getting deprived from their future farmland...