[pp.int.general] (no subject)

[Richard Stallman]

    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.

This is the usual argument of global heatintg deniers, and the
rebuttal is also well known.

Every extreme weather event that occurs COULD have happened in the
past.  However, the effect of global heating is to make such events,
which used to be very rare, increasingly frequent.  Even worse events,
that used to be so unlikely we never saw them, become merely rare,
and then increasingly frequent.

It is hard to compare deaths between 1636 and 2003.  (Was the heat
wave really 9 years ago?  It seems more recent in my memory.)  I think
most people in France were malnourished in the 17th century; I have
read that was so in the 18th century and I suppose it was true before.
Maybe they died from crop failure.

Are there any temperature records from 1636?  I don't know when a
thermometer was first invented.  Do we have any idea how hot it got
then, to compare with the recent heat wave?

Anyway, if this sort of heatwave back then happened only once every
400 years, it isn't so rare any more.

    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.

I agree.  (The heat wave in France was pertinent to the discussion at
the time.)

--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
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