Braced for Impact

PhysOrg: Human Activity to Blame For 2003 Heatwave

<p>You may recall the Great European Heatwave of '03.  Well, get used to it.</p>

Link: PhysOrg: Human Activity to Blame For 2003 Heatwave.

This study says a) it can be attributed to human activities (e.g., adding large quantities of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere); and b) it's going to be the norm. Which means that Europeans will be buying more air conditioners! And powering them with . . .  fossil fuels? Nuclear power? Wind?

Climate Change Speech -- Pew President Claussen

The 10-50 Solution

This speech gets right to the heart of the challenge facing us -- in a world where the largest, most powerful enterprises revolve around oxidizing carbon, how do you displace the old nasty stuff with new, better technologies?

It's a topic we hear very little about. Occasionally we get an announcement about a The Hydrogen Economy, but even if the technology existed today, we have no reason to believe that the huge, profitable, powerful, rapacious Carbonists would go gently into the twilight of buggy whips and bias-ply tires.

So who or what has the clout to take make the biggest, baddest "persons" on the planet change? Mr. Claussen says governments do. And governments, like Soylent Green, are people.

European Heat Death toll 35,000

die puny humans

The Earth Policy Institute (EPI), based in Washington DC, warns that such deaths are likely to increase, as "even more extreme weather events lie ahead".

The EPI calculated the huge death toll from the eight western European countries with data available. "Since reports are not yet available for all European countries, the total heat death toll for the continent is likely to be substantially larger," it says in a statement.

Can Instapundit and Forbes continue to blame this on the French?

Scientists see Antarctic vortex as drought maker

ENN News Story - Scientists see Antarctic vortex as drought maker

So there is this big swirly of wind around Antarctica, and it is speeding up considerably. Which sucks air (and moisture) out of Australia, and the rain falls in the southern ocean, rather than on the farms of one of world's largest agricultural nations. Water resource managers are treating the decreased rainfall as "permanent."

"Global warming" is just one aspect of what we need to think about as "Climate Change." It doesn't have to get hotter in New South Wales -- it just has to change to throw everything out of whack. Of course that couldn't happen in say, Iowa or California.

European Heat Deaths Caused by "Hedonism"?

The death toll from this summer's heat in Europe is up to 19,000. Dead.

Meanwhile, Instapundit cites this "eminent British historian and author" for the proposition that the French are learning the hard lessons of their hedonism.

France received a shock this summer, when more than 10,000 of its elderly citizens died in distress during a heat wave--some while supposedly under medical care in hospitals. Thanks to the 35-hour workweek and the long August holiday, these institutions were short-staffed. The families of those who died were on holiday, too.

(Somewhere cooler I presume.)

Watch out, says Mr. Johnson, the Frenchie hedonism disease is catching, and all of Europe is coming down with it. Next thing you know, the Germans will be partying on Baltic beaches while granny wilts from heatstroke.

No mention of the fact that it was really, really hot for a long time. All over the whole continent. (A continent, as P.J. O'Reilly once pointed out, where you can march from the Urals to the Irish Sea and not find an ice cube.)

Mr. Instapundit: I'm new to this blogging game, so fill me in... the point of your post was . . . what, exactly? That the French suck and deserve to die by the thousands? That the heat is caused by the French? They're getting what they deserve for taking vacations? What . . . ???

I just assumed that the cause of all those deaths from heatstroke was actually THE HEAT.

Like a Hurricane

Here in NoVa, the weather is starting to get bad. The size of Isabel is impressive -- the storm just "came ashore" 250 miles away in N. Carolina, and we're already getting some serious wind and rain. Not expecting the worst part of it until late tonight. Wind is about 30 mph here in the western burbs at about 4 pm. We're not weather sissies -- really! I mean it. Northerners mock DC during snowstorms, and Southerners mock DC in rainy/hurricane weather. Oklahomans mock us when we have tornado warnings. Basically, we get our ass kicked by pretty much every disastrous natural phenomenon except earthquakes....

In typical fashion, the kids are living it up -- the liquid equivalent of a snow day. There are cascading effects here in the DC area. When Metro announced (yesterday) that they would close the above-ground trains and buses when winds hit 40 mph, the federal government had to assess when it would send people home. Something like 200,000 people ride the Metro system every day. When the federal government closes, all the schools close, and vice versa. Last night, they just called the whole thing off. There have been some occasions in the past few years when the feds were a little slow closing down, people got stranded, significant unhappiness ensued. So now we shut down at the drop of a dime.

Also in typical fashion, my wife sees today as a home-improvement windfall -- so my day is pretty well filled up. Hanging valences, moving furniture, spackling, tinkering, etc. In previous hurricanes (non-DC), I've just been getting started with the party right about now. With 2 small kids and a pregnant wife, a heavy two-day party seems like less of a good idea.

The massive power failures have already started. Hundreds of thousands of people without electricity in NC, VA and MD. And this is just getting started. Although the local stations are yakking endlessly about what to expect, we are not getting word about what's really happening in NC right now. They are reporting that the winds are still right around 100 mph, with higher gusts. But where? How are those folks doing?

Just heard that PEPCO (the power co.) will be handing out dry ice in the parking lot of RFK stadium. I can't even compose a sentence to react to that announcement....

Suggested hurricane reading:
J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (Obsessive, makes me sweat profusely just thinking about it.)
John D. McDonald: Condominium (One of McDonald's best. No reason to think that the shitbirds that build condos on the beaches of NC and VA are any different from the shitbirds that build them in Florida...)

Waiting for Isabel

Nothing like an impending natural disaster to focus the mind. Washington DC, your global climate change test zone (sorry Frenchie, your troubles have nothing to do with us!), is bracing for the latest in this year's weather extravaganzas. If I'm reading the latest warning correctly, tomorrow afternoon should start looking pretty hairy. Are we talking about a good sized storm surge coming up the Potomac? Cause the way that sumbitch is lined up right now, it looks like the old counter-clockwise rotational thing is going to blow a whole, whole lotta water up the Potomac. That ought to do wonders for the Blue Plains sewage treatment plant, which on its best day is a health hazard. . . Paging Dr. Wexelblat . . .

So if the blizzard last winter shut down the US government for days, and the recent thunderstorms rendered people (literally) power-less, I can't wait to see a storm that's about 300 miles across. Oh yeah, and we have had the wettest spring and summer on record . .

Check out the National Hurricane Center satellite photos.