Sometimes it gets hot. Even in Northern Europe, currently in the midst of a heat wave. Many people don’t realize that London is farther north than anywhere in the contiguous U.S. It is at the same latitude as Calgary, Canada. Paris is at the same latitude as North Dakota and Montreal. So Northern Europe has not generally been home to high temperatures.
Thirty-one years ago, my wife and I and our then six year old daughter were in London in May, during an unprecedented heat wave. It was so hot that the East India Club, where we were staying, relaxed its rule requiring gentlemen to wear a suit coat at all times. For the first time ever, I believe. But no one blamed us humans: that was before the Left turned global warming into a money machine.
This week’s heat wave has prompted hysteria as well as political opportunism. JoNova reports:
The apocalypse has arrived — the worst ever heatwave means 1,000 schools were closed as temperatures “soared” to 36 degrees C in the UK. The Met Office has issued a red “risk to life” report.
The solution to this, obviously, is to go gangbusters drilling for gas in the North Sea so that Britons can put air conditioners in every home and school (and also afford to run them.) Only 3% of British homes have air conditioning.
Right. But that isn’t how British authorities see it. And the hysteria is real.
So I wondered: how hot is 36 degrees C? I was surprised to see that it is only 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit. That is hot, to be sure. But where I live, in the northern US, not the southern, that is a pretty common temperature in the summer. In fact, the forecast for Monday where I live in Minnesota is a high of 98 degrees.
When I was a kid growing up in South Dakota, summer temperatures in the 90s were common, and occasionally the thermometer soared over 100. And the only air conditioned building in town was the Plaza Theater. Not a single home was air conditioned.
In the 1960s, my town built a new high school along modern lines. It was great, but it lacked the high ceilings and stone construction that kept things relatively cool. In the fall and spring, it got really, really hot inside. But they didn’t close down the school, they added air conditioning.
Extremes of heat and cold (especially cold) can indeed be dangerous, mainly to elderly people who are in poor health. But the solution is not to whine about global warming (which, if it is a reality, will save lots of lives otherwise lost to the cold). The solution is to adapt to weather extremes by heating and cooling public and private spaces. Britain, instead of following that obvious course, is making air conditioning illegal. So they can expect the suffering to continue.
