Thursday, 3 February 2022

A small number x a big number x a random positive number = a very big number.

From The Guardian:

Extreme weather has cost Europe about €500bn over 40 years

European pop. is about 500 million, so that's €25 per person per year i.e. bugger all.

European Environment Agency data shows worst-hit countries to be Germany, France and Italy

No surprises there. France and Germany are two of the largest countries by land area, Italy is also pretty big.

Towards the end of the article:

[The UK's] losses were calculated at about €57bn over the period, equivalent to close to €1,000 per person, with 3,500 deaths.

That would have been a better headline. £25 per person per year and 175 deaths per year.

That's only a tenth as many as UK road deaths. UK road deaths are very low by European standards and less than half a percent of total UK deaths. The article says that most European 'extreme weather' deaths are from heat stroke, so not unexpectedly the UK has few of those.

12 comments:

A K Haart said...

I wonder if those deaths are from heatstroke or with heatstroke.

Bayard said...

...and what were the costs for the previous 40 years?

Mark Wadsworth said...

AKH, they were "with". A normal healthy person does not die of heat stroke. Not even gingers.

B, 1940 - 45 was pretty expensive.

Robin Smith said...

And due to brilliant technology, the number of deaths from extreme weather has fallen significantly.

This deaths will have been due to vaccines 🤣

Scrobs. said...

In July 2020, the last available day for circulation numbers, The Guardian sold an average of 105,134 copies each day – comprising 23,902 newsstand sales and 21,232 subscriptions and 52,000 copies at the BBC. This compares to 248,775 per day ten years earlier.

That's one copy per employee.

Robin Smith said...

Is anyone even a little bit bothered about energy price rises coming up ?

So much is going on unsaid by previously very noisy commentators.

Most recently of course the back tracking on the pandemic scandal

Bayard said...

RS, it will all feed through to lower rents and house prices and everyone will the same as they were before.

Robin Smith said...

Won't feeding monopoly profits raise house prices?

Bayard said...

Higher cost of living and more taxes mean less money available to pay the rent means lower rents.
Higher cost of living and more taxes mean less money available to pay the mortgage means smaller mortgages for a given income means cheaper houses.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Scrobs, now that is interesting. In other words, the BBC uses our licence fee to subsidise the Guardian?

Bayard said...

Mark, well, the BBC is the Voice of the Establishment on TV and the Guardian, since the Andrew Gilligan affair, has been the Voice of the Establishment in print.

Robin Smith said...

Rather all media is the voice of the backtrackers and government misinformation?

Were all hypnotised by whatever is our favourite idea.