Paris
Thursday, July 27
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A Scottie gets
a bath in one of the fountains at the
Dog poop still
exits on the sidewalks of
This cutie
would never do anything so bad, would he?
Well, I suppose the problem is really with the owner, whose foot is
shown here.
This lucky cat
lives in the
Horse in front
of Sacre Coeur. |
How to survive
a heat wave in 1. Get up early and go for an hour-long walk
before the heat and air pollution worsen. 2. Open windows only at night and close them
by 9 or 10 in the morning, at the latest. 3. Cover south facing French doors that have
only flimsy curtains with heavy quilts or blankets during the day. 4. While sitting around the apartment doing
your reading, studying, or working, sit with feet in a basin of water. Aim a fan directly at yourself. If it is hotter than body temperature in
the apartment, wear a damp t-shirt at all times. (By the way, did you know that some
sportscasters out in the heat on live TV are actually standing, barefoot, in
basins of water? We learned this by
watching the Tour de France. That’s
why their feet aren’t shown on your TV screen.) 5. Be ready to take a cold shower at any time. 6. Drink lots of water. But do not drink too much. This year, with this canicule
(that’s what the French call a heat wave), the problem for many older people
has been that they drink too much water instead of too little. This depletes
the body’s mineral salts and can cause dizziness and even fainting. 7. Venture out in the late evening for a
moderate walk to an air conditioned restaurant. Do not dine until 9PM. 8. If you get cabin fever during the day and
you must venture out, go to the grocery store and stand near the frozen food
cases. 9. If you
have a chronic health problem such as high blood pressure or a blood
condition, take very seriously the problem of air pollution. The bad ozone that is cooked up in a city
like The heat wave that
we are experiencing this year is not as hot as the one we had here in August
2003. But it has been much longer
lasting. Yesterday and the day before
we had very bad air quality, so we stayed inside except for the morning and
evening outings. We’ve had several
other bad air days this month, too. The French have
no trouble admitting that they’ve had a heat wave, but they are loathe to
talk so much about the deadly air pollution problems. After dinner last night, we walked home in the
rain. It felt glorious. It was a very cold, heavy rain, and water
ran in the streets. There was much
thunder and lighting, which absolutely delighted me (always does!). Today, finally, we have a cloudy day and
the temperatures are much better – only in the 80s, not the 90s. The French climatologists have warned that this
will not be our last heat wave.
“Beginning in 2050, these canicules like
that of 2003 will be relatively frequent,” according to climatologist Jean Jouzel (Le Parisien, July 26, 2006). The cause?
The greenhouse effect caused by emissions of greenhouse gases. A chain reaction has been started, says
Valerie Masson-Delmotte, a paleoclimatologist. Even if we stop the production of
greenhouse gases, the climate is still going to heat up from now until the
end of the century. So, what has
changed here since the canicule of 2003? The weather
phenomenon has been less violent.
Nights have not been quite as hot.
The government has put in place a Canicule
Plan and has implemented the plan with great seriousness. One part of the
plan in One suburb of Somehow the French government was able to gather
up an additional 2 billion euros by making French people work on a day that
they used to have for a holiday (the Pentacost). This money is dedicated to efforts to help
the older people and handicapped people who suffer in a canicule. The organization that collects the funds is
the Caisse Nationale de Solidarité pour l’Autonomie
(CNSA). Only 500 million euros have
been used so far. The big telecommunications centers operated by
France Telecom are very hot places that are too big to be air
conditioned. All the high-tech
equipment needed for telecommunications these days puts out a great deal of
heat. The poor folks who work there
must endure temperatures around 100 degrees F. The management has changed their hours so
that they start at 6AM and work until 1PM only, and they’ve rented big air
conditioners that provide areas where workers can cool off. One of the big heat-producers are the bays
required to provide ADSL service. |
