Essay by Eric Worrall
So go swimming a few weeks earlier in the season?
Extreme heat poses ‘real risk’ to Spain’s mass tourism industry
Public health adviser says higher temperatures caused by climate crisis pose danger for visitors not used to them
Sam Jones in Madrid
Sat 27 Jul 2024 14.00 AESTThe climate emergency poses a “real risk” to Spain’s traditional mass tourist model as rising temperatures and more frequent heatwaves hit the country’s most popular coastal destinations, a senior public health adviser has warned.
Héctor Tejero, the head of health and climate change at Spain’s health ministry, said the increasingly apparent physical impacts of the climate emergency had already led the ministry to begin talks with the British embassy on how best to educate “vulnerable” tourists about coping with the heat.
Asked whether the climate emergency could lead to tourism disappearing from parts of Spain in the future, Tejero said: “It’s a real risk because the big Spanish sol y playa tourist areas – the areas that are most dependent on tourism – are places where the impact of climate change is going to be greatest in Spain; places such as the south and the east of the peninsula – basically the Mediterranean coast. There’s a definite risk that the zones where there’s most tourism will become less habitable because of more heatwaves and much hotter nights.”
…
“I’d say tourism is one of many sectors that’s at risk from climate change,” Tejero said. “Apart from the fact that it’s causing tensions in certain areas, it needs to adapt itself to the climatic reality that’s on the way. That’s why we need to adapt the tourist sector, consider reducing it, and try to mitigate the effects of climate change before they get worse. But Spain is the EU country that’s most vulnerable to climate change and that’s not going to change in the short term.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/27/extreme-heat-poses-real-risk-to-spains-mass-tourism-industry
How could the “climate emergency” possibly get more absurd?
Spain has this thing called winter, which is cold. Spanish Summers are hot. Somewhere between the hot Spanish summer and the cold Spanish winter is a temperature which is right for everyone. If you don’t like blistering heat, visit a few weeks early. Or if the weather is too hot, pick a beach on the Spanish North coast where the weather is a little cooler.
From the perspective of the anti’s, in the streets in Barcelona, that are asking/demanding that tourism be restricted, a little more tourist disencitive is a good thing.
Find the cloudy lining.
I recommend that Spain do nothing and it will all work out fine. The government doesn’t know a damn thing.
The people of Spain will do something about it. And what they do won’t be pretty.
People spend much more money trying to stay warm than to stay cool.
Humans are tropical creatures, that’s why we don’t have fur to protect us from the cold.
Outside of the Tropics, we have to live and work in heated buildings, use heated transportation and wear warm clothes most of the year.
The WUWT Real-time global temperature on the right-hand side is 58.12°F / 14.51°C, that is much too cold to live outdoors with no protection from the cold. A person might last a few days before hypothermia killed them.
No, the massive increase in housing costs and basic living costs driven by tourism is why the people of Spain want tourism to be SHARPLY restricted.
That is some of the people. Others make most of their living from tourists and, if anything, want more of them. Somehow the divergent attitudes have to accommodate each other. Restriction requires coercive government action. Non-interference is free choice.
Yep, those in Spain making money from the tourism want more, they also don’t care if their fellow Spaniards are pushed out of owning homes/land since they are quite able to afford the rise in prices/rents that is hurting others. Have read several articles on this at ZeroHedge, a lot of anger building over this and leftists are gleefully using it for their own agendas.
Same is happening in many tourist areas in UK from Cornwall to Whitby and on into Scotland, Wales and the Lake District. Wealthy people buy up property to let on AirBnb and other sites and deprive locals of housing in the area they grew up in.
Without tourism, much of the Spanish would be under-employed/unemployed
The extreme left coordinating these attacks on tourists don’t care either way
Tourists won’t want to go to the beach when it is really hot?
Is that a sentence that makes sense?
Well it is one of the key reasons bars are so popular in Spain. When it is too hot to sit on the beach a cool beer in a bar overlooking the beach/heat is a great alternative. A bar that provides shade and cooling fans is a good option for many tourists and it provided big profits for the Spanish economy..
It’s never too hot on the beach if you use a parasol.
Most tourist come for just one week. Spend most of their time drinking until early in the morning sleep until 1 o’clock and go to the beach on the hottest part of the day and get burned. It has always been like that.
Adios!
Say you are on a beach under the shade of a large paraguas and the temperature on Tuesday is 36°C and on Wednesday it is 38°C (about 97 to 101 F) – would you notice? Me? If I were there (and I wouldn’t be), I’d head indoors when the temp hit about 28°C (82°F). Me? I’d vacation at about 7,000 feet {2200 m.}.
Anyone have temperature data for Spain, and pictures of where it is measured ?
2023 was a warm year because of the El Nino, hence the hype from the Groaniad.
And of course, all their “predictions” are based on “the models”..
.. reality gone out the window.
Not a lot of models on the beach these days.
Plenty of whales, though !
Story tip..
Apparently the Antarctic set several COLD records this time last year.
Chinese Academy Of Sciences: “Antarctic Cold Spells Shattered Records” In July-August, 2023 (notrickszone.com)
I’m sure if it had been warm records, there would been a big hoo-ha in the press.
Mr Worrall
Your sentiments are fine for adults without children/with grown-up children, but families are pretty much limited to holidays in the school vacations, which in England tend to be late July to early September (in Scotland, end of June to mid August).
‘Spain’ is of course quite a big country and has significant climatic differences. If you go to southern/southeastern Spain/the islands it is of course brutally hot in the summer. You do of course have the option to go further north up the Mediterranean coast, to Catalonia, where the heat will be less extreme. And if you are braver, the Atlantic coast to the north will see far less extreme weather and the sea will be considerably more bracing too.
Not to put too fine a point on it, there are beaches on the French Atlantic/English Channel coast, the German Baltic Sea coast, all around Britain too. The summer temperatures vary considerably, so people can choose according to taste.
There is of course another approach to handling the heat. Go to the beach at dawn or late in the evening, near to sunset. We did that in Yugoslavia in the 1970s, I’ve done it in Greece. This may not be the favoured strategy of those who wish to party until 3am, of course, but it’s not a prescription, merely an option.
Less concrete in Southern Spain might also be a strategy for reducing mid-day temperatures?
Not to put too fine a point on it, there are beaches on the French Atlantic/English Channel coast, the German Baltic Sea coast,
Totally agree about the Baltic coast of Germany. I was there in June and there were plenty of people in the sea. Judging by the languages I heard being spoken I reckon 95% or more of the visitors were German. Admittedly the beaches have a plentiful supply of Standkörbe: they will cost you about 14 euros a day to hire.
But it might not suit everybody. There were places to get alcoholic refreshment but there was a distinct lack of the less salubrious establishments you might get elsewhere. But I would say great for families with children. And in June there were plenty of families with small children. I also spent many happy holidays on the Atlantoc coast of France in the 1990s when I went on holiday with my children.
When our kids are practicing football in the US with full pads during the summer, I will remind them of the brutal heat the kids are experiencing at the beaches in southern Spain. All kids like to laugh.
The URL tells you a boatload of BS is coming…
Story top.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/markets/article-13677211/Drax-seeks-new-handout-despite-300m-buyback.html
Drax, the UK’s largest wood burning power station had already received £6 billion in direct subsidies and is seeking a further £300 million more. Of course it is.
Green engineering at its finest!!!!
Share price rise on the day put it top of the leaderboard and the dividend was raised. Currently there is money to be made burning US forests. Will be a different story if the taxpayer cash is stopped but since Drax is an important source on inertial generation on our grid it has a tight grip on the government’s balls.
Can I make an obvious point. For those wishing to retain a sense of wellbeing/sanity, do not click on any Guardian web article.
It simply gives them click count advertising revenue, which aids their nonsense propaganda.
Eric makes a very sensible suggestion but of course the article was aimed at normal Guardian readers who are not noted for their common sense or else they wouldn’t read the Guardian.
I have only been to Madrid once and it is warm. There is a US airbase just outside Madrid. So there should be lots of temperature data available.
Spent more time in Palma de Majorca. If hot was bad why do some many Northern European folks flock there? SAS had a training spot in one of the hotels years ago. Lovely place to spend a few days.
take your lies and shove them
I give you “climate gentrification.” I kid you not:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/i-am-little-haiti-exhibition-documents-battle-with-gentrification-and-climate-change
Excerpt: “… A major factor, Little Haiti’s relatively higher elevation at 10 feet above sea level and away from Miami’s famed coastline makes it more attractive as seas rise and increasingly threaten much of this area. That’s made Little Haiti a victim of so-called climate gentrification.”
I am sure if people find out it is hot and sunny on Spanish beaches the entire tourist economy is toast.
They could try Portugal. The sun is the same but the cold Atlantic ocean keeps temperatures near the coast a lot lower especially at night.
So the theory is that a hotter world will be worse for the beach business? Huh?
Oh?
Spain will lose customers while Dubai is hotter and attracting hordes of wealthy people?
How does that work, exactly?
Another public health adviser, apparently an alarmist wuss blaming summer temperatures on mankind and mankind’s alleged CO₂.
From Noel Coward
https://youtu.be/BifLPGi4X6A
As an American from the southern US that loves visiting Spain’s moderate coastal climate, I can only hope Europeans fall for this and the impact is greater availability in rentals and lower prices.