New York City, August 11, 2005

Despite this year’s very inconsistent weather in Europe, WWF came out
with a
report showing that since the 1970s, European cities have gotten hotter
by 2.2
Celsius or 4.0 Fahrenheit. Heat waves have killed tens of thousand of
people
i.e. 40,000 in France and Italy in 2003.

The WWF surveys of 16 capitals have shown rise of temperature ranging
from
0.2 degrees Celsius in Copenhagen to 2.2 degrees Celsius for Madrid.
Actually,
in only three cities the rise was less than one degree and three cities
was
more then two degrees.

WWF says the reason is the heat trapping gases from fossil fuels burnt
in
power plants, cars, and factories.

Global warming creates its own vicious circle when the heat causes more
people to use air conditioning that needs more electricity, that
creates more heat
trapping gases.

Some of the other figures are: London and Luxembourg - 2 degrees,
Athens and
Lisbon 1.9 degrees, Stockholm 1.5 degrees, Warsaw 1.3 degrees,
Brussels, Rome,
Vienna 1.2 degrees, Paris and Amsterdam 1.0 degrees, Helsinki 0.8
degrees,
Dublin 0.7 degrees.

WWF points out that this effect cannot be explained by city growth
alone:
London has had only one percent rise in population figures since the
1970s and
Madrid has doubled its population but both have similarly high
temperature
increase figures.