From	Stephan Singer	Date	Wed, 06 Aug 2003 15:06:03 +0200
To	grassl@dkrz.de, Klaus Hasselmann, per.carstedt@ecosystem.se, mueller@ermine.ox.ac.uk, michael.grubb@ic.ac.uk, joyeeta.gupta@ivm.vu.nl, Carlo Jaeger, Martin Welp, Bert Metz, Mike Hulme, a-michaelowa@wwfepo.org, berk@wwfepo.org, hedger@wwfepo.org
CC	patrick.hofstetter@wwf.ch, morgan@wwf.de, Sible Schone, Catarina Cardoso, jleemorgan@wwfepo.org, Oliver Rapf, liam@wwfthai.org, Katherine Silverthorne, Lara Hansen
Subject	economic costs of european heat wave
dear all, i think we all have seen [if not commented on] the devastating heat wave presently in europe - gives us a feeling on truly global warming. WWF has assured some money - a few thousand EUROS what is not much to be honest but at least a start - to ask an economist with climate policy understanding to assess in a short but fleshy paper [max 10 pages] the economic costs of these weather extremes in europe. This can be put in context with the mitigation costs of ambitious climate policies which are often quoted as a barrier to clean technologies unfortunately. I think, we as an NGO working on climate policy need such a document pretty soon for the public and for informed decision makers in order to get a) a debate started and b) in order to get into the media the context between climate extremes/desasters/costs and finally the link between weather extremes and energy - just the solutions parts what still is not communicated at all. In short, can you advise us on a competent author who is readily available [can be one of you, of course], to bring together the conventionally accessible costs of reduced transport loads on rivers, in railway networks, forest fires, disruption of water supply and irrigation, closure of hydro power and even nuclear in some locations, health costs, agricultural failures [if accessible] etc etcetc...resulting from the heat wave? Of course, i could not sent this e-mail to all competent sceintists, so fell free to share please and come back to me - at best ASAP many regards stephan singer Stephan Singer Head of European Climate and Energy Policy Unit WWF, the conservation organization E-mail: ssinger@wwfepo.org ************************************************* www.panda.org/epo - Stay up-to-date with WWF's policy work in the capital of Europe www.passport.panda.org - take action on global conservation issues - have you got your Passport yet? ************************************************* WWF European Policy Office 36 avenue de Tervuren Box 12 1040 Brussels, Belgium Tel: +32-2-743-8817 Fax: +32-2-743-8819