Us? I mean, yes, strong, manly, that’s me. cough
Is it always question of conserving, though? How many extra people must there be in a room or a house with AC before the at-risk people don’t get the benefits?
Probably, but it doesn’t mean we would necessarily be comfortable.
I’ve been exercising all summer, including in the awful heat of the past few weeks. I run 5 miles about 4-6 times a week. I’ve also been playing softball a couple of days a week, usually on weekends right in the hottest part of the day. I actually like exercising when it’s hot, working up a good sweat.
But when i’m not exercising, i still like being in a nice cool environment. The idea of walking around all day sweating like a pig isn’t very appealing to me.
Well, on today’s show he talked about an article about how obese people have trouble in the heat and we went on about global warming for a while. I have heard him so riff several other times.
I have never heard him dispute that the climate changes. Indeed, today he said it does all the time, and in fact cited a report from the 1930s discussing climate change before it was “politicized.” He disputes the ability of scientists to be able to make long term trend analyses from the data sets they are using, but doesn’t have any major issue with the idea in general that the earth is warming. He does strongly dispute that humans are causative or that the causative effect if it existed could be reliably culled from the data.
FWIW, that’s what I’ve heard and I listen during lunch most days.
My grandfather would dispute that. 
I guess we’d have to define “tough” pretty rigorously to make a meaningful statement about people then versus now.
Let me try and see how you can pull it apart:
Before air conditioning, obviously nobody had it. Therefore, in a given heat wave, roughly 100% who we might consider as at risk for susceptability to heat (infants, sick, elderly, what have you) were exposed.
Some percentage of them died.
Now a large percentage of this at-risk group enjoys air conditioning.
Some percentage of these people get exposed and die.
Now, on the face of it we could seemingly compare percentages and say that the tougher group would have less fatalities.
If I were to guess, I would say that we have a higher percentage of fatalities among today’s group because advances in medecine have allowed people to survive who are much more medically fragile than would be survivable in the 30s. I would also guess that today’s group of at risk people probably prudently stays in the a/c most of the time. Given a power outage or other exposure to heat they have no acclimatization. The group in the 1930s would have some acclimitization due to constant exposure to seasonal temperature change without the benefit of A/C.
Because they would be less fragile and more acclimatized as a group perhaps it might be fair to lable this group as “tougher”
Similarly, the non at risk group of the 1930s would also be more acclimatized due to the nonavailability of A/C. Also, I’m guessing that we were a more manual labor intensive economy back then than we are now. So, this group would also be used to working in the heat, and hence “tougher,” than we who are not.
We also have better medicine and painkillers now than they did then. Back then, they had to “tough it out” on a lot more things than we did, and were probably more used to chronic discomfort.
As a group, I’d imagine we suffer a lot more from obesity than they did back then. We are also a lot more “sensitive” and in “touch with our feelings” which I guess make us wimpy psychologically and physically compared to the previous iron-assed tough guys who used to walk the earth.
Finally, the ancient greeks beleived that each generation was weaker than the one before as we got further and further from our divine origins, so certainly, the ancient greeks are on Rush’s side on this.
Putting this all together it sure looks to me like they were tougher then than we are now, in general, and specifically as pertains to heat resistance (seeing as we are mor likely to be acclimatized than our 1930s selves)
Hmmm. Remember those special lanes for people who carpooled? HOV lanes or High Occupancy Vehicle Lanes.
Maybe instead of HOV Lanes we could make HOHVAC rooms. High Occupancy Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning rooms.
Hmmm. Actually, I guess if we’re strong and wish to conserve and be considerate of the needy and not put them at risk, we should maintain our acclimatization so we can forgo A/C at times when the power grid is at risk and not jeopardize those who depend on it for their health.
I hear you. I run everyday and do yard work on weekends, and it still feels hotter than hell out there.
I guess being acclimatized just means we are less likely to keel over.
Hell, I have a weird-ass asthma, which gets worse depending on the temperature. I’m actually pretty happy at 80+ degrees… I can breathe!
Actually, Rush does not so much dispute it as assert the contrary without evidence. I suppose that fits some minimal definition of “dispute,” but it mostly looks like the typical fact-free assertions of Rush.
A point with which he has personal experience.
As to the acclimatization discussion, we would first have to discover whether people who are acclimatized are less susceptible to trauma, or whether acclimatized persons are simply better prepared to continue exercising in higher levels of heat. The people who are dying are those who are already at a stage in their lives where exercizing in heat (or even out of the heat) is probably not an attainable goal. The 141 (or so) people who died in California, recently, did not include large numbers of stock brokers and computer geeks. No greater percentage of those types of people died than died in the 1936 heat wave.
So, it is possible that people in 2006 complain more about the weather than did people in 1936, (although I doubt it), but he has established no serious basis for his claim that we are “weaker.”
Basically, he is simply repeating the tradition of the Greeks that things continue to degrade through time (which means that he is betraying his own themes, repeated throughout most of his career, that the “liberals” are falsely painting a picture of decline when we are actually getting better all the time). Whether it is ancient Greeks or one’s grandfather, each generation likes to pretend that they had it worse and responded to life better than their successors. It is simply one way to compensate for the jealousy they feel when they see the next generation have it better than they did.