Things that make you go hmmmm

The Economist's Certain Ideas of Europe blog notes the boom in year-round operation of bar terraces, supported by outdoor space heaters, that tends to follow smoking bans. This has certainly been the case in DC. But what about global warming?

. . . these outdoor terrace heaters (which have also sprung up like topsy all over Brussels in the last couple of years) are not exactly a brilliant idea, environmentally. The gas ones may be prettily designed with little silver hats to reflect the heat downwards, but they still amount to sticking a bunch of large propane cylinders on the pavement, lighting them, and letting them heat the sky. The electric ones are surely equally wasteful, aren't they? It is all rather a poser. This blogger, as a selfish non-smoker, confesses to finding bars and pubs in places like Britain much more pleasant since smoking was banned in them. Yet a headlong rush to more and more outdoor heating cannot be a bright idea, either.

How long before the first city council bans smoking in outside bars?

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2007/12/things-that-make-you-go-hmmmm/2454/