No it isn't. It just takes a little longer, so you leave for work a little earlier. If you worked for me and called off because it was 20 degrees, I'd fire your butt.
But then again we are talking about the 19th century. They didn't have snowplows back then nor did they have heated transportation or even effectively heated buildings.
LOL. Snowplows! They didn't need any damn snow plows back then. They walked or rode a horse. In 19th century cities, people lived close to where they worked. As to effective heating, they survived quite nicely with their Franklin stoves.
Thus the temperature's toll on productivity would be even more extreme than it is today.
That explains why Northern Europe and the Northern US never became the industrial engines of the world like say industrial empires in Equatorial Africa or Southeast Asia or the Mississippi delta. People just freeze to a stop anyplace north of the Mason Dixon line I quess. < /sarcasm >
He could not similarly walk outside in 20 degree temperatures and survive the day without protective clothing). Additionally, when it hits 100 degrees in Houston the roads don't clog up with snow and ice every time precipitation comes. Not so when it is 20 degrees on the northeast coast where transportation is shut down or delayed any time there is an ice storm.
Excuse me, but humans figured out how to make warm clothing about 20,000 years ago. I have worked and played outdoors all day in far colder temps than 20 and it did not phase me one bit. (The operative word there BTW is work!) The old timers had a saying about cutting fire wood. It warms you twice. Once when cutting and a second time when you burn it.
I don't have the stats, but I'd be willing to guess that roads in Houston are closed more frequently from flooding from tropical storms (I've had it happen to me twice while visiting Houston) than roads in New York or Chicago are closed by snow or ice. People in the North can drive through ice and snow. People in Houston can not drive through 3 feet of water.
Another thing for you to think about. The growth of the Sun Belt did not happen until air conditioning became affordable for the average homeowner. That says something about people's attitude to relatively colder or warmer climets.
And if you demanded I travel to your company during a major snowstorm that shut down every other company in the city I would first reconsider my place of employment and then explore to what degree you were civilly liable for endangering your employees by requiring that they report to work under penalty of termination in the midst of weather conditions that render travel unsafe by any reasonable degree or measure.
LOL. Snowplows! They didn't need any damn snow plows back then. They walked or rode a horse.
Okay. Next time a snowstorm dumps 4 feet on the east coast go there and either of those two things. Try walking in it or riding a horse through it and tell me how far you get. Heck, try it with 3 feet of snow or 2 feet. And remember, you can't use any plowed road - just the places where the snow has not been removed or altered in any way since it fell. You will find it very slow and difficult at best and most likely abandon your effort in less than half an hour.
In 19th century cities, people lived close to where they worked. As to effective heating, they survived quite nicely with their Franklin stoves.
Yeah, you gotta hover around a tiny stove in the middle of a small closed off room. Thus the stove is as much a confining device to work as it is a source of heat. Now tell me what you plan on doing if you are a dockworker and there aren't any stoves, there aren't any rooms, and there aren't any means of heat on your job site other than the coat on your back.
That explains why Northern Europe and the Northern US never became the industrial engines of the world
Nope. As Jefferson famously observed, manufacturing is pursued by necessity when the alternative of agriculture is untenable. In extreme northern climates the weather limits crop choices, so the people there pursue other means of economic productivity by necessity. Holding all else equal though and placing an industrial plant of comparable nature in both a warm and cold climate, you will find that the warmer climate plant tends to have greater success. Witness the automobile factories of the south today in comparison to their counterparts in Detroit. Detroit's factories are decrepit, inefficient, underproductive, and on the verge of shutting down whereas the opposite is true in the south.
Excuse me, but humans figured out how to make warm clothing about 20,000 years ago.
If warm clothing is the answer then to all the problems of the cold, I suppose places like Greenland, Antarctica, ANWR, Siberia, and Canada's Northwest Territory should all be bustling population centers! The simple fact is, non-seq, cold climates are more taxing upon human survival than warm ones. Moderately cold climates, or climates that are only cold for part of the year, may be mitigated by clothing and stoves but they are still cold and still taxing upon their residents. Permafrost climates are virtually uninhabitable or, if inhabitable, so undesirable to most people that nobody will live there.
I don't have the stats, but I'd be willing to guess that roads in Houston are closed more frequently from flooding from tropical storms (I've had it happen to me twice while visiting Houston) than roads in New York or Chicago are closed by snow or ice.
Nah. Having lived in Houston and on the northeast coast the two are simply incomparable. Houston's roads close down when (a) a hurricane hits us head on, which happens less than once a decade, or (b) when rain or tropical storms linger over the city for extended periods of time thus saturating the ground and inhibiting runoff. You may get two or three days a year at most where the latter happens in any significant sense (unless, of course, you are stupid enough to build your house on a flood plain...and there are a few people who do fit into that category). Contrast that with the north where the average blizzard will shut things down for the better part of a week. You can pretty much count on about one mid-sized blizzard every winter, so that in itself should offset the hurricane and flood days of the gulf coast. Add in the smaller freezes, snowstorms, and additional blizzards in some years and the north takes a large lead in closures.
Though it is an unscientific measure, perhaps a good comparison between the two is the number of inclement weather days in which the local schools closed down. The decision to close the schools, after all, is almost always based on road conditions where the busses operate so that alone is a good guide to the number of days when conditions are poor. I attended public school in Houston for several years as a child and can count on one hand the number of days that weather shut down the schools. Once we had a hard freeze that knocked down a bunch of power lines and iced over the roads. Two or three other times we had tropical storms. On average it ammounted to approximately one day of school closures a year if even that. Contrast that with the northeast, where I have also lived and worked. Up here they pre-plan snow days into their annual school schedules with an allotment of about a week that can be missed without having to extend the school year. I cannot think of any time in recent memory in which the schools did not meet or exceed their alloted snow days. Last year was particularly bad and most schools extended their year into the summer. This year is already on pace to do the same with two major December freezes already.