
Are parts of India becoming too hot for humans? - nav
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/03/asia/india-heat-wave-survival-hnk-intl/index.html
======
vmurthy
A new fact I learned today and which doesn't make me any happier:

'Survivability was based on what is called "wet bulb temperature" \-- a
combined metric of humidity and the outside temperature.

When the wet bulb reaches 35°C it becomes impossible for humans to cool their
bodies through sweating, hence it indicates the survival temperature for
humans. A few hours of exposure to these wet bulb conditions leads to death,
even for the fittest of humans'

More info : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-
bulb_temperature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature)

~~~
beautifulfreak
So a wet bulb condition occurs at 50% relative humidity and 46 °C (115 °F).
Many places are reaching that already. Thanks for the tip, I hadn't heard of
this.

------
wrong_variable
If you have to ask, then the answer is no.

Ideally avoid news about India from CNN,BBC,...

Most of these journalists have never set foot outside of their hotels in Delhi
or Mumbai.

Travel 5km outside of urban core and India remains the same as it always has
been. It's a tropical country so of course its going to get warm.

What has happened is really awful urban planning with zero account on the laws
of thermodynamics. So you have European style urban heat effect from concrete
but worse since its India.

The solution is already in the pipeline with insane growth in solar power.

As climate change heats up ( pun intended ) India is not going to be the
biggest loser here due to the monsoon. It gets more rainy and the weather
stays stable overall.

The most destabilization of weather is going to happen in Russia, EU, Canada,
Australia and North America. So please try to fix your own backyard first (
since you guys shat your pants in the first place anyway ).

~~~
PavlovsCat
What journalists? Sources for this article are the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.. a whole lot
really, not one thing coming from a journalist.

> Last year, there were 484 official heat waves across India, up from 21 in
> 2010.

That's by definition of the the Indian government, not journalists that have
never left their hotel.

~~~
wrong_variable
> Last year, there were 484 official heat waves across India, up from 21 in
> 2010.

Does it mean India is unlivable ? What if we changed the headline to USA being
unlivable ? how often has CNN published USA being unlivable ?

CNN is responsible for climate change as much as any large oil company, they
have always invited climate change denialist on their network.

There is also a undertone to 'India being unlivable' that rubs some people the
wrong way. They said the same thing about Africa / India being unlivable for
white colonist 300 years ago. So CNN should try to be neutral and informed in
their writing - they could have said "North Indian cities like Delhi are
becoming unlivable".

Putting all of India in one basket when India has extremely varied climate,
make it seem they are much more uninformed.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> Does it mean India is unlivable ?

No, of course not. The headline isn't to give a yes or no answer, but to
simply explore the question, list some things we know and some studies.

I guess as Indian you get to read a _lot_ of patronizing shit on the web, and
I totally respect your resentment, but this article was submitted by someone
from MIT, it wasn't written by their staff.

> how often has CNN published USA being unlivable ?

Not unlivable, but literally searching for "cnn when will the us become
unlivable" I found these for example:

[https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/23/health/climate-change-
rep...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/23/health/climate-change-report-
bn/index.html)

[https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/07/health/hothouse-earth-
war...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/07/health/hothouse-earth-warming-
intl/index.html)

> _More than 200 countries pledged to take action on climate change under the
> Paris Accord struck in 2015. The agreement pushed signatories to work
> together to keep temperatures from rising more than 2°C above pre-industrial
> levels. However, there are no binding targets, and the US later pulled out,
> dealing a blow to global efforts to form a united front against climate
> change._

I have no love for the CNN either (mainly for their cheerleading for and
getting fat off war, as I see it), but here I have to say, fair enough?

> There is also a undertone to 'India being unlivable' that rubs some people
> the wrong way.

As I said above, in general being pissed off by that is something I totally
understand (not as in "I know what it's like", but you know what I mean I
hope), but this is about the wet bulb temperature, so "literally unlivable",
not colonialist attitudes.

> So CNN should try to be neutral and informed in their writing - they could
> have said "North Indian cities like Delhi are becoming unlivable".

I agree that most headlines suck (and that's not to excuse it), but just as I
checked the article to quote the relevant bits (which are more nuanced than
the headline was), I realized they changed it to _" Are parts of India
becoming too hot for humans?"_, which is at least something.

By the time this shit really hits the fan, however bad it gets, the people who
caused the most harm will be dead and gone either way. Even you and me won't
see the worst of this, this could get centuries deep, and industrialized
civilization might as well get used up in war, leaving "us" (humanity) with
_fuck all_.

FWIW, I think "the West" kinda owes a lot of reparations, to a lot of
countries, I don't hold your anger against you at all. But we need to be sober
and fierce more than anything, though not for us little people to bicker, and
not to be bitter. I guess it's patronizing and easy to say for me, but I can't
change where I was born. We just have to roll our sleeves up wherever we are,
and then we'll still get enough people who will genuinely resist the
inconveniences (or taxes) coming out of the woodworks. There'll be plenty of
battles ahead, let's not have needless ones.

