
In India, Summer Heat May Soon Be Literally Unbearable - throwaway5752
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/climate/india-heat-wave-summer.html
======
kamaal
Personal anecdote.

I've lived all my life in India. Though have moved around for jobs. Most of my
life I have lived in Bangalore. I worked for around 3 years in the US.

While I was in the US, my Asthma kind of magically vanished. In fact I don't
even remembering having any respiratory issues of any kind, until in the last
4 months when I caught an infection. When the doctor asked I had show him my
unused, now expired Asthma medication. So the doctor suggested my Asthma
remission could be due to lack of pollution in the US. In fact despite
drinking water while traveling at various places in the US I rarely caught a
infection of any kind. Not even a Stomach upset. The 3 years that I lived in
US were my healthiest in all life. I didn't take a single pill for anything.
In fact that final infection I had didn't warrant medication too.

The moment I came back to Bangalore, my Asthma returned, like on the very
third day. Eating out in Bangalore, the throat infections and food poisoning
returned. And Bangalore is considered a relatively well off place compared to
many cities. But still you see streets littered with garbage, stagnant water.
Malaria, Dengue and Chickungunya break outs every few months are very common.
Even until recently Dengue was almost like a death sentence in Bangalore.

Every few months there is a lake in around vicinity of South Bangalore(called
Bellandur lake) which catches fire. Apart from the industrial waste, a lot of
apartments release sewage in the lake, eventually leading to decay, and then
Methane release and then fire.

Though I don't have much Idea about North India, from news I learn every day
that things are way worse. A couple of months back New Delhi skies blocked out
sun for several weeks at a stretch due to Paddy burning.

India needs very urgent laws on the lines of Clean Air Act, and Clean Water
Act in US. Too many people are falling ill due to pollution and illness. Apart
from the fact that illness is a bad thing, its also a huge drain on economy in
terms of health care cost and work place productivity.

~~~
RajuVarghese
I remember Bangalore in the 70's: mild temperatures, light drizzle, uncrowded
roads (I one could walk across MG Road with a kid on either side), laid back,
and generally a comfortable place. What will the next 20 years bring?

~~~
beerlord
India 1975: 621 million people

India 2018: 1.358 billion people

India 2038: 1.615 billion people

[https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2038/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2038/)

India urgently needs population control, perhaps schemes funded partly by the
West to issue vasectomies to young, poor men in exchange for $200.

~~~
newen
India has a huge instinctive reaction against population control strategies,
especially ones funded by the West. They tried your idea in the 1970s and it
lead to lots of forced sterilizations by the government/police. See
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
india-30040790](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30040790) for a
small view of the problem.

~~~
beerlord
Population control organised by humans (in exchange for 200 bucks) is going to
be much more pleasant than population control organised by mother nature.

~~~
newen
I didn't want to saying before but it sounds horrifying and repulsive to me,
and it has hints of eugenics too. Thanks for the idea but it's pretty fucked
up. It will lead to infringing on people's repoductive right's including
coercing people in sterilization and it will give the government way too much
power.

------
thisisit
This is such a shallow piece on Indian summer. I gave up reading after the
part about doctor's dilemma. Summer strokes have been common in India for a
long time. And the article doesn't even talk about the summer wind also known
as Loo:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loo_(wind)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loo_\(wind\))

The dry summer wind is considered fatal by many and normally people have raw
mango juice or Aam panna to ward it off.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aam_panna](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aam_panna)

I grew up in North India where my parents made me drink it after lunch every
day during summers.

Nowadays I find that many people are not aware of this traditional recipe and
they instead opt for stuff like drips etc as mentioned in the article.

~~~
xbmcuser
Have you been to India recently like last 2 years in the summer months. The
temperatures have increased by a few degrees I am from Karachi Pakistan and I
can tell you that temperatures have changed in Pakistan in last 2-3 years
almost all high temperature records were broken. And we have more concrete
cities now than earlier. For Karachi I am sure people will have to stop going
out or working etc in the afternoon in the summer months just like desert
cities like Dubai Abu Dhabi etc.

~~~
thisisit
I currently live in India. So yes I know the temperatures out here.

Given that many replies seem to be about how out of touch I am about the
temperature and mango juice aspect let me clarify the post, once and for all:

Yes,it is getting hotter year after year and there is enough proof for climate
change. But, the article talks about an "Indian Summer" and then I don't see
any mention of things like "Loo" and "Aam panna" which are generally
associated with an Indian Summer I can't help but say it is not a good read or
even properly researched. As you put it, we can change it to Pakistan or
Bangladesh and have the same article. So, my issue is with the quality of the
content. But maybe I didn't put it across well.

------
sytelus
According to article, the absolute catastrophe is still ~80 years away, i.e.,
reaching wet bulb temperature[1]. This would be the time when humans won't be
able to survive summers in south asia without technology. I suspect the next
big migration crises will start much before that - probably in next 20-50
years - when large swaths of population have no choice but to move up north.
The preview of this migration crises may consist slower GDP growth, destroyed
farming, food crises, water shortage and so on.

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

~~~
randyrand
Is it possible to survive in India without technology even today?

------
anujdeshpande
New Delhi is probably one of the worse hit places. The general sentiment is
true in a lot of other places in India too. Pune, where I reside, used to be a
place where the British had a lot of properties because the climate was closer
to what they were used to (cold). It's changed quite a lot in the last couple
of years. We reached 43 deg C last year.

~~~
ashwinikd
A lot of farmland around the capital area has been converted into commercial
land for urban construction. The same is true for Bangalore where Residential
complexes have replaced the lakes. Four years back having an Air Conditioner
at your home in Bangalore was very rare. Since last two years many residents
who can afford it have installed AC or are considering getting one.

~~~
kamaal
>>The same is true for Bangalore where Residential complexes have replaced the
lakes.

What disappoints me in this regard is people who buy flats in those apartments
knowing well that the complex is encroaching a lake(bed), eventually a
demolition happens. But really how careless would you have to be, to buy there
at the first place.

>>Four years back having an Air Conditioner at your home in Bangalore was very
rare.

It is, Even now. In the insides of the city where there are more individual
homes than apartments.

But, some times a few flat owners have no other options at all. I hear, the
flats along the Electronic city road, receive crazy levels of dust every day.
Same with those near Hebbal.

Also even in cases where lakes haven't been approached, due absence of civic
planning, they obvious can't pipe sewage into the normal sewage pipes. Given
those pipes were built for individual homes, not massive apartment townships.
What they do now is send sewage to lakes. Case in point Bellandur lake and
Ulsoor lake in Bangalore. By definition these are not lakes, but cesspools.

------
amingilani
I'm from Pakistan, highest this summer has been 44 C 111.2 F. My solution has
been to start working remotely and never leave my 24/7 Air Conditioned room --
which stops for a few to several hours every day because of power outages.

I can't see the heat becoming any more unbearable than it is!

~~~
IshKebab
The irony is that all this air conditioning uses enormous amounts of energy,
accelerating climate change even further.

~~~
gonvaled
Yepp, lots of feedback loops will start kicking in, some of human origin,
others of natural origin: ice-free seas absorve more heat than ice-covered
seas, for example.

------
hellofunk
Nearly 40 degrees C two days in a row last week in the Netherlands, breaking
all records in history -- and the Dutch are quite unprepared for such heat,
there are nearly zero air conditioners anywhere. It's a new manifestation of
"unbearable" for me.

~~~
AtlasLion
I'm originally from Morocco and living in the Netherlands, in my birth city it
gets close to 50°C. I have been really enjoying the "extreme heat wave" in the
Netherlands lately but also seeing how my friends and colleagues just couldn't
handle it.

~~~
kennxfl
50°C seems like an awful lot for any human to handle.

~~~
blattimwind
As long as the air is relatively dry you don't die just yet.

------
usaphp
I don’t know if it’s me just getting older but it seems like everywhere I go
during summer time - it’s incredibly hot and unbearable, i remember playing
during soccer and basketball in the afternoon when I was at high school and
didn’t really feel that unbearable heat like I do feel now

~~~
polotics
It's not you. Anyone going on in years will notice this. It's a real
phenomenon. My solution has been: go to higher altitudes.

------
pknerd
Things are not different from Indian neighbor. I am from Karachi and we faced
44C a couple of months ago. Lots of Fb and WhatsApp posts urging people to
plan trees(We have more severe plantation issue than India due to the absence
of more forests. Many locals are trying to come up with ideas of _Urban
forests_ , the idea worked well in India and the guy who did this in India
helped to do the same in Karachi as well.

Not sure whether trees enough can change everything.

~~~
xbmcuser
Can't change everything but it will make a large difference. Even bring more
rainfall though our Karachi roads can't bear much rain :-)

------
amriksohata
And animal agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to climate change

~~~
jm547ster
This is patently false, eliminating all agricultural animals from the US would
drop total greenhouse emissions by around 3%. Factoring in transport of said
animal goods would only be made worse by a need to ship the bulkier
alternative (vegetables)

~~~
mping
May I ask where did you get that number? I realized that you only mentioned
the US, and I guess the parent was talking about the globe, but still I'd like
to know.

~~~
jm547ster
[https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/inventoryexp...](https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/inventoryexplorer/#allsectors/allgas/econsect/current)

~~~
samfriedman
That link shows Agriculture as a contributor of 9.5% of greenhouse gases, with
livestock representing about 40% of that total. I'd imagine it's responsible
for some proportion of the Transportation (28.7%) emissions as well.

------
gonvaled
Anec-data: in Germany we are having unusually high temperatures. If this
continues, working in the summer makes no sense anymore (AC is not widespread
here), and I will have to revert to taking summer holidays again.

------
latchkey
Nearly 2 years ago, I moved from San Francisco (cold) to Saigon (hot). It has
been interesting to watch how my body has become more accustomed to the heat
over time. When I first got here, I would visibly sweat all the time. Now,
that I'm more used to things, I sweat less and I feel cold easily. I suspect
that humans will adapt to this new way of life we've brought upon ourselves.

~~~
realusername
I'm also living in Saigon and it's the same for me, at the beginning I was
putting the AC to 17 degrees, now I put it at 27 degrees, you get used to it
after a while.

~~~
llampx
27 degrees is still relatively cool. As somebody else said above:

> You can't beat the laws of thermodynamics. When the wet bulb temperature
> reaches the human body's natural 37 degrees Celsius, it'll be impossible for
> the body to expel heat via sweating (evaporative cooling). At that point no
> amount of adaptation will help, and humans need technology to stay alive.

~~~
realusername
When you come from a place when 25 degrees is exceptional, 27 seems very hot
already :p. But yes I agree with you.

------
known
Sounds like India is infected with
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)

------
r_singh
Not trying to dispute the information stated in the article. Just want to add
that as an exception, here in Mumbai, the weather is pleasant and enjoyable,
it's cloudy with intermittent showers every few hours.

~~~
kk_cz
Your personal experience is consistent with information in the article, see
the map describing decrease of living standards due to the climate change
(Mumbai is in the safe area)

------
puranjay
June in Delhi this year was incredibly hot and dry. The temperature at 8pm in
the night was 44C.

