[scrooched_moose]

If you'd actually bothered to read it, this paragraph explains the difference:

The real killer in Chennai is the humidity. The combined measure of heat and humidity in air is the “wet-bulb temperature”—the lowest temperature to which something can be cooled through evaporation from its surface. In dry air, even at temperatures well above 37°C—human body temperature—people can sweat to cool down. But at wet-bulb temperatures of 32°C and higher, “it becomes unsafe to perform most physical labour,” says Moetasim Ashfaq, an atmospheric physicist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Few people can survive a wet-bulb temperature above 35°C. In the past decade, wet-bulb temperatures in Chennai have regularly risen above 32°C. But for much of the past week, wet-bulb temperatures have repeatedly crossed 36°C—a fatal level.

[natch]

230 people died of heat related causes in British Columbia recently. 230. In 2021. So for an article about India, leading off with lower temperatures (including effective temperatures taking humidity into account) all the way out in 2041 and only 11 deaths (versus the 230 in one week alone already this year in British Columbia for god’s sake) is just plain silly and does not show how serious the problem really is. They really think it’s going to take until 2041 to get serious?? We are already there now, today, this year. And the death counts are way higher, even for a northerly temperate region.

[amarshall]

Heat index or humidex is not the same as wet bulb temperature. You still fail to see this. A wet bulb of 32°C is equivalent to a heat index of 55°C. I can’t find anything to indicate the recent heat wave in British Columbia was even above 50°C humidex (highest I can find is 46°C humidex). The Canadian humidex record appears to be 52°C. So, again: the wet bulb temperature described in the article is higher than any Canada has seen.

[natch]

Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate you geeking out on this. But the fact is, 230 dead from heat in BC is a lot more striking than the described imagined relatively tame scenario from 20 years in the future.

Another way to say it is if we are already seeing this in Canada in 2021, the reality in southern India in 2041 is going to be a helluva lot worse than the article portrays.

[amarshall]

But…the article doesn’t describe a more tame scenario. You really just seem to have completely misread it. You say it imagines “only 11 deaths” but it’s talking about just people waiting to get into one hospital, not the wider area or impact. If you bothered to read on you’d see the actual imagined death numbers are in the tens of thousands.

Please read the article before commenting falsehoods about it. You claimed the imagined temperature was lower (it’s not). You claimed the imagined deaths are lower (they’re not).

[natch]

Average humidity in British Columbia is 70% which means sometimes it is significantly higher than that.