Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by natch 1775 days ago
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.
1 comments

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.
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.

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).