[rayiner]

This is a weird premise. India (and Bangladesh) has virtually 100% access to electricity and adequate generation capacity. The concept of temperatures exceeding the wet bulb temperature makes for a scary fiction novel. But I bet even my dad’s village in Bangladesh could afford to put a few cheap Chinese mini splits in the school building and other gathering places. They are extremely efficient in the heat and wouldn’t cause a huge strain on the grid.

As the article notes, people certainly will and do die from such conditions. But it’s in the tens of thousands, not millions. And about 50,000 people a year die from heat waves in europe, too.

[michaelhoney]

Problem with events like this is that they affect tens of thousands of people all at once. The first 1% of people will buy all of the available air conditioners. This happened in Australia in 2019: we had a huge bushfire with smoke affecting ~600K people. The available air filters sold out in hours.

[throw0101a]

> But I bet even my dad’s village in Bangladesh could afford to put a few cheap Chinese mini splits in the school building and other gathering places. They are extremely efficient in the heat and wouldn’t cause a huge strain on the grid.

Mini-splits have a maximum operating temperature in the 47-50˚C range.

The headline in this article seems to indicate some places have hit that limit, and so the external units (compressors) may not be able push the heat out of the refrigerant any longer.

[esperent]

> virtually 100% access to electricity and adequate generation capacity

Tell that to all the brown- and black-outs I experienced while traveling there. Renting a room with AC was double the price, at least, abd then there wasn't enough electricity to power it. There frequently wasn't even enough to fully freeze icecubes in the freezer.