In India, Summer Heat May Soon Be Literally Unbearable(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
In India, Summer Heat May Soon Be Literally Unbearable
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/climate/india-heat-wave-summer.html
62 comments
I've developed breathing and stomach problems living in Delhi the last 10 years. My wife now has asthma. I've also developed severe allergies.
Things have become particularly bad in the last 5 years. Come winters, the sky isn't visible in Delhi for weeks. At the height of the crop-burning season (why they do it, I have no idea), there was literally smoke inside my house.
India's biggest cities are practically unlivable. Public transport is abysmal, traffic is terrible, and the pollution keeps getting worse.
Nearly all the smart people I know who can afford to emigrate have already emigrated, or plan to.
India needs to control its pollution and traffic problems otherwise there will be yet another wave of brain drain and the beneficiaries will be countries like Canada and Australia
Things have become particularly bad in the last 5 years. Come winters, the sky isn't visible in Delhi for weeks. At the height of the crop-burning season (why they do it, I have no idea), there was literally smoke inside my house.
India's biggest cities are practically unlivable. Public transport is abysmal, traffic is terrible, and the pollution keeps getting worse.
Nearly all the smart people I know who can afford to emigrate have already emigrated, or plan to.
India needs to control its pollution and traffic problems otherwise there will be yet another wave of brain drain and the beneficiaries will be countries like Canada and Australia
>>My wife now has asthma.
Well the bad news, Asthma like diseases are like the tip of the Ice Berg. The next set of life style diseases like Diabetes and Thyroid Malfunction are going to be worse. There is already a growing trend of Thyroid Malfunction among women in Bangalore.
>>At the height of the crop-burning season (why they do it, I have no idea),
The crop waste after they harvest is expensive to dispose off, and decays slow. All options getting rid of them are expensive or too slow. Plus they don't compost because fertilizers are cheap, apparently.
>>India's biggest cities are practically unlivable. Public transport is abysmal, traffic is terrible, and the pollution keeps getting worse.
I can assure you there is no respite. We are only in the beginning of what are huge urbanization trends. Talking to my relatives who stay around districts around Bangalore, I don't know a single young nephew/niece/cousin who doesn't want to come to Bangalore. Because Bangalore is where good tuition classes, jobs and other stuff is.
>>India needs to control its pollution and traffic problems otherwise there will be yet another wave of brain drain and the beneficiaries will be countries like Canada and Australia
More bad news here. Many countries are cracking down on immigration. Thanks to the blatant fraud and abuse our people do here. During a recent H1-B thread on HN someone mentioned India alone files 2.5 times more H1-B applications than all other countries combined and the phenomenon of 'Principal Engineers' who can't code a shell script.
With the growth of right wing politics and nationalists trends in the west, immigration is no longer an easy deal.
Well the bad news, Asthma like diseases are like the tip of the Ice Berg. The next set of life style diseases like Diabetes and Thyroid Malfunction are going to be worse. There is already a growing trend of Thyroid Malfunction among women in Bangalore.
>>At the height of the crop-burning season (why they do it, I have no idea),
The crop waste after they harvest is expensive to dispose off, and decays slow. All options getting rid of them are expensive or too slow. Plus they don't compost because fertilizers are cheap, apparently.
>>India's biggest cities are practically unlivable. Public transport is abysmal, traffic is terrible, and the pollution keeps getting worse.
I can assure you there is no respite. We are only in the beginning of what are huge urbanization trends. Talking to my relatives who stay around districts around Bangalore, I don't know a single young nephew/niece/cousin who doesn't want to come to Bangalore. Because Bangalore is where good tuition classes, jobs and other stuff is.
>>India needs to control its pollution and traffic problems otherwise there will be yet another wave of brain drain and the beneficiaries will be countries like Canada and Australia
More bad news here. Many countries are cracking down on immigration. Thanks to the blatant fraud and abuse our people do here. During a recent H1-B thread on HN someone mentioned India alone files 2.5 times more H1-B applications than all other countries combined and the phenomenon of 'Principal Engineers' who can't code a shell script.
With the growth of right wing politics and nationalists trends in the west, immigration is no longer an easy deal.
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?
Yup, Growing up in Bangalore in the 90's, I remember it was nothing like this. In fact I remember summers being very enjoyable. Kite flying, playing with tops, going out with friends, playing Gilli-danda in the afternoons, and watching cricket in nights.
In fact my dad(who was a bus/truck driver), tells me he had far better quality of life than me in the pre-1980s. Air was pure, and the city was empty, and it was safe in the cities. It was almost like there was enough space and resources for everybody. You could rent easily. Working hours were same, but people got home quickly(not much traffic) and spent time with families.
And more importantly there was a calm, relaxed pace to life.
These days we have money and career, but much is lost in terms of quality of life.
In fact my dad(who was a bus/truck driver), tells me he had far better quality of life than me in the pre-1980s. Air was pure, and the city was empty, and it was safe in the cities. It was almost like there was enough space and resources for everybody. You could rent easily. Working hours were same, but people got home quickly(not much traffic) and spent time with families.
And more importantly there was a calm, relaxed pace to life.
These days we have money and career, but much is lost in terms of quality of life.
India 1975: 621 million people
India 2018: 1.358 billion people
India 2038: 1.615 billion people
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.
India 2018: 1.358 billion people
India 2038: 1.615 billion people
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.
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 for a small view of the problem.
Population control organised by humans (in exchange for 200 bucks) is going to be much more pleasant than population control organised by mother nature.
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.
It's sad but cost of human life in India is quite low. I Don't think that their government will look after these 'casualties'.
> cost of human life in India is quite low
What do you mean by this?
What do you mean by this?
Long term costs of things, health care implication of issues like Pollution, and garbage littering(hygiene) are neglected. In fact this carelessness can be seen in other places like nutrition too.
Also general lack of respect for the law. Things like everyday corruption. And then lack of basic public hygiene, come to mind.
India had to do a lot of work to eradicate polio. It took quite literally decades.The next set of diseases which will be more like Diabetes, Thyroid related diseases, Malnutrition etc will be far harder to deal with.
Also general lack of respect for the law. Things like everyday corruption. And then lack of basic public hygiene, come to mind.
India had to do a lot of work to eradicate polio. It took quite literally decades.The next set of diseases which will be more like Diabetes, Thyroid related diseases, Malnutrition etc will be far harder to deal with.
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)
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
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.
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
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.
India had hot summers, but the point this article is trying to make is that it is getting hotter, to an extent it may become unbearable. I hope you are not debating global warming and climate change. Mango juice or any traditional/non-traditional drink, however effective they may be today, isn't a solution to make those future unusually hot days bearable.
You are correct that the article is shallow in content and more of fear mongering. But at the same time, it is true that the heat is getting worse with each passing year (in the last 4-5 years at least, you can check the temperature data), so it is very likely that heat related deaths and ailments are increasing. So the article is trying to highlight an important issue, although not in the best way, and in fact might even be harmful because a single wrong fact can ruin the credibility of the entire article.
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.
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.
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.
sorry but raw mango juice will not save the world and prevent mass migration to North in the next 200 years. I'm from India and always get annoyed by the populace's over reliance on traditional methods and "science"
>>I'm from India and always get annoyed by the populace's over reliance on traditional methods and "science"
Well our Prime Minister said, its not the climate but its we who are changing.
https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/internet-cant-keep-calm-aft...
:)
Why worry about all this science, when you can eat Kulfi and chill.
Well our Prime Minister said, its not the climate but its we who are changing.
https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/internet-cant-keep-calm-aft...
:)
Why worry about all this science, when you can eat Kulfi and chill.
Well, raw mango juice will not stave off climate change though...
(That said, shouldn't more or less the same hold for any country at the same latitudes?)
(That said, shouldn't more or less the same hold for any country at the same latitudes?)
Interesting. Do you know what exactly in Aaam panna prevents the loss of sodium and iron as the wiki says? Because mango itself isn't particularly rich in either of these.
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
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
Is it possible to survive in India without technology even today?
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.
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.
>>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.
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.
Delhi gets the worst of the summers and the worst of the winters. The air in Delhi is practically unbreathable in the cold season
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!
I can't see the heat becoming any more unbearable than it is!
The irony is that all this air conditioning uses enormous amounts of energy, accelerating climate change even further.
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.
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.
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.
And how common is AC in Morocco?
I lived in SE Asia for many years, it is also very hot there, we were right on the equator. But the AC was very cold in every place, and the cities were often designed to allow moving about the town without ever going outside (lots of underground tunnels with AC, for example).
I lived in SE Asia for many years, it is also very hot there, we were right on the equator. But the AC was very cold in every place, and the cities were often designed to allow moving about the town without ever going outside (lots of underground tunnels with AC, for example).
50°C seems like an awful lot for any human to handle.
As long as the air is relatively dry you don't die just yet.
Same in Denmark, we've had several weeks of uncommonly high temperatures, and July 2018 is officially the sunniest month on record, since we started recording sunshine hours in 1920. Given the forecasts for today and tomorrow, we're set for around 338 sunshine hours, compared to the normal average of ~200.
Temperatures around 30C and locally over 33-35C may sound mild, depending on where you're from, but this is a country where summer temperatures usually hover around 20-25C. We're simply not used to it, and our houses are built to keep in the warmth, not get rid of it.
Temperatures around 30C and locally over 33-35C may sound mild, depending on where you're from, but this is a country where summer temperatures usually hover around 20-25C. We're simply not used to it, and our houses are built to keep in the warmth, not get rid of it.
Also in Japan we just had record temperatures in the last 2 weeks.
While summer is humid and hot in Japan I can't recall ever being this hot.
While summer is humid and hot in Japan I can't recall ever being this hot.
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
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.
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.
Not sure whether trees enough can change everything.
Can't change everything but it will make a large difference. Even bring more rainfall though our Karachi roads can't bear much rain :-)
And animal agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to climate change
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)
That cannot be even kind of right. You need to grow and ship 10x more food energy and protein in the form of plants ("vegetables"?) just to have the necessary feed. That's just to make feed (ignoring water and raising altogether) and it's already absurdly more wasteful than it would have been just to eat the plants directly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency#Ten_perc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency#Ten_perc...
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.
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.
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.
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.
When I was in Vietnam in December a couple of years back, I was comfortable wearing a tshirt and shorts, it was about 25 degrees in Hanoi from memory.
I had several Vietnamese people ask me how I wasn't feeling cold, several of them were wearing jerseys to stay warm. I told them there where I'm from, it gets down to -6 in winter, 25 degrees is warm to me.
It's really the humidity in Asia that gets me though. It got up to 40 C in my (new) city this summer and I didn't really struggle at all, because it was dry heat.
I had several Vietnamese people ask me how I wasn't feeling cold, several of them were wearing jerseys to stay warm. I told them there where I'm from, it gets down to -6 in winter, 25 degrees is warm to me.
It's really the humidity in Asia that gets me though. It got up to 40 C in my (new) city this summer and I didn't really struggle at all, because it was dry heat.
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.
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.
> 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.
When you come from a place when 25 degrees is exceptional, 27 seems very hot already :p. But yes I agree with you.
> I suspect that humans will adapt to this new way of life we've brought upon ourselves.
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.
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.
Metabolic processes create unavoidable waste heat so the wet bulb temperature doesn't even need to reach 37. It starts to get dangerous already at 30 and 35 will kill any healthy person after a few hours even if they don't move at all.
that is true for most of the world, but not the tropics as the temp gets closer to the max a human can handle. Not to nention there are so many manual labourers in these coountries
Sounds like India is infected with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
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.
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)
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/87429/fire-burns-in...
There was plenty of medical waste in those landfills that burned with the particles up in the air.
You might want to be careful in Mumbai, its not exactly Shangri La.
There was plenty of medical waste in those landfills that burned with the particles up in the air.
You might want to be careful in Mumbai, its not exactly Shangri La.
But it's not summer in Mumbai now, it's monsoon season.
June in Delhi this year was incredibly hot and dry. The temperature at 8pm in the night was 44C.
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.