It’s hot. It is unbearably hot during day, and it is hot even when it is not the day. It is an understatement. It is the hottest summer in the memory that I can gather credibly in mind. But I doubt the memory. I think maybe it is because I am getting older, and hence grumpier. But newspapers too are saying so, about this summer being a brutal one in last so and so years, with heatwave that doesn’t seem to recede. But we know news are about being sensational these days, and not necessarily factual. Maybe they have not really checked the data which is there (means which is yet there). So, I checked it, to see whether this summer is especially scorching, to foretell whether all the summers to come will be similar, or this is just the odd hotter one.
From the
little systematic evidence that I can find on internet (along with realization
that systematic historical weather information, even at aggregate level is hard
to find except here), I can infer that Mumbai is perhaps hotter than average
maximum temperature in April from last 30 years. But Mumbai (city as well as
suburbs) is relatively cooler than the peripheral towns in Mumbai metropolitan
region. (Yea, island Mumbai is a lucky city when it comes to natural calamities!)
And it is in these parts the deviation from historical pattern is evident. For
example, in Kalyan-Dombivali (a dormitory town on periphery that has grown big
enough to be a municipal corporation), the historical average April maximum
temperature is 36.6℃. This year, there were at least 10 days, when maximum
temperature has been more than 40℃ and it was never less than 37℃.
Perhaps the
maximum we had and are having this year is not a surprise. The signs were
there, but I did not really look it up till this summer. The Aprils are getting
hotter. I have somewhat unconventional chart. I have taken cumulative average
of April maximum temperature in Maharashtra. I take cumulative average, for
example, cumulative average for 1920 is average of 20 years from 1901 to 1920. If
underlying climate process is unchanging, then maximum temperature is a random
variation around a constant average, akin to what is called ‘white noise’ then
cumulative average should get closer to average temperature. (I have assumed
38.4℃ as the average maximum temperature in Maharashtra. But that is not very
important part of the argument.) In the figure, it is that flat red line. On
the other hand, if climate is becoming progressively warmer, then average maximum
temperature will also rise. My measure, cumulative average, is an intuitive measure,
which conveys the fact that summers have been becoming warmer. It is this year
where I started being troubled by them.
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| माहिती स्त्रोत: https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/download-data |
I keep remembering the Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘The ministry for the future’ when I realize that now henceforth, I should expect progressively hotter summer. Robinson’s novel begins with a grim, gripping description of a summer of death in one of the densely and highly populated state in India. The description is a fiction, but well within a realm of the plausibility.
It is not
deaths of thousands in a fictional but plausible summer that I keep
remembering. I remember that those who had access to AC survived the calamity
in the novel. I keep thinking that when I keep recognising almost silent murmurs
of hundreds of ACs dotting the windows of my neighbourhood. As of now, when our
combination of heat and humidity is not life threatening, AC is simply about
having a luxury. But if things keep getting warmer, AC can be more than that. It
will become marker of dignity, or even survival.
But more ACs run in my neighbourhood this summer, greater are the chances that next summer will be even hotter as coal we have burnt this year will increasingly ensure the warmer climate. But no one is saying that. No one’s asking all new AC buyers to try to be tough and just make it work with fans. We will scramble for coal, but we cannot let the juggernaut of consumerism come to halt. And we have solid moral basis for not letting it halt, of trickle down. My search for comforts pays for someone’s search of survival. So, there is no point asking me to stop acting on my consumption impulses, in fact, it will be a cardinal sin in the world where we have promised ever growing arch of consumption to anyone who participates.
More I think about the summer and our quick response of cooling ourselves of from it, a scorching realization strikes me. Every next summer is going to be hotter, unsettling, draining. And one can bear it as long as one can and as resolutely as one can or one can keep buying a way out of it, even when buying one’s way is making future worse for all of us. We can have AC in a bedroom, all bedrooms, in living room. We can have an invertor or a generator if load shading takes place. Or one can just relocate to those too important to have load shading places. We can have AC local train or bus or metro or a car. Our offices can be the oasis even their exteriors are contributing to heat islands.
The truth is right there, out in bright sun. But what is the use of letting it have its way to me? No, truth is harsh, it is unsettling, let us condition it till it suits us. Let us keep buying till we can outlast other, or we get outlasted.
Is it wise, someone might wonder? Someone might remember a sentence about wisdom, that it comes when it is of no use.