…2/n

I have an old iPhone, so although I use DuckDuckGo I have no means to default its search to noai.duckduckgo.com, and although I tell DDG I want no LLM summaries, when the cookie for that expires I get them anyway.

Which is how I come to note how confidently the ‘AI Assist’ reports temperatures in the 1930s based on essentially nothing. I followed its cited sources, where there is nothing whatsoever about any temperature data at all prior to the 1980s

…3/n

What a fucking shit show. Absolute bollocks being spewed on the basis of nothing. Just making shit up and misleading people.*

(Edit: *more measured thoughts in posts 10-12 below.)

It’s automated Trumpism.

Anyway, I’ll get somewhere close to some actual answers about 1930s Indian temperatures later today, by putting some actual work in with a semblance of diligence and discernment.

While the web still has an uncountable number of documents that aren’t distilled bullshit

…4/n

My mum was born in Quetta in 1932 – then India, now Pakistan. Her dad had poor heart health from the mid 1930s onwards, retired from the (Raj) Army to the UK, but was then called up again in 1940.

My mum, her sister and mother followed him back out to India later that year.

But in Indian heat, his heart could not maintain his utility to the war effort. He was re-retired and the family moved to the Nilgiri Mountains of Tamil Nadu, for its temperate climate, to see out the war

…5/n

The May 2026 temperature snapshot of India at the top (repeated here) portrays a 13°C spread, with Ahmedabad and Kolkata the hottest at 47°C (’kinell) and Bengaluru the coolest at a mere 34°C.

My guess is that the Nilgiri Mountains would be a lot less than that 34°. (They’re where my mum’s family would have been in the mid 1940s).

But as the context here is temperature extremes, I’ll go down a Kolkata rabbit hole https://mstdn.ca/@dbattistella/116649502661415044

…6/n

My thought at the top was roughly “What was the temperature in India like in the 1930s?”

I’ve not found a source for that, but https://data.opencity.in/dataset/daily-temperature-70-years-data-for-major-indian-cities provides data for 8 major Indian cities back to 1951.

From its CSV source, the average of average daily temperatures in Kolkata for the 7-day period from 21 to 27 May, from 1951 to 1955 was:

1951: 34.7°
1952: 34.6°
1953: 35.4°
1954: 34.5°
1955: 34.3°.

So across those 5 years the average was 34.7°C.

This week, it’s been 37.3°C

…7/n

Intriguingly, there’s no source for the map above which took me down this rabbit hole, and although it cites 47°C for Kolkata, that might be a *forecast* because the data from which I derived this week’s average of “37.3°C” is at https://www.easeweather.com/asia/india/past#day=21&month=5.

And the highest Kolkata temperature which it cites for the past week is 45.3°C.

Anyway, in the data I looked at, 2026 Kolkata seems to be something like 2.6°C hotter than early 1950s Kolkata, which perhaps highlights something else…

…8/n

The **FFS don’t go above 1.5°C of global heating** we’ve been telling ourselves is a *global* average and most of the Earth is covered in water.

The heating on land – where humans live – is roughly twice that average.

And the 2.6°C difference that’s cited in the previous post – which spans 70 years – is in the region of twice the +1.47° global increase – which spans 270 years – that we’re hovering around now.

But I was only looking narrowly at one week for 15 million Indians in Kolkata

…9/n

The thing is, if you expire in an unbearable and unsurvivable heat spike, it doesn’t really matter what the average temperature was or is or will be 🤷‍♂️ 💀

@urlyman I wrote about this five years ago. It's not a pretty scenario, but on our current trajectory it's our almost certain future, and within the lifetime of people now living.

https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2021-11-15-the-everyone-dies-event-class/

@yetiinabox @urlyman It horrifies my how casually and wilfully our politicians ignore and evade this issue. We have about a decade to make global drastic change; if we don't, very few people now in primary school, world wide, will live to see old age. This isn't some far future problem that can be put off.

And yet, as a society, we are doing nothing and we will do nothing.

I've just seen a post by @urlyman which is germane.

#ClimateEmergency

https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/116656655687514207

@simon_brooke @urlyman

When one of my kids was about 10 y.o., they got the full impact of these facts. Being autistic, they lack the social restraints that prevent many people from reacting bluntly, and so on the walk to school they would randomly shout at drivers. Why are you driving a car? Do you want all of us to die? It should be a normal response. Removing all government subsidies for motor roads and aeroports should be a normal response. A feeling of intense shame every time you use a car or aeroplane should be a normal response. Yadda yadda. The problem is not the physics; the problem isn't even just capitalism, but it is social and economic. If we can crack that we have a chance.