–Are climate talks ignoring the 40,000 non-bloody deaths in India alone? (Also not counting bloodless death from flooding)
See this climate press conference from just now:
https://unfccc-events.azureedge.net/SB64_113185/agenda
Worth watching (unless you are prone to depression).
*Jordan Dilworth* (EN), Policy Advisor, UNFCCC & UK Climate Diplomacy, Climate Diplomacy & Geopolitics, E3G, environmental think tank
The trade and climate talks were not a bloodbath as they might have been, Dilworth said.
Yet … If you include America’s attacks on Iran as part of the USA’s climate-negotiation stance …. then they kind of WERE a bloodbath, actually.
The world is trying to draw Trump into climate action and Trump is deploying trade protection, data centers, global inflation and war.
See this:
see this for more:
And this:
Heat deaths are bloodless?
ChatGPT unchecked: If by “premature deaths from temperatures above 40°C” you mean the total excess mortality caused by extreme heat, not just officially recorded heatstroke deaths, then my best estimate is:
Roughly 20,000–60,000 premature deaths across India over the last two years (2024–2025 combined).
Here’s how I get there.
Official heatwave death counts in India are typically only in the hundreds per year, but researchers widely regard those figures as severe undercounts because heat often kills indirectly through heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, respiratory illness, and worsening of existing conditions. Official statistics generally capture only a fraction of the true mortality burden.
A major 2026 study from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley estimated that:
A single day of extreme heat causes about 3,400 excess deaths nationally.
A five-day heatwave causes nearly 30,000 excess deaths nationally.
India experienced prolonged and repeated heatwaves in both 2024 and 2025, with 2024 being the hottest year on record nationally.
If you assume:
several significant multi-day heatwave episodes each year,
overlapping vulnerable populations,
and that not every day above 40°C produces the same mortality impact,
then a plausible range is:
Estimate type
Deaths over 2024–2025
Conservative
10,000–20,000
Central estimate
20,000–60,000
Upper-end but still plausible
60,000–100,000+
My central estimate would be around 40,000 premature deaths over the two-year period. That’s far above the official counts but consistent with the emerging excess-mortality literature.
One important caveat: 40°C itself isn’t the real killer threshold. A dry 40°C in Rajasthan can be less deadly than a humid 37–39°C in parts of eastern India. Epidemiologists increasingly use excess mortality associated with heatwaves, apparent temperature, or wet-bulb conditions rather than a simple 40°C cutoff.
So if someone asked me, “How many Indians probably died prematurely because of extreme heat in 2024–2025?”, I’d answer:
Probably on the order of tens of thousands, with ~40,000 being a reasonable midpoint estimate and perhaps 20,000–60,000 as the most defensible range given current evidence.