Why the hell is the author mixing Fahrenheit and Celsius degrees?
Paragraph one:
" for instance, where humidity routinely tops 90 percent, simply moving around outside when it’s over 105 degrees Fahrenheit would be lethal"
Paragraph two:
"At 11 or 12 degrees of warming, more than half the world’s population, as distributed today, would die of direct heat. "
Same paragraph:
"At present, most regions reach a wet-bulb maximum of 26 or 27 degrees Celsius; the true red line for habitability is 35 degrees"
Paragraph three:
" As I type that sentence, in the California desert in mid-June, it is 121 degrees outside my door. "
I'm an american and if you told me it was 27C outside I wouldn't know whether that was hot or cold until I reflected for a moment and compared that number to cpu core temps.
Ignorance on my part, certainly, and not excusable but perhaps typical.
I don't even mind the fact that he used one or the other, it's just that mixing units in a scientific article doesn't seem very....professional for me.
Especially since increase by 12 degrees Celsius != increase by 12 degrees Fahrenheit. So in that paragraph where he talks about 11-12 degrees increase being lethal, you don't have all information necessary.
Out of interest, why don't you capitalize "American"?
Edit: I'm genuinely curious and not asking to annoy anyone; I might be misunderstanding grammar rules or rules of HN. I ask because I'm not sure this was a mistake; all over the web I see people who write with good grammar, but never capitalize "American". Is it considered rude to capitalize "American"?
For what it's worth, it should be capitalized but I suspect Americans don't formally discuss themselves in the third person enough to have that grammar rule down.
I don't know about OP, but in some languages(Polish for example) you capitalize proper nouns(so you would capitalize America) but not adjectives(so American or Polish or German would never be capitalized) - so it could be just a cross-language mistake.
Paragraph one: " for instance, where humidity routinely tops 90 percent, simply moving around outside when it’s over 105 degrees Fahrenheit would be lethal"
Paragraph two: "At 11 or 12 degrees of warming, more than half the world’s population, as distributed today, would die of direct heat. "
Same paragraph: "At present, most regions reach a wet-bulb maximum of 26 or 27 degrees Celsius; the true red line for habitability is 35 degrees"
Paragraph three: " As I type that sentence, in the California desert in mid-June, it is 121 degrees outside my door. "
Just....why?