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Advocates want to name heatwaves like hurricanes to raise awareness of dangers

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Re: Advocates want to name heatwaves like hurricanes to raise awareness of dangers

#31

Post by take_a_breath »

chrisseaton wrote: post #24
TheRealSteel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We ABSOLUTELY need to make people panic about heatwaves. We need to make people lose sleep about it. Get distracted by it. Feel sick about. Climate change is going to kill millions if we don't act hard, and fast. We need a global, coordinated, war-like effort immediately to prevent the displacement of billions and a new world war. Coronavirus lockdown is not even going to be a blip on the radar compared to life on th…

We want effective solutions. Panic, sleep deprivation, making people feel sick and stressed is not the way to get those.

Couldn’t any form of bad news make people panic, sleep deprived, and stressed? I don’t think communicating the science or real world impacts is too hard for people to handle. If it is, we are going to have a lot more problems as the climate continues to warm.

Edit: We told citizens about Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks and it caused panic, sleep depravation, and stress. Why is this risk different?

Re: Advocates want to name heatwaves like hurricanes to raise awareness of dangers

#34

Post by chrisseaton »

take_a_breath wrote: post #31
chrisseaton wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We want effective solutions. Panic, sleep deprivation, making people feel sick and stressed is not the way to get those.

Couldn’t any form of bad news make people panic, sleep deprived, and stressed? I don’t think communicating the science or real world impacts is too hard for people to handle. If it is, we are going to have a lot more problems as the climate continues to warm. Edit: We told citizens about Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks and it caused panic, sleep depravation, and stress. Why is this risk different?

> Couldn’t any form of bad news make people panic, sleep deprived, and stressed?

Yes... and that's unavoidable but the person I'm replying to is talking about deliberately inducing more panic, sleep deprivation and stress by increasing the dramatics of bad news. That seems bonkers to me.

> I don’t think communicating the science or real world impacts is too hard for people to handle.

I don't think giving dangerous heatwaves whimsical names is any kind of honest 'science communication.'

> We told citizens about Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks and it caused panic, sleep depravation, and stress. Why is this risk different?

I think you've imagined that I wrote 'don't tell people about the risks'. I wrote don't artificially ham it up to deliberately cause additional stress.

What you want is people taking effective action. Panic, sleep deprivation, and stress isn't the way to get there.

Re: Advocates want to name heatwaves like hurricanes to raise awareness of dangers

#35

Post by throwanem »

zez61 wrote: post #26
throwanem wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's practically slander. Honestly, I don't think Christians even deserve to complain about climate disasters, not with all the effort they put into worshiping an incredibly priggish and unbelievably prudish deity for which weather-powered slaughterfests have always been such a go-to. And I mean say what you like about Ishtar, at least she gets that people are gonna fuck.

What is the purpose of this comment? Keying off a random deity figure you’re replying to, you decided 9am on a Monday morning on Hacker News seems like a pretty good time to spout off hateful and discriminatory feelings about “they” the religious group? They don’t deserve to talk about climate change because they’re prudish in your interpretation of things? Seriously, what the shit are you talking about? Christians l…

It's the massively dominant religion of one of the world's most dangerous nations, and I'm "punching down" by calling out the part of its propaganda that can't give up on making a fertility goddess out to be a demon despite having won that particular war literal millennia ago? I'm "punching down" by questioning whether a cult of the ideal death can fairly be considered to have a stake in the condition of the world they seem only too anxious to leave behind for the "life of the world to come"? Okay.

It's weird to me that you think I'm making a joke here.

Re: Advocates want to name heatwaves like hurricanes to raise awareness of dangers

#36

Post by thrownaway954 »

i'm sorry to say but all this will do is desensitize people further. it used to be that when they named a storm it was going to be bad and you paid attention. now they name every damn storm out there and it just makes you tune out.

Re: Advocates want to name heatwaves like hurricanes to raise awareness of dangers

#37

Post by zez61 »

throwanem wrote: post #35
zez61 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the purpose of this comment? Keying off a random deity figure you’re replying to, you decided 9am on a Monday morning on Hacker News seems like a pretty good time to spout off hateful and discriminatory feelings about “they” the religious group? They don’t deserve to talk about climate change because they’re prudish in your interpretation of things? Seriously, what the shit are you talking about? Christians l…

It's the massively dominant religion of one of the world's most dangerous nations, and I'm "punching down" by calling out the part of its propaganda that can't give up on making a fertility goddess out to be a demon despite having won that particular war literal millennia ago? I'm "punching down" by questioning whether a cult of the ideal death can fairly be considered to have a stake in the condition of the world th…

I noticed you didn’t answer the question and simply continued airing your grievances with Christianity with the faintest shred of relevancy, as if you were waiting for the opportunity, for HN to finally talk about something in the Christian orbit so you can roll in and put those people in their place.

It says way more about you than you think that a random reference to a deity in that religion in the context of naming heat waves made you completely fly off the hateful handle and spend your morning dunking on Christians and their beliefs as if you’re scoring points with anyone instead of revealing yourself to be a deeply unsavoury person to know.

Christians feed the homeless. What work are you putting off on a Monday morning to be here, doing this, right now?

Re: Advocates want to name heatwaves like hurricanes to raise awareness of dangers

#38

Post by throwaway0a5e »

TheRealSteel wrote: post #23
nemo44x wrote: post #21

Are we going to officially name every tornado? Every earthquake? The article leads with “we need more drama...” - I think we have enough, thank you. We need to consider the psychological affects of these things. We already stir people into collective panics for so many things. Do we need to add another? People need less anxiety in their lives.

We ABSOLUTELY need to make people panic about heatwaves. We need to make people lose sleep about it. Get distracted by it. Feel sick about. Climate change is going to kill millions if we don't act hard, and fast. We need a global, coordinated, war-like effort immediately to prevent the displacement of billions and a new world war. Coronavirus lockdown is not even going to be a blip on the radar compared to life on th…

You know what happens after a decade of people using rhetoric like there's a war on? You get an actual war.

Re: Advocates want to name heatwaves like hurricanes to raise awareness of dangers

#39

Post by elmo2you »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #13
leetrout wrote: post #3

I am not a fan. We’re heading to naming all the major weather which happens often and is just going to desensitize people. The NOAA already doesn’t recognize winter storm names and I would expect them to use the same rationale for not naming heat waves, cold waves or any other extreme weather events that don’t bring destruction. (Not arguing against the danger of heatwaves).

That's exactly it, it's the "boy crying wolf" issue and everyone will just shrug. I found them starting to give "regular" storms already overly dramatic, or that they have started to hand out "yellow", "orange" weather alerts. Those are just not actionable for me as an average regular citizen. Mind you they probably mean that measures are being put in place for others though.

I fully agree with that, but I think it's a manifestation of a far wider trend that might be far more worrying.

In this age of information overload, where the struggle for people's attention has become nothing short of warfare, I see both advocacy groups and commercial entities ever so further seek to dramatise their message, just to "maximize their reach" and not get drowned out in the sea of other sensationalized/polarized information. While this motivation or a even sense of need is understandable, with everyone "competing" only for their own interests in relationship to everything else, it essentially is a race to the bottom.

The (psychological) effects of it do (already) go a bit further than people just shrugging. On the population as a whole, it (significantly) increases stress levels, general distrust (certainly warranted), and maybe even cause a constant sense of danger or a believe that this world has gone mad. The effects of which should not be underestimated. All of which can cause both individuals and groups of people to make really poor decisions.

Re: Advocates want to name heatwaves like hurricanes to raise awareness of dangers

#40

Post by CalRobert »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #20

While we are at it, can we change some vocabulary used for sensitising climate change from ' For the planet ' to ' Your children will die soon, your grandchildren sooner '?

I'm stunned how even when I agree with other people about climate breakdown happening, they think "Miami flooding" and I think "my kids dying horribly in a resource war or food riot".

Though people seem to be finally understanding that sea level rise is a minor concern all things considered.

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