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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

#51
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).

Agree. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I strongly suspect this is more motivated by weather news marketing and ad revenue strategy than an altruistic desire to "raise awareness".

There is a practical use for the names. It isn't all marketing. Internally, a hurricane starts as a little swirl on the other side of the ocean and is watched/tracked as an interesting object. Designators are used to track these structures. They are given formal names at a particular point once they hit certain milestones. This naming triggers certain processes (more attention, greater tracking fidelity, inclusion in daily briefs etc). These are no different than military operations, which have to be of a particular size before they are formally 'named'. The fact that the media promulgates these internal designators to the public is but an extension of a useful internal process.

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

#52
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow gay man here: thanks for making our struggle a victim card to play when you’re confronted about your lack of soul. How supportive of you. I already told you hostility toward religion is my concern, because I employ people of many diversities and faiths. If you want to make it your imaginative slight that’s your prerogative, but I think I’ve been quite clear and consistent throughout the thread.

Yeah, I mean, anyone can easily see that I'm the one playing the victim here. Like I said before, I can respect your need to unload on somebody. You've got my phone number, you said it yourself. If it really means that much to you to pursue this, why don't you just give me a call? If nothing else, you might find it feels more therapeutic to spout off that way than in text.

This guy runs Baltimore, and throwanem, you're done in Baltimore! This has to be the most unintentionally funny HN comment thread I've read. I'm sure throwanem is shuddering at the potential loss of a $90k "Senior LAMP" job offer.

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

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I mean, anyone can easily see that I'm the one playing the victim here. Like I said before, I can respect your need to unload on somebody. You've got my phone number, you said it yourself. If it really means that much to you to pursue this, why don't you just give me a call? If nothing else, you might find it feels more therapeutic to spout off that way than in text.

This guy runs Baltimore, and throwanem, you're done in Baltimore! This has to be the most unintentionally funny HN comment thread I've read. I'm sure throwanem is shuddering at the potential loss of a $90k "Senior LAMP" job offer.

I mean, he came up on the Baltimore tech slack, so. How do you think I found the thread?

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

#54
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).

> I am not a fan. We’re heading to naming all the major weather which happens often and is just going to desensitize people.

I agree. This is just going to turn into a media nightmare and people will simply tune out.

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

#55
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy runs Baltimore, and throwanem, you're done in Baltimore! This has to be the most unintentionally funny HN comment thread I've read. I'm sure throwanem is shuddering at the potential loss of a $90k "Senior LAMP" job offer.

I mean, he came up on the Baltimore tech slack, so. How do you think I found the thread?

Oh, boy! I'm famous!

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

#56
post #29

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 '?

How certain is that, given that according to previous predictions the Earth should currently be uninhabitable?

By all means, provide us with reputable sources that claim "the Earth should currently be uninhabitable". We'll wait.

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

#57
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…

I’d be down for preventing the accompanying world war, but I’m neutral about displacing billions. Maybe I’m just a naturally-nomadic person, but I don’t see anything too wrong with governments making ultra-long-term plans to negotiate a rewrite of all global geographical borders by “sliding” the definitions of all existing countries further away from the equator and toward the poles, abandoning existing cities “inland” while rebuilding “outland”, and helping all those affected to either resettle, or ensuring they acquire citizenship of the country they now geographically reside in. (Though, with the requirement that those that would end up in the unlivable “no man’s land” zone at the equator, must be resettled.) And also, to make coordinated multilateral investments in increasing the arability of the currently-below-permafrost soil in northern Canada/Russia, Greenland, Antarctica, etc. for the whole world to take advantage of in the future.

(This would best be done not suddenly over years, but gradually over a century; with each country “losing” land on a schedule, as if a peninsula being eroded away into the sea; while gaining land at the same pace on the other end. Maybe each country could run a big painted cable across the country representing the border in places where it’s otherwise illegible, and then keep moving it along north/southward with each passing year. That would give people time to become wary of the encroaching border and move away, probably taking advantage of some government tax credit for doing so.)

As long as all this is done through negotiated treaties, rather than through war, this sort of mass resettlement seems somewhat like a good idea—even if we don’t experience world-shattering climate change. It’d be a recognition of the fact that some places in the world are (naturally) livable for human beings, while others aren’t. And that people have natural rights, no matter their country of citizenship, to reside in a livable climate. Which means that the people who were already living in not-naturally-livable areas even before recent anthropogenic climate change, would be acknowledged as having the right to resettle somewhere more livable, with governments working to change borders or citizenships to allow them that.

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

#58
post #16

How about not naming weather events at all? We shouldn't have to anthropomorphize something before people consider it a threat, like telling children to go to bed or the boogeyman will get them. Asian countries tend to assign typhoons a sequential id but they're still somehow cognizant of the danger.

Naming large weather events makes a lot of sense. Hurricanes are very good example of that. They are actual entities which behavior gets tracked. It is much easier for the public to keep up to date, when there is an easy to remember name.

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

#59

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 '?

Why will your grandchildren die sooner than your children will?

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

#60

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 '?

While I agree "for the planet" is terrible messaging (namely, the planet's been through worse and will be just fine), I also think your proposed change is bullshit. Your children will and their children will be fine, but there's big and real chance that they will not have the standard of life you have and certainly far below what they could have. I think that's plenty scary in its own.

>Your children will and their children will be fine

What about the children who died in the fires now in USA, in Australia, Floods in India and elsewhere all of which have been worse than ever in this century and the reason being attributed to climate change?

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