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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

#101

Post by kyleee »

dylan604 wrote: post #94
mbostleman wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is a particularly constructive line of debate, but predictions in the 1970s from [sources well known and accepted by mainstream press, if not reputable in hindsight or by other definitions] are pretty numerous. Here is one from Paul Ehrlich in April 1970: "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make...The death rate will increase until at leas…

In the 1970s, people were dealing with things like Acid Rain and large hole in the ozone layer. Things probably were much more dire looking at that point.

And people were worried about catastrophic global cooling

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

#102

Post by cos2pi »

It's worth mentioning here that heatwaves are the leading cause of weather-related death in the US for the past 30 years.

https://www.weather.gov/hazstat

I'm not advocating for the personification of all extreme weather events, but the lethality of heatwaves is often overlooked.

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

#103

Post by lhorie »

dylan604 wrote: post #92
foota wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm highly skeptical of your claims, nearly 200,000 people have died of covid, despite having shutdown the country. You've presented no information to suggest that the scientific consensus that millions would likely have died without the measures we went through is false.

I wonder what would have happened if we gave a 2 week advanced notice for people to stock up, and then shut everything down 100% for 4 weeks straight. Would we have been out of this whole mess by now as opposed to this lingering?

Right around the time shelter in place orders took effect, supermarkets were sold out of various items. Toilet paper was the most infamous one, but depending where you were, you might also have had a hard time finding chicken and canned soup, for example. It goes to show that the supply chain is decidedly not prepared to handle the event of the entire population suddenly decicing to stock up on provisions for extended periods of time.

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

#104

Post by krapp »

_ph_ wrote: post #58
krapp wrote: 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.

But does it matter to the public whether they roads are closed due to Irene or Jacques?

Admittedly, the names are catchier but I'm not certain they're necessary to convey information. It's not as if they have to keep track of a dozen hurricanes at a time.

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

#105

Post by bzb5 »

kyleee wrote: post #101
dylan604 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1970s, people were dealing with things like Acid Rain and large hole in the ozone layer. Things probably were much more dire looking at that point.

And people were worried about catastrophic global cooling

Just like now we are worried about catastrophic global warming. Only that, of course, now we are right. ;-)

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

#106

Post by wtvanhest »

simonsarris wrote: post #74
umvi wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet west coast politicians want to stop calling them "wild fires" in favor of a new term "climate fires". So the question is, how much of these wildfires are due to climate change, and how much is due to bad forest "resource management" (not sure what this entails - preventing more frequent smaller fires with firefighting which causes bigger fires years later?) and how much to some other reason (water table depletion…

Pre-1800, about 1.8 million ha burned each year in CA: https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/Fi... > Approximately 1.8 million ha burned annually in California prehistorically (pre 1800). Our estimate of prehistoric annual area burned in California is 88% of the total annual wildfire area in the entire US during a decade (1994–2004) characterized as ‘‘extreme’’ regarding wildfires. The idea that U…

I'm not sure who the best person to ask on this topic is, but do you have any sense for smoke prediction models? Over the weekend, I put together the resources I could find easily, but I'm wondering what, if any good prediction models exist.

Copernicus - https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/global-forecast-plots

NASA GEOS - https://fluid.nccs.nasa.gov/cf/classic_geos_cf/

From those, I concluded that we could see fresh air in san francisco as early as this afternoon. Right now, that doesn't seem possible, so I'm wondering if there are other models that exist?

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

#107

Post by Brakenshire »

xenspidey wrote: post #66
bakedbeanz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not OP but a quick google search. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/18-spectacularly-wrong-predic...

So of the 18 predictions none are from climatologists, none are in published research but rather in comments to magazines and speeches, and half are from 2 people, Paul Erlich (a biologist) and Kenneth Watt (an ecologist). And some of them are not even wrong, for instance concerns about population growth or rainforest loss at the rate it was occurring at the time. The headline here is “some random scientists were wrong about something 50 years ago”. The fact the comparison is even made between these comments and the published evidence base for climate change, indicates more about the person making the criticism than the target of the criticism. These are the same kind of people who think that political commentators on rolling news are making a meaningful contribution to scientific debate.

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

#108

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

dylan604 wrote: post #92
foota wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm highly skeptical of your claims, nearly 200,000 people have died of covid, despite having shutdown the country. You've presented no information to suggest that the scientific consensus that millions would likely have died without the measures we went through is false.

I wonder what would have happened if we gave a 2 week advanced notice for people to stock up, and then shut everything down 100% for 4 weeks straight. Would we have been out of this whole mess by now as opposed to this lingering?

We wouldn't be. The countries that control the coronavirus with shutdowns have had to continually impose new shutdowns as cases arise. I'm not saying policy doesn't matter, but I don't think any country is or could have been out of the mess right now.

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

#109

Post by gremlinsinc »

umvi wrote: post #100
ciarannolan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with your first paragraph. I don't think your comment about covid makes much sense (200K+ dead in 6 months is pretty damn dire).

> 200K+ dead in 6 months is pretty damn dire Disagree. At least 450k die per year of preventable health conditions (lung cancer + obesity) and nobody bats an eye (that's 4.5M deaths per decade). The flu alone kills orders of magnitude more than covid over longer timelines. A once-in-a-lifetime virus kills medically compromised people at elevated rates for 6 months and people lose their minds? It's not rational.

The spanish Flu killed about 600k Americans. We're on target to hit 400k+ by January. So, it's a safe bet we'll beat the Spanish Flu by next spring.

These are people who didn't need to die, who wouldn't have died for another reason. Do you really place such a low price tag on people's lives? What if it were your life, would you gladly sacrifice it?

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

#110

Post by ciarannolan »

umvi wrote: post #100
ciarannolan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with your first paragraph. I don't think your comment about covid makes much sense (200K+ dead in 6 months is pretty damn dire).

> 200K+ dead in 6 months is pretty damn dire Disagree. At least 450k die per year of preventable health conditions (lung cancer + obesity) and nobody bats an eye (that's 4.5M deaths per decade). The flu alone kills orders of magnitude more than covid over longer timelines. A once-in-a-lifetime virus kills medically compromised people at elevated rates for 6 months and people lose their minds? It's not rational.

Out of morbid curiosity, how would you describe 200K+ dead from a contagious disease in 6 months? I'm sticking with "pretty damn dire".
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