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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

#141

Post by sandworm101 »

phkahler wrote: post #87
sandworm101 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> This naming triggers certain processes (more attention, greater tracking fidelity, inclusion in daily briefs etc). Right, but you mention the key thing places like The Weather Channel want - increased attention via daily briefs. The public doesn't need that, TWC does.

They might appear to want it, but I think the weather channel simply takes whatever is available. With hours of time to fill each day, they will make hay with whatever data the government weather people put on the website.

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

#142

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

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?

> communicating the science

That's not what's happening. What is happening is cherrypicking of speculative results, presenting them as a certainty, because CLICK HERE TO SEE WHY YOU WILL DIE is a lot more attractive than "All the changes will be gradual, and if we keep improving at the current rate of improvements (as opposed to sticking with what we currently have), we will get this under control."

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

#143

Post by mrmuagi »

cos2pi wrote: post #102

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.

It doesn't kill you directly, but the vulnerable are easy prey (elderly, immobile, etc.). A story that was shared with me about the lethality of heat was basically an overweight individual fell off his mobility scooter and was knocked unconscious, and just cooked to death.

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

#144

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #60
martythemaniak wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I wonder how much perception aligns with reality here. For people who don't know the numbers, please post your estimates of how many people died in the 2019-2020 fires in Australia and the 2020 California fires so far, then look up the answer on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bus... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_wildfires.

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

#145

Post by leetrout »

sandworm101 wrote: post #141
phkahler wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> This naming triggers certain processes (more attention, greater tracking fidelity, inclusion in daily briefs etc). Right, but you mention the key thing places like The Weather Channel want - increased attention via daily briefs. The public doesn't need that, TWC does.

They might appear to want it, but I think the weather channel simply takes whatever is available. With hours of time to fill each day, they will make hay with whatever data the government weather people put on the website.

Not quite true.

> In November 2012, TWC began naming winter storms ...

> The U.S. government-operated National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ... and ... the National Weather Service (NWS)—did not acknowledge TWC's winter storm names and asked its forecast offices to refrain from using the TWC names

> The National Weather Service has since stated that "no plans to consider naming winter storms" are in progress.[25]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_storm_naming_in_the_Uni...

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

#146

Post by chrisseaton »

take_a_breath wrote: post #138
chrisseaton wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 he…

I haven't seen nearly enough action taken, so maybe sounding the alarm louder will push more action? ==I don't think giving dangerous heatwaves whimsical names is any kind of honest 'science communication.'== We do it all the time for other weather events, specifically for communication purposes. I'm not sure people think of hurricane names as "whimsical" rather a way to understand specific details about a specific w…

> And what might that "effective action" entail?

Well exactly.

We need to figure this out before we deliberately induce mass panic, which would only be destructive without any idea of what action you want to achieve.

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

#147

Post by kiliantics »

umvi wrote: post #82
CalRobert wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> and I think "my kids dying horribly in a resource war or food riot". I still think "I'll believe it when I see it". Scientists are very good at making apocalyptic predictions based on theoretical worst case scenarios, but reality just never seems to match said predictions. In reality, stuff happens more slowly on much longer timescales. Just look at covid - back in March, the predictions were pretty dire - it was p…

The thing is, when it comes to climate change, those predictions are often a best case scenario given the evidence. They assume that we will take the necessary measures, which we have been falling way short of doing for decades. We now only have a narrow window within which to take extreme measures to keep to those best case scenarios, if we are lucky.

With covid, many followed the suggested measures, so we avoided extreme results where the appropriate precautions were taken. The fact that scientists predicted doom and gloom and many people actually did what scientists recommended to avoid it shows that we should be following their recommendations for the climate too. In the case of covid, it was in the interest of short term political/corporate outcomes that we did something. Climate acts on longer timescales so we continue to see inaction...

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

#148

Post by kiliantics »

CalRobert wrote: post #40
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.

Resource wars and food riots are already happening in many parts of the world and no one wants to do anything about it :(

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

#149

Post by umeshunni »

thehappypm wrote: post #62
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…

How exactly does climate change lead to a world war? I can understand that there will be many climate refugees, but refugees don’t form armies that can stand up to a standing Western army. I’ve always understood the biggest threat to be mass displacement and starvation, leading to closed off borders, and poverty and death in severely impacted countries like Bangladesh. But world war? Not so sure. The world powers wil…

> How exactly does climate change lead to a world war?

Climate change leads to changes in changes in rivers and availability of fresh water, irrigation water etc. This can leads to conflicts between large states in resource constrained regions (e.g Middle East or South Asia) that could then spread globally.

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

#150

Post by perl4ever »

rhino369 wrote: post #130
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 '?

People will be able to smell the bullshit. The idea that climate change will be apocalyptic (for first world nations) in your grandchildren's time frame is just as loony-toons as denying it exists at all. The scientific consensus is nowhere near that bad.

I'm taking no particular position, because I don't go out of my way to read on the subject, but I did notice an article recently which said that we seem to be firmly on the worst of the likely IPCC scenarios from a few years ago, not in the middle.
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