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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

#91

Post by ciarannolan »

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…

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).

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

#92

Post by dylan604 »

foota wrote: post #84
umvi wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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?

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

#93

Post by vharuck »

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…

At the end of March, Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted between 100,000 and 200,000 US residents would die of COVID-19 over the course of the pandemic[0]. Now, only at mid-September, we're closer to his upper limit. Not to mention flu season's coming, and we're seeing outbreaks as schools and universities reopen. So that prediction was probably too conservative.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

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

#94

Post by dylan604 »

mbostleman wrote: post #68
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.

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.

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

#95

Post by vharuck »

martythemaniak wrote: post #83
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

The question is "what's at stake with climate change", not about what happens to invididuals (because everything happens to individuals). What's at stake isn't the death of the planet, or the death of life, or the death of civilization. All these things are resilient enough to adapt to the effects of climate change. What isn't resilient enough is our quality of life, which is based on my assumptions that climate chan…

>All these things are resilient enough to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Everything lasts forever, until it's over. Extinctions are the norm in Earth's history. There's no reason to think humans are the exception. The fact that humanity has yet to die off isn't much comfort. It's a sample size of 1 species, and by definition we wouldn't even be discussing this if the alternative happened.

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

#96

Post by hutzlibu »

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…

And then with all the panicked, stressed out, sleepless annoyed people, you believe we are in a better position to focus our energies towards change?

I doubt it. Fear does only very seldom lead to more rationale behavior. I would rather suspect the confusion and riots and breaking up of society would just start sooner this way.

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

#97

Post by dylan604 »

johnday wrote: post #2

Sounds like a good idea. It might be harder to delineate when a heatwave is worthy of being named, but I'm sure the Met office (or the equivalent across the Atlantic) can manage it. That said, I'm not convinced that giving it a name is enough to make people consider it dangerous.

Don't we anthropomorphize things to make them more friendly? Here comes Heatwave Henry III. Everybody wave back! Hopefully, he won't be nearly as bad as that evil Henry II.

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

#98

Post by dylan604 »

svara wrote: post #6
tejado wrote: post #4

In germany, the high pressure areas are named after male names and low pressure after female names: https://www.bavariannews.com/blog/2018/10/03/how-storms-in-g...

As the article you cited points out, this has been changed in 1998. Low pressure areas get male names in odd years and female names in even years; vice versa for high pressure areas.

great, that's not confusing at all. hmm, i'm seeing a warning. i should know what to do. wait, what year is it? damn, if only i could remember even/odd male/female cycles. oh well, best if i just ignore it and carry on with my day. at least it's not a tuesday. i never got the hang of tuesday.

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

#99

Post by foota »

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?

I think for starters this would never happen in the current US both due to a lack of political will and highly varying circumstances (things were fine in Texas at the start, why would they lock down?). Not to even mention legal challenges. I believe people would need to be dropping dead nationwide to the tune of one in a hundred or thousand per week for this to happen here.

But even if we could I don't think it would save us for some of the following reasons, though it might have bought us a couple week or month reset. However, if this were followed up by strict adherence to social distancing, mask usage, and restrictions on social and work gatherings, we'd likely be in a much better place than we are now.

Completely eradicating the virus when there are tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of cases seems unlikely to me. Enough cases are likely to persist through propagating within large households, cases with extended infectious time period (I'm not sure how likely this is? It seems to me like it should be possible for some cases to remain infections for longer than normal periodas of time, but I haven't read anything about this), and people not following the guidelines to give a sizable enough base for the virus to recuperate. And even if some areas do eliminate it, it can come back through domestic or international travel.

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

#100

Post by umvi »

ciarannolan wrote: post #91
umvi wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

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