Meteorologists, please stop the fearmongering (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Meteorologists, please stop the fearmongering (2019)

lakeplacidnews.com

44 pointsAlupis58 comments

My favorite recent example of this: I don't mean to minimize the damage and deaths that Milton caused, but right after the storm it felt like nearly every newscast led with the visual of the tattered roof of the Tampa Bay Rays stadium.

It made for a good, scary visual. All the newscasters where oohing and ahhing about the damage. But the only thing torn was apparently the garbage-bag like cover on the roof (I'm joking, but only slightly - the roof cover was only a thick vinyl). I would have been surprised if that roof hadn't been torn to shreds. It was poor journalism IMO because it just made me think "if that's the worst they can come up with, it must have been really mild", which wasn't true (Milton did cause less damage than anticipated due to where it landed, but there were still a bunch of deaths, many caused by spawned tornadoes).

While I, as a Meteorologist and formerly involved in the TV business, I agree with you on using visuals entirely to overstate this, the fact that the field in the dome was set up before the storm to house thousands of electrical lineman and relief workers expected after the storm, says that the roof coming off was NOT an expected outcome from Milton, making it a reasonable way to tell the story on the news.

> to house thousands of electrical lineman and relief workers expected after the storm

This was the crux of the story at least locally in Central Florida. I have no idea if that was lost in coverage outside of the area in favor of the visual impacts of the torn roof.

To some degree I also worry that panicking about everything causes the population to become numb to the warnings of actual big storms like Helene and Milton.

I'm not sure if there's another name for this, but it seems like an variant of alarm fatigue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue

Someone should really create a dataset comparing predicted damage/casualties of storms vs. actual outcomes. It would really help set context for stuff like the panic around Milton, stoked by entertainers masquerading as meteorologists (such as this gentleman: [1]).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImrqhcMDL9A

Ever heard of the Prevention paradox?

What if the actual outcome is changed by the predicted damages.

Not that you're wrong but you're thinking of the preparedness paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox

Thanks, didn't know the english name of it

People do make these date sets. They're called actuaries, unfortunately, they're not doing it to help people. I worked at an insurance company briefly and there was a whole team that ran various models of storms to determine how much they needed to charge people, how much coverage that premium would cover, possible damage done, previous storm damage, etc. It was actually pretty cool albeit not exactly a job you could feel good about at the end of the day.

I don't understand why you wouldn't feel good about this job. Ultimately, you are assisting in creating (hopefully accurate) signals that help summarize risk to simplify decision-making. Seems like honorable work to me...

I’m not referring to actuarial predictions. I’m referring to predictions made by public figures at or to media outlets (such as the one I linked to).

That man has been a meteorologist for decades. Is all of his work just entertainment or did he just happen to become the main character for a day on the internet?

I wonder how many homeless people get killed by the storm, but who don't make it into the statistics though....

They're TV personalities. What else are they going to do?

Hopefully fade away, like town criers. I'm astonished this is still profitable given the high costs. I think they're on the margins: the quality of presenters and production has fallen dramatically from back in the day.

There's single-person YouTube channels that consistently get more views than MSM shows. It's a different landscape today.

The networks also have YouTube channels, and when something happens are they're in direct competition with non-network channels they get ratio-ed by an order of magnitude. Most recently that happened with Milton.

I find it impossible to listen to patronizing presenters on network television an longer. That's before we even get to the group-think they peddle whenever the matter is controversial.

Journalism is a storytelling business that is optimized for psychological impact, no more and no less honorable than writing a children's book or a screenplay.

Scientists are after fact.

Philosophers are after truth.

The commentariat are after repeat customers.

This isn't a dig on journalists or meteorologists btw, but let's drop the heroic pretense. Even Edward Murrow shoveled mostly slop.

Helene and Milton were severe storms that killed people (despite ample advanced warning) and caused historically significant amounts of damage. Are there other storms that people are being bombarded with dire warnings about that I don't hear about because I live in NY? Because as far as I can tell, the only two recent weather events to get substantial coverage were roughly as devastating as warned.

The bigger problem seems to be politically-inspired idiots sending death threats to meteorologist because they'll believe every conspiracy theory they hear from their ultra-right news sources and elected officials:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/us/meteorologists-threats...

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

What bugs me about this is that it's an armchair analysis from someone 11°+ north in latitude (Lake Placid is a five hour drive north of New York City.

Additionally, I looked up the historic weather data. In a span of 3 weeks there was a temperature swing of over 25°C in Atlanta.

Finally, the author completely and disingenuously ignores that the US south does not have snow removal equipment to the same degree. In emergencies that equipment has to get trucked down... Assuming it's not needed in the localities lending it.

What you call fearmongering is, for the news channels, just proper monetization of their businesses. I'm often disappointed in other consumers (who should know better, or have better taste in entertainment). They're the root problem here. News businesses exist to follow the nutrient gradient of what makes money. Asking them to do something else just feels naive.

Weather events and natural disasters are a news corporations favorite thing to exploit. No single person to blame, plenty of hysteria, changing conditions... all combines for the broadest possible audience that feels compelled to stay tuned in for the next update. I personally love the exaggerated visuals of a "15 ft storm surge" filling up the entirety of downtown Tampa in 3D, you just KNOW everyone loves to dust off that special stage to show a totally ridiculous CG storm render.

Why do you place the blame on the consumers?

The idea that the media is full of shit by default is a very new one that most people have not internalized and almost certainly never will.

I disagree that it's "proper" especially when it starts to stray into "irresponsible"

We consume what is around this. To fault or ask for change in the consumer is to fault or ask for change human nature, which is a futile endeavor. It seems that a well-functioning society would be structured with the awareness of this fact, and with safeguards to ensure that media isn't a race to the bottom of emotional manipulation (not because of any moralistic hand-wringing, but because it's detrimental to society when that's what media has become). The real (and really big) question is, what productive steps can we take in that direction?

The root problem is our capitalist system and lack of countervailing values and systems.

Fear mongering is a major source of media industry revenue.

Are you saying that the HN crowd is advocating for reducing an activity that makes money for rich people?

I seriously doubt that...

Agreed on the individual events, but the trend is pretty scary. My daughter went to pick out a pumpkin yesterday in Austin and it was 100 degrees. Christ.

Today, my phone says "Red Flag (Fire Weather) Warning" in big, bold letters across the lock screen.

Imagine growing up in a world where your primary-computing device is constantly telling you to be afraid of darn near everything all the time.

This past summer - constant alerts about summer heat. Yes, we know it's hot outside, experts used to call it summer, but now it's "Heat Wave Alert 90+ Degrees in the Valley in the middle of August!" - duh...

We're training everyone to always be afraid. Then we wonder why our youth think the world is going to end in a couple years...

Many of the most damaging fires here in southern California have been started by people doing things during a red flag warning that they absolutely should not be doing. Loss of property, loss of life.

More evidence that people get numb to the warnings and ignore them.

The problem really is that the baseline is adjusting so that formerly routine activities can quickly become dangerous, but people do not want to adjust their expectations on what they should do.

It’s a tough problem; people love campfires and they love fireworks, but it is legitimately becoming risky to do that without starting a large forest fire for large parts of the year in places.

Well, that, and your corrupt state's government squandering its unthinkably massive budget as usual, instead of spending it on adequate fire prevention.

(For those saying Californian forests are federally managed—what is https://www.fire.ca.gov ?)

The majority of forest in CA is federally owned and managed.

A non-trivial number of these fires in recent years have been traced to homeless encampments as well.

That can't be true—those are all responsible, upstanding Californians!

Yes, except that summers are hotter and hotter and hotter. The alert was there even during August, the difference is that the August weather is the baseline now

People say this very often - but government temperature charts do not support this notion.

If the average summer temperature has increased by about 1F over 30 years... can you even tell the difference? Can you go outside right now and determine the difference between 88 and 89 degrees? I think not.

So, what's changed? Constant fearmongering alerts on your phone and computer every day. You've convinced yourself, against all government evidence, that August truly is unbearably hot compared to years past. That's just not reality.

Though you're kind of right, some years have a hotter August on average than other years and I believe this one was hotter for much of America. As in noticeably hotter for many days.

I assume the government charts are aware of this, so that 1F degree higher is measured by averaging ~5 Augusts together thirty years ago and comparing them to the most recent few Augusts.

Not only in America. The Mediterranean boiled this year with an average of 30 degrees Celsius, which for a sea is a lot

The average is rather useless if weather gets more extreme.

One hand on the stove and one in an ice bucket is isn't so bad on average.

I grew up in a world being told marijuana kills and Halloween candy contains razor blades. At least these warnings are based on facts.

Facts? lol!

When a meteorologist says there will be unusually high temperatures, or unusually low temperatures, do you deny these facts? Do you just laugh with your silly little "lol" as the elderly die from these abnormally extreme temperatures? I do hope you respond and tell me, in great detail, the facts behind your gruesome and morbid laughter.

lol

It sounds like you're leaning into the trend and doing a large part of it to yourself? First with your phone running software that you apparently do not feel works in your interests, and then secondly using a tiny agency-limiting phone as your "primary computing device", or at the very least normalizing the behavior for kids/parents? If the lock screen of my desktop/laptop/phone were to start saying weird messages like that, I would investigate it as the security lapse that it is. And sure, the throwie devices I keep around to interact with stuff that requires the Doubleclick malware framework will show me those trash headlines if I scroll too far to the left, or I'll see them on the occasional insecure browser (ie no adblock). But that happens at most every few weeks, and so doesn't warp my larger perspective.

As a meteorologist, I agree. Fear-mongering endangers people’s lives, because they are less likely to believe a real warning and just “ride it out”.

I'd settle for a reliable forcast for tomorrow.

Saying “It’s going to be dangerous out there" when it's merely a bit below freezing (Sorry, am Canadian) can legitimately be called fear-mongering. Some people are going to get a little chilly and learn a life lesson about wearing proper clothing, but minor cold is relatively easy to react to. Even if someone decides to go for a drive in the country with nothing but shorts on, help is readily at hand in most places if they have a breakdown.

On the other hand, scaring people about natural disasters like hurricanes can and does save lives. Milton didn't turn out to be the storm of the century as some were saying, but it still killed three hundred people. How many more might have died if people hadn't taken it so seriously?

Let's just be thankful that lawyers haven't found a way to sue weather forecasters for being incorrect, because then we'd have no weather forecasts.

I would wager that many of the deaths are from homeless people that don't exactly have a closet to store their cold-weather gear in. And when snow storms hit places that normally don't get them, it's a huge deal because people don't know how to drive in it. Even if it's not artic circle cold outside

I'm not saying cold weather doesn't produce issues, especially for places unaccustomed to it. I'm saying the impact is on a different scale than from a natural disaster, so perhaps it's wise to reserve catastrophic language for potential catastrophes. If you use the same language for cold weather as you do for hurricanes, people might not take hurricanes seriously enough.

There is a tremendous amount of misinformation in this.

1.) When meteorologists say it will be dangerous, it is either cold enough for exposed skin to freeze or very slippery. Both of those situations are dangerous.

2.)Help is not readily available in ‘the country’. I could drive you forty five minutes outside of my city and you will have no cell service. People die in their cars out in the country.

If you’re not careful with cold, you’ve been trusting luck instead of foresight. Cold is very dangerous.

I did mention I'm a Canadian, yes? I used the car in the countryside example because, although it is foolish and dangerous to drive anywhere without suitable clothing for the weather, you still have a much better chance of surviving than if you go for a drive in a hurricane. It's not even close.

Yes, you mentioned it complete with a distasteful apology. But you’re still minimizing something very dangerous with a totally contrived example. Don’t do that - we have a large immigrant population and they deserve better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com