OT -- Alternative to 'man-made'?

[jennypenny]

I wasn't referring to climate change in particular which is why I was trying to avoid the use of 'man-made' because, as jacob said, it's become linked too closely with climate change.

@jacob--It's difficult trying to group risks where humans play a role in how their own actions can aggravate or mitigate the risk (long and short term). I can take the time to describe each more specifically as you suggest when I'm writing about a particular risk, but when grouping them for coordination purposes (and, let's be honest, for those who won't bother to read carefully and need a shorthand to comprehend it), it's hard to find terms that aren't loaded.

The Guardian's new style guidelines are problematic (for me) because we're really only at the beginning of the more direct effects of climate issues. If we call it an emergency now, what will we call the situation in 10 years? 20? I understand the desire to use language that accurately conveys the seriousness of the situation but there's a risk of numbing people to the problem -- people can't maintain a sense of emergency for prolonged periods of time. The same criticism has been leveled at terms like "war on ..." where, after a while, people tend to tune it out. I'm not sure what the solution is.

[jacob]

The problem with the word awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tVqN0prMro

Only solution I can think of is to drop adjectives and quantify things. This takes effort but would lead to sentences like ..."more than 50% of the excess carbondioxide ever emitted has been let out from power plants and vehicular transportation over the past 40 years. About 2/3 has been absorbed into the oceans increasing the level of carbonic acid enough to increase the acidity of the world's oceans by about 40%."

But leaving out the adjectives leaves out the value statement. Unless informed, the reader would not know if 40% is a lot. It sounds like a lot ... but if you put it in pH terms, it corresponds to dropping pH by 0.1 ... which does not sound like a lot. Well, is it a lot? If you're human, it's probably okay. If you're a coral reef, it's TEOTAWKI. And if you're a human in the coral reef diving industry, it's somewhere in between.

So communicating this way requires a shared scale (measuring stick). It's similar to the problem of using metaphors in that it requires readers to already have somewhat of a similar framework with which to interpret what they're reading. It's even similar to using words. When I say "dog" I need to presume that we both think of some generic slobbery furry creature with four legs, etc. For a long time physicists wondered about how to communicate the difference between left and right to an alien civilization. However, the universe seems to posses certain asymmetries that can be exploited for that purpose. Still, there's Goedel's incompleteness theorem for the ultimate death match.

That is the problem with writing. It's near impossible to be everything for everybody. But it is possible to be more for more. It's just a lot harder than being just one thing for one kind. In my writing, I don't like to optimize for PC as much as I try to optimize for different levels of insight. As a result, I'm going to piss off some readers ... but others will be able to reread my stuff and hopefully gain further insights the second time around.

[Tyler9000]

@jp - This might be useful:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... nvironment

Noting that The Guardian has a left-center bias and are therefore interested in picking their phrasing in a certain way, I still think that this new "style" is more useful because it is more accurate and more importantly, it has more information content. As you know, presenting a complex subject like climate change^H^H^H^H^Hbreakdown is still very much work in progress.

I hear what you're saying, but I would argue the new information content is mostly alarmist and the goal is not to meaningfully explain a complex subject at all. The Guardian article outright says that their goal is to communicate a "catastrophe for humanity". The problem is that there are real-world consequences to using ever-escalating language simply because you're not getting the results you want. Even beyond creating the perception that you're simply crying wolf when the increasingly dire predictions don't happen, eventually you run into unintended consequences like this:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-t ... 2019-05-23

So personally, I think over-policing language in a single direction usually does more harm than good. I'd prefer to encourage meaningful discourse on a topic rather than depend on strict language rules to slowly bend public consciousness to your desired belief.

[jacob]

@Tyler9000 - The likely unsolvable problem is where to set the center-point. There are also real world consequences of not escalating the language far enough which go somewhat beyond not maxing out one's IRA. Dialing in the right point is hard, because as your linked article also notes, humans tend to respond only to a bias that is either positive ("There's still hope if only we start now") or extremely negative ("You're already in deep shit, but there are ways to avoid making it worse"). Picking the former has so far resulted in collectively kicking the can down the street for a good 40 years. The guardian style seems to be an attempt to try the other tack.

Which of those two strategies would work best for e.g. measles? Would it be the same strategy for e.g. alcoholism or diabetes? Should the center-point somehow be set according to other actual dangers or are perceived dangers more appropriate. For example, compare the actual vs perceived danger of organized terrorists and lightning strikes.

More generally, I think we have the engineering triangle of the challenge of designing triggers (literally). It holds for numerical modelling (like trading signals) and it probably also at some level holds at how we read and understand words and concepts. A word (like man-made) can be accurate, precise, or simple---pick any two. Or to rephrase, if a word (e.g. "Doppler-shifted absorption spectrum") has to be both accurate and precise, it won't be simple but require a technical background. (Cf. scientific papers which are both accurate and precise but really only fully comprehensible if you hold a masters or better). If it has to be accurate and simple, it won't be precise. "Climate breakdown" is accurate and simple, but it doesn't give you much precision in terms of whether it's tomorrow or in 2081 or 2150 or what or where or how much. "Climate change" is simple and precise but not very accurate because it doesn't really communicate much beyond "things are changing" resulting in the popular counterpunch that "climate has always been changing".

The general lesson is that if writers and readers insists on "simple" (and most readers do) there's a price to be paid in either accuracy or precision. This thread is already much longer than most people will ever spend deliberately educating themselves about complex subjects.

Add: It might be interesting to ponder that the big assessment reports use very precise definitions of what words like "likely", "very likely", etc. mean. Precise in the sense that they are actually calculated outcomes. E.g. "very likely" means a probability of 90%-100% and extremely likely means 95%+, so if a calculation results in 96.4%, the report will phrase it at "very likely" rather than "rejects the null hypothesis at p=.964". However, while this anal/obfuscatory level of definitions is supposed to provide a means for both hard scientists and ... non-scientists to read it equally well, the de facto outcome is the worst level of bureaucratic writing imaginable. Okay, maybe that is hyperbole, but it's pretty bad. And obviously, unless you memorize the definitions, you'll be stuck looking up what "likely" means all the time.

[jennypenny]

The emergency isn't now. We have to act now to mitigate the emergency that's coming, but it's not here yet. Someone with pre-diabetes and poor lifestyle habits isn't presently in an emergency situation but is only heading towards one.

If media referred to it as the 'coming climate crisis' like health professionals refer to the 'coming antibiotic resistance crisis', it would sound (to me) more accurate and less alarmist. I'd argue it isn't The Guardian's job to convince people of anything, only to accurately report information (in the past, journalists didn't advocate for anything). If they want to report frequently on scientists who use alarmist language to describe their findings, that's ok, but they shouldn't preemptively editorialize by requiring certain language be used.


Sorry, I wasn't trying to start a debate here. I think presenting context/scale/perspective is very important. People made fun of that colored DefCon chart from W, but almost everyone could understand that orange wasn't good but was better than red. The problem with issues where conditions are in permanent decline is how to present a scale that is constantly sliding. And when to permanently adjust the scale downwards, giving up on a previous parameter that will never exist again. (apologies if I'm using technical terminology incorrectly, but you get the gist)

[jacob]

I think presenting context/scale/perspective is very important.

Yah ... I find myself continuously challenged how to answer when asked "how bad will climate change be"? Well, what timeframe are we talking about because the answer for 2040 is a lot different than the answer for 2080; and the answer for Barcelona is again different than the answer for Berlin. Do you mean for yourself and if so how old are you? Or your children? How old are they and where do you all live? Could you move? "Coming" is worse, because some places are already impacted. Climate crisis is already here on Tanger Island. It's practically here in Miami, FL, depending on how you count and whether recurring street flooding during king tides and continually having to pile sand on the beach to prevent it from fading counts as an emergency---it probably does if your hotel lobby floods every full moon or maybe that's just until you get used to it? In 2080, it will still be coming for Berlin or Buffalo, NY. If you look at refugee^H^H^H^Hclimate displaced streams currently going from Africa and the ME into Europe, you will see a strong correlation between origin and water deficits in that area. So while it's already arrived in those places, it has not arrived in SoCal, New Mexico, Arizona, or Nevada yet. The Colorado river still provides. It's coming though.

When is someone diabetic? Is it coming until one hits the 100 blood sugar count but not at 99? Is one not obese at a BMI of 29.95?

If you look at the spread of the Black Death (yersenia pestis), it took IIRC about 20 years to make it from the Med to the northern parts of Europe slowly but predictably moving from town to town. When did that go from a coming crisis to an actual crisis? When people began to keel over in the city you lived in ... when it hit Europe from the trade routes ... or when it was first detected in Asia. Was the Black Death a catastrophe? Well, it isn't to us, but those who lived through probably saw it that way. And those who survived it experienced one the greater economic booms in human history.

Dealing with a sliding scale is even worse. Since 2017, we've been at +1C, so climate has already changed a bit and some aspects of it (the polar vortex) have already broken down, so it's fair to talk about a climate breakdown as in "the change is a type of breakdown". It's definitely fair to talk about a biodiversity breakdown because breaking up territory and making it unviable for [keystone] species is literally how biodiversity is lost. I still remember looking out over the garden and seeing it thinking with flying insects when I was a teen. Now I see almost none. But a Gen Z will never have seen that many insects, so they don't see it as the insect apocalypse ... in the same way we don't see the loss of the buffalo or the passenger pigeon as catastrophic because we never experienced the loss.

That is to say a recurring emergency quickly becomes business as usual or a way of life.

I suspect whatever word is picked, it's gonna piss off some people. Disruption is also an accurate word, but it'll annoy those who like stability and the argument can be made that it's not really a disruption if it's possible to adapt fast enough.

It think it comes back to that if you want to cover a lot of information with one word, there's bound to be a lot of signal loss. For example, for a reasonably acceptable understanding of what "man-made" implies, you'd have to grok about 3 chapters of a college level course on climate science.

[jacob]

I think COPD is a better metaphor for some of these issues. COPD for those who don't know it is a steadily progressive, incurable, and irreversible lung disease that is acquired by inhaling pollution most commonly in the form of voluntary tobacco smoke. It's the 4th biggest killer in the US. Once you have it, you're going to die younger than you otherwise would have. In some sense, it is actually worse than climate change, but it has strong analogies.

Suppose you're stage 1 which means your symptoms are not obvious but the [unstoppable] degradation of lung tissue has started. Now, is this an emergency? You're not going to die tomorrow or even five or ten years from now, so in principle you can keep the smoking habit. However, if you do keep smoking, you're most definitely going to make it worse faster. And you will die younger. OTOH, if you stop smoking, you can live out most of your life with a few restrictions. But you don't...

So some years later, maybe 5 or 10, you're stage 2. You're now obviously short of breath in situations that used to be easy for you. Emergency? Well, if you have to outrun a bear or play a game of pickup basketball, yes ... but you can probably keep your physical job even though it's getting harder, and you can keep smoking, goddammit.

Stage 3 follows faster. You can no longer do normal things like normal people; everything has to proceed at a slower pace. But you adapt your life around it. Retire. Watch TV all day. Emergency? Only if you're pressured and have to get out if your house is on fire. You can still smoke the occasional cigar and there's still time to get your affairs in order

Stage 4 comes shortly after. Almost everything now feels like a small emergency. Have to run to the toilet? Sorry, that should be planned in advance to avoid collapsing due to blood oxygen deficit. Inhaling and brutal coughing now feels painful enough to stop smoking, but it is too late. You catch pneumonia and have to be rushed to the hospital, but you make it and get sent home after a few days. Maybe you do that a couple of times because everything begins to infect your weakened lungs.

Some months later, you will die. Once it gets close, the doctor will even be able to predict fairly accurately (20% time-uncertainty, say "a week give or take a couple of days") how much time is left because things have become extremely predictable. You can literally give a heads up to the funeral home.

So ... was there ever an emergency? If so, when was it? Was it a catastrophe? If so, which aspects of it? The experience in the final stage or the lost potential in ever meeting the grandchildren? We can certainly agree that it was a "health change" but that doesn't really explicate much. We can probably also agree there was a "health breakdown", but when did that start and when did it really, really start.

I think the key here is to acknowledge that "emergency" implies a particular isolated event, whereas something like climate change, mass extinction, an epidemic eruption or diabetes, alcoholism, or COPD on a more personal level rather takes the form of a slow weakening of a complex system until it finally collapses under multiple or rapid emergencies because there is no capital left for recovery. How did you go bankrupt? First slowly, then all at once.