raddlesnake

What's your opinion on the current crisis in Ukraine?

Maritime SAR Coordinator here - We've heard of times where people are about to get rescued and they sort of...shut down. It's almost as if their adrenaline was keeping them going, then as they see the rescue coming, their brain says, "We're all set, I don't need to push any more adrenaline through" and people go under. They get so overwhelmed by the fact that the rescue has arrived that their body preemptively starts to relax.

Do you have any science/data to provide more context to this phenomenon?

Hello!

Disaster Analyst here- these are the kinds of questions I deal with on the daily. So- you're getting both sides from the media because they're both right. The issue with fuzzy words like "worse" is that there's not a scientific definition for "worst." There are hundreds of storms that are all described as "one of the worst" and it frustrates people like me to no end.

So, to answer your question, fires are becoming costlier than ever, but we know more about them than we used to. Depending on where in the world you look, frequency hasn't changed dramatically or to the point that it's outside the realm of what we might expect due to climate change. Using a selective interpretation of this data that I disagree with personally, you could find a way to state that there aren't substantially more fires and modern wildfire management practices are more capable than ever, reaching a conclusion that global exposure to wildfire has decreased without technically being incorrect.

On the other side, wildfires cost more to fight, move more quickly than they used to, and burn more stuff that is worth more money. Big fires = big problems. People depend on interconnected infrastructures for...everything, it seems. While there might not be overwhelming evidence to suggest that there are more fires than there used to be, the ones that do occur are particularly devastating. When fewer hazards have an increased negative ability to disrupt normal societal functions, you can argue that vulnerability has increased.

A good comparison would be land-use management and the role that levees play in flooding. Levees stop the floods that don't breach the top. When a flood breaches the top of a levee, everything that levee protected is in big trouble. Levees allow for fewer floods, but the floods that occur are particularly devastating.

To argue about which is "worse" won't really lead anywhere because you can make a case for either side.

Thanks for the kind words!

We were initially worried about people discarding their own trash- we use the businesses to help self police that kind of stuff, but it honestly hasn't been an issue. Part of offering the incentive is that it's something between 2-5 dollars. It's enough to make the effort worth it, but not so nice that it would be worth it to cheat. This has been a concern for the businesses and we haven't had any of them come back to us saying it's a problem, so I think we're doing something right!

Plenty of organizations do cleanups and plenty of organizations try to create buy in. I think a key point where we differ from those other programs is that we target the people in local businesses, most of which are residents of the community. When the businesses support the community, the community supports the businesses. If anything, the role of our project is to facilitate that relationship in the background rather than lead from the front and have everyone fall into place behind us.

We ask our participating businesses to keep the incentives in the 2-5 dollar range. Some may be worth more to the person turning in a full container- 2-5 dollars for the business can be greater for the consumer, depending on the business. We've found that's the sweet spot for motivating people to take action without being so awesome that they'd cheat. Over the course of the summer last year, we estimated that we removed 800 gallons of small litter from the beach, 16 oz at a time.

I wonder what scale we'd have to reach to be freakonomics worthy..