Who knew there could be so many socio-political implications of Hurricane Harvey?
There are liberals blaming the hurricane on climate change — while even kookier leftists (those of the “social justice warrior” variety) somehow see this natural disaster as a race issue.The US government is CREATING hurricanes to kill black people 🙈 pic.twitter.com/QS2BvXvEpT
— The Safest Space (@TheSafestSpace) September 5, 2017
Believe it or not, “environmental racism” is an actual concept on the Left, as if racism can exist without intent. The Root enlightened us ahead of the hurricane with news that “Race and Class Are the Biggest Issues Around Hurricane Harvey and We Need to Start Talking About Them.”
Climate change — check. Racism — check. Classism — check.What other buzzwords can they toss out in attempting to politicize a hurricane? “Sexism,” because…well, why not?
According to The Blaze:
According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, female-named hurricanes are more deadly than male-named hurricanes. Why? The answer is simple: society’s gender bias, of course.The team of researchers purported that upon hearing a hurricane with a feminine name, society did not take the threat as seriously because of implicit gender bias.
“Feminine-named hurricanes (vs. masculine-named hurricanes) cause significantly more deaths, apparently because they lead to a lower perceived risk and consequently less preparedness,” the researchers wrote in the world-renowned scientific journal last year.According to CNN, the researchers not only analyzed death tolls from hurricanes occurring between 1950 and 2012, but also conducted their own independent experiments. One experiment had participants predict the intensity of 10 hurricanes — five with male names and five with female names.
The results showed that both male and female participants assumed the male hurricanes were more dangerous and deadly. Another experiment showed that participants would evacuate their homes at a much higher rate if the hurricane was named “Alexander” rather than “Alexandra.”
“These experiments show that gender-congruent perceptions of intensity and strength are responsible for male-named hurricanes being perceived as riskier and more intense than female-named hurricanes,” the study said. “These findings have important implications for hurricane preparedness and public safety.”
The study urges policymakers to reconsider the current naming-system of hurricanes to reduce the implicit bias that exists in society regarding gender. It also requests that media professionals refrain from using the pronouns “he” or “she” when referring to hurricanes.
Who knew that refusing to refer to hurricanes by gender-neutral language is literally killing us?
Well, it’s not.
A separate study was commissioned in response, this one by Björn Christensen and Sören Christensen, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. What they found was that “by reanalyzing the same data, we show that the conclusion is based on biased presentation and invalid statistics.” The key paragraph of their response study points out that “[i]n the light of an alternating male-female naming system started in 1979, the authors claim that similar results can be obtained by only considering the data after 1979 […]. However, when reanalyzing [their model] for these years, no effect can be observed at all: neither [the perceived gender of the storms name] nor [other potential confounding factors] are significant on a 10% level.”
So, another day, another crazy liberal theory busted. What will they think of next?
[Note: This post was written by Matt Palumbo. He is a co-author of the new book A Paradoxical Alliance: Islam and the Left, and can be found on Twitter @MattPalumbo12]
