What's in a name?

Hurricane Katrina left a scar on the American psyche. It was a huge storm that ravaged the Gulf Coast and flooded much of New Orleans and the surrounding area. Handling of the aftermath of the event received much criticism, with responses slow and emergency services overwhelmed. The flooding was exacerbated by inadequate levee protection, unable to deal with over 30 feet of storm surge (according to the NOAA post event report) with catastrophic consequences .

I do find it odd then that presidential candidate Jeb Bush decided to use "Hurricane Katrina" as a nickname for State Senator Katrina Shealy, as a form a praise.

Despite the characterisation of a "strong" and "fierce" storm, apparently matching State Senator Katrina Shealy's personality, it does seem to be poor taste, even though it has been ten years since Hurricane Katrina struck. I doubt this would have been attempted soon after the event. Furthermore, I wonder whether this nickname would have been used in the areas worst affected around New Orleans? Which begs the question, was it acceptable in Florida, which was also struck by Hurricane Katrina?

Ultimately, the intent was not malicious and so I would hope it has not offended anyone, but I wonder if the general population also sees this as poor judgement, and if it may have affected opinion. Perhaps it was a further attempt to simply make the news media story. Jeb's stance on anthropogenic climate change seems to be more accepting than his brother George at least.

It also reminded me of a project in 2014, by 350 Action, to lobby the World Meteorological Organisation to change the names of severe storms to those of famous climate deniers, in an attempt to associate their lack of willingness to accept the science which links global warming to anthropogenic fossil fuel burning, with actual disasters.

Here is a short presentation explaining the rationale behind the video released by 350 Action:



According to the project website, the video went viral gaining over 3 million views.

I do hope that a little more judgement is used when talking about extreme storms as their impacts last way beyond the superficial recovery. This is why tropical cyclone names are retired if there are any associated fatalities. However, if we accept the comment by Jeb Bush, perhaps some other politicians would be happy to take on the name of storm during an event? I think not.