The globe is getting warmer, and extreme heat kills thousands of people — perhaps tens of thousands — every year. Climate activists are pressuring officials to start naming heat waves, the way we do hurricanes, and several cities around the world are considering adopting the practice. If heat waves were named (so the activists argue) we’d be better able to bring the risks to public attention, thereby increasing the chances that people would take proper precautions.
I’m skeptical.
The most obvious challenge is that “heat wave” has no widely accepted meaning. Even though the usage can be traced at least to the 1860s (the Oxford English Dictionary wrongly says the 1870s), today’s definitions remain vague. Representative is Webster’s Unabridged, which gives “a period of abnormally hot and usually humid weather.” But how long? How hot?
