Hurricane Names
by Jeff
Image text: After exhausting the OED, we started numbering them. When overlapping hurricanes formed at all points on the Earth's surface, and our scheme was foiled by Cantor diagonalization, we just decided to name them all "Steve". Your local forecast tomorrow is "Steve". Good luck.
This comic is a response to Hurricane Irene, which hit the East Coast of the United States over the weekend. In the picture in the comic is the southeastern United States, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
Additionally, this comic is correct in that they have a list of names every year. Here is a list of the names for 2011-2016 from the National Weather Service. Also, this comic is correct in that they follow that list of names with the Greek letters. From the NWS again:
In the event that more than 21 named tropical cyclones occur in the Atlantic basin in a season, additional storms will take names from the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and so on.
This comic postulates what would happen if they went through the Greek Alphabet as well. The comic, as a joke says that they will use random word generators, which is how they came up with "Eggbeater".
In the image text, the Cantor diagonalization is (from wikipedia) "was published in 1891 by Georg Cantor as a mathematical proof that there are infinite sets which cannot be put into one-to-one correspondence with the infinite set of natural numbers. Such sets are now known as uncountable sets"
So, in this comic, because there were so many hurricanes, the National Weather Service went from Names, the Greek letters, to numbers, but when there were infinite hurricanes, they had to start calling everything "Steve".
August 29th, 2011
Coincidentally (knowing xkcd it’s not), an eggbeater is also a type of wind turbine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggbeater_wind_turbine
August 29th, 2011
Also, “OED” is the colloquial name for the “Oxford English Dictionary” the multi-volume work generally considered to be the most complete dictionary of the English language.
August 29th, 2011
One other point this comic makes: it is horrible. And it’s only going to get worse. As long as global climate change persists, it is only going to keep getting worse.
August 30th, 2011
Why is everyone voting Tom’s comment down? Climate change is happening, and the scenario this comic portrays of non-stop hurricanes could some day be reality.
August 30th, 2011
The downvotes are another way of saying “Oh for $deity sake, don’t bring that up AGAIN”.
Climate change is happening just as it has happened the last couple of million years. Why, has our climate ever been constant? It’s a tired subject of conversation because most people bring it up with half-assed “arguments” having completely missed the point. Yes the climate is changing, no that was never the question. I’m tired of it just as I’m tired of all the stupid comic strips about the winter bringing snow “in spite of the global warming”.
In other words, stop yelling and repeating unfounded nonsense.
August 30th, 2011
That was a bit harsh, I apologize.
August 31st, 2011
But it seems your point is “The Climate is changing, but it’s natural and not man-made” — which is a popular view among politicians, but not among scientists (97% of climate scientists surveyed said that the earth is warming and it is caused by humans)
September 1st, 2011
“the earth is warming and it is caused by humans” does not equate to “so many hurricanes that they all get named Steve”.
The problem with the initial post in this chain is that it takes a light-hearted comic joking about naming conventions and makes it a political piece. It’s not a commentary on anything other than “wouldn’t this be silly?”
We’ve all at one point wondered how far back the contingencies they have for naming hurricanes go, and what they would do if there were so many hurricanes that they ran out of contingencies. THAT is what this is a commentary on. Not global warming.
November 13th, 2011
As I scientist (who actually READ the study from where that number originated) I would like to point out that you have misread the results of the non-peer reviewed paper (assuming you read the paper and did not pull 97% out of the echo chamber). The paper reads that 96.4% of climatologists who answered a voluntary survey that was offered to an undisclosed list of professionals agreed with the AGW theory. Among meteorologists, geologists, and oceanographers this number drops below 75%. But don’t take my word for it READ THE PAPER!!!!!!!
August 30th, 2011
Yes, while it’s possible, it’s not probable. But I think the reason everyone is voting it down is because that was not the point of the comic. He has already addressed the global warming issue in http://xkcd.com/164/ . He’s just pointing out the limitations of the current naming system in an extreme case.
August 29th, 2011
Very good explanation this time, Jeff.
August 29th, 2011
And the name “Steve” in the image text, refers to Steve Jobs (the CEO who recently retired from Apple)
August 29th, 2011
He’s not just saying that “when there were infinite hurricanes, they had to start calling everything ‘Steve’.”
He’s saying there were UNCOUNTABLY many hurricanes. In other words, there were more hurricanes than there are positive integers.
August 30th, 2011
Lets make this absolutely clear: The Cantor diagonalization is referring to the fact that there are not enough numbers to label all points on earth.
Even though the number of points on earth and the number of positive integers (used for numbering things) are both infinite, there are more points on earth than there are positive integers, in a precise mathematical sense. The size of the set of all positive integers is known as “countably infinite” and the size of the set of all points on earth is known as “uncountably infinite”. Cantor’s diagonalization argument is used to show that “uncountably infinite” is larger than “countably infinite”, even though both are infinite.
This whole thing is used to increase the ridiculousness of the situation: we have not only infinitely many hurricanes, but so many that we don’t even have enough natural numbers to label them, even though we have infinitely many natural numbers
August 30th, 2011
he is saying that since the hurricanes overlap, they can’t be referred to by numbers – you’d be in many hurricanes simultaneously. This is what the diagonalization refers to – there is a set of numbers that overlap and therefore cannot be counted.
August 30th, 2011
It has nothing to do with overlap, but with the uncountably infinite amount of real numbers compared to the countable infinite amount of whole numbers: Cantor’s diagonal argument.
August 30th, 2011
Is it just me, or does this style of absurdity remind you of the Hitchhiker’s Guide?
August 30th, 2011
The logic mistake in the comic is that hurricanes are meteorologic structures that have a minimum size and duration. If they get too close to each other they interact and at one point you can’t distinguish them any more. Because of that there can’t be an infinite number of hurricanes simultaniously at any given time on earth.
The hurricanes will fuse into one global storm named Steve long before they reach a nearly infinite number. Coutable or not doesn’t matter any more.
August 30th, 2011
so the hurricane-like spot on Saturn that eats other super-storms will henceforth be called Steve!
August 30th, 2011
I think that the “Steve” part is a reference to the movie Inside Man…
August 30th, 2011
FWIW, Hurricane Steve hit Australia in 2000. LIU.
August 31st, 2011
As for Greek letter names, 2005 is the only year that’s had enough named storms to need to use them (so far); it got as far as Tropical Storm Zeta (the 6th Greek letter and 27th named storm).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Atlantic_hurricane_season
September 2nd, 2011
Trust nothing that comic strip characters say about hurricane names.
More details:
http://icanbarelydraw.blogspot.com/2011/09/trust-nothing-that-comic-strip.html
September 8th, 2011
Did anyone notice that those hurricane symbols look just like EA’s Origin logo?