Pirate's Cove

The amazing thing is that the climate cult has been Spreading Awareness for 35+ years, and, yet, still have to push it because not enough people are buying into Doom. When they started they weren’t even a cult

People Better Understand Climate Change When Shown Stark, Binary Data

Slowing human-caused climate change requires decisive action, but the slow upward creep of global temperatures contributes to apathy among people who don’t experience regular climate-driven disasters, psychologists say. In a new study from UCLA and Princeton, researchers looked into ways to communicate the true impact of climate change and found a solution.

Because a rise of 1.7F since 1850 is something to be freaked out over, right? No. Hence, apathy. Further, I’d posit that if all you have to offer is extreme gloom and doom, and that the fixes are more taxes/fees, more authoritarian government, and a loss of freedom and life choices, well, ‘climate change’ may be a big concern in theory, but, not in the real world.

Showing people continuous data, such as temperature increases in a town, left people with a vague impression of gradual change, but showing binary data for the same town, specifically whether a lake froze or not each winter, brought home the striking shift, said incoming UCLA communications professor and cognitive psychologist Rachit Dubey.

“People are adjusting to worsening environmental conditions, like multiple fire seasons per year, disturbingly fast,” said Dubey, senior author of the study. “When we used the same temperature data for a location but presented it in a starker way, it broke through people’s climate apathy. Unfortunately, compared to those who looked at a clearer presentation of the same information, those who only looked at gradual data perceived a 12% smaller climate impact and cared less.”

That would be called fearmongering, using massaged data. Further, why can’t the changes be mostly natural, with some land use, urban heat island effect, and, yes, some greenhouse gas output included? I know Raleigh is generally hotter than when I moved here in 1994, but, much of that is the growth, and that the growth and urban pollution at the lower lever keeps nights from getting cooler. I haven’t really noticed hotter summer days, though, yeah, it can get hotter earlier in the year. It’s a Holocene warm period.

Dubey studies how people reason about climate change, how to communicate about it and how to improve climate communications. He noted how heavily political and personal experiences influence risk perceptions around climate change, and how quickly people redefine “normal.” A Vox article reporting on climate apathy in 2020 inspired Dubey to look deeper into the human tendency to adjust to change, even as science has proven that humans’ greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change and increasing disasters like wildfires, droughts, floods, hurricanes, and sea-level rise.

If you cannot simply give the facts, but, have to change how you communicate, then it really isn’t that doomy or that big of a deal. Eric Worrell notes

The obvious interpretation for climate apathy is the climate change people are experiencing is not a big deal compared to other issues they deal with in their daily lives, and is not disruptive enough make people care. That “apathy” is ordinary people correctly concluding global warming is way down on their list of priorities.

But instead of accepting climate change isn’t a problem for the people they investigated, the scientists concluded they have to spice up the message, to make the data look more frightening.

In real life it is a minor issue. Hell, even most of the Dem voters I know never mention it, and aren’t interested in discussing it when I make a joke that “this is all your fault for driving a fossil fueled vehicle, when are you getting an EV?”