Americans Connecting 2012's Extreme Weather to Climate Change
Madeline Evans of Henryville, Ind., walks the parking lot of her elementary school, Saturday, March 3, 2012. The school and much of her town was devastated by a large tornado less the day before.
Indiana National Guard photo by Sgt. John Crosby
April 19, 2012 3:45 PM Text Size: A . A . AWhat?s your first reaction to these polling numbers?
What?s it like to see these recent extreme events as a climate scientist? You look at the long term, but it?s these short- and medium-term events that seem to be swaying the public.
Do you agree with the researchers? "close to home" idea?that is, these extreme events are making climate change and its effects more real for Americans, who previously viewed it as something off in the future or something for other countries to worry about?
People can tell us general things, but we always look for specific things to make them more concrete. People are not being told the wrong thing; they?re just trying to make connections between the general and the specific.
The last few years have certainly felt strange, in an anecdotal sense. But is it possible to quantify how strange it?s actually been to have all these things together?warmest March ever, so many early tornadoes, droughts, etc.?
We?ve done more work in the last 10 years on how climate change gets expressed in weather extremes?as seen in the number of heat waves that are clearly increasing in number and intensity all over the world?and we expect this as we shift the mean toward warmer conditions. But when people talk about ice storms or a single hurricane?there the connection to climate change is much more tenuous. A lot of times the science hasn?t been done on any specific extreme, and because they?re all unique, we need to have more serious data.
Do you think the public?s misunderstanding of weather versus climate is a good or bad thing?
And I think the answer is yes. These poll results provide an opportunity to talk about how climate science is related to weather extremes and where we?re going and where the difficulty is?this notion of science as a process. There are good things here, because whether or not people are convinced or agree or disagree on climate change, it opens up a space for communication.
There?s an interesting note in the Times story that public acceptance of climate change hit a high point just before the recession, then waned, but now is on the rise again. How big of a factor do you think the economy is in the public?s acceptance of climate change and particularly in moving climate policy forward?
Do you think more weird weather events in the U.S. will continue to increase public acceptance of human-induced climate change?
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