A new study finds that people who live in hot countries are more likely to believe that climate change is actually happening than residents of countries where extreme stormy weather events occur
By Maya Falah, Angle - news agency for science and the environment
"NBC News called it 'The Great Frost' and said it was the coldest weather in years. Is our country still wasting money on the global warming scam?" wrote Donald J. Trump, the president of the United States, On his Twitter account In the cold winter of 2014.
Trump is not alone. Many people in the world do not understand how it is possible that scientists are talking about "global warming" - the prevailing name for climate change until a few years ago - while the last winters are breaking cold records in various parts of the world and more and more events of severe winter storms are occurring around the globe. This confusion makes it easy for Trump - who is not a big believer in climate change, and has done quite a bit since he was elected Steps that cause concern In the heart of the supporters of steps to slow climate change - to thwart the efforts of his predecessor in office to fight the phenomenon, as well as to endanger other major efforts of international organizations working to slow down the climate change process.
Climate or weather?
Now Trump's way of thinking also has research backing: Researchers from Boston found out that the way people perceive climate change is much more influenced by gut feeling and personal experiences than scientific knowledge (ie don't confuse them with facts). According to the study, people from countries where records of hot temperatures have repeatedly been broken in recent years tend to take the threat of climate change seriously, while in countries that suffer from cold waves and do not particularly feel the warming, people tend to be more skeptical about the issue.
Today there is a consensus Very wide in the scientific community According to which not only is climate change actually happening, but also that it is happening as a result of the actions of man, who is burning fossil fuels at an ever-increasing rate since the days of the industrial revolution, thus causing an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But according to the researchers, the difficulty in grasping the contrast may partly stem from confusion among the public between the concept of "climate" versus "weather." Many people tend to think that these are different names for the same subject, but in fact there is a difference between the terms Significant difference: "Weather" reflects changes in the atmosphere in a short or specific time frame - temperatures, humidity percentages, wind speed, rain, etc. - that is, factors that can change at any given moment. "Climate", on the other hand, refers to a continuous trend of the weather, or the average weather in a certain area over an extended period, usually at least 40-30 years.
As mentioned, many are not aware of the separation between the terms or confuse them and therefore they tend to interpret the spot weather - a stronger than usual blizzard, for example - as proof that global warming is not happening, even though one of the phenomena of climate change is the proliferation of extreme events such as storms Winter with strong intensities, and not only does it not contradict the climatic trend of average warming, it even strengthens it because the warming of the earth pushes a lot of energy into the climate system and extremes all its forms of expression.
Changes under the radar
But is it just a semantic confusion? It seems that the nature of climate change causes many to look for any reason they can find, or invent, to deny its existence. An analysis of the characteristics of the climate threat reveals that in each and every one of its characteristics it tends to cause us to reduce its severity: all our psychological mechanisms combine to bring us to underestimate one of the greatest risks currently facing humanity. According to Dr. Nurit Karmi, head of the program for social and environmental studies at Tel Hai Academic College, our ability to assess risk is closely related to the degree of our familiarity with its consequences and the degree of personal experience with it. "A person who has experienced the realization of a threat will assess it as more serious," she explains.
Skara vineyards In an article published in December 2015 In the scientific journal "Ecology and Environment" there are dozens of studies that examined the human perception of climate change, in an attempt to explain where the gap comes from between the serious warnings received from the scientific community and the relative indifference of the public, and many of its elected representatives, to the issue. Among the other factors that Kerami cites as reasons for this approach is its immediacy: that is, although some of the phenomena of change are already occurring today, most of the predictions for significant changes relate to the next decades. This is how it happens that the slow changes pass "under the radar" of our sensory perception.
Another reason that keeps the public away from internalizing the dangers inherent in climate change is also the factor of uncertainty in it: because the predictions of climate change are based on models that cannot indicate unequivocal results, but if only a prediction with a certain probability - the public treats it as a threat with a limited guarantee, Even when the predictions are presented as "very likely" scenarios.
In a survey conducted in the USA during 2014, it was found that only 50 percent of the American public believes that climate change is indeed occurring as a result of human activity, and only 33 percent of the public thinks that it is a "very serious problem". These figures can certainly change in the next four years, during which a president who doubts climate change will lead the most powerful power in the world and it seems that it depends quite a bit on the sensitivity of the president to the cold.
A video that deals with the difficulties of internalizing the climate change they created Tami Venka, Karin Mokhter and Karina Morbiov, students of visual communication at the Holon Institute of Technology, as part of a collaboration with angle:
