It's Hot
Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2023 10:52 am
When it's hot our thoughts turn gently to the question of climate change, and it's unfortunate that weather reports and news media link climate change ideas to very unpleasantly hot weather. I sympathize with the effort to nudge people at a moment when they just might be feeling a little more receptive than usual to the concept. The problem is, people think back on many other occasions when they've experienced very hot weather over their lifetimes, and think the whole climate change story is full of s***.
It's very frustrating that people can't figure out the difference between "It was hot just like this when I was 10 years old" and "It is hot like this more often now because the whole average temperature is going up up up!" I ponder useful analogies - I wish weather reporters and others in the media would come up with some. People who don't understand what climate change is often are not stupid, they've just been told by their favorite politician or media talking head that climate change is a hoax, and when they check it against their own evidence of "Is this hot weather unprecedented?", everything checks out as a no.
People start getting a little shook, by contrast, when they realize massive forest fires all across the west and smoke traveling everywhere else was not a normal thing they experienced in most years. It seems new. So when they report on this hot weather they need to find a way to frame it such that it's not the temperature itself, but the aspects of heat waves that are novel now.
On the other hand, that was my "please let's help everyone understand and come together for solutions!" happy voice speaking. After trying to explain very basic elements of this stuff to people for 20 years, the real voice inside me is the cynic who says, reality will do what it does and nobody needs to believe it's going to happen because we're so far from properly preparing that we're doomed anyway. Maybe it's not such a bad thing if we don't have grandkids, because they'd surely be in a generation that truly suffers. But then I tell myself somebody will find a way to compress carbon dioxide and create some monster that eats it or whatever... The important point is that I'll be dead and gone.
It's very frustrating that people can't figure out the difference between "It was hot just like this when I was 10 years old" and "It is hot like this more often now because the whole average temperature is going up up up!" I ponder useful analogies - I wish weather reporters and others in the media would come up with some. People who don't understand what climate change is often are not stupid, they've just been told by their favorite politician or media talking head that climate change is a hoax, and when they check it against their own evidence of "Is this hot weather unprecedented?", everything checks out as a no.
People start getting a little shook, by contrast, when they realize massive forest fires all across the west and smoke traveling everywhere else was not a normal thing they experienced in most years. It seems new. So when they report on this hot weather they need to find a way to frame it such that it's not the temperature itself, but the aspects of heat waves that are novel now.
On the other hand, that was my "please let's help everyone understand and come together for solutions!" happy voice speaking. After trying to explain very basic elements of this stuff to people for 20 years, the real voice inside me is the cynic who says, reality will do what it does and nobody needs to believe it's going to happen because we're so far from properly preparing that we're doomed anyway. Maybe it's not such a bad thing if we don't have grandkids, because they'd surely be in a generation that truly suffers. But then I tell myself somebody will find a way to compress carbon dioxide and create some monster that eats it or whatever... The important point is that I'll be dead and gone.