by Ideology clouds how we perceive the temperatures
[Via Ars Technica]
Earlier this year, we covered some polling data in which people were asked what factor shaped their acceptance of climate change. Buried in the data were two apparently contradictory findings: there is a large partisan divide in acceptance of climate change, but most respondents said they base their acceptance on their personal experience of the weather. Assuming that hot weather shows no partisan bias, this doesn’t make much sense—political beliefs shouldn’t influence what we think about the weather.
And yet they do. That’s the conclusion of a new paper that dives into extensive polling data to find out how people perceive different trends in the climate. The results show that not all weather events are created equal. When it comes to things like flood and droughts, most people seem to have accurately registered the recent trends in their area. But when the subject shifts to temperatures, the actual trends become irrelevant, and ideology and political beliefs shape how people perceive things. As the authors put it, “the contentious nature of the climate change debate has influenced the way in which Americans perceive their local weather.”
That authors of the study used data from about 8,000 poll responses, obtained between 2008 and 2011. The surveys included questions about how people perceived the weather in recent years. For temperatures, they were asked whether they were higher, the same, or lower than in past decades. Similar questions were asked about the frequency of floods and droughts. The survey also asked for self-assessments of political leanings, and included several questions that got at core ideological beliefs (such as egalitarian or individualist tendencies).
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An interesting paper. When asked about weather that pertains to water – drought and floods – people are able to provide quite accurate descriptions of the trends in their locale. No matter what their political inclinations.
But when it comes to temperature trends, they completely fail – seeing no increase in locations with an increase if they are conservative and seeing an increase in locations with little increase if they are liberal.
Temperature has become politicized but precipitation has not. Yet the precipitation trends are just as indicative of the change in our global climate as temperature is.
So, the question I guess it whether discussing precipitation in the context of climate change will result in more people accurately understanding climate change or will their political inclinations cause them to disregard reality, as they do with temperature. Only time will tell.
July 19, 2012 at 9:19 am
Back in the Dark Ages (the late Forties or early Fifties) most of us were taught what was called General Science. It was usually a Freshman course and, among other things, taught us about photosynthesis, how to dissect a frog, the DIFFERENCE between weather and climate, how to classify animals and plants, etc. etc. Obviously, we didn’t delve very deeply into each thing, but, at least, we were exposed and knew the difference between climate and weather and, therefore, temperatures changes make a difference. Apparently, the baby-boomers were very ill-educated!!!
July 19, 2012 at 3:53 pm
There are several things here. What people believe about weather is determined by their ideological view of climate is, not what age cohort they come from. There are four major living American generations in adulthood now – the Silent, Baby Boomer, Generation X and Millennial – and all had the same problem. When temperature – a politicized marker – was examined, the generations answered based on their ideological viewpoint. When drought/flood was used – a non-politicized marker – was used, they actually answered based on reality. How old they were – or how educated – had little correlation.
The problem here is the inability of people to recognize when climate begins to impinge on weather. The increasing daily temperatures are a reflection of the climate change. The increasing droughts are a reflection of climate change. Drought and floods are such infrequent events, though, that people are able to accurately assess the trend that their occurrences are increasing. Their intuition tends to fit reality. But temperatures vary by time and season so people have a much hard time intuitively gauging the trends.So they fall back on other heuristics which mainly includes political views.
But, the extremes we have seen in the US this Spring/Summer are so great that they are actually beyond the bounds of variability seen over the entire last Century. It is actually possible now, for the first time, to say that these specific weather events are caused by increasing global temperatures. But the paper indicated that it would be easier to get people to understand this by looking at precipitation events – which they can intuitively grasp – rather than temperature effects – which they intuitively get wrong.