We have dramatically shrinking glaciers. We have compelling science. We have adorable polar bears treading water. But wouldn’t you know it, what really makes us fret over climate change is making it all about us.
A new study has found that a feeling of “personally experiencing” global warming heightens people’s perception of risks related to the environmental phenomenon – and particularly those risks germane to where they live. Changes to the seasons, unusual weather, water levels, snowfall patterns and shifts related to plants and animals were among the most common signs cited by lay people.
“The Holy Grail is figuring out how to get the public engaged on this issue. The problem is that the typical output of climate studies is statistical information that’s impenetrable to most people,” said Karen Akerlof, the study’s lead author. “If you can help people feel they’ve actually experienced what’s happening, they may be able to better acknowledge the risks.”
Using population survey and climatic data from a county in Michigan, researchers found 27 per cent of people felt they had personally experienced global warming, which refers to the long-term rise in the earth’s average temperature (“climate change” includes global warming and everything else affected by increasing greenhouse gasses). This is on par with a nationally representative U.S. study, fielded in 2010, in which 30 per cent of respondents felt similarly.
This feeling of having a firsthand account of global warming was so meaningful, it positively predicted concern for local risks related to climate change: think forest fires, drought, changes to animal and plant species, and public health.
“People actually believing they’ve experienced climate change can explain their perception of risks related to climate change, above and beyond how they feel about national climate policies or their political affiliation,” said Akerlof, a researcher with the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University in Virginia.
Unfortunately for climatologists, the study – to appear in the journal Global Environmental Change – paints a grim picture. Seventy-three per cent of people either weren’t sure if they had experienced global warming or said they hadn’t, echoing the 2010 survey in which 70 per cent of respondents nationwide claimed no personal experience with the phenomenon (“don’t know” wasn’t an option).
“It’s obviously tough,” said Akerlof. “You’ve got to talk about local climate change impacts in order for people to connect with what’s happening.”
The most frequently described experiences of global warming were changes in seasons (36 per cent), weather (25 per cent), lake levels (24 per cent), changes in plant and animal species (20 per cent) and snowfall (19 per cent). Notably, most of these perceived signals were indeed borne out of regional climatic records.
Environment Canada’s senior climatologist, however, said the fact remains that most people can’t discern weather from climate.
“(Scientists) use millions of measurements that, over long periods of time, can be pieced together to say, ‘My gosh, the world has warmed up by three-quarters of a degree over the last 150 years.’ The average person couldn’t sense that if they walked outside,” said David Phillips. “After a bout of extreme summer weather, Canadians clearly believe it came from tailpipes and smokestacks. But if we go through a tough winter that’s cold and snowy, we’re more likely to hear that climate change is a lot of hot air.”
John Smol, Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change, said the good news – at least in the context of this study – is that the symptoms of climate change are visible to anyone who really looks.
“We’ve been monitoring some Arctic ponds for almost 30 years and they’ve completely evaporated away. So I’ve seen the effects right before my eyes,” said Smol, a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. “Now we need to turn the perception of this problem into action, because action has been glacially slow – though there’s nothing slow about the glaciers right now.”