In Britain, 9 out of 10 people can’t go six waking hours without talking about the
weather, according to one recent study.
That’s gotta be the most British thing I’ve ever heard.
And, it kinda makes sense.
The weather changes all the time, so there’s always something to talk about.
It’s one of the few things we all have in common, even if we don’t agree on what type
of weather is best.
In fact, weather’s short time scale is what makes it different from climate, which is
what you get if you take the weather over an entire year, decade, or even century, and
look at it all together over a long time scale.
But if they’re so different, why does the day-to-day weather have such a strong influence
on how we feel about the climate, and if we think the climate is changing?
[OPEN]
We can think of the difference between weather and climate this way: Climate tells us what
clothes to have in our closet, and weather tells us what to wear right now.
Sometimes we need a raincoat.
Other times we need only a t-shirt.
That’s because small disturbances in the atmosphere can lead to huge swings in the
weather we experience every day.
Ever seen that game called Plinko?
We don’t know exactly where any one piece will land; it can go in a lot of different
directions.
But over many rounds, a pattern will always emerge: most pieces fall in the middle, and
fewer fall on the edges [normal distribution].
Climate works the same way.
Just like the Plinko pieces, we don’t know exactly what weather any particular day will
have.
But when we add up lots and lots of weather, over many years, a pattern also emerges [e.g.
summer temperature normal distribution]: this is the climate of any one place.
It isn’t very cold or very hot very often, and most days are pretty normal for that place.
But when we look at the climate of any place over time, we can see that the pattern is
changing, as if the Plinko board has been tilted.
Most years have more hot days, and fewer cold days than before, and the average day is getting
warmer.
But day-to-day, we can’t feel this shift in the climate.
So instead, we draw on our daily experience–weather–to explain what’s happening.
If we’ve recently experienced unusually warm weather we’re more likely to believe
that the climate is warming, and more likely to be concerned about the consequences.
On the other hand, if we’ve experienced a lot of cold days, we’re less likely to
believe in the climate is changing.
In one study, participants who either sat in a warm room or read words that sound hot
were more likely to believe that the climate is changing than participants who sat in a
cooler room, or read neutral words.
This happened because our brains tend to make judgments using whatever information is most
readily available.
This mental shortcut allows our recent memories and experiences to fool us on all kinds of
issues.
Our views on crime?
They’ll probably be different if we’ve just been robbed.
Our views on the economy?
Depends on if we just lost a job.
When we’re faced with a complex, difficult issue - like climate change - instead of carefully
analyzing it like the rational beings we think we are, we base our judgment on more recent
experiences that relate to it - like, the weather.
So, because we experience the weather, it’s often at the front of our minds, and we talk
about it [speech bubbles: polar vortex, rain bomb, heat wave].
And because we talk about it, it’s more likely to stay there.
But this doesn’t happen with climate.
In America, just 1 out of every 5 people has talked about global warming in the last month.
Even among people who think global warming is important, less than half of them regularly
discuss it.
Climate science?
More like climate silence.
Even though most of us are concerned about climate change, researchers have found that
we underestimate how many other people are concerned.
So we often avoid discussing climate change because we assume most of the people around
us will disagree with us.
But if we stay silent, it leads other people to believe their concern is uncommon, so they
stay silent too.
It’s a spiral of silence.
But, just like the weather, we all experience the climate - it simply changes more slowly.
And the effects of that changing climate are even more universal than the weather.
So, maybe we don’t realize how many other people are out there, waiting for us
to ask: “So… how’s the climate these days?”