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Do You Remember Normal Weather? Scientists Say Most of Us Don't
An extensive analysis of more than 2 billion U.S. Twitter posts found that people have short memories when it comes to what they consider "normal" weather, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Generally, people base their judgment of "normal" weather on what has happened in the last two to eight years rather than linking it to the climate record. This creates a disconnect with the historical weather events, potentially obscuring how people perceive climate change.
"People experience weather on a day-to-day basis, and what climate is doing is gradually changing the types of weather people get and its distribution," explained lead author Frances Moore in an interview with EcoWatch. "If something is extreme at one point in time because of climate change, how quickly does it not become extreme?"
To answer this, the UC Davis team quantified 2.18 billion geolocated tweets between March 2014 and November 2016 in order to measure what type of weather people comment on the most. From that, they can infer what type of weather people are expecting and what they think is normal. Although their Twitter survey does not represent a random sample of the American population, Moore says that her team's sample size represents adults mainly between the ages of 20 and 50.
"We find that people get their ideas of what normal weather is for a particular place or season, but that they adjust that baseline fairly quickly," said Moore, continuing that if the same weather persists over time, people tend to comment less about it. The authors conclude that people begin to view these "historically extreme" weather conditions as normal based on their expectations, personal memory and internal biases.
Researchers then measured what they call a "sentiment rate," or the measure of, on average, how positively or negatively words were used in a tweet even after a person stopped referring to the weather. They found that after repeated exposure to certain weather events, people tweeted less about the weather but still expressed negative sentiments overall, namely particularly hot or cold events that tend to make people the grumpiest.
"Even when people stop talking about the weather, these very hot and very cold temperatures are having a negative impact on people's moods overall," she explained. "People are no longer really surprised by the weather, but they haven't adapted to it because they're still having these negative consequences."
If we forget what happened more than five years ago, researchers warn that people will continue to normalize "historically extreme" weather events and further downplay the significance of anticipated climate change that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts throughout the 21st century will lead to increasing global temperatures, changing precipitation patters, sea level rise and a greater intensification of hurricanes and storms. To remedy this, Moore says a simple bit of homework could be all that it takes.
"Anything people can do to get the data that tells them what their location was like at this time of year 100 or 50 years ago — or even in their childhood — will help them understand," she said. "We've seen [this trend] this year where people's idea of what constitutes cold weather seems to be changing."
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If people in three European countries want to fight the climate crisis, they need to chill out more.
That's the conclusion of a new study from think tank Autonomy, which found that Germany, the UK and Sweden all needed to drastically reduce their workweeks to fight climate change.
"The rapid pace of labour-saving technology brings into focus the possibility of a shorter working week for all, if deployed properly," Autonomy Director Will Stronge said, The Guardian reported. "However, while automation shows that less work is technically possible, the urgent pressures on the environment and on our available carbon budget show that reducing the working week is in fact necessary."
The report found that if the economies of Germany, Sweden and the UK maintain their current levels of carbon intensity and productivity, they would need to switch to a six, 12 and nine hour work week respectively if they wanted keep the rise in global temperatures to the below two degrees Celsius promised by the Paris agreement, The Independent reported.
The study based its conclusions on data from the UN and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) on greenhouse gas emissions per industry in all three countries.
The report comes as the group Momentum called on the UK's Labour Party to endorse a four-day work week.
"We welcome this attempt by Autonomy to grapple with the very real changes society will need to make in order to live within the limits of the planet," Emma Williams of the Four Day Week campaign said in a statement reported by The Independent. "In addition to improved well-being, enhanced gender equality and increased productivity, addressing climate change is another compelling reason we should all be working less."
Supporters of the idea linked it to calls in the U.S. and Europe for a Green New Deal that would decarbonize the economy while promoting equality and well-being.
"This new paper from Autonomy is a thought experiment that should give policymakers, activists and campaigners more ballast to make the case that a Green New Deal is absolutely necessary," Common Wealth think tank Director Mat Lawrence told The Independent. "The link between working time and GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions has been proved by a number of studies. Using OECD data and relating it to our carbon budget, Autonomy have taken the step to show what that link means in terms of our working weeks."
Stronge also linked his report to calls for a Green New Deal.
"Becoming a green, sustainable society will require a number of strategies – a shorter working week being just one of them," he said, according to The Guardian. "This paper and the other nascent research in the field should give us plenty of food for thought when we consider how urgent a Green New Deal is and what it should look like."
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- Needed: A shorter work week – People's World ›
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