Extreme weather conditions that come with climate change is starting to become the new normal, according to experts.
People are not talking about the issue as much and that could make humans less motivated to take actions to combat global warming.
Scientists analyzed over 2 billion social media posts from 2014 to 2016. They found that when temperatures were not normal for a particular time of the year, netizens were quick to say something about it. But when there were unusual temperatures again, people stopped saying anything about it as much.
According to the authors of the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this is a sign that due to their own expectations, biases and memory limitations, humans may not be the best judges of temperature change.
It is the ‘boiling frog’ effect, an experiment that involves placing a frog in a pot of boiling water and it jumps out right away.
But if the frog is put in a pot of lukewarm water and the heat is increased slowly, the frog will stay until it dies as it doesn’t feel the difference.
Study co-author Frances Moore said: “I think it is quite surprising how quickly the effect of these temperatures decline.”
Moore also said she doesn’t think humans are adapting to extremes. They are still ‘pretty miserable’ in extreme cold or extreme heat. However, they stop talking about their concerns, and that is a worrying problem.
“People will be worse off if they stop talking about it,” Moore added. “People’s memories are short, compared to the time scale of climate change. We need to be aware of the disconnect when we communicate about climate change.”
The boiling frog notion could result in an inability to understand what ‘normal’ weather feels like. It could make it more difficult for governments and scientists to come up with policies that challenge global warming.
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