How Cold Weather Makes You Forget About Global Warming : The New Yorker

How Cold Weather Makes You Forget About Global Warming : The New Yorker: "A slight change in presentation, however, may shift attitudes in the direction of climate science and away from the vicissitudes of local weather. A study out this month, from the Cardiff University psychologists Stuart Capstick and Nicholas Pidgeon, found that periods of exceptionally cold weather in the United Kingdom had the opposite effect as they did in the United States: more people believed in the truth of climate change. The reason for the difference? The media had framed the weather within the context of climate change, emphasizing that it was unnatural, rather than simply cold. Perhaps if people here were told that it’s not just brutal out there, it’s unnaturally brutal, they, too, might jump to a different conclusion"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dick Lindzen on cold and heat extremes

Gavin Schmidt and Richard Alley made some comments on extreme weather here .  Dick Lindzen (via email) on cold and heat extremes: "Gavin and Alley both seem pretty ignorant.  Extremes of both cold and heat depend on advection by baroclinic eddies.  This should get weaker in a warmer climate (assuming polar amplification which is another dicey matter).  Alley is assuming that one just adds the change in global mean temperature to any current extreme.  Marc shouldn’t be so defensive.  He’s not dealing with experts.  On the other hand, perhaps it should be noted that the reduction in extremes is ‘consistent’ with global warming."
Read more

Eric Holhaus on skeptics: "crowd is like 1980s military uniform-type people"

Meet Eric Holthaus, the Rebel Nerd of Meteorology | Culture | Rolling Stone "He covers everything from super typhoons in Hong Kong to walking conditions in Atlanta, tying it all back to the warming planet – which is something many of his colleagues refuse to do. Amazingly, according to one study, nearly half of all US meteorologists don't believe that humans are the cause of climate change. Holthaus has met this contingent at conferences. "The crowd is like 1980s military uniform-type people," he says. "They're prominently conservative Republicans in positions of power, and they want to push the message they believe, politically.""
Read more

1998: Hockey stick hype coincided with real-life temperature spike. Scientists and public fooled by natural variation?

Image
Below is some background information on late 1990s hockey stick hype, the simultaneous elevation of newly-minted Ph.D. Michael Mann to IPCC lead author, the conversion of "many scientists" to believers, and the real-life temperature 1998 temperature spike. My hypothesis is that the natural 1998 temperature spike was crucial in selling both scientists and the public on the validity of Mann's bogus hockey stick. If the exact same paper had been published after, say, an 18+ year hiatus, not nearly as many people would have been fooled. ======= This article  looks back at the late 1990s Many scientists who had until then remained sceptical of climate change were convinced and the headlines and broadcasts meant that large swathes of the public were simultaneously concerned about the activities of the oil companies, the profligate use of coal and oil in developed countries, and the amount of carbon dioxide pouring into the atmosphere. IPCC TAR and the hockey stick | Climate Et...
Read more