Wildfires across Turkey over the past week have led to at least 14 deaths - Copyright AFP Lillian SUWANRUMPHA
Whilst the majority are accepting of climate change, especially those with rudimentary education, there remains in every society a cohort who are resistant to scientific fact. How can scientists and policy makers challenge this?
Certainly, the slow upward creep of global temperatures contributes to apathy among people who do not experience regular climate-driven disasters.
A new study finds that presenting the same continuous climate data, such as incremental changes in temperature, in binary form -- such as whether a lake did or did not freeze in the winter -- significantly increases people's ability to see the impact of climate change. This is in the context of displaying data about the same town or other location, especially one that resonates with people personally.
According to lead researcher, UCLA communications professor and cognitive psychologist Rachit Dubey: "People are adjusting to worsening environmental conditions, like multiple fire seasons per year, disturbingly fast...When we used the same temperature data for a location but presented it in a starker way, it broke through people's climate apathy. Unfortunately, compared to those who looked at a clearer presentation of the same information, those who only looked at gradual data perceived a 12% smaller climate impact and cared less."
Dubey's studies how people reason about climate change, how to communicate about it and how to improve climate communications. The academic noted how heavily political and personal experiences influence risk perceptions around climate change, and how quickly people redefine "normal."
For the past five years, Dubey has been looking more deeply into the human tendency to adjust to change, even as science has proven that humans' greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change and increasing disasters like wildfires, droughts, floods, hurricanes, and sea-level rise.
Research
For the study, Dubey asked study participants about the climate in a fictional city they named "Townsville," and later asked a second group about five real lakeside cities around the world, including Lake George in New York and Grand Traverse Bay in Michigan.
In both versions of the experiment, he showed half of the study participants a graph of temperature increases from 1940-2020, and the other half a graph showing whether temperatures caused the lake to freeze each winter. Whether charting temperatures or lake freezes, each pair of charts drew from the same slowly warming weather information.
As temperatures gradually climbed, the lakes stopped freezing as often. For the real towns, study participants hearing about the lake also learned about the decline of activities like ice skating and ice fishing.
When Dubey asked participants to rate from 1 to 10 how much climate change impacted the town, people who learned about a range of temperatures responded lower than people who learned whether the lake froze -- on average, 6.6, compared to 7.5, or 12% higher.
Another inference suggests that by making the emotional connection to local traditions, whether ice skating in the winter or freedom from wildfire smoke in the summer, may also contribute to overcoming apathy.
Analysis
"For years, we assumed that if the climate worsened enough, people would act, but instead, we're seeing the 'boiling frog' effect, where humans continuously reset their perception of 'normal' every few years," Dubey adds. "People are adjusting to worsening environmental conditions, like multiple fire seasons per year, disturbingly fast. My research examines how people are mentally adapting to the negative changes in our environment."
Next steps
Dudley hopes these results will aid anyone designing visual representations of climate change graphics or those seeking to clarify gradual changes, from climate generalists and data visualization professionals to policymakers and journalists.
"People working in these fields have a sense that binary data is more effective, and our study adds theoretical rigor, using careful cognitive experiments," Dubey explains. "Our study also helps explain why the 'Show Your Stripes' visualization is so compelling because it takes continuous data and presents it in a more binary format."