Climate change – to be(lieve) or not to be(lieve)
Climate change, representing one of the most discussed topics today, affects all of us in some way or other. Even to those who doubt the human interference and impact on climate, climate change is still an issue of direct impact on our daily lives because of its constant presence in the background, causing debate and, even though possibly slight, feeling of inconvenience.
During the last couple of days the east coast of North America experienced a heat wave, either a physical proof of natural weather variability, or the more unpleasant alternative of possible evidence of climate change. I assume that this weather event will affect many minds, probably even cause some change of opinion, and definitely raise some concerns. In this blog post I will describe why.
The reason behind this is human nature. Our human minds are simply constructed in such a way that they tend to conserve an opinion based on previous experiences. In this way we establish a set of hypotheses explaining the world surrounding us. Our mind will collect and selectively welcome new facts supporting the established hypothesis. It takes some kind of proof and new experience in order to switch an established opinion. I went through some literature on this subject when working on my doctoral thesis and, ironically enough, studying car drivers’ behavior (and car driving is assumed to contribute to climate change), ranging from accident frequency to perception of news. In short, drivers are very hard to convince that they are taking a risk while for instance driving fast, driving while using mobile devices, or driving during severe weather, simply because most haven’t yet had any accidents! Second, their perception of news predicting bad weather and their own observations of weather is also strongly affected by previous experiences. So, if you hit the road in early spring, regardless of a severe weather alert predicting snow your brain will still expect fair weather conditions with no risk of hazards. If, additionally, you happen to be living in a warm climate zone city traveling in a foreign country up north in a mountain area, your will be playing a dangerous game. The danger lays in the fact that your brain is unable to expect something you’ve never previously observed in person. Your hypothesis simply won’t match the hazardous reality.
While my claim is based on some established research in psychology, it is surprising to see how well this theory works on the climate change debate and us humans. Just think of all the headlines spreading fear and horror you’ve read on climate change. Did these stories make you think of climate change as a real possibility? Probably not. That is, not until you experienced an extreme weather event yourself. Because belief requires some real experience.
If you have been living in one place your entire life and observed the sky and weather show performing every day live on the stage of the place where you live, more or less active and probably mostly passive, the weather is a part of the daily scenery completing the picture of your life. There is more common weather, and there are some more rare phenomena, all of which you are treating as “normal”. This is what is usually meant by weather and weather variability.
However, on one particular day in your life you might experience something out of range, something extraordinary, unexpected, perhaps even unbelievable. You suddenly feel the unexpected on your skin. Perhaps wet, cold, heat. Maybe mixed with pain. Or by contrast very joyful and pleasant. Maybe threatening and dangerous. Maybe not. The unexpected scenario evolving just before your eyes. This event will forever stay conserved in your mind, and it will become a story to tell your grandchildren. This is what we call an extreme weather event.
Now, if you experienced something threatening associated with this weather event, you might start thinking about the possibility that this is the thing you were reading about in the papers. This is climate change. This is not normal anymore, this represents a change. And just as climate change represents a modification of what can categorized as “normal weather”, your mind will also switch into this new mode accepting the hypothesis that climate change is true. Eventually, you might almost forget about this event and switch back to normal, all depending on the nature of the event, its impact on your life, further knowledge you’ve gained and information you’ve collected on the topic. The event will most certainly have some impact.
Climate change can be proved first when we have experienced several events, and when this happens to many people worldwide. Then we will be ready to act and make transforming changes of our way of life, consumption, production, transportation. The problem is that we are waiting for real evidence in order to comprehend and understand, within the tiniest areas of our human brains, what is happening.
It is my strong belief that one should always be careful when it comes to news carriers predicting disasters and announcing the end of our our existence. However, climate change does not represent fresh news today. I used to belong to the group of strong believers who started raising their voices in the early 90’s simply because I was forced to touch upon the subject while studying Meteorology and Atmospheric Science at Stockholm University. The information and knowledge I had to consume to get my exam in Meteorology thought me that there were some discoveries made on the topic that had just raised a concern and a warning finger. To me and my peers it was obvious that the climate is such a fragile system, just as any other system on the planet preserving the current appearance of the Earth, so fragile and complex that science has just begun unveiling its true nature and secret mechanisms.
So, what happens if that system is put out of balance? How far can we push it? Is the process reversible, will we be able to go back to normal? These are some questions everyone, not just a Meteorology student, should ask themselves. However, for the majority, who naturally doesn’t choose Meteorology for a profession, climate change is a complex matter that cannot be easily explained without forcing loads of information and knowledge on people.
The problem of climate change lays in the human nature. Whoever you are, once presented the unpleasant facts, you will be asked to join a the group of believers, doubters, those who reject, or those who silently accept waiting for a coming extinction. You will take sides and you will chose sides based on your previous experiences.
It is not until you experience, with your own body and senses, through someone near you, or by thoroughly studying the subject, that you will switch to a new opinion perhaps contradicting your current belief.
