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Humans are incredibly adaptable creatures. We can live at the poles, in deserts and even in space.
But sometimes our adaptability can be expensive. Unhealthy diets, limited exercise, poor work-life balance, excessive time spent on social networks – we all have bad habits that we've become used to and that cost us in the long run. It takes a willing effort to recognize and change the destructive patterns of behavior that we have normalized.
We are scientists studying how humanity adapts to the effects of climate change. Some effects are characterized by sudden and catastrophic events – recent hurricanes, forest fires, floods – but most changes occur gradually through a steady deterioration of the situation year after year, after decade. This pace of change helps us adapt by leaving at least some time for our economic, political and social systems to respond.
However, the pace of our changing climate can also present drawbacks. It can be easy for humans to normalize a climate that, at least on geological scales, is changing rapidly and dramatically.
The boiling frog metaphor has long been used to describe this potential risk. If a frog is placed in an already heated pot, the fable will disappear immediately. If, however, the frog is placed in a cold pan that is slowly heated, the temperature that rises gradually will make him think that the frog thinks that the conditions will not change and that it will eventually be cooked.
Science tells us that this story is wrong, at least for frogs. But could it apply to humans? With our co-authors, Flavio Lehner and Patrick Baylis, we have recently found evidence that humans can actually be surprisingly similar to the legendary boiling frog. Our work was published Monday afternoon in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Using billions of Twitter posts in the United States, we have been able to measure the remarkable nature of different weather conditions. Commenting on the weather is a secular and ubiquitous feature of human society, but the type of weather we talk about varies from place to place and over time. Temperatures of one hundred degrees are expected in Phoenix in June. The same temperatures, however, would spark heated debate if they occurred in January instead of June or in Seattle instead of Phoenix.
The discussions on Twitter clearly show that people comment more on the weather when it is different from normal. But it is disturbing to note that people seem to have little recollection about what time it is "normal". As they tweet about unusual temperatures (a particularly hot New England walk, for example), this effect disappears quickly if the same phenomenon occurs. the time persists year after year.
We estimate that it takes five years for temperature changes to become completely innocuous. In other words, on average, in the United States, the idea of a normal time is based on what has happened in recent years.
Even worse, we find that the effects of temperature on emotional states persist – warm temperatures make us cranky – even if we notice less unusual temperatures. We do not fully adapt to the costs of unusual temperatures; we are just getting used to it.
The implications for climate change are clear and alarming. If emissions are not reduced rapidly, the warming of the next century will exceed that of the last 500 years. But if we ignore the weather and climate events that occurred more than five years ago, even the changes we see will seem minimal. As with the apocryphal frog, the progressive pace of change, combined with our rapid adaptation to expectations, could make us believe that our climate changes do not change much, but that they are normal. They are not.
It can be hard to devote sustained attention to changing bad habits, but people can change and change potatoes into runners for marathon runners. Let's see how we have become collectively accustomed to our new climates. Let's take action to check our own perceptions about the raw facts of climate change. Let's be vigilant against the normalization of worsening environmental conditions. And, most importantly, let's jump out of the pot.
Nick Obradovich (@ Nick_Obradovich) is a researcher at MIT Media Lab. Frances C. Moore (@ClimateFran) is Assistant Professor of Climate Science at the University of California at Davis.
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