Extreme weather has affected vast areas of North America in 2023. Benjamin Kirtman, professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami is most shocked by the rapidly warming ocean waters. He said, “It’s completely out of bounds.”
A 2019 study published by a prestigious science journal stated that humans evaluate weather as either normal or abnormal according to factors including expectations, memory limitations, and cognitive biases.
… we provide evidence for a “boiling frog” effect: The declining noteworthiness of historically extreme temperatures is not accompanied by a decline in the negative sentiment that they induce, indicating that social normalization of extreme conditions rather than adaptation is driving these results.
… Past work has shown that public policy tends to advance during “windows of opportunity” provided by, among other things, focused public attention. Without public perception of a problem, the ability of scientific experts and policy analysts to advance a policy agenda will be limited. This potentially poses a challenge for addressing chronic environmental problems such as climate change.
As climate disasters become more common, motivations to address underlying causes will decline as the general public accepts them as normal. Add the normal inclination to diminish gradually deteriorating situations and we are unlikely to save humanity from extinction.
In the first half of July 2023 alone, British Columbia wildfires have damaged more ground than was burned throughout ten of the fifteen years from 2008 to 2022. The four worst years for fire recorded in British columbia are 2017, 2018, 2021 and 2023. Incidentally, the four years of highest fossil fuel production.
(As I am writing this, at least seven fixed-wing aircraft are working on a small Seymour Mountain fire a few kilometres from my North Vancouver home.)
Categories: Climate Change
in-sights.ca 
Here might be a book people should try and get from the
library. Expect to be on a long waiting list as it is a hot one.
The price of the E is not too bad also.
BC could become one of the places people do not want to
move to in the very near future. Not necessarily a bad thing.
but being on the lake boating when its 38C. Pass.
Do you think Eby would read a copy? Yes of course when pigs fly.
“Danger Will Robinson”.
https://www.envirolink.org/2023/07/11/the-heat-will-kill-you-first-is-a-chilling-book-and-a-warning/
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Some more grease for the slide into oblivion but at least we
come out near the top denoted in the graph provided in the link.
https://steadystate.org/guess-what-has-decoupled-from-economic-growth/?blm_aid=121624
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Hi Pat
I don’t know if Norm has any strategies, but at my age I’ve discovered what Mom used to szy was true, “you can not save those who will not be saved”. She meant it in context of water safety when swimming and boating on summer vacation. It applies to a lot of things.
For many people they don’t notice they are even in trouble until they are into the mess up to their neck.
People will “normalize all sorts of things, if dealing with those issues is uncomfortable. Not much in life gets better by ignoring it, except perhaps not seeing people who are mean to you. That again is one of those items in life where people frequently don’t deal with the issue until some one puts them in the hospital or they have their belongingss stolen from them. Its sort of like how Hitler came to power. By the time people noticed or acknowledged there was a real problem it was too late.
As to the climate and people’s unwillingness to deal with it, many are simply too “busy” with their lives. It not until the water is no longer coming through their taps that they realize there is a water shortage.
Its the same thing with the fent. and homelessness crisis. You could see this coming from a long way off. Voters and politicians didn’t want to deal with it.
when the health emergency was declared the provincial government did nothing. At least Alberta banned pill presses. The problem did not go away and here we are. All sorts of things have been tried but not much has worked. We may now have to bite the bullet and spend the real money to deal with this.
So it isn’t just climate change and pollution that is not dealt with. Its almost everything in life.
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Thank you for your reply. I find this topic very interesting and frightening at the same time. I have been watching the climate crisis unfold for over a decade and have been frustrated that civilization has failed to act with the necessary urgency. As you state, humans are very good at normalizing unpleasant events.
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Hey Norm. By any chance have you come across any strategies/narratives that have successfully been used to keep the population from sliding into this pattern of normalizing ever increasing destructive events.
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I wish I could be optimistic but recently read an article in a Scientific American magazine titled Why People “Fly from Facts.” It sought to answer why facts have so little effect on many people. The conclusion is that there is no complete solution but some improvement could be gained.
“
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Thanks for this hypothesis Norm. I hadn’t read about it before but I can see how it makes sense. When it comes to climate change humanity certainly seems to be following this playback. It does not bode well for are future.
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I’m pretty sure I have met several frogs like that, not one spoke French, and most had very poor English.
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