rjzimmerman:

Excerpt from this article from Yale Climate Connections:

All of which, and much more, raises some interesting questions:

• If extremes keep recurring – as they seem to be doing – will people at some point simply stop paying attention?
• As climate change makes these events more common, is there a point where people just stop talking about them? Pretty much accepting them (beware – cliché coming) as one more “new normal”?

Frances Moore, assistant professor of environmental science and policy at the University of California, Davis, and colleagues set out to answer these questions using what may seem like a fairly unconventional tool: Twitter. While this social media tool may seem ideal for keeping up with pop culture shenanigans, it’s become an increasingly important research tool for studying people’s perceptions about a wide array of issues and topics, including climate change.

Moore’s study, published in PNAS in February, found people base their perceptions of normal weather patterns on a two- to eight-year span of time – a short timeframe that can distort perceptions of the effects of climate change. Moore and her colleagues expressed concern about the “boiling frog” effect – accepting as normal a gradually more hostile environment rather than choosing to correct this environment – one they would have avoided if they knew what was truly happening.