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Andrew Dessler

A friend emailed me saying: "it was nice that Texas won the climate change lottery this year with a cooler wetter summer than usual"

Let's look at the data. Here's IAH summertime average temperatures:

plot of IAH summertime average temperature, showing that 2023 was not cool
Andrew Dessler

2024 was definitely not "cool" by any metric. It *was* cooler than the hellacious summer of 2023, but it was still in the top 10% of summers over the past 55 years.

This points out one of the big problems with climate change: people's memories are terrible when it comes to extreme weather.

Sep 22, 2024, 08:16 PM·Public·Fedica
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Andrew Dessler

This is quantified in this paper by Fran Moore et al. @climatefran.bsky.social (pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.): "The reference point for normal conditions appears to be based on weather experienced between 2 and 8 y ago."

Significance Climate change exposes people to conditions that are historically unusual but that will become increasingly common over time. What kind of weather do people think of as normal or unusual under these changing conditions? We use the volume of social media posts about weather to measure the remarkability of different temperatures and show that remarkability changes rapidly with repeated exposure to unusual temperatures. The reference point for normal conditions appears to be based on weather experienced between 2 and 8 y ago. This rapidly shifting normal baseline means warming noticed by the general public may not be clearly distinguishable from zero over the 21st century, with potential implications for both the acceptance of global warming and public pressure for mitigation policies.
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Kevin Leecaster

@andrewdessler
I know that the analogy is inaccurate, but I'll say it anyways, homo sapiens like frogs in hot water are unable to remember that it used to be more comfortably cooler.

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