{"id":287516,"date":"2025-07-24T09:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T09:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/287516\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T09:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T09:05:10","slug":"boiling-frog-effect-makes-people-oblivious-to-threat-of-climate-crisis-shows-study-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/287516\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Boiling frog\u2019 effect makes people oblivious to threat of climate crisis, shows study | Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Surveys show that the increasing number of extreme climate events, including floods, wildfires and hurricanes, has not raised awareness of the threats<\/a> posed by climate change. Instead, people change their idea of what they see as normal. This so-called \u201cboiling frog effect<\/a>\u201d makes gradual change difficult to spot.<\/p>\n

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania wondered if climate change could be made more obvious by presenting it in binary terms<\/a>. Local newspaper archives describing ice skating on Lake Carnegie when it froze in winter inspired a simple experiment.<\/p>\n

Some test subjects were shown temperature graphs of a fictional town\u2019s winter conditions; others had a chart showing whether or not a fictional lake froze each year. The result, published in Nature, showed those who<\/a> receiving the second graphic consistently saw climate change as more real and imminent.<\/p>\n

Binary data gives a clearer impression of the \u201cbefore\u201d and \u201cafter\u201d. The disappearing ice is more vivid and dramatic than a temperature trace, even though the underlying data is the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are literally showing them the same trend, just in different formats,\u201d says Rachit Dubey, a co-author of the study.<\/p>\n

These results should help drive more effective ways of communicating the impact of climate change in future by finding simple binary, black-and-white examples of its effects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Surveys show that the increasing number of extreme climate events, including floods, wildfires and hurricanes, has not raised…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-287516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114907416131294010","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}