Why the US doesn’t perceive global warming

Because it’s too damned big and diverse, weather-wise.

Western Europe often experiences extremes of weather in a uniform way, as when a catastrophic summer heat wave in 2003 in a half-dozen countries caused the deaths of thousands of people.

In the United States, which spans a continent, there is almost never a shared sense of meteorological misery — as was made vividly clear when epic snows buried Denver as if two winters hit back to back while the Northeast basked in warmth that seemed to render the whole idea of seasons meaningless.

Some climate experts muse that the innately variegated climate across the country might help explain why it has taken longer for human-caused global warming to rise to the level of a national priority here than in Europe.

An interesting thought. We always have something anomalous (or even “normal”) going on somewhere, so perceiving a trend is a lot more tough to do than when heavy rains means the whole continent is flooded.

The next way to test the hypothesis is to see how geographic and climactic diversity play in public (or governmental) perceptions of global warming elsewhere in the world.

(via collision detection)