Essay by Eric Worrall

“…  we assumed that if the climate worsened enough, people would act, but instead, we’re seeing the ‘boiling frog’ effect …”

People Better Understand Climate Change When Shown Stark, Binary Data

The researchers looked into ways to communicate the true impact of climate change and found a solution. 

Published: April 25, 2025 

Slowing human-caused climate change requires decisive action, but the slow upward creep of global temperatures contributes to apathy among people who don’t experience regular climate-driven disasters, psychologists say. In a new study from UCLA and Princeton, researchers looked into ways to communicate the true impact of climate change and found a solution.

…

“People are adjusting to worsening environmental conditions, like multiple fire seasons per year, disturbingly fast,” said Dubey, senior author of the study. “When we used the same temperature data for a location but presented it in a starker way, it broke through people’s climate apathy. Unfortunately, compared to those who looked at a clearer presentation of the same information, those who only looked at gradual data perceived a 12% smaller climate impact and cared less.”

…

“For years, we assumed that if the climate worsened enough, people would act, but instead, we’re seeing the ‘boiling frog’ effect, where humans continuously reset their perception of ‘normal’ every few years,” Dubey said. “People are adjusting to worsening environmental conditions, like multiple fire seasons per year, disturbingly fast. My research examines how people are mentally adapting to the negative changes in our environment.”

…

Read more: https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/people-better-understand-climate-change-when-shown-stark-binary-data-398948

The abstract of the study;

Article
Published: 17 April 2025

Binary climate data visuals amplify perceived impact of climate change

Grace Liu, Jake C. Snell, Thomas L. Griffiths & Rachit Dubey 

Nature Human Behaviour (2025)

Abstract

For much of the global population, climate change appears as a slow, gradual shift in daily weather. This leads many to perceive its impacts as minor and results in apathy (the ‘boiling frog’ effect). How can we convey the urgency of the crisis when its impacts appear so subtle? Here, through a series of large-scale cognitive experiments (N = 799), we find that presenting people with binary climate data (for example, lake freeze history) significantly increases the perceived impact of climate change (Cohen’s d = 0.40, 95% confidence interval 0.26–0.54) compared with continuous data (for example, mean temperature). Computational modelling and follow-up experiments (N = 398) suggest that binary data enhance perceived impact by creating an ‘illusion’ of sudden shifts. Crucially, our approach does not involve selective data presentation but rather compares different datasets that reflect equivalent trends in climate change over time. These findings, robustly replicated across multiple experiments, provide a cognitive basis for the ‘boiling frog’ effect and offer a psychologically grounded approach for policymakers and educators to improve climate change communication while maintaining scientific accuracy.

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02183-9

This would be hilarious if it wasn’t so shocking.

The obvious interpretation for climate apathy is the climate change people are experiencing is not a big deal compared to other issues they deal with in their daily lives, and is not disruptive enough make people care. That “apathy” is ordinary people correctly concluding global warming is way down on their list of priorities.

But instead of accepting climate change isn’t a problem for the people they investigated, the scientists concluded they have to spice up the message, to make the data look more frightening.

I disagree with the study assertion that the “binary” approach maintains scientific accuracy. In my opinion the proposed approach to climate communication amounts to deliberate deception. Omitting the information that people are unconcerned and apathetic about the changes they experienced, because they occurred over a long period of time, and people comfortably adapted to changes, in my opinion is lying by omission.

I believe future historians will look back on this kind of behaviour, this apparent normalisation and casual acceptance of misleading the public through in my opinion deceptive presentation of the facts, and wonder how our scientists and societal institutions so profoundly lost touch with morality.