Study Uncovers the One Thing That Cuts Through Climate Apathy: Loss - Gizmodo

[justaprogressive]

For much of the 20th century, winter brought an annual ritual to Princeton, New Jersey. Lake Carnegie froze solid, and skaters flocked to its glossy surface. These days, the ice is rarely thick enough to support anybody wearing skates, since Princeton’s winters have warmed about 4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970. It’s a lost tradition that Grace Liu linked to the warming climate as an undergrad at Princeton University in 2020, interviewing longtime residents and digging through newspaper archives to create a record of the lake’s ice conditions.

“People definitely noticed that they were able to get out onto the lake less,” said Liu, who’s now a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University. “However, they didn’t necessarily connect this trend to climate change.”

When the university’s alumni magazine featured her research in the winter of 2021, the comment section was filled with wistful memories of skating under the moonlight, pushing past the crowds to play hockey, and drinking hot chocolate by the frozen lakeside. Liu began to wonder: Could this kind of direct, visceral loss make climate change feel more vivid to people?

That question sparked her study, recently published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, that came to a striking conclusion: Boiling down data into a binary — a stark this or that — can help break through apathy about climate change.

https://gizmodo.com/study-uncovers-the-one-thing-that-cuts-through-climate-apathy-loss-2000598328

[peggysue2]

1. As a kid, ice skating was a favorite winter sport

There's an exquisite sense of freedom sailing across a frozen lake. Whether I was off on my own or with a group of friends skating was so much fun. Lot of family get togethers, too.

We were shore people in the summer and out on the lakes and ponds in the winter.

Yes, it will be missed by people who remember. If it jars others, the absence of ice and snow and winter activities, then (though sad) it's a good thing.

The Don't Look Up phenomenon is what truly needs to disappear.