gradual

Defeating climate apathy

May 30, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Slowing human-caused climate change requires decisive action. But according to psychologists, the gradual rise in global temperatures can lead to climate apathy, especially among those who don’t face frequent climate disasters.

Climate apathy is a general indifference or lack of emotional or behavioral response to climate change and environmental issues. People experiencing climate apathy may feel disconnected, overwhelmed, powerless, or simply uninterested in climate issues, leading them to avoid taking action or engaging in conversations about it.

A new study by researchers from UCLA and Princeton University looked into ways to effectively communicate about climate change. The research team found that presenting people with continuous data, like rising temperatures in a town, gave them only a vague sense of gradual change. But showing them binary data—like whether a lake froze or not each winter—illustrated the change more effectively.

In the study, which was recently published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, the researchers showed participants either temperature graphs or lake-freezing data for fictional and real towns in order to measure how each format affected their perceptions of climate impact. Participants who saw whether lakes froze rated climate change as more impactful—12% higher on average—than those who saw only temperature data.

By focusing on the increasing rate of once-rare events, the researchers hope that the same temperature data that once led to climate apathy may instead help communities care more about the climate crisis.

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UCLA study: How to break through climate apathy

Photo, posted November 20, 2008, courtesy of Brad Saunders via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Rising seas are destroying buildings

April 8, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Alexandria is the second largest city in Egypt and is the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Its history goes back over 2,300 years and it was once home to a lighthouse that was among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and a Great Library that was the largest in the ancient world. The modern city has more than 6 million residents but still has many historic buildings and ancient monuments. But perhaps not for long.

Rising seas and intensifying storms are taking a toll on the ancient port city. For centuries, Alexandria’s historic structures have endured earthquakes, storm surges, tsunamis, and more. They are truly marvels of resilient engineering. But now, climate change is undoing in decades what took millennia for humans to create.

Over the past two decades, the number of buildings collapsing in Alexandria has risen tenfold. Buildings are collapsing from the bottom up as a rising water table weakens soil and erodes foundations. Since 2001, Alexandria has seen 290 buildings collapse. Comparing present-day satellite imagery with decades-old maps, the authors of a study by the Technical University of Munich have tracked the retreat of Alexandria’s shorelines to determine where seas have intruded into groundwater. The authors say that more than 7,000 buildings in Alexandria are at risk. They call for building sand dunes and planting trees along the coast to block encroaching seawater.

The true cost of this gradual destruction goes far beyond bricks and mortar. This is the gradual disappearance of historic coastal cities. Alexandria is a warning for such cities around the world.

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In This Storied Egyptian City, Rising Seas are Causing Buildings to Crumble

Photo, posted September 11, 2012, courtesy of Sowr via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Mangrove forests and rising seas

December 6, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Mangrove forests play a vital role in the health of our planet. They protect coastal regions by acting as natural barriers against storms, erosion, and flooding. The intricate root systems of mangrove forests, which allow the trees to handle the daily rise and fall of tides, also serve as biodiversity hotspots, attracting fish and other species seeking food and shelter from predators.

But mangrove forests around the world are under increasing threat from deforestation, coastal development, and climate change. In fact, according to a new study led by researchers from Northumbria University in England, the mangrove trees in the Maldives are actually drowning.

The research, which was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports, found that sea levels around the Maldives rose more than 1.18 inches per year from 2017 to 2020. An unusually intense climate phenomenon, known as the Indian Ocean Dipole, occurred toward the end of this period, causing warmer sea surface temperatures and an increase in sea level in the Western Indian Ocean.

While mangrove forests can naturally keep pace with gradually rising seas, this rate of sea level rise was too fast. The rising sea level meant that seawater effectively flooded mangrove forests, causing many trees to lose their resilience and die. Some islands in the Maldives have lost more than half of their mangrove cover since 2020.

Since mangrove forests also store massive amounts of carbon, the research team fears that the loss of mangrove forests could release large amounts of carbon, further accelerating climate change.

The researchers warn that the findings in the Maldives could have implications for coastal ecosystems around the world.

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“Drowning” mangrove forests in Maldives signal global coastal threat

Photo, posted February 11, 2015, courtesy of Alessandro Caproni via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Dangers Of Thawing Permafrost | Earth Wise

April 12, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The thawing of the permafrost in the Arctic is a major concern from the standpoint of the potential release of enormous amounts of carbon dioxide trapped in it. There are nearly 2,000 billion tons of carbon there, which is as much as humanity releases into the atmosphere in 50 years. But greenhouse gases are not the only danger posed by permafrost thawing. There are also microbes, unknown viruses, and chemicals that could be very dangerous.

More than 100 diverse microorganisms in Siberia’s deep permafrost have been found to be antibiotic resistant. The deep permafrost is one of the few environments on Earth that have not been exposed to modern antibiotics. As the permafrost thaws, its bacteria could mix with meltwater and create new antibiotic-resistant strains.

By-products of fossil fuels – introduced into permafrost environments since the beginning of the industrial revolution – are present. Metal deposits including arsenic, mercury, and nickel, have been mined for decades and have contaminated large areas.

Now-banned pollutants and chemicals – including DDT – came to the Arctic through the atmosphere and over time have become trapped in the permafrost.

There is now ongoing research further characterizing the microbes frozen in permafrost and providing more precise measurement of emissions hotspots in permafrost regions. Scientists are increasingly turning to integrated Earth observations from the ground, the air, and space.

There are models that predict the gradual release of emissions from permafrost over the next century. Other models say it could happen within just a few years. The worst-case scenario would be utterly catastrophic but none of the scenarios portend anything good.

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Thawing Permafrost Could Leach Microbes, Chemicals Into Environment

Photo, posted February 9, 2017, courtesy of Benjamin Jones/USGS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.