Climate change is a big topic of discussion online or in the media but it almost never comes up in my day-to-day life. When I’m at work, doing my shoping or whatever, I don’t think I ever hear people mention it.
I wonder if it’s the same for others. I’m sure it’s a subject if you’re a teacher or an organizer or something. What about for average people doing average things?
I dont hang with political people and I cook food for a living. In my experience it’s like there’s this tacit agreement not to bring it up. Do you ever get that? Or is it just a matter of where you live and who you know?
I’d say it comes up fairly often, given heatwaves/wild fires and severe hurricanes. Also, my wife brings it up all the time, as she’s worried about rising water levels ruining our house. (We currently have less than a foot to spare during winter storms)
Once every few months maybe. It’s not a regular conversation. But where I live it’s too cold and we have too much water. Fucking water won’t leave me alone.
It comes up all the time in my social world (people who mostly have graduate degrees in the Northeast).
I suspect this is just socioeconomics. When I hang out with the people I grew up with, we rarely talk politics. When I hang out with my adult friends, we rarely talk about anything else.
It comes up in my work with City Council. In the summer the rain pattern is such that the city park sports fields get too wet to play, and/or need more mowing (more attention than usual from the service dept). Now it’s leaf season but the leaves aren’t falling yet so leaf pickup will probably be pushed in to snow season, and they can’t pick up when it snows. And then during snow season there has to be people scheduled to plow, but it hasn’t been snowing enough to keep them busy, but then when it does snow it’s a crazy lot all at once and it’s hard to manage.
Also flooding is a big concern all year round. We don’t seem to get too many wet rainy days. Instead we get incredible deluges of rain that cause water levels to rise really quickly, more than the drainage is meant to handle, and people’s homes and yards get flooded.
So, I notice this stuff more because I’m fielding the complaints but people in our city are talking about the effects of climate change on them (their kids’ schedules, their tax dollars, their homes) whether they know it or not.
I would say ‘being good to the planet’ comes up daily, does that count? As in, everyone talking about how they need to behave better, stop using single use plastic, eat more vegetarian food, whether to buy an electric car, that kind of thing.
I live in Alberta, Western Canada; with petroleum a major part of the economy. It is also a place with some pretty dramatic weather and I work in insurance restoration.
I hear about it constantly. From denialist right wingers and petroleum industry types. Many engineers and geologists that should fucking know better.
I also hear about it from everybody observing obvious climatic changes, the very observable effects in the mountains to the west of us. Swaths of dead trees from pine beetle and spruce bud worm infestations that used to be be controlled by cold winter temperatures that just do not happen anymore. Dramatic glacier recession; like documented by the yearly markers at the Columbia Icefield Discovery Centre north of Lake Louise is just staggering.
When I have to explain to someone why the attic in their home filled up with ice when in 30 years they have never had the problem before. Whether you deny AGW or not the evidence of climate change is all around us, at least where I live.
That’s pretty much exactly the conversation I had with my parents a couple of weeks ago. Fewer “rainy days,” more “torrential downpours.” My father called me last night, and told me that Green Bay (where they live) has already surpassed their all-time record for yearly precipitation (which was set last year), and it’s only early October.
Overall, I’d say that, in some form, the concept of climate change comes up in conversation that I’m in at least once a week or so. But, then again, I’m also a weather nerd.
I’m an avid fly fisher and it’s pretty common for me and other anglers to talk about stream conditions and its impact on the wildlife, we lurch from too much rain to not enough and the weather has clearly changed over the course of my life.
I’m a farmer; I sit on a town planning board; and I have friends who do neither of those but who pay attention to such things.
In some company, it comes up with a bit of caution – it’s possible to discuss whether better flood prevention plans are needed without discussing whose fault it is that they’re needed; or even to discuss the fact that spring and fall frost dates and rainfall patterns have changed without agreeing on why they’ve done so.
All the time. People notice how it has gotten warmer for more days during the summer. People sure notice that fire season is a lot longer now than it used to be.
I just spent a bundle on air conditioning because the number of days we need it has increased so much.
And quite a bit of talk about the massive snowstorm in just this week.
The discussion is about the craziness of the weather; not global warming-- a one degree increase in average temperature over the last X years or whatever.
In Spain it’s become part of the general chitchat about the weather: “it’s so hot!” “Yes, but it’s July; it’s always hot in July” has transmutted into "“it’s so hot!” “Yes, we’ve had record temperatures this year - again!” Being careful not to set the A/C too strong was initially a matter of “women complaining too much”; eventually it became one of “good business practice” (since those whiny women take a lof of purchasing decisions, and you want them to be willing to enter your shop); now energy companies thelmselves have out tons of publicity about how to use appliances including A/C in the most efficient way (and it’s cheaper for you!).