We've been bombarded all winter with stories of cold and snowy weather in the eastern US, but the news was just released that January 2014 was the fourth-warmest January on record. How can this be? The eastern US covers less than 1% of the Earth's area, so (as this essay nicely puts it) "if the whole country somehow froze solid one January, that would not move the needle on global temperatures much at all." That essay is worth reading because it goes on to explain how subjectively people do perceive global warming: something as unrelated to global warming as being in a cold room does have an influence on the opinions voiced in a survey. Educators should be aware of this, and actively work on making students think objectively and use data.
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