Why We Fail to Notice Climate Change

In northern Vermont, where I live, classic newspaper clippings show pictures of people driving trucks across Lake Champlain. Those icy, ephemeral corridors, though, seem like relics of a bygone era. Roughly half a century ago, maybe more, the region started to warm. At first, the change was imperceptible. The lake froze every year between 1850 and 1917 and then almost every year until the late 1940s. This past decade, though, thaw years outnumbered freeze years. This February, the lake froze for the first time in seven years. This seemingly tiny shift – a frozen lake versus open water – speaks to a larger, more insidious problem: our difficulty in perceiving the slow creep of climate change.

The Illusion of Gradual Change

Technically speaking, a lake freezing versus not freezing is a small shift. A degree too warm and you have running water. a degree too cold and you have a frozen expanse. But as Grace Liu, a machine learning expert at Carnegie Mellon University, explains, people pay more attention to binary data – years the lake froze versus years it didn’t – than to continuous data, like steadily rising temperatures. Research published in Nature Human Behaviour in July 2025 demonstrated this effect, showing that people perceive a greater degree of change when presented with such clear-cut distinctions.

“People notice change more frequently if they are presented with binary data,” Liu says. This ability to perceive change is a crucial first step toward addressing the climate crisis, but whether that awareness translates into action remains an open question.

The Boiling Frog Effect and Normalization

Scientists once believed that increasingly severe weather events – stronger hurricanes, more destructive wildfires, more frequent droughts – would serve as a wake-up call. However, research suggests otherwise. A study analyzing over 2 billion social media posts from 2014 to 2016 found that people tend to consider “normal” temperatures those experienced just two to eight years prior. This rapid normalization of the abnormal means that even significant climate shifts can proceed unnoticed. The researchers, who published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in March 2019, termed this phenomenon the “boiling frog effect” – a reference to the fable of a frog that fails to perceive the gradually heating water until it’s too late.

This normalization extends beyond temperature. A team surveyed roughly 500,000 Americans exposed to 15,000 natural disasters between 2006 and 2022. The study, presented at the Universitat de Barcelona, found that exposure to extreme events did little to change beliefs about climate change or willingness to support pro-environmental policies. As Toni Rodon, a political scientist at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, notes, “Nothing moves the needle in any significant way.”

Our Cognitive Shortcuts

Our brains are wired to seek efficiency. Therapists and self-help writers often point out that thinking in binaries is a mental shortcut, requiring less cognitive effort than grappling with nuance. Psychologist Jeremy Shapiro, author of Finding Goldilocks, explains that this “cognitive miserliness” stems from our evolutionary past, where quickly distinguishing between good and bad was essential for survival. While that instinct was valuable in a world of predators, it can hinder our ability to grasp the complex, gradual changes associated with climate change.

This tendency toward simplification is evident in how we perceive events like snowfall. New York City, once reliably blanketed in snow each winter, experienced a 701-day snow drought ending in January 2024. While this is a striking statistic, it’s easily lost in the day-to-day experience of weather. Researchers have warned that the Northern Hemisphere is heading toward a “snow-loss cliff,” where even small temperature increases will lead to dramatic reductions in snowfall. This research, published in Nature in January 2024, underscores the accelerating pace of change.

Turning Messy Data into Clear Signals

The challenge, then, is to present climate data in a way that overcomes our cognitive biases. Liu and Dubey’s research suggests that framing climate impacts in binary terms – for example, years a lake froze versus years it didn’t – can enhance the perception of change. However, they emphasize that this approach should be used in conjunction with the full complexity of the data. Oversimplification can be misleading, and it’s crucial to avoid losing important information.

Anthropologist Julian Sommerschuh of the University of Hamburg suggests that concrete, local examples can be more effective than abstract global data. He contrasts the apathy he observes in Germany, where people are overwhelmed by the scale of the climate crisis, with the proactive approach of farmers in western Kenya, who are implementing practical solutions like tree planting to address the impacts of unpredictable rainfall.

What Comes Next: Reframing the Narrative

The key may lie in finding ways to make climate change feel less distant and more personal. Presenting data in a binary format, while potentially useful, is just one tool. Communicators must likewise focus on tangible impacts, local solutions, and the urgency of action. Shapiro believes that working *with* people’s cognitive tendencies, rather than fighting against them, could be a more effective strategy. By framing climate change as a clear and present danger, we may be able to overcome the inertia that has allowed this crisis to persist for so long.