Can we talk about global warming in a language Americans understand?
Yes yes yes please! I do the conversions on line and get totally whacked out by the number that appears. If temps rise by 1.5° Celsius, what is that rise number in Fahrenheit? Google tells me 34.7. Huh? And I’m a math idiot, so I freeze.
Excerpt from this Sierra Club article:
For most Americans, the metric system, and the Celsius scale in particular, is baffling. (I mean, why is a kilogram greater than a pound but a kilometer is shorter than a mile?) Temperature measurements in Celsius are meaningless. A 40°C day in Barcelona is sweltering; a 40°F day in Baltimore is frigid.
Imagine if we were to consistently talk about climate change in Fahrenheit. One degree of Celsius is the equivalent to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Do the math: 1.5°C becomes a 2.7°F rise in average global temperatures; a 2°C rise is the equivalent of a 3.6°F rise.
Even if every country meets it obligations under the Paris Agreement, we’re on track to hit 3°C of global warming by the end of the century, according to the number crunchers at Climate Action Tracker. Now we’re talking about 5.4°F—the difference between a lovely spring day and a warm one. In the absence of meaningful action—a terrifying though realistic scenario given that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise—we could be on track for as much as 4.4°C of warming by 2100. That’s nearly 8°F—the difference between a warm day and an uncomfortably hot one. Eight degrees is the spread between the average August high temperature in Kansas City and the average August high temperature in Minneapolis, more than 400 miles to the north. It’s a big deal.
In short, to talk about global warming in Fahrenheit doesn’t just make the climate conversation more intelligible to more people. It makes the conversation visceral. Discussing global warming—or global heating, if you prefer—in Fahrenheit converts abstract scientific measurements into actual lived experiences. Fahrenheit is how Americans know the weather, how they feel it on their skin. If we want people to really get the direness of the climate crisis, we need to hit them where they feel, not simply where they think.
