The Poll Says . . .

It says that 35% of the public reported being impacted by extreme weather in the past year.  This was recently reported in the New York Times (April 18, 2012) in an article by Justin Gillis - - A Majority Believe Role of Warming in Weather.  The results of the survey seem to indicate people are starting to connect the dots - - something is happening in the context of climate change that is impacting weather extremes.  The poll suggest that a solid majority of the public feels that global warming is real, a result consistent with other polls that have asked the question in various ways.

This is from the article - -

"A poll due for release on Wednesday shows that a large majority of Americans believe that this year's unusually warm winter, last year's blistering summers were probably made worse by global warming.  And by a 2-to-1 margin, the public says the weather has been getting worse, rather than better, in recent years.

The survey, the most detailed to date on the public response to weather extremes, comes atop other polling showing a recent uptick in concerns about climate change.  Read together, the polls suggest that direct experience of erratic weather way be convincing some people that the problem is no longer just a vague and distant threat."

When invited to agree or disagree with the statement, "Global warming is affecting the weather in the United States," - - 69% of the respondents in this new poll said they agreed.  This is very important to engineering - - the scientific evidence has always been clear (at least to me).  The issue has been the general public and their apparent willingness to see this as a problem that is distant in time and space.  We appear to be moving into a new stage - - one where time and space are collapsing.  Hundreds of tornadoes over a weekend, record setting droughts, extremely cold weather in Europe the past winter - - the world is changing and people see it.  They see the change.  They feel the change.  They are impacted by the change.

Things are getting freaky with the weather - - engineering is going to have to adapt to the new realities of freakiness.  Two goals will drive engineering as we adapt to this freakiness - - the first is to limit risk and damage.  Plan, prevent, and prepare will be an increasing part of our responsibilities.  The second goal is to build resilient communities.  Stuff is going to happen.  Some of this stuff will be bad.  Some will be very bad.  The key will be to get infrastructure systems up and running as quickly as possible.  How fast you can get back to being operational will become an important performance metric in the era of freakiness.