Study: Warming giving U.S. type of weather we prefer, for now

WASHINGTON — Global warming has mostly made the weather more pleasant for Americans over the last 40 years, which may explain why much of the public doesn’t rank climate change as big a threat as do scientists and the rest of the world, a new study suggests. [...] that perceived benefit of global warming — mostly milder winters — will soon be outweighed by more oppressive summer heat, according to a study in the journal Nature that’s dividing the scientific community. “Americans are getting the wrong signal from year-round weather about whether they should be concerned about climate change,” said study lead author Patrick Egan, a public policy professor at New York University. If heat-trapping gases aren’t controlled, nearly nine out of 10 Americans will have noticeably worse weather — not better — by the end of the century, especially in the summer, the study found. To try to understand America’s reluctance to tackle climate change, Egan and Megan Mullin, an environmental policy professor at Duke University, created a weather preference index for Americans based on past studies that look at where people move, taking employment and other factors into account. America “may have been lulled into complacency when it comes to the impacts of climate change,” said Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn’t part of the study but called it a solid analysis.