Trusting the Climate: Catastrophe Vs. Stability.

This article examines the continuing phenomenon of trust in climate stability. Such trust is mediated by specific social contexts and evolves in response to societal events, material constraints and scientific evidence and media representations. We consider the ways in which normalized understandings of climate are influenced by experiences with extreme weather events. Paradoxically perhaps, we argue that weather extremes are occasions that actually reinforce trust in the stability of climate. The ways in which extremes are dealt with and explained by society provides an important clue for the semantics of environmental representation generally and climate specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]