Poll: Believers in man-made global warming rapidly dwindling
What a great story. The Warmers are going the way of the flat-earthers. In our search for the reasons why that might be, we can start with the 24 inches of snow that fell in my backyard in Virginia yesterday.
That was the 2nd largest snowfall ever measured in Washington. We can add the Christmas week storm, which was the largest amount of snow ever recorded in Washington in December, and the 7th largest overall, and we start to see why the Global Warmers are soon going to be able to meet in a phone booth (speaking of extinct . . .).
Now a BBC poll brings even more bad news for all the Chicken Littles.
The Populus poll of 1,001 adults found 25% did not think global warming was happening, an increase of 10% since a similar poll was conducted in November.
The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75% this month.
And only 26% of those asked believed climate change was happening and “now established as largely man-made”. . . .
“It is very unusual indeed to see such a dramatic shift in opinion in such a short period,” Populus managing director Michael Simmonds told BBC News.
“The British public are sceptical about man’s contribution to climate change – and becoming more so,” he added.
“More people are now doubters than firm believers.”
There are those who say weather change is not the same thing as climate change. To them, I would pose a question. What if the climate is in fact changing. But what if instead of warming, the planet were actually cooling? Wouldn’t we expect the weather to reflect that change in the form of record cold and snowfall?
Just asking on behalf of the larger number of us who disagree with you.
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Isn’t it called climate change?
Snow? In February? Gosh, never seen that happen before, you must be right!
Couple things:
(1) Asking the general population whether they believe climate change, or global warming, is occurring has absolutely no basis for an assertion on whether it actually is happening. You could for instance ask the general population whether they believe in God, and the poll results would actually mean something. However, if the thesis of your article is to have any worth whatsoever, the poll would have had to be conducted with 1,001 climatologists from around the world.
You can’t discredit 30 years of scientific research with the opinions of regular people off the street. To think otherwise is willful ignorance at best, and being a danger to future generations of society at worst.
(2) Using an event like the recent blizzard in the mid-Atlantic region as a supporting factor for asserting that “Global Warming is a Hoax” only underscores your ignorance of the scope and scale of climate systems and how theories regarding their behavior are developed. (Bill, I’m not name calling here, just stating another fact.) Climate theories take years to develop and are based on measurements of average temperatures, atmospheric gas levels and climate behaviors, among other things. For instance, much stronger evidence to form a thesis re: global warming comes in the form of satellite photos of the north polar region taken yearly that prove a trend of increased melting seasons over the past 30 years. When you look at the data (as opposed to going with your gut) you can see that the process is actually exacerbating itself, with dark ocean water absorbing more heat than the reflective ice of which there is less and less every decade – with the last decade being by far the most extreme.
In conclusion, I normally wouldn’t waste my time trying to make this point with someone like you, who markets disinformation to those who seek it in order to reinforce their own bias against established facts; but I just have to say, that I find it incredibly ironic that your great-great grand children are going to be looking back in history, saying to themselves, “What were You thinking? How could You ignore the evidence so willfully, so selfishly, so as to allow the Earth’s delicate balances to be upset until it can no longer support several billion of us, just so your energy corporations could continue to make ginormous quarterly profits?”
Well, I don’t know for sure whether that’s what your descendants will be thinking (or whether you will have descendants), but that’s what my gut tells me.
…and to clarify point (1) above: I realize that the thesis of this particular article is simply stating that Global Warming Denial is on the rise, but it is said within the larger context that GW is a hoax; so i stand by it. The study means absolutely nothing. It really just reinforces the danger that articles like this one are possibly affecting popular opinion, which is kind of silly when you think about it.
I mean, we wouldn’t want popular opinion to dictate how we would deal with severe heart disease; we would want to talk to a cardiologist. Why anyone would think climatologists are not to be listened to when it comes to the health of the only planet we will get baffles me to no end.
In response to another comment. See in context »Agreed. It is unfortunate that people who purport to comment on this issue with any supposed expertise or knowledge still don’t know the difference between climate and weather.
In response to another comment. See in context »If purely anecdotal evidence is what you rely upon to determine whether global warming is taking place then let me assure you that it is very evident over the course of my lifetime in the Midwest. I am forty-five and grew up in southern Wisconsin. Until the late 1980’s, you would not have expected to see the grass from late December until March. Not so for the last thirty years! In fact, it rarely snows at all. You may be blanketed in record snowfall but I can assure you that Spring will start sooner and Summer will last longer than you can remember. If you paid attention to climate scientists’ observations without an ideological axe to grind it might occur to you to categorize the “snowpocalypse” as precisely the kind of freaky extreme weather event expected to happen with greater frequency as a result of global warming.
BTW, what possible benefit would it be to the scientific or any other community to perpetrate such a “hoax?”
Money. Research money. Carbon credit schemes. Socialist redistribution of wealth. Aggregation of power over businesses and individuals through Cap and Trade poliicies.
In response to another comment. See in context »Is this what passes for conservatism in America? Casual acceptance of crackpot conspiracy theories?
In response to another comment. See in context »“Socialist redistribution of wealth.”
Is that a sentence? Does that mean anything?
I’ll be the first to admit that cap and trade or some equivalent scheme will hamper economic growth, but there’s zero reason to think it will lead to wealth redistribution in any meaningful way. In the United States, anyway, the reverse will happen if a law similar to what’s currently under debate passes. Credits are slated to be given away rather than sold at auction. The original plan was raise revenue selling emissions credits to spend mitigating the effects of cap and trade on individuals and communities that suffer disproportionately (eg, job training in a town built around a coal mine, home heating subsidies, etc). Congress caved to the omg-cap-and-tax crew and decided to give away credits instead.
This isn’t just idle speculation. Go look up the CBO analysis of HR2454; the cost is twice as high (2% of income) for the median American than it is for Americans in the top income decile (1%). It’s more than four times as high for the poorest 10% of Americans (4.4%).
In response to another comment. See in context »Apologies; the numbers I reference there are actually from an RFF study and not the CBO analysis. The CBO analysis shows the top income quintile experiencing the same impact as the second quintile (0.1% change in after-tax income), and the third and fourth quintiles (what’s usually defined as the middle class in political discourse) impacted four times as much (0.4%). The bottom quintile does gain 0.2% after-tax income… for a wealth redistribution of a wopping $40 per household. Socialism!
In response to another comment. See in context »Fair comments but money, research money grubbing are the American way…big corporations like pharma and defense do quite well in the research business as do universities and I’m sure you would argue that stuff like Star Wars, based on the fear of Tesla’s death ray, is all vital for democracy. Socialist redistribution of wealth? Ahh…tax cuts for the rich? Subsidies for oil companies that make billions? A $100,000 tax break to doctors to buy a car to drive to work? Carbon trading is a hot commodity on Wall Street and the bill proposed in congress is another gift…republicans would love it but for Obama’s support.
In response to another comment. See in context »You should be thankful that you aren’t deep enough into the absurd climate change debate to know what the answer is to that question. Here’s George Will carrying water for the ignorant on This Week:
“WILL: Speaking of the marketplace, the biggest industry in the world right now may be fighting climate change. There are billions, trillions of dollars on the table, and when you say, well, they are academics and they are scientists and they talk in funny ways — academics are human beings, and the enormous incentive to get on the bandwagon on global warming, the financial incentive, the market driving this, is huge.
KRUGMAN: There is tremendously more money in being a skeptic than there is in being a supporter.
WILL: Hardly.
KRUGMAN: It’s so much easier, come on. You got the energy industry’s behind it. There are 20 times as many believers as there are skeptics in the scientific community. They get almost equal time in the media.”
…
You see, scientists are pulling the wool over our eyes and demanding a substantial change affecting many tens of trillions of dollars of the global economy over a century in order to keep their cushy, tenured professorships and government appointments. Oh, and all of the incredibly influential alternative energy companies.
In response to another comment. See in context »Facts are stubborn things Bill, that’s why science does not work like the People’s Choice Awards.
According to a Jan. ‘09 study from the American Geophysical Union written by Peter Doran 97% of earth scientists “believe” in man-made global warming. Those stubborn facts. Can’t be wished away.
DOran is at the University of Illinois at Chicago and associate professor of earth and environmental sciences. About the near-unanimity among climate scientists he said,
“They’re the ones who study and publish on climate science. So I guess the take-home message is, the more you know about the field of climate science, the more you’re likely to believe in global warming and humankind’s contribution to it.”
(http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoia-ssa011609.php)
At some point, deniers change from expressing matters of opinion into the irresponsible. The earth is round, we did land on the moon, and the industrial revolution has warmed the planet.
“the industrial revolution has warmed the planet”
This is nitpicking and there’s no one definition of the industrial revolution, but by most accepted definitions it is separate from the development of oil extraction and refining technologies, coal extraction, etc starting in the middle of the 19th century. The industrial revolution was definitely a precondition for all of that, though.
In response to another comment. See in context »Thanks for the correction Zach, you are, of course, correct!
In response to another comment. See in context »I’m glad you’re thrilled that people are ignorant of facts. Last year, including the unusually cold December in North America and Europe, was the second-warmest year ever (tied with 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007). Our previous record snowfall here in Baltimore was in 2003, by the way. Practically all of the warmest years in modern history occurred in the last dozen years. The earth’s average temperature is at its highest level since man discovered fire (well, not man, but the ancestor of man). The concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is at its highest level since the Americas separated from Pangea. The warming effect of greenhouse gasses is a consequence of basic laws of physics.
Below-average temperatures in America and Europe were, in fact, predicted by the same climatologists that you mock as flat-earthers, using the same sorts of models that forecast global warming. You can presuppose that the planet is cooling if you like, but look at the data in any way you want over any range of time and it shows that the temperature is rising (that’s true even if you cherry pick the 1998-2007 decade).
We’ve seen changes in climate in the past, but similar changes tens of thousands of years ago took roughly a thousand years. We’ve done it in half a century.
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that this unprecedented change in climate occurred precisely when humans began to account for an exponentially growing fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Lastly, warm, wet air is a precondition for a blizzard. Snow depth is a poor indicator of temperature even at the local level.
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