I missed this last Friday, but better late than never. From Gallup Worry About U.S. Water, Air Pollution at Historical Lows. Looks like a double body-blow to admitted document thief Dr. Peter Gleick; Americans don’t share his top two concerns on water and climate, probably because of the actions of zealots like him.
These results are based on Gallup’s annual Environment poll, conducted March 8-11. The trends are part of a broader decline in worry about environmental threats documented in the poll.
Gallup asked Americans to say how much they worry about each of seven environmental problems. All show significantly less worry today than in 2000, when worry was at or near its high point for each item. The declines in concern about drinking-water pollution and air pollution are the largest for the problems included in this year’s poll.
More broadly, worry about the seven issues is below the historical average for each. Most of the trends date back to 1989.
Concern about these environmental problems is down among most major subgroups since 2000. Across the seven items, the percentage worried a great deal is down an average 16 percentage points among Republicans, 18 points among independents, and 13 points among Democrats.
Americans Worry Most About Water Contamination, Least About Global Warming
On a relative basis, Americans tend to worry more about environmental threats to the nation’s water supplies than those that affect other parts of the environment. The highest levels of worry this year are for contamination of soil and water by toxic waste, pollution of drinking water, and pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.
Concern about global warming is lowest of the seven environmental issues tested, even though it is up slightly this year from last year.
The relative rank order of these environmental issues has generally been consistent over time, with water-related problems at the top and global warming at the bottom. In fact, the three water concerns in this year’s poll have ranked as the top three concerns over any other environmental problems nearly every time they have been asked since 1989. Pollution of drinking water has most often been the top concern.
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I believe people worry more about .gov and the economy currently and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Look what happens when you mix bullsh1t with real issues.
Everyone wants clean drinking water. Everyone want fresh air. I suspect that everyone on this blog agrees with that. But when you lie to the public and tell them that clean air is air without CO2, then you end up tossing out the baby with the bath water.
The EPA and its sympathizers are so off the rails that there is no solution other than to close the whole thing down and re-evaluate what requires regulation from scratch.
Fortunately, the Greens overreached and are now incredible.
Notice all but one are actual real issues that don’t require a scientist to tell you when its happening?
The major polls I can find in the UK tell a similar story.
British Social Attitudes, December 2011:
“The report also finds that people are more sceptical about the credibility of scientific research on global warming:”
• Under half the population (43 per cent) currently considers rising temperatures caused by climate change to be very dangerous for the environment, down from 50 per cent in 2000.
• Over a third (37 per cent) think many claims about environmental threats are exaggerated, up from 24 per cent in 2000.
——
“Britons Question Global Warming More Than Americans and Canadians 12 September 2011”:
Temperature rise is a part of global warming or climate change. Do you think rising temperatures are… ?
A result of human activities 37%
A result of natural causes 39%
Both 18%
Don’t know/Refused 3%
Not aware of global warming 3%
Oh, bliss it must be to be part of that last 3%! As ever, public opinion is only glacially permeating the UK government, but it is getting there (more onshore windfarms canned; fracking testing given green light; absurd budget measures on energy conservation reversed…).
I bet the Australian numbers are interesting!
The money squandered on the Global Warming boogieman could do a lot to help with actual environmental problems. Alas.
“They watched ABC, the other ABC, NBC and BBC incessantly screaming a none too subtle message at them for years and after a while, they reached for the TV remote with its mute button. No amount of repackaging of the message will get around that mute button once it’s been pressed and lads and lassies, it’s been pressed.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/i%e2%80%99m-not-a-scientist-but-%e2%80%a6/
They’ve lost the mob. Der Krieg ist vorbei. C’est fini. Dead man walking …
Pointman
If I want global warming, I just buy a ticket on Jet Blue and fly down to Puerto Rico where it is a lot warmer than around here. Problem solved.
Unemployment around the western nations is still higher than before 2008.
When life is tough and incomes are low, or jobs are scarce, fretting about
things you cannot influence becomes a less affordable luxury.
Most polls are to sway public opinion, not measure it.
A poll that wanted to measure what people truly thought about environmental issues would ask:
#1. Would you pay twice as much for your water if it contained half the parts per trillion natural background of arsenic? of mercury?
#2 Would you pay twice as much for your electricity to fund useless mitigation measures for a harmless trace gas?
to fulfill renewable mandates for equipment made by well-connected political donors?
#3 Would you put up with frequent electrical blackouts in order to get rid of coal-fired plants?
#4 Would you pay twice as much for gasoline and stand in line for hours to buy a meager ration from the few stations left open, in order to get rid of our automobile addiction?
#5. Would you pay twice as much property tax in order to fund a windmill farm next door?
#6. Do you think that the annual slaughter of millions of birds and bats, and dozens of windmill workers, is OK for windmills, when oil companies are fined for a single bird?
#7 Did you know that wind power requires 100% fossil fuel backup that costs twice as much as fossil-fuel baseline?
#8. Did you know that the asynchronous nature of solar and wind power make grid crashes more likely?
#9 Did you know that ethanol uses more energy than it makes?
that it destroys small marine engines?
that it causes people to starve and rain forests to be eradicated?
That’s certainly part of it. But most is because it’s not something to worry about as much now. We’ve made great progress is cleaning up the environment and keeping it that way. Is everything perfect? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But I wish we’d stop downplaying the success we’ve achieved in fighting real pollution.
Reblogged this on TaJnB | TheAverageJoeNewsBlogg and commented:
Due to the actions of Climate Change extremists, polls like these will continue to decline.
An indication that citizens’ average intelligence is increasing?
There is, unfortunately, another way of looking at this survey. If concern about “Pollution of drinking water” and “Air Pollution” is down, it can be because the Obama EPA is now in charge and “we” no longer NEED to worry about it — it’s being handled.
What I find astounding is that 72% of the population worried about “Pollution of Drinking Water” in 2000! Ok, maybey 1970 I’d buy, but 2000? 3 people in 4 “worried about drinking water?”
And with all the fracking hoopla today that concern is DOWN from 2000 to 2012? Miind-boggling!
al gore used the global warming theory to trick the unsuspecting american society into paranoia. the truth is hes still angry about the election loss so this is his undying revenge. ong after hes dead people will still be conversating this global warming theory.
There are real environmental issues indeed, spilling out wast quantities of toxic stuff over residential areas being the first one. Like the red sludge flood in Hungary. The company running the failed facility was utterly irresponsible, for they did know the dam was cracking. It could even be seen on satellite images taken a week before the disaster.
And of course, they did have neither liability insurance nor enough capital in their venture to make up for the damages, so the financial loss was split up between general taxpayers and those who suffered directly.
And it is not a unique event, happens every now and then all over the globe.
Therefore we urgently need a multilateral international treaty on compulsory industrial liability insurance. It can’t be restricted to a single jurisdiction or even a region, because in that case it would simply drive industry out. However, until non-toxic non-polluting agents (like carbon dioxide) get removed from the list of pollutants, there is no hope whatsoever to have one, because insurance companies are not fools. Cost of imaginary damages, unlike that of real ones, is incalculable.
There was alwasy been a great risk that should the AGW scare fall it would take a whole load of otherwise good enviromental concerns down with it . Although bad news for everone , its understandable , the hicthing of so many enviromently wagons to the AGW funding honey pot and the poltical scare that has grown around it , has meant that its become hard for lots of people to see the difference bewteen this and other issues.
It may even be why some very poor sceince, like the Hockey stick, gets so strongly defended by the eco’s. Like a pocker player that is all in they can only win or lose the lot so they MUST support ‘the cause’ for fear of losing all the support they got from the public , for this piublic will not forgive the lies and the BS, the insults and the waste of money that is ‘the causes ‘ legarcy .
This is a sticky one. We cannot do science by popularity. Just as the claims of “ninety-something percent of scientists agree with ” doesn’t make it true, a poll of ‘ordinary’ people, many of whom who likely know next-to-nothing about an issue, doesn’t make that issue less important. It just makes it that much harder to do real, meaningful, and unbiased science to get to the best possible answer. If The Team would have just embraced the idea of skepticism, and actively sought the aid of skeptics in validating (or not) their hypotheses, we might have had meaningful answers years ago.
I think we have the Jor-El effect going. The heroic figure who is the only one who can see the disaster that looms large, with all other mocking him. The difference here on Earth is the skeptics, or a decent number of them, are not mocking, they are doing the real “science job” of looking for errors and trying to duplicate results. The Jor-Els of Earth have responded poorly when their authority was questioned, and diminished their cause in the process.
@Paul Westhaver
That depends upon your definition of “Clean”.
Am I willing to pay for distilled water? No. If 1000 ppb Hg in fish is safe to eat, than a couple of bbp Hg in cheap drinking water might be a bargain worth making and a leve of zero is not necessary.
Do I want air at minimum haze and 350 ppm of CO2 if the price I pay is no electricity? Again, No.
There is a balance to all things practical. Purity is in the realm of religion.
I’m concerned about “the concerned”.
What will become of them?
Politically… Getting behind the AGW alarmism cause has been good – because of the high level of commitment from the believers. But as this moves down, and the disbelief increases, then political campaigning will adjust.
Quite possible concern about these issues is declining in the rich, developed world because we have successfully addressed and ameliorated so many of them. Life got better. We don’t need to stay worried about these things. Pity they are so quickly replaced by other worries.
Nice if they asked why they are less worried than previously.
Air without CO2 is like distilled water without a trace of minerals. Try drinking the latter for an extended period and see where that gets you. Remove all the CO2 from the atmosphere and see where that gets us.
Hey, I’m not worried about global warming either!
This will really anger the EPA and the Obama administration. Expect them to punish business and drivers even more for the insolence of the American public.