A new survey has been released by Yale in cooperation with George Mason University. In it, 74% surveyed say “global warming is affecting weather in the United States”.
Personally, I blame Seth Borenstein, Kevin Trenberth, Bill McKibben, Joe Romm and Brad Johnson for elevating and continually propagating this lie. As readers may recall, the journal Nature came out with a strong editorial against this sort of thinking, saying it is unsupportable by the current science.
Nonetheless, these propagandists are going full steam ahead in pushing it anyway. They are preying on the psychological weakness of short term weather memory coupled with the normal human fear of storms, part of our makeup. Almost everyone has astraphobia (fear of lightning and thunder) to some degree until we are reassured there is nothing to fear. Now, these people are turning that fear back on even though the data shows otherwise. This tactic really isn’t any different than making people in the middle ages believe witches caused bad weather. We think we’ve come so far, yet there are still those propagandists who prey on primal fears for the advantage they bring.
Here are some of the talking points, followed by the press release and questions:
• Asked about six recent extreme weather events in the United States, majorities say global warming made each event “worse.” Americans were most likely to connect global warming to the record high temperatures in the summer of 2012 (73%).
• Americans increasingly say weather in the U.S. has been getting worse over the past several years (61%, up 9 percentage points since March).
• A majority of Southerners (56%) say the weather in their local area has been getting worse over the past few years. Half of Midwesterners (50%) say this as well.
• Half of Americans recall unusual weather events in their local area over the past year (52%).
• Six in ten Americans (61%) recall unusual weather events occurring elsewhere in the United States in the past year (other than their own local area), perhaps reflecting extensive media attention to the record-setting drought, high temperatures, and strong storms in the summer of 2012, as well as the unusually warm winter of 2011-2012.
• Half of Americans (51%) say that droughts have become more common in their local area over the past few decades, an increase of 5 points since last spring. This national change was driven primarily by a major shift of opinions in the Midwest (66%, up 25 points since March), which was hit hardest by the summer drought.
• A majority of Americans (58%) say that heat waves have become more common in their local area over the past few decades, up 5 points since March, with especially large increases in the Northeast and Midwest (+12 and +15, respectively).
• More than twice as many Midwesterners say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave (83%, up 48 points since March) or drought (81%, up 55 points) in the past year.
• Northeasterners are more likely to say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave (52%, up 10 points since March) or drought in the past year (23%, up 6 points).
• Southerners who say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave increased to 61 percent, from 50 percent in March.
• An increasing number of Americans in the West say they experienced either an extreme heat wave (49%, up 13 points since March) or drought (41%, up 10 points).
• One in five Americans (20%) says they suffered harm to their health, property, and/or finances from an extreme heat wave in the past year, a 6 point increase since March. In addition, 15 percent say they suffered harm from a drought in the past year, up 4 points.
GROWING MAJORITY SAYS GLOBAL WARMING IS AFFECTING U.S. WEATHER
Poll Shows Americans Believe Global Warming Is Making Extreme Weather Worse
October 9, 2012 – (New Haven, CT) A new national survey finds that 74 percent of Americans say “global warming is affecting weather in the United States” – up five percentage points since March 2012. Likewise, 73 percent of Americans say that global warming made the record-high temperatures of the summer of 2012 worse, while 61 percent say weather in the U.S. has been getting worse over the past several years, up nine points since March.
“Americans have just experienced two years of record-setting extreme weather events, and are increasingly connecting extreme weather in the United States to global warming,” said Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz of Yale University.
Half of Americans (52 percent) recall unusual weather events that have occurred in their own local area over the past year, while 61 percent recall unusual weather events that have occurred elsewhere in the U.S. Half of Americans (51 percent) say that droughts have become more common in their local area, an increase of five points since March, 2012. This national change was driven primarily by a major shift of opinions in the Midwest where two out of three respondents said droughts have become more common (66 percent, up 25 points since March).
58 percent of Americans also say heat waves have become more common in their own local area, up five points since this March. In addition, 20 percent of Americans say they personally suffered harm to their health, property, and/or finances from an extreme heat wave in the past year, a six-point increase since March.
“Extreme weather is clearly having a serious impact on millions of Americans, though the impacts are different in different parts of the country,” said co-investigator Dr. Edward Maibach at George Mason University.
In the Midwest, a large majority (71 percent, up 21 points since March) says extreme weather has caused more harm to crops over the past few decades. In addition, large majorities of Midwesterners say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave (83 percent, up 48 points since March) or drought (81 percent, up 55 points) in the past year.
In the South, a majority (56 percent) says the weather in their local area has been getting worse over the past few years, while a majority of Southerners (61 percent) say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave in the past year, up 11 points since March.
In the Northeast, 40 percent say that droughts have become more common in their local area (up 15 points since March), while a majority of Northeasterners (52 percent) say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave in the past year, a 10-point increase since March.
In the West, 49 percent say that extreme weather is causing more forest fires (up seven points since March). Forty-nine percent of Americans in the West also say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave in the past year (up 13 points since March), or a drought (41 percent, up 10 points).
The data are from a nationally representative survey of 1,061 American adults, ages 18 and older, conducted from August 31 – September 12, 2012. Respondents are members of GfK Knowledge Networks’s KnowledgePanel®, an online panel of members recruited using probability-based sampling methods (random digit dial and address-based sampling). Key demographic variables were weighted to match US Census Bureau norms. Margins of error (at the 95 percent confidence level) for the populations discussed are as follows: Total: +/- 3 percentage points; Northeast: +/- 7 percentage points; Midwest: +/- 6 percentage points; South: +/-5 percentage points; West: +/- 6 percentage points.
The report: Extreme Weather and Climate Change in the American Mind comes from an ongoing national study, Climate Change in the American Mind, by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. The study is funded by the Surdna Foundation, the 11th Hour Project and the Grantham Foundation.
In addition to Dr. Leiserowitz, principal investigators included Geoff Feinberg and Peter Howe of Yale University and Drs. Edward Maibach and Connie Roser-Renouf of George Mason University.
==============================================================
Here’s the survey: http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/Extreme-Weather-Public-Opinion-September-2012.pdf
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I think Pielke Jr put the lie to this story using good old fashion data to show extreme weather is in decline.
Once upon a time, the USA were only 3% of the world…
On a more serious note, this all shows how alarmists feed on fear, and quite literally, on dead people. Zombies around us.
The boy who cried wolf is now the boy who cried Wolf! Panther! Bear! Cougar!
How long will the villagers put up with it?
So Global warming morphed to Climate Change which has now evolved into Extreme Weather.
The lies have to get bigger and bigger, the little boys have to scream “Wolf! “Wolf!” louder and longer, but when their grift finally collapses it will be a total and complete end to the Great Con Job.
And they know it. Which explain their ever more desperate claims and fear mongering hysteria.
This is devolving into Newspeak. We have always–or never–been at war with Eastasia….
Bogey man?
REPLY: In the USA we call it “boogeyman” – Anthony
Just watched Bill Mckibben on the Bill Maher show: we’re going to lose Ohio (for argricultural purposes), storms are getting worse and invoking the precautionary principle all in about 4 minutes.
This is actually very good news for skeptics. Climate Change is such a ill defined phrase that everything is climate change. You can’t argue against actual climate change because the climate is always changing.
Now, it they move to extreme weather, then we’ve won. Tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, floods, ….. none of them show any real positive trends. These things, while some are still vague, are more measurable. We are aware of their statistical acrobatics and can spot them fairly easy.
Point and laugh time!
A majority of Americans (58%) say that heat waves have become more common in their local area over the past few decades, up 5 points since March, with especially large increases in the Northeast and Midwest (+12 and +15, respectively).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In other words, a single heat wave over a period of a few weeks caused a change in people’s perception of how common heat waves have been over the last few decades. There lies the difference between perception and facts, which is why we started keeping records in the first place. It has never been any different.
The rest of the survey is just more of the same.
Time to defund NCAR.
I know of no one who would reply or respond to a survey such as this. A very basic question: Who does?
The survey questions are not only loaded, but also of trivial merit. After a hot summer, with drought conditions over much of the country, a September survey is likely to show that more people think it has been getting hotter or dryer in recent years, than one taken in March before the onset of these conditions.
Public opinion often has no connection to fact, because it is possible to fool some of the people some of the time, especially when this kind of flimsy work will be waved about by the MSM to give a needed boost to the bogus bandwagon of the climate alarmists, and its huge train of misguided zealots embarked on a kind of self-righteous green crusade, shepherded by the various watermelon celebrities, organizations, and tyrants, and not likely to give up easily on their imagined quest to save the world.
Nevertheless, the CAGW bandwagon is getting a bit wobbly on its wheels, and a couple have been completely shot off. The mob in train will have to work a little harder now to keep the whole scam going, and Dr. Leiserowitz’s survey will be fodder for the green horde.
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I recently talked to someone that says the climate is worse because this person couldn’t remember getting sunburned as a kid back in the ’80s, but regularly gets sunburned now. Strange, because I can remember back when I was a kid back in the ’60s getting sunburned every summer. I and my friends would all get sunburned. We even had competitions to see who could pull the biggest piece of dead skin off in one piece. Looking back; I remember tornadoes, blizzards, heatwaves, cold waves, hail storms, heavy snow winters, light snow winters, droughts, warm winters, frigid winters, hot summers, cool summers, etc. In short, I see nothing different now from when I was a kid. Are these people in the pols so stupid that they believe what their told over what they lived?
Hands up! Who remembers the thirties?
Not bogeyman, but could this be more like; “Bogus, man”?
I was just thinking the same thing myself Bob. Interesting how ALL the hysterical warmists are going for the disaster angle, as they have given up on the “ICE” disaster as that didn’t happen and the seas that did not rise to their liking. So what is left except more hysterics about the weather. Can anyone remember precisely what last year’s weather was like. Have a guess, write it down and then get the facts and see how one fares.
Bob … here’s how:
http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/knpanel/index.html
I would say these folks are reaching an Alex Jones paranoia level of fear and hysteria generation, and that’s not easy to do …
Alex Jones is the same nut who on Dec 31 1999 was broadcasting ‘the collapse of the world’ ALA Orsen Wells “War of the Worlds” style (but Alex carried on as it was *real* to him! versus with Wells it was a ‘show’, a put-on) … but of course, none of what Alex Jones portrayed as occurring was true.
Some of these people need fear in order to prosper, in order to peddle their ‘brand’ of news and information (as well as profitable book, video/ DVD and ancillary product sales). Now, whether this behavior is an expression of their desperate need for attention (pathological) or just a cold-calculation economic/business model decision to explain their modus operandi – it is difficult to judge or tell any difference …
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James Sexton says:
October 9, 2012 at 9:31 am
This is actually very good news for skeptics. Climate Change is such a ill defined phrase that everything is climate change. You can’t argue against actual climate change because the climate is always changing.
Now, it they move to extreme weather, then we’ve won. Tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, floods, ….. none of them show any real positive trends. These things, while some are still vague, are more measurable. We are aware of their statistical acrobatics and can spot them fairly easy.
Point and laugh time!
Sorry James – that doesn’t work, facts can – but ingrained perceptions are not easy to change with facts.
Back in 1976 in UK there was a long and severe drought – unlike the one in 2012 (“the wettest drought in living memory”) the ’76 drought only ended late summer when the government appointed a ‘Minister for Drought’ and it started raining.
However, late that summer there were several domestic gas explosions. The press started attacking the gas companies for not maintaining their pipework and householders were warned repeatedly that subsidence due to dry weather was causing the older pipes to fracture leading to leaks and explosions. Domestic gas explosions seemed to be front page news almost every other day. Eventually, a more attacking interviewer on one of the more serious TV news analysis programs started a combative interview with a senior executive of what was then ‘the Gas Board’. He demanded to be told what the Gas Board was doing about the subsidence causing the large increase in domestic gas explosions and loss of life. The senior executive dryly responded that in reality for the year of 1976 and for each month – gas explosions were far lower than normal. The reason that they made headlines was because they made headlines the first explosion being reported on a slow news day in late summer, triggered interest and the news became self fulfilling.
We have the same psychology here – the ‘if you repeat a lie often enough people will start believing it’ (tm Goebels). Removing the public perception that the drought had caused gas explosions was not achieved by giving them the facts. More by lack of interest – as the headlines no longer sold papers different fads and nine-day wonders took over and the explosions dropped out of sight. What we see with the alarmists is a continual battle to retain the headlines – so they move to more and more extreme positions. But showing they are wrong with facts won’t work. Perhaps get the media to start reporting alarmist twaddle – as alarmist twaddle just geared to get more tax money…. that would kill the perception stone dead overnight.
In the 50s my grandfather used to blame the crazy weather on the Russians. I suppose others once thought it was Zeus or something else manipulating weather. There has always been a weather bogeyman.
‘Extreme weather and climate change in the American mind’. That sounds about right, most of it is in the mind.
We’re lucky in the UK, whenever it’s been dry for a while the Met office declares a drought and it then rains for the next six months. By lucky I mean……
Con men make a living by preying on human nature. It is human nature to look for the “tiger in the grass” or analyze noise data and see patterns. In addition, we tend to remember 3 sigma events more than those closer to the means, so when the outlying points in the distribution occur, they tend to count those higher in our minds.
I think ‘extreme’ has been devalued. Everything is ‘extreme’ now.
Last time I looked, a scientific organization investigating climate change was supposed to
investigate, you know, climate change, not the opinions of citizens, few of which could tell you
whether it rained last Tuesday. Can never be too accurate measuring sheer ignorance, you know. Overall, the fact that this many people believe something patently untrue says a lot about the media in this country. As you can see, freedom of speech does not guarantee that truth will out. Media folks are either unwilling, or afraid to cover the subject with any competence. You can always take the view that we already knew the public to be woefully ignorant about a whole lot of things, especially when it involves science (they still believe you catch a cold by getting chilled or wet, something disproved in the 1920’s).
A more revealing question would be to ask how higher temperatures cause all these extreme
weather events. Or did the respondents know what the difference was between this heat wave and past heat waves? .Or past droughts? The fact that the survey was done by an organization out to prove climate change makes it suspect, as well. I’m sure that if there had been a lot of hurricanes lately, the emphasis would have been on them.
Is this some attempt at subliminal html?
Six paragraphs fron the end starts with “In the In the South, a majority (56 percent) says the weather in their local area has been getting worse”. The word “says” is showing in a different color (on firefox) and the source shows this:
What’s that all about then?