A non panicked public says “where’s the fire”? Amazingly, “Global Warming” scores a ZERO in the latest ABC News poll.
ABC and the Washington Post polled Americans about the most important issue to them in the upcoming elections. The economy ranked #1 with 41%, Iraq #2 with 18%, Health Care #3 with 7%, Terrorism/National Security #4 with 5%, Immigration and Ethics followed with 4%, Education and Morals with 2%, Environment and Global Warming continue to receive a 0%.
See full size table here
(Direct link to ABC Poll, page 6 has global warming zero result) http://www.abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1063a4EconomyandIraq.pdf
h/t to ICECAP and reader Mike Bryant.
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The 41% worried about the economy may better represent the number worried about man-made global warming insofar as postulated carbon taxes are going to add quite some pain… but perhaps they have not bridged that gap?
Or have; and simply ignored the climate question, figuring they had already answered that in the “Economy” box.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/04/20/do2002.xml
Amazing.
The politicans need to pour more money into TV ads.
With a little luck, algore’s $300 million ad campaign will end up just one big Flush.
This means there is hope the farce will end. My greatest concern is the duping of the masses.
The specific question was: “Thinking ahead to the November presidential election, what is the single most important issue in your choice for president?”
Given that all three of the remaining candidates are basically on the same page with respect to global warming, even if a few people thought it was the single most important issue (though I doubt even that number is very big), it’s not one that distinguishes between the candidates.
The Gore adds I’ve seen so far only sideswipe the issue. They “agree” on “caring about the planet”, then having done all that, the closing line says something about “solving” the “climate” issue.
If they wanted to make a real impact, they should have tried the shock and awe approach, maybe?
If global cooling hits the number one issue will be how to survive! Global warming was a long term threat with political solutions, a cooler world caused by changes in the sun’s behaviour has no political solutions and it will become a scramble for food resources with instability in the poorer countries as they lose out big time to the richer players.
I hope you are all wrong which seems like wishful thinking, the climate has never been stable from one century to the next, why should our run of luck go on forever?
Looks like AGW fell from “asterisk” (between 0.5% and 0.0%) in February to “absolute zero” in May.
Ouch. How humbling to not even rate a lowly asterisk.
Pierre: Note the overwhelming trend in ther comments to that article. c. 10-to-1 on the skeptic side.
Perhaps the “climate” in the “WAllies” is creating a pressure buildup that will cause an explosive intellectual counter-reaction. Maybe THAT’s the GCM model that will prove out.
In my view, Algore’s ad campaign is indicative of panic.
The data from the Sun and Ocean, the steady stream of new papers, projects like SurfaceStations.org, and Polls like this one are all picking up. More and more people are clueing in to the fact that we don’t know exactly how climate mechanisms work, but certainly many indicators point to the Sun and the Pacific Ocean as far greater drivers of climate than mankind.
As the temperature has trended downwards, and we’ve had a record cool winter, most people are relying on their own empirical judgment. And so if you are Algore, and you’ve staked your reputation, and a whole lot of Green Business on your weak hypothesis, you certainly have no choice but to double-down, or even $300 Million down to to try and save your ship. And while you are at it, shut out the press, etc.
All signs point to Algore eclipsing humpty-dumpty in the very new future. We won’t just have egg on his face, he will be swimming in a sea of egg.
BTW, let me also state that there appears to also have been a shift in overall anti-AGW tactic to focus more on the computer models. And this is the exactly correct tack in bringing their hypothesis down. They cannot deny that all of their claims are based on these models. The models are everything to them. So by continually focusing on the models, and asking them to defend the models, pointing out the models weakness, etc. it will have a maximum impact. It’s very instructive to to simply play what-if with their models. Keep the models in the spotlight. Let’s run live on-air simulations with their models, and show what happens when positive feedback is dialed back. Do it with a fancy multi-gesture interface and colored isobars. Let their methods defend or not defend themselves.
And lets ask those who have not yet published their models, to do so. It’s easy to then say, but what-if we simply dial back this positive feedback variable here? Then what happens? And in every case, the crisis disappears. And this is intuitive simply by looking at climate history. There are plenty of historical natural CO2 emissions from volcanic and other activity that did not produce a runaway effect. So why model that now?
Because the goal is not a conservative approach to energy usage, nor protection of mankind or the earth. The goal is political control.
It’s almost as if the rubes learned the difference between science and political pandering back in 7th grade.
Maybe the public school system isn’t so bad afterall.
Could the American people be much much smarter than the warmers think?
Re: Anonymous
Why more money into TV adds? To convince people we’re heading for disaster when we’re not? Gore continues to do that although for practical purposes the hypothesis that increases in CO2 drive increases in global temperatures has been falsified. It’s the “unintended consequences” of “mitigating” carbon emissions by foolishly making ethanol out of food crops that are the real disaster in this story.
Seems like the American People are smarter than some give them credit for being.
I have noticed that Al” Incontinent Truth” and Obama’s political ads both use flashing images with subliminal messaging. Not particularly adept advertising,
but they are spending money like water on them.
It seems, therefore, that the next big growth industry is subliminal marketing for the message-content-challenged. Forget all this math and science stuff, I’m opening a PR firm where we make cheap but flashy ads filled with 0.5 second imagery. Going to call it Hippy, Zippy, and Trippy Mrktg. Does anyone have Al’s ph number?
Clearly the rhetoric needs to be ramped up a lot! Forget “global warming”, “climate change”, etc., much too tame and wishy-washy. “Climate crisis”, “climate emergency”, hmm, better but still not urgent enough. “Climate apocalypse”? “Climate immediate eco-mega-death”? “Climate unstoppable immanent global damnation and eternal hellfire”? I don’t know, they’ll need to think of something – fast!
… in recent underwater excavations, a journalist’s diary was found among the ruins of the sunken Titanic.
Turns out he was gauging the public mood on the boat. People had a lot of things on their minds, but the thing that eventually finished most of them (including the journalist) off – the ship hitting an iceberg and sinking – was not among them.
(snark)
Seriously: the fact that the American public is not worried about this, is not exactly a sound logical argument for the case that we *should not* worry – as you try to imply.
Given the American public’s recent track record in identifying what’s going to hit it (dot-com bubble, 2000 elections, 9/11, Iraq, housing bubble) – this is actually in itself a reason to worry more.
Gotta agree with Gary G here. Maybe that $300M will put some people to work without changing anybody’s mind.
Well, it’s no wonder. Today’s temperature is 14 degrees below “normal” for this date and tonite they are calling for the possibility of record low temperatures … which means below freezing … in San Jose California in late April.
In the 12 years I have lived here I have never seen such a cold, late spring. In fact, this might be the latest freezing temperature I have ever experienced in my life anywhere I have lived.
Much as I admire Americans’ apparent resilience to GW propaganda, surveys like this are a crock, because they allow respondents to pick only one issue from a fixed list. But very few people are single issue fanatics.
Imagine a survey that asked people to name the single most important thing to them. You would get things like “my family”, “my job”, “my faith”, “my boyfriend”, perhaps a few “the planet”. “The upcoming election” would probably get a zero: does that mean no one in America cares about it?
Maybe the public school system isn’t so bad afterall.
Oh, yes it is.
All this shows is that the PSS has been about as successful in teaching AGW as it has been in teaching math.
Al’s ph number?
8.3? (He’s pretty base.)
It rsanked where it ranked for a reason: people are not worried about such nonsense despite the constant media sky-is-falling bombardment. This is great news, unless you’re a carbie.