EXCERPTS FROM GALLUP – complete poll story here
PRINCETON, NJ — Although a majority of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is either correctly portrayed in the news or underestimated, a record-high 41% now say it is exaggerated. This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.
As recently as 2006, significantly more Americans thought the news underestimated the seriousness of global warming than said it exaggerated it, 38% vs. 30%. Now, according to Gallup’s 2009 Environment survey, more Americans say the problem is exaggerated rather than underestimated, 41% vs. 28%.
The trend in the “exaggerated” response has been somewhat volatile since 2001, and the previous high point, 38%, came in 2004. Over the next two years, “exaggerated” sentiment fell to 31% and 30%. Still, as noted, the current 41% is the highest since Gallup’s trend on this measure began in 1997.
…
Notably, all of the past year’s uptick in cynicism about the seriousness of global warming coverage occurred among Americans 30 and older. The views of 18- to 29-year-olds, the age group generally most concerned about global warming and most likely to say the problem is underestimated, didn’t change.
NOTE TO “thefordprefect”
“thefordprefect says:
The problem with you skeptics is you value your current lifestyle (= wealth) over the needs of the planet.
You know, this REALLY chaps my hide, especially since I’m doing a lot of green things myself, and have made major green contributions in the past.
I put solar on my home
I put solar on a local school, a 125 KW system
I drive an electric car for in-town use, an NEV
I once worked with weathercasters around the USA to promote “Arbor Day Weather Week” in response to Jim Hansen’s 1988 call to action at US congress. It ran in 1990 and 1991 and was sponsored by the National Arbor Day Foundation. Each year they reported about 250,000 tree were planted based on the program requests for seedlings.
And many others who frequent here have done green and conservation things as well. You’ve lumped everyone into your world view and hurled a faux pau of major proportions.
So “thefordprefect” whoever the hell you are (just another anonymous coward making unsubstantiated claims) let me make this clear: apologize for your broad generalization as “we don’t care about the planet” or get the hell off my blog.
I’m not interested in debating the issue, I’m not interested in your excuses. I’m not interested if you are offended. Apologize contritely or leave, those are the terms.
-Anthony Watts
UPDATE: I have been in email contact, and I suggested this would be an appropriate response:
The person who is “thefordprefect” preferred not to issue a simple apology (such as the one I suggested or something similar) for the statement posted, and thus will not be posting on WUWT anymore.
– Anthony
thefordprefect says:
“The problem with you skeptics is you value your current lifestyle (= wealth) over the needs of the planet.”
What sophistry. What delusional pretentious self-serving tripe. What typical empty leftist posturing.
Leave the slogans behind next time with the unicorn and pixie dust distributing “progressives”. This isnt “Firedog Lake”.
I always pose the same essential question, but the replies are always hand-waving nonsense. It’s always “do as I say not as I do”.
Of course the REAL Ford Prefect would never be so pretentious…
The real problem, Anthony, with this guy’s charge, is that it’s a trap. He assumes that he (and others of his ilk) know what “the needs of the planet” are.
We’re all for conservation, like Mom and apple pie, but we’re not all for stopping progress in its tracks, or for giving up the enormous technological and productive achievements of modern civilization, which is what the ‘greenies’ seem to want.
In my view what’s good for ‘the planet’ and what’s good for the human race are the same thing. And what’s good for humanity is continued progress, economic growth, and the expansion of the great frontier to the solar system and the stars. ‘The planet’ is our birthplace, and we should treat it gently and with respect, because it’ll always be our home. But we can’t let obsessive neo-Luddites and neo-Marxists damp down the flame of human development and progress.
The continued development of human society is going to take energy, lots and lots of it. The ‘greens’ want us to stop using fossil fuels, and anything else we can mine from the Earth’s crust; they want us to retrench, admit defeat, and hunker down to a miserable third-world existence—except for the privileged few, of course, who will lord it over the rest of us.
Don’t fall for it. Conservation means common sense and sound stewardship of our birthplace Earth; it does not mean giving up the future.
/Mr Lynn
Anthony Watts, Hear! Hear! I wish I could be a town crier and draw everyone’s attention to the “line-in-the-sand” you have drawn to protect the discussion– not that all readers of WUWT won’t take notice anyway. I believe we need more of this limit setting for trolls, not less. As a naive innocent I began on the internet at the beginning of last year under the moniker “thoughtfulvetting”. During the next number of months I experienced the violence, the calculated hijacking of sincere, intelligent blogs. I have since then been trying to find those blogs that will tolerate open discussion (representative democracy and science in my book) but will brook no calculated destruction of the thread’s discussion. I have found more of my ideal on WUWT than most other places. I applaud your efforts.
@thefordprefect
Re “The problem with you skeptics is you value your current lifestyle (= wealth) over the needs of the planet.”
Hmmm…. sir, your ignorance is showing. You are way out of line.
I am a skeptic, as I have written before on WUWT, and I emphatically deny that which is demonstrably false in the AGW mantra. I do value my lifestyle, yet that is consistent with achieving the greatest good for the greatest number on the planet.
So, let me just state how my colleagues in various engineering fields, and I to a small extent, have made the globe a safer, healthier, less polluted place, extended life expectancies, and that sort of thing. First, I worked as a chemical engineer in the petroleum and petrochemical industry for 25 years. I am an attorney now, but that is another story.
During those 25 years, I worked first in the chlorine and caustic industry, manufacturing chlorine and sodium hydroxide and hydrogen from salt, water, and electricity. Chlorine is one of modern man’s most important manufactures, valued for its use as a bleach, a cleansing agent, a disinfectant for water, and it greatly improves health all around the world where it is used.
Chlorine is also a major ingredient in plastic, especially PVC and other types of plastic pipe. Such pipe has made plumbing cost-effective in much of the world, greatly improving health. A high-grade of PVC plastic is used extensively in medicine, as an example, to hold a fluid that is fed into a patient’s veins (the IV bag), and the plastic tubing itself. The other major component of plastic comes from petrochemical plants, usually ethylene or propylene.
I cannot even begin to describe the innumerable medicines, drugs, and pharmaceuticals that are made from the petrochemicals we create in the big refineries and petrochemical plants. None of those would be possible if not for the ingenuity of chemists, chemical engineers, and a host of other highly educated and trained professionals.
The overall clean air of this planet is entirely due to petroleum and natural gas. Without them, the population would have choked to death or wheezed in coughing agony during a very short life-span.
Prior to oil use and natural gas, energy was provided by burning coal, and from animal power such as horses, mules, and oxen. The coal smoke and soot, and huge piles of poop left by those animals was a very great problem in cities, and made obsolete by gasoline, diesel, and electric motors. The poop dried, attracted flies, and created toxic dust particles when the wind blew. People inhaled that toxic, polluted air with every breath. But no more, thanks to oil and natural gas.
I could go on and on, describing the very low cost of almost all goods and services due to the extremely cheap energy provided by oil men, the refineries, and power plants. Transportation costs dropped dramatically across the board as trains grew faster, longer, and used less fuel per ton-mile. The same is true for large trucks, and ships.
I could also mention the low cost of food, whether grain or beef, pork, chicken, lamb, or the myriad of fruits and vegetables, all of which are very low-cost as a result of chemistry and chemical plants that produce fertilizers and herbicides. Engineers also design, build, and operate the efficient food processing plants that place low-cost groceries in the stores.
So, I invite you to do some reading, do some research, and find out the facts about what wealth does to improve the plight of the common man. Find out which countries in the world have a long waiting list before being allowed to enter to work or live or become a citizen. Find out which countries have good medical care, have sanitary water and dispose of waste in a sanitary manner, have sufficient food to eat that does not make the population sicken and die, and sufficient affordable energy to heat and cool their homes to a comfortable level.
I should know. As a chemical engineer, I traveled and worked in more than a dozen countries, from first-world (USA, Europe, Canada, Japan) to third-world (China, East Germany, Poland (pre-demise of Soviet Union), Brazil, Indonesia). I have seen it all, and did my part to improve much of it, along with my colleagues. I have suffered many bouts of intestinal illness in third-world locales.
After you improve your education, then come back and tell me I value my current lifestyle, wealth, over the needs of the planet. As Dr. Thomas Sowell (no relation) of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution has written, increasing prosperity is the only sure and lasting solution to poverty.
that Gallup poll even made it to the Canadian main stream media. In response, I posted this rant to Macleans Magazine (so far, it hasn’t shown up):
The question “Is the threat of climate change exaggerated” is misleading but symptomatic of the massive confusion and distortion of the issue by the Main Street Media, politicians, best-selling authors and a myriad of member-soliciting organizations. Climate change is one of the most important determinants of cultural evolutions – it has always shaped the rise and decline of civilizations, sometimes subtly, often very dramatically. Warmer periods typically have brought great advances that have then been followed by colder dark ages. Examples: the Roman Optimum, when the centurions crossed the practically glacier-free Alps to expand their Empire all over Europe; the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings settled Greenland and explored Atlantic Canada; and the Little Ice Age with hundred year wars, famines and more.
Today, the shrill claims “we need to stop/combat/fight climate change”, “the debate is over” and “the science is settled” are either opportunistic power grabs, orchestrated moneymaking schemes to exploit environmental guilt or well-meant apocalyptic confusions. If one uses such bellicose terms, wouldn’t it serve to define what kind of climate change is meant and who the enemy is that needs to be fought so urgently? The proponents of such dire rallying cries, be it President Obama, the hapless Stephane Dion or a multi-national environmental NGO, always mean anthropogenic or man-made climate change, brought on by this dastardly polluting life gas CO2. We all spew it into the atmosphere with each breath, trees absorb and respire it and we contribute it with abandon through our SUVs and coal-fired power stations.
Surely, these eco-warriors and Planet Earth saviors don’t mean to imply that we could change real, i.e. natural climate change? That we feeble humans could change the cosmic and planetary forces of solar storms, cosmic rays and their poorly understood interplay with that grand hot water bottle, the global ocean or that atmospheric blanket that keeps us at liveable temperatures? If they mean that, they are delusional – the true scientific facts are mounting despite that huge agenda-driven roller coaster. Kyoto has clearly demonstrated that it is a forum for “Hot Air” discussions and a waste of tax payers’ money to shuffle thousands of functionaries to exotic locales. The concept of global temperature changes of fractions of degrees is quite meaningless, as are the computer models that drive the craze. However, it does make sense trying to embrace better habitat stewardship and to understand Earth’s metabolism so that we can respond and adapt to natural climate change and further prosper – that requires objective science instead of agenda-driven doom-and-gloom clamoring.
In short, it’s time to stop the foolishness. Such opinion polls are starting to reveal that the populace is waking up. The efforts for Kyoto Two may run into turbulence – only nine months left. Time is now for concerted action towards some sanity, aimed at tackling real world issues.”
Danny Bloom (19:41:07) :
I guess we won’t be needing polar cities after all
Hey Danny,
I saw on your blog the virtual village in the snow, with the following caption:
“Entrance to climate retreat. Security will be very important. Who gets in, who is kept out?”
Interesting question, what’s the answer?
Hows the court case going by the way. 🙂
“thefordprefect says:
“The EU cap-and-trade system has operated well and has had little or no negative impact on the overall EU economy, according to an MIT analysis.
this article suggests jobs are being forced abroad damaging the EU”
Wake Up! and take off the blinders Mr Ford. Look behind the curtain to who is manipulating the media. Global warming (attack on energy) and the attacks on farming are about money and control.
Kissinger: “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”
The EU is systematically removing farmers from their land
This is what Maurice Strong (advisor to the world bank) is up to: <a href=”http://www.doublestandards.org/sap1.html” double standards=”
Remember the Clinton’s are connected to Monsanto and Rosa Delauro’s hubby Stan Greenberg is a media consultant for Global warming, Monsanto, and political campaigns of people like Tony Blair. he is a globalist too.
Here are good general history/back ground pieces about the grab for the food supply
This is Rosa Delauros bill to get rid of US farmers.
David Rockefeller, Maurice Strong, Al Gore, the Clintons and the ultimate in media hype, Stan Greenberg are playing all of us for fools