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.
from the article:
Currently the gas is present in the atmosphere in extremely small quantities of about 1.5 parts per trillion,
Thanks for another cracking thread here! especially thanks to E M Smith, BillBodell, Aron, and Roy fOMR.
I was nauseated and ashamed by Monboit’s latest “How to spot a CC denier”, that was mentioned here. Interesting thing is, he says Monckton’s science had been falsified whereas the opposite was what happened, and the Guardian had to print a retraction to Monbiot’s stuff (Monbiot was doffing his cap to Gavin Schmidt as the authority). So Monbiot is – well well – in denial of this memory. See my Primer on this interesting and IMO rather vital story.
However, the good news is that the comments were hot off the mark in saying what rot, with quite a bit of intelligence at times.
Somewhat OT:
Fred Singer will be at an “open meeting at Harvard (at 8PM in Sever 203) on March 12.” Sever Hall is in the Harvard Yard.
I don’t know what sort of ‘open meeting’ this will be, nor whether there has been any publicity, but I hope to be there, and would urge any readers of this blog in the Boston area to attend as well.
Could a moderator give this announcement any more prominence? Many who might be interested won’t see it buried down in this long thread.
/Mr Lynn
@ur momisugly Shawn Whelan
I am already aware of all the WUWT threads on the subject and the oyher sites you mention. (Thanks) But since the March article with Walt Meier I had thought that now that images were back on line, that the data was correct. The point I was making was that there seems to be a big problem with the mask. The USA seems to have carried out large scale land reclammation over night.
76,800 ppt Co2e in 50 years.
So in Fifty Years these little boogers will contribute almost as much “warming” as .0768 PPM of CO2. Less than One-Tenth of One Part per Million.
Whooopee!
I would like to point out a pattern in the poll that hasn’t been mentioned. The skepticism previously peeked in 2004, ann election year. To me that means that some of the responses to the poll are politically motivated.
Lord Monckton was an advisor to Thatchers government (and a newspaper man).
According to Lawson (her Chancellor) in “The Great Global Warming Swindle” she poured the first millions into Carbon AGW in an effort to gain energy independence from the Middle East – get more nuclear power – defeat the miners – and bash CND.
I’m not surprised that the ICCC was no covered.
thefordprefect (05:25:33) :
Any AGW “evidence” put up for debate is always battered with the same “its cyclical just wait and see” the trouble is it will be too late if we wait.
I’ve been hearing that since this theory was proposed, “the situation is too dire, we can’t wait for evidence”. Reminds me of getting rushed at a used car dealership, “We’ll discount it now, but you have to buy RIGHT NOW.” Some of us are not fooled by such tactics. Show me. Don’t spin tales of possible tragedy… show me. Make predictions that work. Many AGW predictions made from the 80s onwards have had time to fail… and they have.
Proof. Not chicken-little alarmism. Proof, please.
Meanwhile we have counter-proof. Ten years of cooling/no rise in global temps, seas NOT rising rapidly, oceanographers projecting 30 more years of cooling. When does weather become climate again? How much counter-proof is necessary to prove a negative?
So it is OK for you to consume without thought for the future.
Yes. I can even breathe out CO2 without wondering if I should kill myself.
…and that’s where these alarmist policies seem to be heading. Death. Cap and trade and taxes causing skyrocketing energy costs, causing the poor to freeze to death in ever-harsher winters.
The graph in last year’s Gallup poll article, not shown in this year’s article, “% saying the effects of GW has already begun” shows 1998 Democrats 46% Republicans 47%; 2008 Democrats 76% Republicans 41%. An extraordinary divergence.
What happened to spike opinions in the years 2004 and 1999?
Most revealing to me is the sudden uptick of the “Independent” percentage saying “news of GW is exaggerated” from 33% last year to 44% this year. Could we be seeing a Hockey Stick starting to form????????
From the link Paul C gave: Crisis? What crisis?
It seems pertinent to retort that last Wednesday, the debating society of St Andrews University debated the motion “This house believes global warming is a global crisis”. It was defeated.
We won on “truth”, and climate realists always would win on “truth” in an open debate.
This demonstrates what can happen when people – including those in Scotland – are exposed to both sides of the global warming debate.
RICHARD S COURTNEY
Longfield
Falmouth, Cornwall
Way to go, Richard!
This is why they refuse to debate. They know their “science” is weak, and they have to rely on appeals to authority (IPCC, Hansen, etc.), and on the much-vaunted “consensus”.
I do hope there will be a video of the debate.
DavidK (04:54:58) :
No wonder this blog site is seen as the epiphany of the close-mindedness of the deny and delay crowd.
I’m outa here.
Ta-ta, AGWer troll. You and your ilk are obviously not interested in science. “The debate is over” after all, right?
I believe the word you wanted, in your haste to hurl your AGW-inspired invective here and run was “epitome”.
An epiphany would be what you might have (and perhaps, miraculously someday will) if you were to awaken from your AGW-induced intellectual sleep and realized that all that you thought you “knew” about C02, and man’s effect on climate was in fact completely false.
“thefordprefect”: “Exactly, the writing criticise others research they add nothing to the debate – no new evidence that AGW is false.
Any AGW “evidence” put up for debate is always battered with the same “its cyclical just wait and see” the trouble is it will be too late if we wait.”
Evidently you a) like to totally distort and fail to understand what I said and b) have no clue how science works. First off, it is not “criticizing other’s research” which I was referring to (though there is a lot of garbage out there) but in fact presenting arguments that the evidence of claim AGW is weak and based on nothing more than an absence of alternative explanation, which no longer holds water anyway, and that things which other studies take for granted are unfounded assumptions. I don’t know who or where you “debate” or see debates, but arguments against AGW are much more than “its cyclical just wait and see”. And, as far as not having time to wait, perhaps you could present one policy-just one-that would make a dent in AGW while still allowing society to meet growing energy demand? Oh, you can’t, because no such policy exists. Tough luck for you.
I personally believe that the burning of fossil fuels such as coal are one of the only real things that mankind has done to benefit the earth as a whole. The total amount of available carbon and biomass on the surface of the earth has shrunk dramatically since the Carboniferous, Jurrasic and Triasic epochs. Billions of tons of carbon have been buried in the earth and lost to the surface, and as a result the total biomass of the earth is smaller than it once was.
Mankind has been liberating some of that lost carbon back to the atmosphere and surface of the earth, making it available once again for life to utilize. This will increase the biomass of the surface and allow life to last longer than it otherwise would have. Volcanism is the only other real source of C02 restoration to the surface, and over time volcanism is slowing down as the earth’s core cools. The was a lot more volcanism during the carboniferous epoch, which was why there was so much more carbon available.
I find it ironic that carbon based lifeforms would go around spouting non-sense about their “carbon footprint” and worrying about carbon emissions, when in fact they wouldn’t even exist without that very carbon they fret about.
glen martin (06:29:43) :
I would like to point out a pattern in the poll that hasn’t been mentioned. The skepticism previously peeked in 2004, ann election year. To me that means that some of the responses to the poll are politically motivated.
There is no indication of peaks in 2000 or 2008, so how is that a pattern?
In my opinion the movement in the polls from “underestimated” to “exaggerated” is simply media vs. practical experience and our practical experience of current weather is beginning to win out. If 2009+ temps jump up movement will probably reverse. People are too preoccupied to delve deeply into the science of climate change but the experience of weather cannot be avoided.
OT: I am not a scientist but I have tried to read some of the scientific papers on both sides of the AGW question. Generally, can you use computer model results to test a scientific hypothesis in the classical sense? What is the role of computer models in science?
The “Cap and Trade nonsense” has not been voted on yet by the US Congress
Lucy Skywalker (06:23:23) :
See my Primer
Hi Lucy, the primer is great. Slightly OT, but noticed your co2 temperature lag graphs with an R^2 of @0.5
Try this
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2001/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/from:1971/to:2001/mean:12/detrend:40/offset:-326.5/scale:0.16
OT our dear friend Sen. Kerry is blabbing on again. So apparently we’re commiting suicide if we dont raise our electricity bills five fold and we dont get rid of our addiction to “dirty” (neccessary) coal…
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.5ce05834a0919b70bceb002f810b5e70.fb1&show_article=1
In response to the comments about Galileo’s trial. Watch the programme on it from “100 days that shook the world” series.
It amazed me the legal points that were made. That the Church tried to go through all legal procedures. That Galileo thought he would be able to defend himself successfully on legal points.
Only at the end did the Pope insist on a result for his political reasons: as he was under attack for being too liberal and not opposing the Protestant countries sufficiently. He was under threat of impeachment and could not countenance being seen to give in to such an attack as Galileo’s. Esp as it was a very personal attack on him in terms of the character Simplicio.
The Church comes out of it badly. They did threaten torture. But many would be surprised at the legal procedings they went through.
Also, the argument was not as straight forward as people now believe. If you read Arthur Koestler’s book The Sleepwalkers, you will see that Copernicus’s system did not simplify anything. It involved more epicycles than the Ptolemaic system. But just as people accepted Millikan’s results for the charge on the electron, because they thought it should be so, the Heliocentric system began to be accepted in some circles(no pun intended) but was not notably superior until Galileo started to show evidence of Phases of Venus etc. It had until this time been perfectly reasonable to believe in a Geocentric system.
Unfortunately, scientific data no longer matters in this issue. The political momentum and blind ideology behind the AGW train is too great. And we may have more to fear from this new religion than opressive taxation. Last year in Seattle we had incidents of Luxury SUVs vandalized as they sat parked on the street. There is some risk this could spiral into an oppressive regime such as those we have witnessed in germany and vietnam…. making it more important than ever to protest loudly and often at every incident that perpetuates the AGW fantasy.
Just come back from lunch break at work, and they have posters all over the walls here about the WWF Climate Change Earth Hour, made me instantly angry. Shall I risk my job and tear all these things down?
Mary Hinge (06:01:58) : Back to topic, one thing that pleasingly stands out is that 57% of people belive that the reports of effects of global warming are either correct or Underestimated. … Considering in many parts of the US there has been a relatively cold winter it is heartening to know that people seem to generally understand the difference between weather and climate
Considering the all-out campaign and constant media attention on AGW/GW and next to zero otherwise, it’s amazing that 41% have come to the conclusion that GW is over-hyped. I wonder how they got that idea.
Mary Hinge (06:01:58) :
“… if PDo has switched to -ive for a while, we are now in La Nina conditions (though not an event as yet) and the sun is in a prolonged solar minimum, they must be wondering ‘Where is the global cooling many of the WUWT people have been talking about’? It is reassuring to know that the general public appreciate that the global warming is masking these effects…”
It’s in the pipeline. No, seriously I am wondering how the AGW scientists missed these important negative forcings. Correct prediction of the natural climate forces is the basis for correct prediction by the AGW climate models, isn’t it?
All the delegates at the climate change conference in Copenhagen is on their way home – and it’s snowing outside the conference center 🙂
Not unusual march weather in Copenhagen – but every Dane I know is longing for spring by now.
Tallbloke said
Try this
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2001/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/from:1971/to:2001/mean:12/detrend:40/offset:-326.5/scale:0.16
That might show the lag, but….
OK what if we change the final year to 2008? Have a look
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2008/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/from:1971/to:2008/mean:12/detrend:40/offset:-326.5/scale:0.16
Or even try a few in between years.
This is fascinating, considering the extent to which mainstream media and education systems treat AGW as a settled science. In fact, most consider reporting on the skeptic side to be socially irresponsible.
Hopefully our policy makers are getting the message.