The Zogby poll results mirrors the recent Gallup poll It’s the economy, stupid. Even so, with opinion on Cap and trade in the minority it seems plans are in place to move forward.
On Earth Day, Secretary Chu warmly embraced the administration’s cap-and-trade proposal, stating, “We must state in no uncertain terms we have a responsibility to our children to curb emissions from fossil fuels…”
Q. President Obama wants to impose cap-and-trade laws that would limit the total carbon dioxide emissions allowed to be released into the environment. These laws would turn carbon dioxide into a commodity allowing those that pollute less to sell credits to those that pollute more. These credits would be traded on commodities markets. According to congressional testimony given by the Director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, “decreasing emissions would also impose costs on the economy – much of those costs will be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices for energy and energy intensive goods.” Some have estimated these costs to be $800 to $1300 more per household by 2015. Knowing this, do you support or oppose cap-and-trade laws?
Support 30%
Oppose 57%
Not sure 13%
Q. Which course of action should America take with regards to energy
policy?
Make energy cheaper by developing all sources of U.S. energy, including coal, nuclear power, offshore drilling and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 54%
Reduce America’s production of fossil fuels that might cause global warming 40%
Not sure 6%
The O’Leary Report/Zogby poll was conducted April 24-27 of 3,937 voters nationwide and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 1.6 percentage points. Slight weights were added to party, age, race, gender, education to more accurately reflect the population. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.
Brad O’Leary is publisher of “The O’Leary Report,” a bestselling author, and is a former NBC Westwood One talk show host. His new book, “Shut Up, America! The End of Free Speech,” is now in bookstores. To see more poll results, go to www.olearyreport.com.
Our economy is still on life support. More recently, some of the economists think we’ll be seeing more bankrupt applications due to more layoffs. When that happens some or many of the banks will come begging for more funds to stay afloat. How many more times will the feds print more greenbacks to hand out? In the meanwhile Congress is still on track to finance a health system, bail out Social Security and try to pass Cap and Trade. Utterly stupid Democrats!!
Ooops! I need to clarify–the bankrupt applications are for individuals who have lost their jobs and can no longer pay off their credit cards. These are large amount of revenues lost to the banks, many of whom are all ready in red ink.
OT Our old Sun is about to write down a bankrupt application..while you discuss trival issues :). It has a 23/24 cycle spot right now.(it has not decided yet)
Carbon credits and carbon shares…pouring the empty into the void…
dark matter indeed!
Ad hominem, in any language remains only that.
Where is your data, sir?
The only thing you seem to have done correctly is to compare the President’s quest to that of Don Quixote.
Why don’t you plow the ground and harvest the grain instead and nourish mother earth with drops of healthy sweat.
The result of the poll is quite interesting. 40% want to reduce carbon footprint in general, when no consequences are assumed. But when costs are made aware, the percentage drops to 30%. Maybe this is a sign that the AGW war will be lost as people become aware what is it all about: getting more money (and power) for polititians.
Marco:
“Los Estados Unidos de America tienen la suerte de ser hoy comandados por una suerte de Mesias inspirado que sabe que hacer y como hacer.”
Beware of the Messiahs when they reach power. They are the worst of all, as History has proved time after time. Fortunately, I am confident Mr. Obama doesn’t see himself as the Messiah you’d like him to be.
More Obama Tricks to regulate the climate and the people:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/30/obama-administration-push-major-inititative-fight-global-warming/
We may have to have more-not less children,who is goning to pull the plow and the cultivator.If cap and trade is enacted no one could afford a Mule…
John Egan (07:56:57) :
“Ummm –
Zogby ain’t the best name in polling.
And the “question” you quoted would earn you a failing grade in “Introduction to Polling” at Midvale State U.”
While I hate Cap-n-Tax and all naively constructed policies like it, I have to agree here – heavily biased wording in these polling questions.
The problem, of course, as many have indicated is that the details of Cap-n-Tax are fairly complex to the average person on the street. In fact if you did a street survey and asked the question “What is Cap and Trade?” – I suspect you would get a very low percentage of people who got even close…
Nice write up on Cap and Trade in the Washington Examiner today
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Obamas-energy-climate-plans-would-drag-US-back-to-1905–or-1862–44042137.html
JR (09:44:01) : “I find it hard to fathom that with 236 cases confirmed by the WHO worldwide, along with 7 deaths, out of 6,000,000,000 people on this planet, that a state agency would cancel athletic events when there is not even one confirmed case of swine flu in the state because they are concerned that swine flu will sweep through the athletic field and stands.”
That ought to stop those rude “tea parties!”
James Egan –
Dissing Zogby is not ad hominem.
I am not attacking the person – I am questioning the reliability of the polls done by the Zogby International which, by chance, has the same name as its founder.
From Wikipedia –
An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: “argument to the man”, “argument against the man”) consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the source making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim.
James – By your own description, you are questioning the source of the claim rather than addressing the substance or producing evidence against the claim, It’s an ad hominem argument.
Until you understand why your argument is illogical, you’re not going to be able to improve upon it.
BTW – Here’s what the Wall Street Journal had to say recently –
(BTW – the WSJ isn’t exactly “Mother Jones”.)
This is known as inverse ad hominem or appeal to authority, it also has the potential to be fallacious.
While the survey’s questions may be effecting the outcome, it is also true that the average person on the street has little understanding of what cap and trade is all about.
I am not sure how someone would go about doing such a survey without communicating the fact there there are significant costs to the consumers of energy – Simply because the average person doesn’t realise this!
I think that we can all agree that if the general public understands what cap and trade is really about (and the costs) there would be a very low level of support. Unfortunately I think that we all know that our President intends to try to inact this policy and will do his best to prevent the average person from having a level of understanding that would allow an informed opinion.
Smokey (09:33:09) :
JamesG (09:14:29) :
Hey wake up people and smell what you’re shoveling. Free market ideology has had a very long run and has led us straight to the crapper… the only real economic success stories are China and Russia, thanks to tight state control.
The free market has provided its users with the world’s highest standard of living, and the best medical care, and a greatly increased life expectancy.
A good example is North Korea vs South Korea. Your “tight state control” [communism] vs the free market [capitalism].
I am always astonished that some people would actually rather live under a system like North Korea’s, rather than a system like South Korea’s.
East Germany vs West Germany….
My bet is the 30% are firmly ensconced in the 52% that brought us “The Won” and his cabal of trained monkeys.
Amazing how many people are starting to sober up; the problem is this ball of stupidity has so much inertia that slowing it will be nearly impossible. It’s especially worrisome now that idealogues inhabit the EPA – appointed positions that have no oversight.
“”” Ken Hall (07:27:45) :
Well perhaps people are beginning to see that yet again, those “crazy conspiracy kooks” are actually ahead of the curve in their access to true information and that all this Climate Alarmism really IS an excuse to tax and control us all.
O/T but, by their behaviour shall ye know them.
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/who-owns-these-two-houses/
Far be it from me to post anything positive about former President Bush, A man whom I consider to be a war criminal, but, The ACTIONS tell us a LOT more about them than their words.
Gore is a lying hypocrite who shows us, by his own actions, that climate change is NOT an impending disaster and he KNOWS IT! “””
Well Ken, I don’t want to lenghten any off topic political debate; but just in case youmight have forgotten the Congress of the United States voted three times to declare war. The first time they voted by a vote of 534:1 to declare war on international terrorism and the one dissenting voter was by a somewhat slow learner California Congressperson who didn’t understand that to vote to NOT do that which is “necessary and appropriate”, is a pretty good definition of Insanity.
The Congress then subsequently voted by quite substantial margins to declare war on the Taliban in Afganistan and then subsequently to declare war on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Only the US Congress is empowered to Declare war and they did that three times. So it wasn’t the doing of President Bush; and the Congress had all the same intelligence or lack thereof that the Bush Administration recived from the Clinton administration. So you throw the words war criminal around pretty loosely.
And as for Actions probably snctioned by the Bush administration; none of those actions are covered under any Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war; so you have no basis for declaring that a war crime.
But let’s get back to climate issues.
Smokey, Graeme Rodaughan
Touche!
James G – if you had written something like …”Hey wake up people and smell what you’re shoveling. Tight state control has had a very long run and has led us straight to the crapper…the only real economic success stories …Free market ideology etc etc” in a country that actually had tight state control – they would be tracking you (and your family) down right now.
What was that term Lenin used? Oh yes – Useful idiot
Great (short) video clip -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT10TBOgvXE
The big push to get cap n trade done is that they need to get in place before the cooling becomes obvious. When CO2 eventually drops they can credit cap n trade for that too. Then there is this little issue of them not being able to fund their socialist schemes without carbon taxes.
“Free market ideology has had a very long run and has led us straight to the crapper.”
“Unbelievably the only real economic success stories are China and Russia, thanks to tight state control.”
Apparently this is the far left garbage that they are teaching instead of common sense and history. With extremism like this being taught to our next generation, it is not surprising that people actually support the new prez and his regressive schemes like cap n trade. I would love to debate this guy on the merits of the free market and government regulation.
Any government that still thinks they’ll be able to persuade voters to pay higher taxes to fight global warming, is skating on very THICK ice.
Marco,
El proposito de ciencia es pensar con la cabeza y no con el estomago. Donde esta la ciencia que soporta sus opiniones? O los del Salvador Obama?
dgallagher
Sorry, but it is NOT ad hominem.
You clearly do not understand the framing of ad hominem in the context of polling.
The validity of any polling depends upon accurate sampling and control for bias.
Since the internals of any specific poll are usually proprietary, previous egregious failures by the polling firm do influence the manner in which later polls are received. And sources do matter. The “New York Times” is generally considered a more reliable source than the “National Enquirer” – MIB notwithstanding. That’s what a polling firm sells – its reputation for rigor and accuracy. I am not attacking Mr. Zogby or anyone in the polling firm, I am challenging the methodology of the firm’s polling – which is NOT ad hominem.
Speaking of rigorous –
It’s “John” not “James”.
And it’s “affecting” not “effecting”.
“Effecting” means bringing into being.
For ex. – “The EPA will begin effecting the new CO2 policy on January 1, 2010.”
And “inact” is not a word – it is “enact”.
PS – FYI – I follow the British/Canadian usage for final periods outside of quotation marks when not part of the actual quotation.
PPS – Didn’t you say,
“Until you understand why your argument is illogical, you’re not going to be able to improve upon it.”?
realitycheck –
Isn’t “Cap-and-Trade” a clause in all New York Yankees’ contracts that requires players to return their uniforms – including their Yankees caps – if they are ever traded?
John Egan –
Sorry, not James, it’s late here. It doesn’t have anything to do with my spelling, punctuation etc. They don’t have any bearing on the issue, which is why, like ad hominem, they don’t make a logical point. If you have a problem with the poll that was published, you can’t just say “Ummm – Zogby ain’t the best name in polling.” Zogby isn’t that great a name period (glad it’s not mine) – ad hominem is not always a fallacy, but it is always ad hominem. It can be rational, yet not be logical. Zogby may have never done an accurate survey, ever, and you may be completely justified in having no faith in the results, but when you knock the source rather than contradict the claim itself, well, you know.
What followed that (in the original post) was a logical argument – and to an extent I agree with it. It’s possible that the framing of the question had the effect of affecting the outcome, but what good would the poll be if you didn’t provide that information? I believe that we both agree that most people don’t understand what the results of cap and trade will be. I personally don’t care what their opinions are, unless and until they are framed with the knowledge that a considerable amount of money is going to be coming out of their pockets.
Perhaps it would have been better if the survey just asked ” Do you support Pres. Obama’s plan to enact a Cap and Trade system to reduce CO2 emissions?”. Then followed up with “Would you still support it you knew that it would cost you at least $800-$1300 per year?”. That way you wouldn’t be offended by the survey methodology, and we would all find out something meaningful – are Americans ready to shell out big bucks for carbon reduction?
I don’t think that the survey question asked did bias the results much – I find it quite credible that 57% would oppose paying $800-$1300, and the followup question roughly coorelates – Americans want cheaper energy more than CO2 reduction.
BTW – I agree that Rassussen is generally more reliable than Zogby, Gallop not so sure about that, a few years back, sure, but anymore.., NYT get real. Frankly all of them routinely blow it by far more than the stated margin of error, which is just a statisical calculation based on sample size vs. the total population. It is really only meaningful when you are plucking colored marbles out of jar. You are, of course, entitled to your own opinion.