It seems that the public just doesn’t share the worry some of the activists have.
From the Pew Research Center
Global Warming and the Environment
Dealing with global warming ranks at the bottom of the public’s list of priorities; just 28% consider this a top priority, the lowest measure for any issue tested in the survey.
Since 2007, when the item was first included on the priorities list, dealing with global warming has consistently ranked at or near the bottom. Even so, the percentage that now says addressing global warming should be a top priority has fallen 10 points from 2007, when 38% considered it a top priority. Such a low ranking is driven in part by indifference among Republicans: just 11% consider global warming a top priority, compared with 43% of Democrats and 25% of independents.
Protecting the environment fares somewhat better than dealing with global warming on the public’s list of priorities, though it still falls on the lower half of the list overall. Some 44% say that protecting the environment should be a top priority for Obama and Congress, little changed from 2009.
See the complete report at the Pew Research Center
h/t to Leif Svalgaard
“Moral Decline” is more important at 45% v. 28%. Moral decline as in untrustworthiness of climate scientists?
Oliver K. Manuel (04:42:40) :
generates H as a waste product that fills interstellar space
From which new stars are constantly forming. Consisting naturally mostly of the H that fills interstellar space. Hydrogen that they proceed to burn to He, just like our Sun, warming the Earth.
The reason it’s called Hoaxenhagen becomes clearer every day …
And now we Amozongate, the Amazon jungle is not going to burn up and blow away like the WWF said it was … and the IPCC saw fit to print in their AR-4 that what the WWF said – because it was ‘the best science’ available.
What’s needed is instant runoff voting, which I believe they already have in Australia, so that votes for losing third parties get re-assigned to the voter’s 2nd (etc.) choices.
I’m certain that if we apply the proper “Mann-o-matic” processes on this poll we can quickly show that “Global Warming” is indeed the most pressing issue and it’s much worse than we thought.
Remind you of anyone?
(Someone you wouldn’t buy a used car from?)
I would like to take the time to thank those that made the results of this poll possible. In no specific order:
Tamino, Josh Halpern, Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, Dhogza, Hank Roberts, Tim Lambert, and many more.
Due to their continued arrogant echo chamber worlds that they have created for themselves, they lack the understanding of human nature and have utterly failed in communication of their message.
From a non-scientist, but very active voter…
O/T but: A subtle change in the reporting in India.
“NEW DELHI: A climategate and then a glaciergate and now an Amazongate. British media reports on errors made by R K Pachauri’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the Amazon forests”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Pachauris-IPCC-didnt-research-Amazon-climate-change-Report/articleshow/5502549.cms
Of note is that it has not been referred to as “The IPCC” but rather “R K Pachauri’s IPCC”.
In India they recognize that if the leader is corrupt then the organization is corrupt because all that flows from the organization is directly or indirectly controlled by the leader.
Our view is that the BBC covered this story at length and that we did so in
a fair and impartial manner. We will continue to report on the climate
change debate in this way, allowing appropriate airtime to both those who
support the broad scientific consensus on the causes of climate change and
to those who reject it.
Not according to their own Policy which states they will not give full coverage to non-warmists as the Climate Change Science is settled.
Doug in Seattle (06:52:38) :
It may be a tactic, but it one that is used every day by many people to further their political goals.
Let us all be thankful that the AGW faithful have not as yet stooped so low. Perhaps if they lost their funding they might think it worthwhile.
Well… There is Earth Liberation Front, which likely tossed in AGW with “humanity’s crimes against the Earth” and is in no hurry to pull it back out. And assorted “questionable” acts by Greenpeace. Wasn’t there recent mention of “vandalism” against a coal plant under construction?
In a slightly different direction, as has been reported, global warming will lead to terrorism.
Wandering around, I found that great fount of wisdom, About.com, and its Environment Issues section where someone named Larry West has “Larry’s Environmental Issues Blog.”
Terrorism Linked to Global Warming
Tuesday June 12, 2007
Apparently with all the droughts, hurricanes and stuff, there will be many desperate people susceptible to being recruited as terrorists. Thus clearly global warming is a national security issue. Fight global warming to stop terrorism, yup, makes perfect sense.
As mentioned in this undated piece titled “Climate Change Creating More Refugees than War”:
Wow. In just eleven months we will have about 50 million refugees thanks to global warming. All those desperate people, those wanting to aid them and draw attention to their plight, and of them will be those willing to resort to terrorism. Because it’s a good thing to help poor desperate people.
So next time a plane, train, subway, or building is blown up, it could be because we let Copenhagen fail. Global warming, serious stuff.
Pamela Gray (05:54:07) :
It is classed as a mild hallucinogenic, and yes, regular use would make a mind wander towards an altered reality.
Michael J. Bentley (06:30:02) :
I never mentioned a specific region of the body (that would be cherry picking).
However, the use of the term “Global” in this context was as a pun.
Did you get it?
Randy Hilton (06:02:30) :
“A poll might or might not be meaningful. . . a collective lot of noses might smell out the truth, or they might be collectively biased. But there’s enough proof to think that those polled got it right.
But just because agw is a power grabbing scam doesn’t mean we’re off the hook. I think we do need to reign in our carbon based energy as well as our excessive consumption. At some point, we are going to “mess in our nest” as we unleash more carbon than our ecosystem can process.”
Total nonsense.
We have sufficient coal, oil and gas for generations to come.
We simply don’t have a viable alternative to replace fossil fuels.
But that will change in the near future.
Anthony — I tried to send this to you as a e-mail and also via your note system, but no luck. Below the <<>> markings, I am pasting my non-AGW concept for global warming/cooling blaming Solar MAGNETIC FIELD VARIATIONS, not CO2. Please read it personally, then you can delete it if you think it is too far out.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Anthony,
I am an old retired electrical engineer, and a frequent visitor to your fascinating website WUWT (as well as to Roy Spencer’s). One of your recent charts (Jan. 5?), depicting the solar magnetic index Ap falling nearly to a historical low intensity near zero, stimulated a concept in my mind that may be far out but perhaps deserving of some investigation.
Think of Earth as the giant armature of an odd-ball electrical generator spinning in the Sun’s stationary magnetic field, but a field of variable intensity that I believe corresponds somewhat to the sunspot cycle. Consider the conductivity of seawater that covers 70% of Earth’s surface. Conceptually, this would create a fairly low-resistiance short-circuit for my giant armature, and eddy-currents would be generated at least in the upper strata of Earth’s saline seas (and maybe even in the upper strata of the atmosphere where it can be ionized by solar radiation and therefor is perhaps partially conductive).
These eddy-currents flowing through the low-resistance volume of sea water would surely generate heat, the power dissipation being proportional to the square of those currents times the volumetric resistance of the conductive saline seawater. (P=I(squared)R) Earth’s seas are giant heat-sinks, so the process is slow but continuous, irrespective of day and night. Such eddy-current secondary warming effects caused by the Sun’s magnetic field may be trivial and insignificant compared to the primary warming effect caused by Earth’s interception of the Sun’s radiant energy, but I believe it must surely be greater than zero, even if infinitesimal due to the low intensity of the Sun’s magnetic field in the vicinity of Earth’s orbit.
But what if it is not insignificant? Has the warming of this eddy-current effect ever been measured? Has it ever been considered or studied? Consider integrating the area under the cyclic curve of the Sun’s magnetic field through which the Earth spins over a period encompassing several solar magnetic cycles. Consider smoothing this area over a period such as the Dalton minimum, when the peaks of the intervening sunspot cycles were exceptionally low. Is there a possible correlation?
Denmark’s Henrik Svensmark theorizes that the Sun’s magnetic field helps to shield Earth’s atmosphere from cosmic ray penetrations that are the seeds for cloud formation. A stronger solar field means fewer seeds are creating fewer cooling clouds, therefor increased solar warming; a weaker field means more cooling clouds. Could my variable eddy-current heating concept, also based on long term variations of the Sun’s magnetic field, also help to explain how the Sun creates cyclic periods of global warming followed by global cooling?
Did the unusual decline of Cycle 23 through such a exceptionally long period cause an abnormal reduction of my theorized seawater eddy-current warming? Does this and the prediction of future lower-intensity solar magnetic-field cycles portend some future global cooling in addition to the slight downward trend during the past ten years currently being evidenced?
I am only a recent student of the issues involved in the AGW controversy and not competent to pursue a study of my cyclical oceanic electrical eddy current concept. (I will be 86 in March.) If you feel the concept has possibilities, please feel free to pass it on for evaluation by someone having scientific competence in this area.
Regards,
Bob
{M. Robert Paglee, P.E. (Ret.)}
Re: Roger (Jan 26 06:54),
The Daily Telegraph editorial falls far short etc…
I agree wholeheartedly, my reason for pointing it out was because it is the DT’s lead editorial, not seen anything like that before. In writing they have therefore admitted that something is not right and have suggested two actions: –
“Rajendra Pachauri, should step down”
“the report should contain contrarian evidence produced by scientists to demonstrate that this is a serious document, not a holy writ”
Small steps they might be, but in the right direction and indicative of an awakening? I like “not a holy writ”
If the “global warming agenda” comes from the UN’s IPCC, let us remember all other UN programs which have already been approved in all these years as binding agreements for all nations. How close are we to arrive at their planned goal of their dreamed Brave New World order?. Which actions should we have to take in order to prevent being the slaves of an international soviet of donkey bureaucrats?
I think we must not limit ourselves to look only to the climate item of their agenda, we should carefully examine all items of the UN’s agenda, which BTW it is not the source but the instrument of a small international elite whose purpose is the absolute control of the world.
(as the George Soros “Open Society” project: http://www.soros.org/ )
There are half a dozen top-flight comments after the article. Highly recommended.
Didn’t the Pew Research Center get the memo?
Hide the Decline!
bob paglee (09:24:44) :
But what if it is not insignificant? Has the warming of this eddy-current effect ever been measured?
Several issues: the Sun’s magnetic field is not stationary with respect to the Earth, rather impinges on the Earth’s magnetic field at 400 km/s, but because the Sun’s field is embedded in a highly conducting plasma it cannot directly interact with the Earth, but is being diverted around the Earth. When the geometry is right [at several places and several times per day] the two fields can magnetically connect. That stretches the Earth’s magnetic field into a long ‘tail’ [way, way past the Moon]. The tail is pressed upon by the flowing solar wind and conditions are generated where the two ‘lobes’ [one from the northern polar cap and one from the southern] can also reconnect, thereby relaxing the magnetic field of the Earth back to its original shape, releasing the energy stored in the stretched tail field [energy taken from the solar wind’s kinetic energy] causing electric fields and currents [dB/dt by induction] accelerating plasma [mostly sucked up from the upper atmosphere e.g. Oxygen ions] towards the Earth. These currents along the magnetic field lines produce Hall-currents at right angles to the [almost vertical] magnetic field. These currents flow in the ionosphere [100 km and up]. The currents in turn induce electric currents in the ground [or rather deep underground] and in seawater [which is a weak conductor]. The seawater currents are readily observed, but are very weak and the Joule-heating from them is totally insignificant.
Temperature data is downgraded from the disant past and upgraded for the recent past. An enormous totalitarian propaganda machine is forced onto the public to convince us the data supports an anthropogenic theory. This is backed by the Royal Society, NASA, the Hadley Centre, NOAA etc and almost every government. Adverts, documentaries and media overwhelm is put into action to present it to the layman, and still to this day it has very little credibility.
In all probability because ordinary people correctly perceive it as a social force than a scientific argument, and social forces come into conflict with scientific truth.
it would therefore have been better for the aforementioned institutions to have presented the argument as rhetoric and speculation, in the style of Lovelock than as science, if they were have any credibility. (admittedly this would have made them slightly sceptical, but I accept most people have a natural aptitude toward scepticism)
Well in the above poll globull warming may be dead last but here in fairyland, British Columbia Canada, it is enough excuse for the provincial government to cook up a carbon tax to help pay for the Olympics. Thanks to Davis Suzuki for his contribution.
After a “peer reviewed”paper claimed that the Ozone hole caused much of the global warming, we now get …
Kadaka, here is an article about the 50 million refugees by 2010.
http://usliberals.about.com/b/2005/11/04/global-warming-to-cause-50-million-refugees-by-2010.htm
It was written in 2005, so the report you mentioned is at least that old…
I am always sceptical of future projections since they are almost always wrong…
Pamela Gray (05:54:07) :
Use of pot causes concern for global warming.
…and the use of cocaine the elaboration of scientific papers. LOL. There is share of interests among pseudo-scientists and politicians, being both consumers of this powder, which provokes in them that sensation of power which they are so in need of, otherwise they should feel at loss, perceiving what they really are.
We, commoners, do not need that kind of help as we were taught by our parents that for obtaining any good in life we must work for it, not to steal it.
It is really an inferiority complex what drives anyone who wishes to control other people. They unconsciously recognize their feebleness to face their own lives and, as a compensation, want to rule over other people!
This is the danger we perceive behind all these naive conspiracies, theories or armageddonian scenarios: The fact that these were really made by sick people, and sick people can do a lot of harm.
Slightly OT but in response to-
Pamela Gray (05:54:07) :
There IS a connection! I noticed it a long time ago. Over a period of several years I notice a distinct correlation between, people I knew (and some that I am very sure of) that used pot extensively when younger and a real-time “view” of the world, (their reality) that didn’t exist. Their brain, as best I could determine, sees the world NOT as it is, but as they HOPE it is, but clearly to them it is one and the same place – their dream IS their reality, in many ways, but not all ways. The difference being the things they some how know they can NOT change they see as they want them to be.
Since then there have been many studies I have read, some summarized in this report: http://www.drugabuse.gov/Infofacts/marijuana.html
Key points being –
…. The highest density of (THC) receptors are found in parts of the brain that influence pleasure, memory, thoughts, concentration, sensory and time perception… and increased rates of anxiety…
Research on the long-term effects indicates some changes in the brain….. ….(THC) withdrawal leads to an increase in the activation of the stress-response system and changes in the activity of nerve cells containing dopamine. Dopamine neurons are involved in the regulation of motivation and reward…..
Research clearly demonstrates that marijuana has the potential to make a person’s existing problems worse. In one study, heavy marijuana abusers reported that the drug impaired several important measures of life achievement including physical and mental health, cognitive abilities….
So, THC effects sensory and time perception, causes changes in the brains motivation and reward system/perception, increases rates of anxiety and impairs cognitive abilities. From a psychological point of view, that’s a perfect storm for seeing their world the way THEY want it to be, rather than the way it is.
But as long as THEY are NOT making decisions that effect the rest of us…… opps, to late! Dang!