From the Pew Research Center.
I wonder if Senator Kerry has seen this. Once again, climate change is dead last. Since energy comes in second, watch now as “climate change” gets morphed into “energy needs” as the new target of our climatic friends.
The public views tougher regulations on financial institutions as an important priority for Congress, but far more want Congress to take action on the job situation and energy policy. In thinking about financial regulation, as many say they worry that the government will go too far in regulating financial markets, making it harder for the economy to grow, as say they worry that the government will not go far enough, leaving the country at risk of another financial crisis.
Congress’s overall job ratings remain abysmal. More generally, most Americans express little or no confidence in Washington to make progress over the next year on the biggest issues facing the country.
…
These are the principal findings from a new weekly survey with a special focus on the themes and issues directly related to Congress. The Pew Research/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, sponsored by SHRM, will complement the Pew Research Center’s ongoing comprehensive surveys on politics, the press, the economy and international affairs. The survey, conducted May 13-16 among 1,002 adults, also finds:
…
Only about a third (32%) says it is very important for Congress to address climate change in the coming months, including 47% of Democrats, 29% of independents and 17% of Republicans. This is consistent with earlier Pew Research surveys that show the public putting a relatively low priority on addressing climate change.
Full story here at the Pew Research Center
Now we have all of 10 years before irreversible “climate change”? How interesting, since in 1988 we had only 7 years before global warming would “spin out of control if we don’t take serious action right now” according to James Hansen (as if humans ever did have “it” under control). Then, after the 7 years had passed, it seems that it would, after all, be another 7 years. Which took us up to 2002, and nothing that could be considered significant regarding climate change had happened. I have also, about a year or so ago heard it said by “scientists” that it would only be another 4 years.
The entire sackcloth, ashes and “repent, the end is near” routine has become tiresome. Methinks these particular little boys have “cried wolf” with no wolf within sight a bit too many times.
“Romm says “scientists claim we have 10 years” window”
They said that ~5 years ago and have been saying it every year since.
“No credit today, wait till tomorrow.” :o)
And one of the reason for the public being put off by alarmist headlines is clearly illustrated below:
Food Poisoning May Rise With Global Warming
http://www.foodpoisonjournal.com/2010/05/articles/food-poisoning-information/food-poisoning-may-rise-with-global-warming/
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2010/05/19/t3.html
WHO
I feel more than a little sympathy for the Citizens of the USA; we here in what was once known as Great Britain have suffered under a socialist Government for 13 long and freedom-sapping years. We are a bankrupt country and have very little in the way of what you in the USA would call Liberty. It would appear that you are about to step onto the slippery slope at the bottom of which we now find ourselves.
A ray of hope dawned when our General Election came along. It was soon dashed when it became apparent that we had a hung Parliament (Would that it had been a hanged Parliament!). What do we have now? Two demi-socialists who, having promised all in their pre-election sound bites, are now busily reneging on everything they said before assuming power. We are being promised now that we in the United Kingdom are going to have a “greener, low carbon economy” when we don’t have an economy worth mentioning. Despite the fact that this country is broke we are to press ahead with the construction of hundreds of useless windmills. The lessons taught by the economically fatal Spanish expariment have been ignored; that Germany is cutting its subsidies for the ‘Green Dream’ is something likewise pushed aside. As the Minister in charge of Energy we have an avowed green advocate who will not countenance the construction of a single nuclear power station and will only permit the construction of a coal-fired power station if the flawed and possibly highly dangerous carbon dioxide sequestration technique is employed to an impossible-to-achieve degree.
Someone. somewhere must be able to talk some sense into this collection of apparently brainwashed idiots who control the future of this once Scepter’d Isle
And one of the reasons for the public being put off by alarmist headlines is clearly illustrated below:
Food Poisoning May Rise With Global Warming
http://www.foodpoisonjournal.com/2010/05/articles/food-poisoning-information/food-poisoning-may-rise-with-global-warming/
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2010/05/19/t3.html
WHO
Mike B “If Americans have little or no confidence in Congress, why do we keep on reelecting incumbents?
The incumbents have enacted legislation (over the years) which hand out scads of taxpayer money, and the same old story is that if newcomers are elected, those programs will be negated and those particular goodies will no longer be forthcoming.
Then too, oft times it is “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
stevengoddard says:
May 21, 2010 at 12:50 pm
As I get older, I would prefer that Congress focuses on reducing gravity. A ten percent reduction in gravity would allow me to run as a fast as I did 15 years ago. They should also legislate water temperature along the California coast. It is usually too cold there for optimal swimming.
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Indeed. Where are their priorities? And it all appears to stem from the core problem of global rotation and tilting. Seems to be caused by an uneven redistribution of wealth.
I am so glad we have a President who thinks about the future and knows how to lead. 😉
Thanks for the tip about selling the climate bill as an energy bill. I will pass on to my connections! But don’t tell anyone else. Shhhh!
Jimbo says: {May 21, 2010 at 1:08 pm): “Romm says “scientists claim we have 10 years” window”. They said that ~5 years ago and have been saying it every year since. ”
Kind of like Henny Youngman’s line, “My doctor gave me 6 months to live, I couldn’t pay the bill so he gave me another 6 months”
I am not real happy with the slant PEW puts on their science but at least they are not completely out in left field like some.
Slightly off topic.
Seems Iceland has had a bunch of mini quakes during the last 48 hrs. 3 under the Mýrdalsjökull glacier home of Katla and 30 or more at Eyjafjallajökull and between Katla and Eyjafjallajökull.
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/
From LarryOldtimer on May 21, 2010 at 1:22 pm:
Far too true. Look at the sterling example of “progressive government” that is Greece. Country is bankrupt, needing a bailout, on the verge of collapsing and taking the EU with it… So just about daily there are “workers strikes” demanding a stopping of spending cuts even though they’re needed to staunch the hemorrhaging of red ink and save the country. They don’t want to listen to reason, and to keep getting their “free stuff” they may very well end up destroying their country and losing everything.
The esteemed Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican I helped send to DC several times, switched parties and sided with liberals. I don’t know that old devil anymore. Now he’s going away. I’ll vote in a new devil come November.
Take heart, people. As Lord Monckton said, in his closing speech at ICCC4, (paraphrased) “There is a new consensus.”
Not that Congress gives a fig about the climate. They smell a further enlarged government fist over our lives and will pursue their aptly named “Power” bill at all cost.
The concept “… of, by, and for the people” is a distant memory.
wws says:
May 21, 2010 at 11:00 am
I see it as the glass half full on thier part:
They spent way too much money already on this. They are the ones to be held accountable, not us, and not since the general public has seen through thier veneer.
It is thier own words that turned people off, claiming ‘faster than previously imagined’ when everyone was shivering, then rolling out the ‘we must act quickly’ billboards.
And last, but not least, they are NOT doing what they were elected to do:
It’s the Economy, stupid, so please, let’s hear the pols explanation as to when & why they thought that shooting themselves in the foot was such a grand idea. Not all of them, mind you.
R. de Haan says:
May 21, 2010 at 11:28 am
Kerry will wrap the climate bill into an energy and green jobs bill.
That’s how they work these days.
Senator Kerry has done that already:
‘The American Power Act will transform our economy, set us on the path toward energy independence and improve the quality of the air we breathe. It will create millions of good jobs that cannot be shipped abroad and it will launch America into a position of leadership in the global clean energy economy.”
Some say the Kerry/Lieberman proposed legislation introduced in the Senate this week is based on Spain’s green technology model. If so, I hope Spain’s recent experience is closely examined.
Call me in the one of three. I think that preparing for climate change should be at least somewhat of a priority. Of course it is not the IPCC WWF version of climate change that concerns me. I am more worried about the just about due Bond Event, the solar minimum, and doing a ‘you are here’ on a plot of the Volstok ice cores. Looking at that and seeing the wild temperature variability of the Younger-Dryas Stadial is spooky stuff, ‘specially here north of the 45th..
John Q Public says:
May 21, 2010 at 1:04 pm
I would love to see the polls if surveys asked for real life trade-off choices – i.e. the government has $100 to spend, where do you allocate it? And no, just like life, you can’t have everything – pick the most important.
John Q- This is one place that I advocate a pure democracy. In my version, on April 15th you don’t get a tax bill, you get a catalog of govt programs (on a 700 DVD set?). You check off the programs that you like and fill in the blank how much of your money that you would like to spend on it. Total it up, add sales tax, and mail in a check. It would be a very different America.
Remember, do you, Old man Romm?
You know, he whose forecasts, T’were comedically Wrong!
He spat and he frothed his venomous wrath
but, my God, he was always good for a laugh!
Joe, respect,’cos you is a Hoot!
I think part of why the AGWers are always going apocalyptic in their language and tone is they recognize the basic difficulty of trying to get the public to put a 30-50-100 year problem at the top of the priority list. There will *always* be something else –or several something elses– that seem more urgent. And in fact they will be more “urgent”.
But that’s really no excuse for inaction, just as it is no excuse for using language more suitable to a zombie movie trailer in order to pump up the perceived urgency. Congress should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
It might be different except for the fact that government has had a huge hand in perpetrating the fraud, for their own greed.
Pay more in taxes to the government so scientists, on government grant money, can pretend to control the weather. What could be wrong with that?
Global Warming a fraud on a scale never before equaled.
Some quotes I found:
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct. ~Thomas Jefferson
Take our politicians: they’re a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize. ~Saul Bellow
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right. ~H.L. Mencken, 1956
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so. ~Gore Vidal
===
Time to DRAFT some qualified people. Make them serve, like it or not.
Do they still teach what the words “scorched earth” mean; in social studies these days. Thast is exactly what the Obama Administration and his obedient Socialist Democrats are in the process of doing to the USA. They are beginning to wake up to the fact that they are all going to be handed their heads on a platetr come November; and for Obama in2012.
So the aim is to reduce everything to rubble before then; well isn’t that the Iranian radical moslem program; destroy everything, so that superman can finally crawl out of the well he stumbled into.
The Pres throws a State banquet for the corrupt leader of the oligarchy to our south; but has the Israeli Prime Minister eter by a side door, and then wait around for a while while the CIC goes off to dinner with his family.
And then this ‘guest’ in our country decides to bitch about our immigration law which has been in place since Rooselvelt signed it into law in 1940; simply because one State enacts a ghost clone law to let their folks cover for the lack of federal enforcement of the federal Law.
Well if you haven’t heard California Congressman Tom McKlintock’s response to this churl, and the democrats, who gave him a standing ovation for bashng our laws; you owe it to yourself to google up a copy from somewhere and read/listen to it.
We finally have at least one Republican with some integrity.
Mike D. says:
May 21, 2010 at 12:38 pm
….why do we keep on reelecting incumbents? …. I blame the morons who keep voting for them. We don’t need a Term Limit Amendment; we need voters who aren’t morons.
exactly.
As long as folks continue to vote for republicans and democrats there will be in this country only the continuing slide into totalitarianism
Smokey says: “…Because they are following the Cloward-Piven strategy exactly: overburden the country with such massive new spending, taxes and debt that the economy spirals downward, out of control, and the dollar tanks. Then the government quickly steps in to “take control” of the situation, and you can guess the rest.”
What is truly pathetic (and otherwise amusing) is that Obama thinks he will be at the helm of all this. His Marxist-Leninist friends will sacrifice him in a heartbeat if they feel it will hike their popularity even a notch or two.
Having been away a while it appears as though little of the “climate game” has changed. There is still wailing about deficits, down turned economy, cap n’ trade, and melting arctic ice. These stories have all lost their once-titillating allure. Now even the scandal sheets are hard pressed to come up with new fear/counter-fear content.
The big game is largely over. Climate fear will not produce its intended revenue and government will have to get it somewhere else. Media has lost its stranglehold on news and entertainment and the former third world is buying cars and tv sets. So how effin bad could things really be? You got a global standard of living on a steep rise – spreading new jobs, cash and markets all over the place. We’re gonna stay on the high road and enjoy life while we can. And check in to WUWT every so often for a smile and a brewsky.
Your future’s just as good as you make it.
If they stand for re-election they are toast this year. The mood I’m sensing is one of being totally po at the current crop of political hacks for a number of reasons.
That is why several have already decided to call it quits.
What the end result will be I don’t know, it will however be lots of fun watching the incumbents twist in the wind.
As soon as any one of the ones I’ve voted for didn’t deliver on their promises I stopped voting for them.
jorgekafkazar says:
May 21, 2010 at 4:36 pm
‘What is truly pathetic (and otherwise amusing) is that Obama thinks he will be at the helm of all this.’
I disagree with you. Obana knows he he just a mouthpiece for the Imperialsocialist “Puppet Masters”.