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
71% of Americans didn’t want Obamacare. But they got it anyway. Get ready for a mouthful of Cap N Trade America, either by laws passed or by regulation from the EPA. You’re getting it. There’s nothing you can do.
The only solution to this bad movie is to pay attention to who you vote for, like you haven’t been doing for decades, and elect people who will undo this bad dream.
Funny that terrorism is not on the list, like anthrax, bombs, shootings,etc. America is taking that for granted I guess.
Mike D. says:
May 21, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Douglas Adams worked it out:
Folks, its a major conspiracy, and believe it or not, the oil companies are in on it. There was a major meeting between Big Oil and an unidentified climatologist from the UN just a few weeks ago. The meeting was secretly taped, smuggled out, and I have been able to obtain a partial transcript. Read it, it is astounding what they are up to:
Tex; OK boys, settle down, I am calling this meetin’ of Big Oil together. Now we all know each other, but we got’s us a special guest, a climatologist from the IPCC. Now Mr. Climatologist, my name’s Tex and I reckon you can guess from that where I’m from. These here are some of my trusted colleagues. Over there is Fayad, buddy of mine from the middle east, and Sergei next to him is Russian. Next to him is Joe, he’s from Canada, and Jose here is from Mexico.
Climatologist; Pleased to meet all of you
Boys; Howdy/Salaam/Da!/How’s it going, eh?/Si, senor.
Tex; Now let me get right to the point here. We been hearing all about this carbon tax thing of yours, and we got to admit, we’re concerned. We got a way of life, and we kinda got accustomed to it. Like just this morning me and Sergei and Jose went car shopping. We each picked out a brand new Lambourghini and before me or Sergei could even blink, Fayad here paid for all of them.
Fayad; it was only fair Tex, you got breakfast.
Joe; Hey! Nobody invited me!?
Tex; No offense Joe, but you stick out something awful in that stupid hat of yours.
Joe; You guys all got stupid hats too….
Fayad; Infidel! You dare to insult the head dress of 200 generations?
Sergei; An insult! Vile capitalist dog, hat is made of mink. Yours is like sock puppet.
Tex; OK, OK everyone settle down. They got a point Joe. I’m wearing an $800 dollar Stetson, you got a knitted toque. Mr Climatologist, ya see what I got to put up with? Now point is, if you could explain to us how makin’ an honest living is messing with the climate, maybe we can work something out. Now our understanding is that this here planet we live on is up against a 3 degree rise in temperature because of CO2 doubling. Have I got it right so far?
Climatologist; That’s the estimate, yes.
Tex; OK, so how much more can she take?
Climatologist; huh?
Tex; How much more can she take before she comes apart? 5 degrees? 10?
Joe; I could live with another 10 I think. I’d even dump the toque.
Climatologist; It doesn’t work like that, we don’t know for sure.
Jose; Don’t listen to canuk dopey Joe. They so cold up there they think snow is normal. Look Mr Climatologist, I’m listening to you. But the first three degrees, wasn’t so bad, si? We can go maybe six?
Climatologist; Uhm… I’m thinking you’ve misunderstood. We’ve only gone up about a half a degree.
Sergei; No… I am reading report. Look here. It says CO2 double, tree degrees. Tree!
Climatologist; Yes, but that’s an estimate. CO2 hasn’t doubled yet, and we’ve only gone up a half a degree.
Sergei; Vatt? Right here in report…
Fayad; Infidel dog lied to whole world?
Tex; Whoa up everyone. Let’s not pull out the hangin’ rope just yet. Now Mr Climatologist, you can see we’re just a might confused. What you’re saying is that CO2 doubling and 3 degrees is just a prediction?
Climatologist; well… its a scientific prediction.
Tex; Well now then we got something to work with if it ain’t happened yet. So how much CO2 is we supposed to have on this planet anyway?
Climatologist; 280 parts per million.
Sergei; Vatt means million? Is that the one smaller than billion? I don’t tink vee use millions anymore in Russia oil field.
Tex; You got it Sergei, but this is climate not oil. Now if 280 is what we supposed to got, how much we got up to so far?
Climatologist; We’re at about 380 parts per million.
Tex; We didn’t even start drilling for oil in a big way before 1920 or so.
Fayad; I heard western world using “new math”, I thought it was infidel plot to short pay invoices. Climatologist, it will take another 180 years at current production rates to get to double.
Climatologist; Well true, but we’re basing our scientific prediction on continued acceleration of fossil fuel consumption.
Tex; OK, you got me jiggered there. What the sam heck is continued acceleration?
Climatologist; Well, if we look at oil consumption from 1920 to 1990, we see that it about doubled every 15 years or so. We just extrapolated from there. We’ll be at four times 1990 consumption by 2020, eight times by 2035. It won’t take 180 years, it will be less than 20.
Climatologist; What? What’s so funny?
Climatologist; WHAT?
Joe; Hate to break it to you buddy, but we can’t do it.
Jose; We want to….
Sergei; If vee could, vee vould. Trust me. Vit dat much money, vee buy you new planet.
Climatologist; Huh? What?
Tex; Pardner, I’m glad you explained, cuz I think we got your problem licked. You see, we ain’t got that much oil. If we put every cent we have into drilling from now on, and every hole we drill hits oil, we STILL couldn’t pump that much oil.
Climatologist; I don’t believe you.
Tex; Well I can see how you might not trust us, we got a bad reputation and Joe over there with his stupid toque-
Joe; Hey!
Tex; Makes him look pretty shady. Let me explain. You see, in 1920 oil was pretty easy to find. Well we done pumped out most of the easy stuff by the 1970’s. The stuff’s been getting harder to find, and what we do find is more expensive to get out. Joe here is getting it out of tar if you can believe it. Now we’ve been keeping up with demand, but just barely. The only reason we can keep up is because the prices have gone up. When the prices go up, it curbs demand because folks can’t afford like they used to and they cut back consumption. I can let you talk to my accountant, he calls it a negative market feedback.
Climatologist; We don’t believe in negative feedbacks.
Tex; Well this ain’t climatology son, this is the real world of business, and in the real world, when you are running out of stuff and what you got left is a lot more expensive to pump, you get a negative feedback.
Climatologist; Well it doesn’t matter, the science is settled. We’re going forward with the carbon tax. We need to save the planet. We’re going to tax you and use the money to reduce demand.
Sergei; Vait vun second capitalist pig-
Climatologist; I’m a socialist actually
Fayad; Actually you are an infidel dog, a thief, a liar-
Tex; Easy Fayad, you’ll spontaneously combust if you get any angrier. Now let me get this straight. You’re going to tax us to prevent us from doing something that we can’t do in the first place?
Climatologist; Have you seen the graphs? If we don’t do something the temperature will shoot up like a hockey stick-
Joe; I’ll show you what a hockey stick is good for-
Jose; Let’s call a press conference. Let’s expose lying thieving gringo-
Climatologist; Go ahead.
Tex; Go ahead?
Climatologist; Who is the world going to believe? A bunch of greedy, filthy rich, selfish oil tycoons? Or a bunch of poor, hard working, UN climatologists trying to save the planet?
Sergei; Vun Qvestion. Vatts in it for you?
Climatologist; Finally. I thought you would never ask. Let me bring my colleague in. You may already know him. Before he became a climatologist trying to save the world, he was a humanitarian saving children in Iraq while Sadam was still in power. You remember how the “oil for food” thing worked don’t you? I thought you might….
Just wait a for heat wave and massive coverage of it in all media outlets (ignoring all the chants of “weather is not climate” from the past winter) for the public opinion to shift.
Guys, I hate to concede that Romm is at least partially correct, Climate HAS been irreversible (by man) and changing since the dawn of time, as usual with warmists his time frame is adjusted to suit his agenda.
peterhodges says:
May 21, 2010 at 4:21 pm
As long as folks continue to vote for republicans and democrats there will be in this country only the continuing slide into totalitarianism
Is there tea in the water? 🙂
AGW proponents are the very kind of people you would not want to sit beside on a bus. Can you imagine sitting beside Romm?!…
In terms of politics, how on earth could they ever say, ‘not many hurricanes this year, relax’. Even if they had some half-reliable method of prediction, they could not say that for fear of what would happen if they were wrong. What a farce. Glad MY taxes don’t pay for it.
@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.
– – – – – – –
In addition to reducing gravity, Congress could easily solve the (perceived) global warming problem by legislating the amount of sunlight that is allowed to reach the surface of the earth. This can be done easily by limiting (by law) the length of any given day (sunrise to sunset period) to not exceed 12 hours, which would be relevant from the vernal equinox until the autumnal equinox. With this law, there would be no need for cap and trade, and the middle class would thus be saved from impoverishment.
Don’t laugh this off just yet. Similar to the now-obsolete law that made it illegal to ride an ugly horse down main street (unknown locality), many years ago the state of Indiana came very close to legislating the value of pi to equal 3.0.
Did a state legislature once pass a law saying pi equals 3?
February 22, 1991
Dear Cecil:
In Science magazine a while back an article about the latest attempts to calculate pi to the umpteen zillionth decimal place made a passing reference to a curious Oklahoma law. It said Oklahoma legislators had passed a law making pi equal to 3.0. I also remember Robert Heinlein in one of his novels mentioning that Tennessee had passed a similar law. Did either of these states ever pass such a law? Are they still on the books? What are the penalties if I proclaim that pi equals 3.14159…?
— Wulf Losee, Andover, Connecticut
Dear Wulf:
Cecil had heard this story too, only the state in question was Kansas, leading him to believe the whole thing was made up by big-city sharpies having a little fun at the expense of the rustics. However, with the help of Joseph Madachy, editor of the Journal of Recreational Mathematics, I’ve learned the story does have a germ of truth to it.
It happened in Indiana. Although the attempt to legislate pi was ultimately unsuccessful, it did come pretty close. In 1897 Representative T.I. Record of Posen county introduced House Bill #246 in the Indiana House of Representatives. The bill, based on the work of a physician and amateur mathematician named Edward J. Goodwin (Edwin in some accounts), suggests not one but three numbers for pi, among them 3.2, as we shall see. The punishment for unbelievers I have not been able to learn, but I place no credence in the rumor that you had to spend the rest of your natural life in Indiana.
Read more: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/805/did-a-state-legislature-once-pass-a-law-saying-pi-equals-3
From the other side of the Pacific Ocean, as reported in the New Zealand Herald newspaper, which buys in it’s ‘environment’ content, the small Pacific Island nations have got together to insist that the UN Security Council ‘do something quick’ as those nations insist the rising seas caused by wicked industrialised nations pouring out CO2 are as big a threat as invading armies!
Joe Romm has a point, that we won’t be able to halt climate change, except that his ten-year estimate should be changed to ‘never could, never will’.
And David M Hoffer’s ‘leak’ from the UN is brilliant.
The new UK coalition government is idiotically Green, but I’ll be back in temperate (and more fiscally astute) New Zealand with its 70% reliance on hydro-elctric power before the UK runs out of electricity, petrol, diesel, fuel oil and tries to rely on wind power in a relatively windless environment.
I don’t know why you Yanks whinge so much.
Here in Australia, we have a Leadership team who have designed a brand new economic finance paradigm.
Business actually increases in market hardship. They have a brand new elegant econometric model model that says foreign investment is attracted to higher taxation.
There is a Noble in it for shure. So stop whinging about yer wonder brains in politics, we can trump you any day any way with political dumbos.
Same people said AGW was the greatest crisis in mankind’s history and then ran like shit when the polls turned.
Polls went south.
Well articulated wws!
The governmental drive for new revenue never sleeps. It presents itself through political party platforms only when expedient, and routinely goes into remission when elected officials fear election defeat. It is fueled by the ever present totality of individual bureaucratic careers (salaries, benefits, pensions & work), and the well known impending insolvency of the welfare state (social security & Medicare). Even for those in government who are skeptical of the AGW hypothesis, I suspect their acceptance of limiting CO2 emissions is purely a new revenue opportunity.
However, given the infancy of current climate science, I have a greater level of uncertainty regarding the core rationale for non-governmental types’ drive to limit CO2 emissions.
I for one would welcome response from the non-governmental, AGW-types, that visit this site, to honestly express their rationale for “hating AGW skeptics”. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the last time I checked, climate scientists skeptical of the AGW-hypothesis were in the minority. If minority status is true, then why the vitriolic response from the majority? What are you afraid of?
Steve Allen says:
May 22, 2010 at 4:42 am
“Well articulated wws!
The governmental drive for new revenue never sleeps. It presents itself through political party platforms only when expedient, and routinely goes into remission when elected officials fear election defeat. It is fueled by the ever present totality of individual bureaucratic careers (salaries, benefits, pensions & work), and the well known impending insolvency of the welfare state (social security & Medicare)…..”
_______________________________________________________________________
You missed the vital unifying point. It is a Lose-Win-Win-Win situation.
1. We lose through higher taxes and salary devaluation.
2. The bureaucrats win by adding more bureaucracy (their pay levels rise as more people are added to their departments).
3. The Politicians win by giving away freebies to buy votes and government positions to political “friends”.
4. The biggest winners are the Banks and Corporations. The bankers win directly. According to a Grace Commission report, here in the USA, 100% of my tax dollar goes to pay interest on the bank loans to the government. That is the PRIVATE bankers get ALL my tax money, the newest twist on slavery. The Corporations win big because every time the money supply is increased, they are the first in line to get the newly minted fiat dollars. The corporations also win because of the Corporate/Bureaucracy revolving door that allows the big boys to be immune to the law while their smaller competitors are bankrupted or jailed. Joe wage slave loses because every time the money supply is increased his saving is devalued and so is his salary.
Unfortunately very few voters ever seem to realize the laws passed are designed to benefit the bankers and big corporations and fleece and control the little guy.
No I am not a socialist but a die hard capitalist who hates Corporatism, the unholy alliance of big gov’t and big business. Some call it fascism.
Steve,
No offence, but they can’t, the rules of the blog are specific. Put up or shut up.
No agit prop.
Blog rules are tight, no argument by obfuscation multi [snip]links.
Only one clown and that’s moi. (Frog for outstanding awesome sexual stud of a man).
They tried.
Ran home to echo chambers of comfort.
They had a problem with science. They thought it was politics.
As Newtron said.
Gravity is E=MC plus a banana, more or less.
KenB says:
“Guys, I hate to concede that Romm is at least partially correct, Climate HAS been irreversible (by man) and changing since the dawn of time, as usual with warmists his time frame is adjusted to suit his agenda.”
Yep and all perfectly natural I might add.
However, I haven’t found anything that the planet can’t totally mitigate given time.
davidmhoffer,
You forgot about coal.
Americans are disgusted by way our Congress behaves. But, we hate dictatorship even more. It’s all about trade offs.
Any poll that includes the delimiter “the job situation” is utterly useless and silly. Regrettably, when ignorant, self-serving politicians see the results of polls (and similar shallow-minded citizens), they infer they should do something about jobs, usually by spending billions creating them. Unfortunately, that’s asinine. The whole jobs situation moniker should be abolished. The government can’t make jobs by spending other peoples’ money, and the few jobs Obama’s crew has provided are in government, where no measurable product is created. The government can only provide an environment where national productivity increases. The current economic situation we face is the result of too much government, regardless of the political affiliation of those responsible (Mostly Clinton). Nafta should be rescinded. But the goal of our government is the elimination of the middle class, the most productive sector. Then add in the following;
gcb says:May 21, 2010 at 10:48 am
As interesting as this is, it also points out the fallacy of basing government priorities solely on polling. Just because 95% of the population thinks that “x is most important” or “y is going to kill us all”, doesn’t make it a fact. A politician who bases all of their decision-making on whatever the polls show may well win re-election, but will not (in my opinion) be particularly effective. Just my $0.02.
This attitude is what is leading the USA down the road to perdition. According to the Constitution, elected politicians are the voice of their constituents. We are in deep trouble because of idiotic politicians imposing their agenda. But the general underlying connotation that the general populace are fools is well taken. I’m stopping here as I’ve run out of synonyms for imbecilic behavior.
Don’t like the way the DNC or RNC or WHATEVER does things? Want to change the world? Join the local party organization. Spend a Saturday morning a month at some local get-together, meet the other attendees and chat (most are just like you), exchange low key views (at first, ask don’t tell), have a buffet breakfast and listen to someone talk for 20 minutes after you eat; and at other “events” add a “good deed” every so often “helping” do whatever. Gain some credibility with the local mucky-mucks that have been at it for years. See how the system works at the bottom of the totem pole. Curious? Sit in the back during “Committee” meetings and listen; find out who the “power brookers” are. Volunteer to help during campaigns. How much time you spend is up to you. You can make a difference. Opportunities will surface.
You say you’re an “Independent”, not one of those Party People? Be up front, tell them you’re curious, that you like so and so for a certain office and want to help them get elected.
If you want to change the world, you need to put a little of your time where your mouth is.
The poor Alarmists just need to try harder in getting their message out that the END OF THE WORLD is nigh. Maybe they could hire Goodyear Blimps and drop leaflets from them. They could even include free carbon credits with them. Or, they could have people in poley bear suits on wafer-thin “icebergs” at malls with signs saying “our world is disappearing; yours will be next”. Lots of ways they could go.
The MSM has to step up their game, too. I am sure there are more things that can be connected with CAGW/CC, with more alarming headlines. Come on, people! I know you can do it if you try! Sarc/off.