It's "dead heat" – Americans rate global warming last

“The nation’s energy problem” is 100% artificial and created by regulatory restrictions. We could all have electricity so cheap and plentiful they would be begging us to buy more of it if they just decided to build the plants.

Can someone please forward this to Govenor Moonbeam.

@Stephen Rasey it’s a Pew poll, they would never ask such questions.

Notice how the dollar weakened today and stocks sputtered? Uncertainties over the upcoming elections had an effect. The recent rallies were all about confidence that we should get some sensible leadership.
WUWT has no doubt had an influence on CAGW worries. Maybe now we need to work out the other concerns? Then Zeke might not whine about me being off topics.

I don’t see Hope or Change on the list.
Is this the November 2012 list?

In “unrelated” news…congratulations to Gavin Schmidt and John Cook for receiving plenty of accolades for their work in helping the public understand the urgency of having to deal with climate change /sarc

Now imagine what will happen when someone admits the global warming business is one of reasons economy is bad.

Brian, In Oz the government is still supporting the CAGW nonsense. Here in the US our Govt is not (although Barky is). Means less visible opportunity.

Brian H said @ January 23, 2012 at 11:15 pm

convict;
at noaa’s school, the students voted the pseudo-subject out of existence by not registering for it. I guess your freshmen aren’t as smart??

The last time I checked, the School of geology at UTas was having problems recruiting, regardless of sub-discipline. Obviously “smart” people know we don’t need geologists, mines, minerals, energy etc. Just more lawyers, accountants, economists, documentary film makers, telephone sanitisers, hairdressers…

The populace has been the court, of the irrational fear of man.
The presiding Justice in this case was the reasoning of man. It is a fundamental practice of man, that we fail. We once conceived a Sun around a flat Earth. Each generation enters the revolving door of ignorance.
What man on Earth has never been mistaken? Not I, not you. Yet each generation of man, believes anew. It is a bias, of the overarching preservation of dignity, that we can omit no wrong.
Our planet, a moon of the Sun, has exists in a bath of space, its atmosphere and oceans are the gifts that gave us life.
Why do men around me, fear the Earth, that created them? Is it the fundamental fragility of man and our inability to control the Universe that leads to thoughts, so fearful, we close our minds and hide in caves.
The first law of science, related the energy in mass. Our ancestors told us it was so, by observational reasoning. Like a rebellious teenager we have rejected this fundamental nature of our universe. It is so, we cannot add more energy to Earth, a script, derived before the evolution of man.
Greenhouse, used in cold Europe for the enhancement of biological life. Why wouldn’t a man, think a analogy, could correlate to the creation of life on Earth, with the atmosphere as it’s vessel? It is a belief without truth.
The enclosure of Earth is it’s atmosphere. The whole of the atmosphere is a window of safety, it protects us from the damaging rays of the Sun.
Radiation cannot enter the mass of Earth, radiation cannot enter the mass of Oceans, radiation cannot enter the mass of Atmosphere. It is the enhancement under pressure of the of the kinetic energy of the Sun that gives us warmth.
Our Atmosphere cannot create radiation, it cannot cannot create kinetic energy, it cannot add extra heat to itself. We are bathed in the temperature of space, it attracts our destiny, Cold.
The truth of this reasoning, has been judged. But they, the gods in white coats, claim deity and cannot be wrong.
It is the inconvenient truth, of the certainty of man to err.
Markus Fitzhenry.

Whaddyathink Spock?
Well, it’s dead, Jim, but not as we know it.

My bad; I had assumed Environmental Engineering was part of Geology at UTas. We had lectures and a prac on the topic. It turns out that it’s part of the School of Engineering. I still argue we are better off without cholera, Minimata disease, E. coli in our drinking water etc and that it’s the discipline of Environmental Engineering that deals with such issues.

Common sense and the hip pocket nerve prevail.

noaaprogrammer says: January 23, 2012 at 10:06 pm
The university where I teach is considering dropping its program in environmental engineering. Reason: For the past 2 years there have been no incoming majors – there are no freshmen or sophomores – and after the two majors that are currently in the program graduate, the program will cease for lack of interest.
That’s the best news I’ve heard for months. Firstly, global warming was largely manufactured by universities who used it as a way to justify lots of pointless environmental research on the pretext they were “investigating” something important. Second, it shows that there simply is no demand for environmental engineering – which means that school leavers are getting the message that there are no jobs in environmental engineering, which shows that despite the massive push at children, cold reality is winning out. And finally, it all adds to the growing picture of lack of press interest, lack of political interest, lack of public interest, and a singular failure of the climate to warm … which by now ought to mean that far from getting a job, an environmental degree is a passport to welfare for life.

Energy should be at the top of the list. without energy there is no economy, or much of anything else for that matter.

Surveys like this are important.
Politicians keep half an eye on public opinion. They need to know what policies are lilely vote winners. While tax and spend will always be important to politicians that is a dream scenario when public opinion is behind the so called ‘evil’ and supports doing something about it.
As public opinion wanes against global warming, politicians will find it more difficult to justify policy and the fear of vote losing will gradually cause politicians to put plans on the back burner and may be even ditch them.
I suspect that if the public was made fully aware as to how the USA has cooled these past 15 or so years, there would be even less interest in global warming. Ditto, if it was properly explained to them the economic harm that has been caused by government policy and the loss of industry (and jobs) to China and other developing nations. To nail the lid of the coffin, the case for shale gas needs to be made strongly explaining the economic benefit of cheap energy.

Isonomia says:
January 24, 2012 at 1:11 am
noaaprogrammer says: January 23, 2012 at 10:06 pm
The university where I teach is considering dropping its program in environmental engineering. Reason: For the past 2 years there have been no incoming majors – there are no freshmen or sophomores – and after the two majors that are currently in the program graduate, the program will cease for lack of interest.
That’s the best news I’ve heard for months. Firstly, global warming was largely manufactured by universities who used it as a way to justify lots of pointless environmental research on the pretext they were “investigating” something important. Second, it shows that there simply is no demand for environmental engineering – which means that school leavers are getting the message that there are no jobs in environmental engineering, which shows that despite the massive push at children, cold reality is winning out
—–
Do you think that’s also the reason that the number students taking Maths and Science is also in decline? Because there are no jobs related to mathematics, physic or chemistry?
Yay! Less people taking science subjects!
/sarc

You can’t fool all the people all the time.

“Fully 86% say that strengthening the economy should be a top priority for the president and Congress this year, and 82% rate improving the job situation as a top priority.”
Count me among the 86% here.
I have always been struck by the fact that our climate elites like Hansen, Trenberth, Mann, Santer, Schmidt, and their cronies strenuously protest the creation of U.S. energy jobs in projects like the Keystone pipeline or drilling for oil in the Gulf, while collecting their very comfortable six figure government salaries (not including the generous benefits packages). They could care less about other people’s jobs as long as they have theirs…
Did you know that these government climate employees even got generous salary increases in 2009 while our economy was tanking and people were being laid off in droves? And in 2010 these same people received huge blocks of government “stimulus” money borrowed from present and future U.S. taxpayers?

Mr. green Obama is still in office and Lisa Jackson is still trying to kill as many jobs as possible with regulatory efforts. Hansen still sits atop GISS while trying, with much success, to kill coal fired electrical plants while fiddling the temperature record. The government grants to prove AGW continue.

Out of everything in this post that I noticed, the ad for re-electing Obama was the most disturbing!

Odd that lower military spending was 3rd to last. That really sticks out as unusual to me.

The entire Pew list of priorities should be highly discouraging to journalists, educators and other Experts of all stripes. Everything the elites find important, everything they’ve been pushing for many years, is seen as unimportant or false by the people.
We’ve stopped listening.
And that gives me a little bit of hope for the future.

noaaprogrammer says:
January 23, 2012 at 10:06 pm
The university where I teach is considering dropping its program in environmental engineering. Reason: For the past 2 years there have been no incoming majors – there are no freshmen or sophomores – and after the two majors that are currently in the program graduate, the program will cease for lack of interest.
=============================================================
This is the consequence of take-no-prisoners environmentalists and watermelons using AGW to achieve all of their objectives. If AGW fails, then it will take the other environmental isssues with it. I think it is a shame that a legitimate engineering discipline that performs a valuable function is failing as a consequence of this approach. And to laymen, science itself is taking a beating because of the non-scientific stonewalling and advocacy of Jones, Mann, et. al. It will take a while to recover from the ill effects of the AGW era.

Gord Richmond said @ January 24, 2012 at 10:39 am

Pompousgit@12:29
You don’t need a degree in “Environmental Engineering” to deal with those issue, and some of the others raised earlier. They all fall under the discipline of Civil Engineering and Mining Engineering, and have done for generations.

Sorry, you obviously don’t know what you are talking about. From the NPER website:

Environmental Engineering is concerned with water and waste water treatment and environmental management (including application of re-use and recycling), waste management (including ecoefficiency and cleaner production concepts, and life cycle assessment), surface and ground water system environmental management (including water quality management), contaminated land assessment and remediation, natural resource management, environment protection, management and pollution control, environmental management system design (including environmental management planning, and auditing), environmental impact assessment and environmental management planning, environmental information systems, natural system accounting (including economic evaluation), social impact analysis, community consultation and dispute resolution, sustainable energy planning and design, greenhouse gas mitigation and management, environmental risk assessment and management, and environmental policy formulation.
The area of practice of Environmental Engineering has been established to distinguish Engineering Associates competent in the practice of Environmental Engineering where Environmental Engineering is the dominant area of practice in their professional life.

http://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/nerb/environmental-engineering

Peter Kovachev says:
If this is a part of a trend, I’d be nice to know more. Like, engineers being practical types, are they seeing a drying-up of funds for envirnmental sciences work?
Environmental engineers don’t do environmental sciences work. They do environemental engineering work.
A monopolization and political control of the field by a tight establishment ? A surplus of radical ideologues and activists who’ve turned off a largely conservative core of engineering and science types? Inability of the big players, including the UN, to deliver on its promises? The collapse of and unsustainibility of green industries and failure of their projects?.
None of that has anything to do with environmental engineering. The downturn in the field of environmental engineering is due to the downturn in the sectors of the economy that employ environmental engineers: infrasturcture development, land development, resource development, energy development, heavy industry, etc. There is also less public sector funding available for reclamation and remediation projects, public infrasturcture, etc. “Radical ideologues and activists” UN promises, and “green industries” dont matter F@#$ all to environmental engineering.
Gord Richmond says:
You don’t need a degree in “Environmental Engineering” to deal with those issue, and some of the others raised earlier. They all fall under the discipline of Civil Engineering and Mining Engineering, and have done for generations.
You dont know what you are talking about. Environmental engineering is a specialty field within the broad umbrella of engineering, just like Civil, Traffic, Architectural, Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, etc. There is some overlap between Environmental with Civil, and Chemical, and Mechanical, and Hydraulic etc, but none of those encompasses the entirety of the field and there is plenty of specialized knowledge in each of those others that is not generally applicable to Environmental. That is the point of specialization.
You guys need to grasp that “environmental” does not mean “environmentalist”, let alone “environmentalist whacko”. Environmental engineering is a productive discipline. It is engineering, not politics.

The physics and chemsitry of climate change do not give a tinker’s damn about American public opinion.

Peter Kovachev said @ January 24, 2012 at 12:03 pm

In other words, thepompousgit, “environmental engineering” is a self-declared discipline which appropriated for itself a slew of specializations which could just as easily stayed in civil engineering.
But wait! There is more! “Environmental engineering,” I see, is not for the lowly, practical “gearheads,” but…incidentally and by-the-way… provides a happy, well-funded home for connoisseurs and sponsors of human engineering as well. How’d they sneak in?
Look again at some of those “sciences” grafted onto the butt-end of the website ad you cited as some sort of evidence. Namely stuff like, “…social impact analysis, community consultation and dispute resolution, sustainable energy planning and design, greenhouse gas mitigation and management, environmental risk assessment and management, and environmental policy formulation.”
Whoo-wee, now that’s some mighty engineering, i’n it? Why not call it Engineering of Everything and Everyone?

The College of Environmental Engineering is no more, nor any less “self-declared” than any other College of Professional Engineers. It seems to me that you want to claim “a slew of specializations which could just as easily stayed in civil engineering”. Civil engineers are like that, I guess. I have had civil engineers claiming, without warrant, expertise in fire safety, building surveying (when they didn’t even know what building surveyors did), acoustics, building services (hydraulic, electrical & mechanical)… I even had a guy with one year post secondary education in electrical engineering claim that his qualification was the equivalent of degrees in building surveying, building & construction and civil & structural engineering. Engineers are like that, I guess.
To be listed as a member of a College on the National Professional Engineers Register requires demonstration of implemented designs to a designated (high) standard within the discipline. Relevant qualification helps, but is not mandatory. If you have a beef with Professional Engineering Registration, take it up with Engineers Australia, or the affiliated body in your country of residence.

Peter Kovachev said @ January 24, 2012 at 12:25 pm

Right, JJ, so environmental activism, legislation, slew of regulations, industry lobbying, pressure groups and political cultures have no effect on the financial health of this “discipline.” Industry and the public would really, really like to spend a lot more (and lot longer) if they could on “…social impact analysis, community consultation and dispute resolution, sustainable energy planning and design, greenhouse gas mitigation and management, environmental risk assessment and management, and environmental policy formulation.”
GordRichmond, perhaps. Perhaps environmental engineering should be a purely “productive industry.” It can start by shedding the stuff I’ve cited in italics above, and get to it, then.

A few years ago, our local council had engineers (civil & hydraulic) build a pump & pipe system to carry the effluent from our village to sullage ponds at another village some distance away at a cost of several millions of dollars. Those sullage ponds were never designed to take the extra load and the subsequent smell caused considerable distress in that community. The wholesale destruction of long established gardens in our community also caused considerable distress. A friend who is a sanitation (environmental) engineer (and famous for his portable septic toilet design) points out that the civil engineers’ solution cost millions of dollars more than upgrading the original local septic systems would have cost and caused far less distress.
Even more recently, the water needs of a village on the opposite side of the river needed supplementation and the civil/hydraulic engineers proposed a pump and pipe system. The pump was to be located directly opposite our rather beautiful and treasured Palais Theatre, used for musical concerts, dances, weddings etc. and immediately adjacent to our war memorial where we honour “those who died for our Empire”. Fortunately, before we started poking the civil/hydraulic engineers with extremely sharp objects, the water authority engaged Environmental Engineers skilled in “social impact analysis, community consultation and dispute resolution” that you so loathe, and a compromise solution emerged. We kept the amenity of our Palais and the pump & pipeline were installed where nobody objected.

Peter Kovachev says:
January 24, 2012 at 12:25 pm
In other words, thepompousgit, “environmental engineering” is a self-declared discipline which appropriated for itself a slew of specializations which could just as easily stayed in civil engineering.
Not true. Much of what falls under the specialization of Environmental Engineering could not have stayed under Civil, because it was never was in Civil in the first place. A great deal of Chemical Engineering, for example. Civils dont need chemistry. Chemicals dont need most of Civil. So they specialize. That is the point. Environmental Engineers need some, but not all, of both of those – plus some other stuff. So they specialize. That is the point.
The problem with you guys, is that you don’t know what you are talking about, and you can’t grasp that the word “environmental” does not mean “environmentalist”. Environmental Engineer and environmental activist are not the same thing. The motive for specialization olitical cruiwas to meet the demands of the market, not out of some political crusade on the part of the
Right, JJ, so environmental activism, legislation, slew of regulations, industry lobbying, pressure groups and political cultures have no effect on the financial health of this “discipline.”
Of course those things have an effect on the financial health of the discipline of Environmental Engineering. I listed some of those impacts above. The actions of environmental activists, for example, have effectively halted hard rock mining in my state. This action by environmental activists has harmed every discipline involved with the mining industry, including Environmental Engineering. The bust of the housing market has effectively halted the residential land development industry in my state. This action by some financial instrument marketers has harmed every discipline involved with the housing market, including Environmental Engineering.
Industry and the public would really, really like to spend a lot more (and lot longer) if they could on “…social impact analysis, community consultation and dispute resolution, sustainable energy planning and design, greenhouse gas mitigation and management, environmental risk assessment and management, and environmental policy formulation.”
Those are minor aspects of environmental engineering. They are also minor aspects of Civil, and Chemical, and Traffic, and etc engineering. They are services that engineers provide, not demands upon society that engineers make. Environmental engineers frequently help industry defend itself against environmental activists. It is funny to watch, as activists have a tough time dealing with the hard facts that engineers trade in.
Equating engineers and activists just because they share the adjective “environmental” as you do is the same as denigrating Automotive Engineers by invoking automotive safety activist Ralph Nader.

Ford quits USCAP Membership
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/shareholder-activism-right/331226

I’m afraid the decline in interest in “global warming” may have come too late for California. Already the concept, its perceived horrificacies and what to do about them are imbedded in California Statute and Regulation, with AB32 as the prime example. Even if the public’s concern dropped to Zero the mandate for the state’s utilities to attain a 33% Renewable Portfolio Standard would march on, somewhat like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
The utilities are currently signing long term contracts (Power Purchase Agreements) with as many solar PV (and a few solar thermal) developers as fast as they can in order to qualify for Federal Subsidies of one kind or another before those subsidies sunset. These contracts will last for 20-30 years and guarantee that the developer will receive 3-10 times the going rate for power produced today. Additionally, transmission lines to bring this expensive power to the centers of population are also being constructed along with backup conventional natural gas powered plants in order to firm or level out the variable output from not only the solar plants but wind farms as well. This adds up to extra $Billions$ that ultimately the ratepayer and the taxpayer will have to cover.
I’ve estimated that in order to meet the state’s 33% RPS the utilities need about 20% more than they now can claim. This means that the total investment will be about $85 Billion if the 20% is achieved by just the solar plants. And how much loss in value can we assign to about 155,000 acres of desert landscape turned into essentially an industrial complex?

@G. Karst says – January 24, 2012 at 10:22 am
It should be “yet to be disproven”, and you are right. It may yet be.