Of course, things like lack of any warming trend for a decade couldn’t have anything to do with it. Could it? Climategate? Glaciergate? Fakegate? Naw. It’s the economy, stupid.
Source: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/trend
Climate Change Skepticism Stems from Recession, UConn Study Finds
By: Christine Buckley, CLAS Today
In recent years, the American public has grown increasingly skeptical of the existence of man-made climate change. Although pundits and scholars have suggested several reasons for this trend, a new study shows that the recent Great Recession has been a major factor.
Lyle Scruggs, associate professor of political science in UConn’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, suggests that this shift in opinion is related primarily to the public’s concern about the economy.
“That the economy impacts the way people prioritize the problem of climate change is uncontroversial,” says Scruggs. “What is more puzzling is why support for basic climate science has declined dramatically during this period.
“Many people believe that part of the solution to climate change is suppression of economic activity,” which is an unpopular viewpoint when the economy is bad, Scruggs continues. “So it’s easier for people to disbelieve in climate change, than to accept that it is real but that little should be done about it right now.”
Scruggs and UConn political science graduate student Salil Benegal published their findings online in the journal Global Environmental Change on Feb. 24. An abstract is available here.
The study relies primarily on information drawn from a number of national and international public opinion surveys dating to the late 1980s.
The researchers found significant drops in public climate change beliefs in the late 2000s: for example, the Gallup 2008 poll reported that between 60 and 65 percent of people agreed with statements of opinion that global warming is imminent, it is not exaggerated, and the theory is agreed upon by scientists. By 2010, those numbers had dropped to about 50 percent.
The authors also found a strong relationship between jobs and people’s prioritization of climate change. When the unemployment rate was 4.5 percent, an average 60 percent of people surveyed said that climate change had already begun happening. But when the jobless rate reached 10 percent, that number dropped to about 50 percent.
The paper also evaluated three other explanations for the crisis in public confidence: political partisanship, negative media coverage, and short- term weather conditions.
“We think that this is the first study to consider the economy and these explanations at the same time, says Scruggs.”
Of these, the authors found that faith in climate change dropped across political parties, among Republicans, Democrats, and independents. They also found that that the “Climategate” email hacking controversy and reported errors in the 2010 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which both occurred after public faith in climate change began to drop, were not factors.
The authors did find that if people had experienced a recent change in short-term weather, they were more likely to believe that climate is changing over the long-term. But when the study controlled for these effects, the economy mattered more than the weather, says Scruggs.
The authors also marshaled international evidence showing that European opinion points in the same direction.
“There is probably a stronger overall ‘pro-climate’ ethos in Europe,” says Scruggs. “Still, even in Europe, countries experiencing more severe national recessions saw larger declines in beliefs that global warming was occurring.”
The researchers speculate that cognitive dissonance, which arises when people experience conflicting thoughts and behaviors, could explain this pattern. Most people view economic growth and environmental protection to be in conflict, so admitting that climate change is real but should be ignored in favor of economic growth leads to an internal philosophical clash.
“Psychologically, people have to evaluate economic imperatives in the recession, and that can create conflicting concerns,” Scruggs says.
When confronted with a desire to boost the economy, he continues, people seem to convince themselves that climate change might not really be happening.
Now that the economy is beginning to bounce back and the unemployment rate is shrinking, Scruggs says it makes sense that belief in global warming has begin to rebound.
“We would expect such a rebound to continue as the economy improves,” he says. “You wouldn’t make that prediction if you think something else, like political rhetoric, is the issue.”
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Per the top graph, so as to dispel the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the defenders of faith, here’s the larger HadCRUT record for the last 30+ years – it WAS warming, but seems to have stopped in the last decade and is now headed down a bit.
Source: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/trend
The “researchers” shouldn’t have had to spend a lot of other people’s money merely to tell us about their own faith-based psychoderangements, which include the idea that everyone else is irrational, but they probably did.
And then they even forgot to mention the “fact” that specifically due to a their drastically underdeveloped economy, the Chinese and Indians are so irrational that they are trying to single handedly bring about “the destruction of creation”!
Why is Prof Scruggs is puzzled over the public’s declining support for climate change? The answer is obvious. The public is well aware of the difference between science & politics, & how the two are practiced. They recognize the AGW believers penchant for scare tactics and propaganda, as well as their reluctance to engage those opposed to the notion of significant man-made GW in open and honest science-based debate.
Dave Wendt says: @ur momisugly March 13, 2012 at 10:05 am
…As more and more of the “climate community” have openly admitted that the “science” is really irrelevant and that the goal is and always has been “redistribution of wealth” the worm has turned….
____________________
This is especially true after Mike Mann is accused of taxpayer fraud and he is protected by a twisting of words by the VA Supreme Court. It doesn’t help that it is now shown he has recieved almost $6 million in grants over the last 13 years and that does not include speaking fees.
Seems the real meaning of “redistribution of wealth” is stealing money from Joe Sixpack and putting it into their own pockets. But that has always been the problem with trying to implement “Social Welfare” The conmen always take their cut first and the publicised recipients get the left overs.
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/08/19/suing-nasa-and-uva
It’s getting to the point I just can’t read this rubbish anymore. Beating my head against the wall only makes me forget for a little while.
After years of being taught “this or that wouldn’t be as bad if there wasn’t global warming”, people are starting to realize that current economic recession wouldn’t be as bad if we didn’t waste so much money on fighting climate.
Perhaps what was learned from fakegate has something to do with the hypothetical drop in knowledge about climate change. We learned from fakegate that there are groups actively working to stop people from learning about science. Could these groups have had an influence?
The first step is to admit you have a problem…
“Lyle Scruggs, associate professor of political science…”
Need this article go any further?
Maybe it’s as simple as real scientists selling themselves out to the political scientists? Maybe it’s as simple as real scientists no longer arguing competing theories, data, and all that wonderful stuff that comes with the scientific method, and instead, trying to smear their opponents with the cleverest focus group tested phrase, such as “deniar.”
If real scientists wanted to be nothing more than political scientist, why work your butt off in school to get that science degree? It would have been so much easier to just chuck it, and to join the dumbest in the political science program, wouldn’t it?
Just one word is needed in response:
Duh!
(Boy, am I tempted to add more, but I promised just one word.)
Well stated, Dave Wendt. Two paragraphs laying out the whole truth.
We’re here. We’re climate. Get used to it.
“Cognitive dissonance, which arises when people experience conflicting thoughts and behaviors”
like wanting to shout that ‘you’re as mad as hell’, yet remaining as tranquil as a mill pond excusing the tripe because the author is an associate professor of political science and will know no better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dib2-HBsF08
No doubt some linkage exists – when people have jobs etc., they don’t mind the government spending a few billions on lunatic projects. When people see the economy collapsing around them, they recognize that they are governed by people with a very strange agenda, and start to speak up against the prevailing dogma, which just happens to be CAGW.
“In recent years, the American public has grown increasingly skeptical of the existence of man-made climate change. Although pundits and scholars have suggested several reasons for this trend, a new study shows that the recent Great Recession has been a major factor.”
In recent years, the American public has grown increasingly skeptical of the signifcance of man-made climate change. Although pundits and scholars have suggested several reasons for this trend, a new study shows that the recent Great Recession has been a major factor.
There. Fixed it.
Well, there’s at least one politician who’s not toeing the AGW line:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/rick-santorum-dangers-carbon-dioxide-tell-plant-152230291.html
Reluctantly I am inclined to accept the conclusion given the short attention span of the American electorate. Obama’s current poll numbers are tanking in direct response to rising gasoline prices and probably some other issues as well, but mostly the price of gas. If this reading is correct then any policy that is seen to inhibit the economy which will directly impact the voter, will cause the voter to react unsupportively to any idea that drummed up the need to inhibit the economy in the first place. Call it a reversal of cause and effect. Americans vote their wallet and I suspect many other Democratic societies do as well. Tell me you are going to solve the world’s problems at no expense to me, then support will be at least condoning but not opposed. Demonstrate to me that your solutions cost me, then opposition rises first to the solution then to the need of any solution, then finally to denying the proposed problem really exists. Hence cost benefit analyses are demanded.
Sorry, but I’m not optimistic that the public has seen through this current hoax (AGW) for the proper reason. The track record doesn’t support a deliberative researched conclusion by the public. They are easily led astray by shallow populist themes, that’s why liberals use them over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take the win to end the hoax but be warned as soon as this one is done, a new one will be foisted in order to scam the tax payer yet again.
So it’s official. AGW is a faith with no scientific basis.
The science is settled: there’s no such thing as manmade Global Warming. Now it’s just about politics, and the bad guys are STILL winning. Until we find a way of aligning politicians’ self-interest with sceptical public opinion they will continue their wicked hoax.
A hindcast based on a forecast…that has value…FAIL
And this proves/solves… what… exactly?
I just surveyed my butt, and it says global warming is worse when I sit down.
Can I get a grant?
When you can see there’s been no warming in 17 years, but believe it’s warming because the climate models say it is, that’s cognitive dissonance.
When you label people who don’t believe the AGW hysteria as being anti-climate, that’s stupidity.
There may be some truth here. It is a fact that professed environmentalism rises in good times, when people can afford public virtue. In fact, societies care little for large-scale environmental regulation until per-capita income reaches a fairly uniform threshold–which is why there will be a significant green movement in China in coming decades.
The underlying temperature trend since satellite measurement began (~30 years) is ~0.16C per decade once known sources of short term variability are backed out (ENSO, volcanoes, solar). This holds true for both terrestrial and satellite records and is unchanged across the last 10 years. Please refer to Foster & Rahmstorf 2011
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044022.pdf. Global warming continues no matter how many times “pause”, “lack” and “stopped” are sprinkled into such articles.
“What is more puzzling is why support for basic climate science has declined dramatically during this period.”
Obviously nothing to do with the bad science, the distorted data and unfounded scare stories.
That would mean the public are becoming smarter and that would never do.
Pull My Finger says:
March 13, 2012 at 1:24 pm
And this proves/solves… what… exactly?
I just surveyed my butt, and it says global warming is worse when I sit down.
Can I get a grant?
*
LOL! In support of the findings of your butt, I’ll give you a dollar.
Oddly in one way they are right , when things are going well people can indulge in unimportant and meaningless pursuits , and they can take a rather slack attitude to money . But when things go bad , that changes it all, suddenly they do start to look at the bottom line much more , they start to ask questions like ‘why’ in areas they never asked before and they withdraw from ideas that to them which are seen as unimportant but nice to have to core of their needs .
The trouble is far from clear that this interest will come back and the return of better economic times , the mob interest waxes and wanes and what can be hot one minute is no ice cold the next. As the old saying went, ‘today’s news is tomorrows chip wrapper ‘.
Add to that the various issues like fakegate , the leaked e-mails , which to be honest are not really hot issue once you move away from those interested in the subject on both sides and toward the general population which , no offense to Watts have probable never heard of this nor Realclimate etc web sites.
And its worth remember the two golden rules of politician’s ,’ get elected ‘ ‘stay elected ‘ , once it became clear those two rules could not be meet via the AGW scare it was always going to hit the buffers . And its the corrosive mix that is bringing the AGW scare train to a halt, it was after-all a train powered by political will rather than by the rather poor science .