I missed this last Friday, but better late than never. From Gallup Worry About U.S. Water, Air Pollution at Historical Lows. Looks like a double body-blow to admitted document thief Dr. Peter Gleick; Americans don’t share his top two concerns on water and climate, probably because of the actions of zealots like him.
These results are based on Gallup’s annual Environment poll, conducted March 8-11. The trends are part of a broader decline in worry about environmental threats documented in the poll.
Gallup asked Americans to say how much they worry about each of seven environmental problems. All show significantly less worry today than in 2000, when worry was at or near its high point for each item. The declines in concern about drinking-water pollution and air pollution are the largest for the problems included in this year’s poll.
More broadly, worry about the seven issues is below the historical average for each. Most of the trends date back to 1989.
Concern about these environmental problems is down among most major subgroups since 2000. Across the seven items, the percentage worried a great deal is down an average 16 percentage points among Republicans, 18 points among independents, and 13 points among Democrats.
Americans Worry Most About Water Contamination, Least About Global Warming
On a relative basis, Americans tend to worry more about environmental threats to the nation’s water supplies than those that affect other parts of the environment. The highest levels of worry this year are for contamination of soil and water by toxic waste, pollution of drinking water, and pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.
Concern about global warming is lowest of the seven environmental issues tested, even though it is up slightly this year from last year.
The relative rank order of these environmental issues has generally been consistent over time, with water-related problems at the top and global warming at the bottom. In fact, the three water concerns in this year’s poll have ranked as the top three concerns over any other environmental problems nearly every time they have been asked since 1989. Pollution of drinking water has most often been the top concern.
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We are having a provincial election here in Alberta. The front runner was recently asked in an online forum what her thoughts are on Climate Change and she replied
“We’ve always said the science isn’t settled and we need to continue to monitor the debate,” Smith wrote. source http://www.edmontonjournal.com/health/Wildrose+Smith+convinced+climate+change+real/6467880/story.html
Meanwhile, CAGW alarmists insult her by saying “I wonder if she thinks the flat Earth debate is settled?” asked University of Alberta ecologist David Schindler. “It’s very discouraging in an era when sound policy requires scientific literacy in its leaders.”
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/scientist-muses-whether-alberta-wildrose-leader-believes-in-flat-earth-147775855.html
A local radio station has put up an online poll to see what Albertans think. If you’re an Albertan reading this you might want to voice your opinion in an unscientific poll at http://www.qr77.com/index.aspx The survey is along the right side about half way down.
If she wins and becomes our preimiere it will be very refrshing to have a leader who is rational on this issue. (okkay, maybe “another” leader…)
One wonders how much of that decline is due to the problems with the economy that started in 2000 with the bursting of the dotcom bubble. One would think that currently people have more immediate things to think about, with the middle class shrinking and housing prices slumping. The 90’s were a period of time when everyone did better and the economy was trucking along at an unprecedented rate, leaving more time to think about less immediate concerns.
I’m surprised this article hasn’t been discussed here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/16/himalayan_karakoram_glaciers_gaining_ice/
Obama unilaterally regulates fracking:
http://times247.com/articles/obama-s-fracking-power-grab-goes-full-steam-ahead
@howb at 3:33
I just looked at that poll. ATM the count is 80% against the ‘settled science’! Som e27% think that the science is not settled and 53% don’t think that there is a problem at all. Only 11% think we need to jump off the edge of a flat earth..
I’ve been working on a presidential campaign for the past 8 months or so. This involved a whole lot of calling around in my area of the state (Southwest Washington) trying to find supporters, as well as deep involvement in all local republican activities, something I would normally avoid like the plague.
For most of the phone calling we posed as a political poll, asking people a few questions about their presidential preferences and which issues concerned them most, rather than identifying ourselves by our candidate right off. While we focused on republican and independent voters, we also called thousands of democrats. In all those months and thousands and thousands of phone calls, I had a grand total of three individuals select environmental issues as their top concern — and two of those were concerned because of property rights being lost under Agenda 21. The economy was the #1 concern by far and away, followed by taxes.
The big surprise for me though was at the various republican meetings and especially the local candidate speeches given at our county caucus just last weekend. The fraud of global warming, Agenda 21, and UN encroachment were directly mentioned far more often than not. In many areas the republican party is even adopting official anti-Agenda 21 stances, though at our local platform discussion we ran out of time to bring it up.
I am fully well aware of the republican role in implementing UN environmental policies in the past, and I’m still a little suspicious, but the tide definitely seems to be turning. After so many years of being labeled a ‘conspiracy theorist’ and so forth, it was quite shocking (in a good way!) to see so many mainline, professional politicians discussing these things as easily as they talk about taxes or gun rights.
Mr. Hadian in particular, running for governor, is anti-agenda 21. Those of you in WA may want to look him up and consider supporting him.
Looking forward to the day that the headline reads:
Didn’t have to start a fire in the wood stove today. Love global warming!
Sorry, but there’s something about the terms “multilateral international treaty” and “compulsory” that I REALLY don’t like being used in the same sentence.
Earlier Tom Nelson noted a tweet from “Tom Tommorow” that would give a seemingly reasonable basis for the public to support action on climate change. It was: “If majority of scientists are wrong abt climate change, we spent some extra money, made some extra rules. If cons wrong, everything dies.” My comment:
BUT… this is a dangerously specious tweet. Lesser points is that he assumes a ‘majority’ of scientists favor the rapidly being discredited AGW position, and the idea that a little warming would be catastrophic is accepted by few. At worst we’d see a marginal increase in sea level, and a change in the best latitudes for farming. -Nothing- dies.
But the main thing is the tweeter’s contention that the cost of following the warmist plan is just “some extra money” and rules. No. It would be a lot of extra money and rules.
Most importantly, the radical warmist agenda (83% mandated CO2 cuts by 2050 passed the U.S. House) would spell dangerous economic contraction and probable collapse of civilization. No joke. See my harrowing comment on this:
http://www.real-science.com/time-team-huddle#comment-73061
It would be nice to think that public opinion responded to the plain fact that REAL pollution no longer requires much action, but public opinion is never that wise. I’d look first to the decreased emphasis by the American media.
Wouldn’t be surprised if the change could be traced precisely to the purchase of the NBC empire by Comcast.
There’s three things to take away from this poll……… first….. we’re winning. We’ve a long ways to go yet, but we’re winning.
Second, clearly it is time to decouple CO2/CAGW from real environmental issues.
Third, watch out for your water rights. Don’t let them get started on that.
Here’s my take from this morning….. http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/good-news-bad-news/
Gee 55% worry about global warming a great deal, or a fair amount, and another 22% worry about it, but only a little. If it was a sane world and people knew the facts, 100% would not worry about at all. We have a very long way to go before people understand the truth.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
In the USA, and most of the developed world, the reason we have so many problems and worries is because we have no real problems. None of us are actually worried about our next meal, nor our shoes, nor a roof over our head. Apparently the average American family near the poverty line with a high school senior will spend upwards of two thousand dollars for prom this year. Obviously poverty is not a real problem in this country, not to mention the ever increasing rate of obesity.
These percentages are actually scary. Over one third of Americans are “worried a great deal” about the general availability of sufficiently clean air and water for general health? Really? In 1970 there was a significant problem. As Willis E. has pointed out, that was a reasonable use of the force of the state, but the problem was solved by the mid ’80s, and these regulators exist only to justify their own existence now. Now the most dangerous substance known to mankind is EPA, at least in the USA.
Don’t take my word for it. The EPA is proud to let us know that they succeeded decades ago. They just refuse to go away.
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/images/comparison70.jpg
“Gallup poll: Global Warming still dead”
Fixed the header.
Burch says:
April 17, 2012 at 2:29 pm
…If The Team would have just embraced the idea of skepticism, and actively sought the aid of skeptics in validating (or not) their hypotheses, we might have had meaningful answers years ago.
It was never about finding meaningful answers — it was about global wealth redistribution.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/rio20-meets-agenda-21/
http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/politik/schweiz/klimapolitik_verteilt_das_weltvermoegen_neu_1.8373227.html ( Interview translated to English at Planet Gore and carried on NRO at http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/253552 )
sarc on
I for one worry about water quality when all the homeopathic meds in the medicine cabinets are disposed and become even more super powerful when diluted in the aquifers. That could (may. model suggest) lead to a new race of super academics that seek to take over the world from politicians in a death match to save the world by killing it before the other side does.
I’m not sure sarc /off is needed or appropriate.
This sort of fits in.
I note that fully 23% of those questioned worried ‘not at all’ about global warming; nearly twice as many as were worried ‘not at all’ about rainforests and extinctions.
Slightly OT and probably only available to UK viewers but, a nice chance to email David Cameron and let him know what to say in an upcoming climate speech. Standard WUWT type rules would apply I guess.
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/speakout/david-cameron-green-speech
Meanwhile, this article from the NY Times Justin Gillis appeared in my local Bay Area newspaper this morning:
In Poll, Many Link Weather Extremes to Climate Change
Scientists may hesitate to link some of the weather extremes of recent years to global warming – but the public, it seems, is already there.
A poll due for release on Wednesday shows that a large majority of Americans believe that this year’s unusually warm winter, last year’s blistering summer and some other weather disasters were probably made worse by global warming. And by a 2-to-1 margin, the public says the weather has been getting worse, rather than better, in recent years.
According to Justin: “The poll opens a new window on public opinion about climate change.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/science/earth/americans-link-global-warming-to-extreme-weather-poll-says.html
Yea, just read the Gillis article. Talk about two sides of the same coin. Gillis counts any thing other than “not worried at all” as “worrying”. Also the question is just about global warming, nothing about man made global warming, which is the real issue.
The US constitution recognized the need to formally separate church and state. Science has become the new religion, with the same dangers. Formal separation of science and state is required to protect “we the people”.
Seems to me that we humans evolved in a wilderness full of real risks and we are programmed to look out for the “wolf at the door”.
That’s OK, when you are living in a stone age wilderness, when more than likely you’d not see 40, but these days we live in such a risk free environment that many see 100, and most see 60.But are pysche evolved to detect all the dangers of an environment of wolves at the door, but now take away the wolves and we start imagining them – in other words, with no real danger, we start treating minimal risk with the same response that ought to be reserved for some marauding beast.
Something similar seems to happen with auto-immune diseases. If the body is “too clean”, it starts treating non-infective agencies as “the enemy” and it vastly over-responds. And the treatment seems to be to recalibrate the body by giving it real infections … healthy bodies need dirt!
Likewise, society starts to treat the obsessive problems like global warming sensibly, when we all have real problems like unemployment and debt collectors banging on the door.
Thought you might like to look at the results of a poll at QR 770 radio in Calgary Alberta. I’d sure like to know what Suzuki thinks of this!
http://www.qr77.com/Polls/PopUpResults.aspx?qid=10246
Amazing to see an anti climate change poll result, most are so programmed they wouldn’t think of releasing such results.