Now, alarmists are making the public believe in the extreme weather boogeyman

A new survey has been released by Yale in cooperation with George Mason University. In it, 74% surveyed say “global warming is affecting weather in the United States”.

Personally, I blame Seth Borenstein, Kevin Trenberth, Bill McKibben, Joe Romm and Brad Johnson for elevating and continually propagating this lie.  As readers may recall, the journal Nature came out with a strong editorial against this sort of thinking, saying it is unsupportable by the current science.

Nonetheless, these propagandists are going full steam ahead in pushing it anyway. They are preying on the psychological weakness of short term weather memory coupled with the normal human fear of storms, part of our makeup. Almost everyone has astraphobia (fear of lightning and thunder) to some degree until we are reassured there is nothing to fear. Now, these people are turning that fear back on even though the data shows otherwise. This tactic really isn’t any different than making people in the middle ages believe witches caused bad weather. We think we’ve come so far, yet there are still those propagandists who prey on primal fears for the advantage they bring.

Here are some of the talking points, followed by the press release and questions:

• Asked about six recent extreme weather events in the United States, majorities say global warming made each event “worse.” Americans were most likely to connect global warming to the record high temperatures in the summer of 2012 (73%).

• Americans increasingly say weather in the U.S. has been getting worse over the past several years (61%, up 9 percentage points since March).

• A majority of Southerners (56%) say the weather in their local area has been getting worse over the past few years. Half of Midwesterners (50%) say this as well.

• Half of Americans recall unusual weather events in their local area over the past year (52%).

• Six in ten Americans (61%) recall unusual weather events occurring elsewhere in the United States in the past year (other than their own local area), perhaps reflecting extensive media attention to the record-setting drought, high temperatures, and strong storms in the summer of 2012, as well as the unusually warm winter of 2011-2012.

• Half of Americans (51%) say that droughts have become more common in their local area over the past few decades, an increase of 5 points since last spring. This national change was driven primarily by a major shift of opinions in the Midwest (66%, up 25 points since March), which was hit hardest by the summer drought.

• A majority of Americans (58%) say that heat waves have become more common in their local area over the past few decades, up 5 points since March, with especially large increases in the Northeast and Midwest (+12 and +15, respectively).

• More than twice as many Midwesterners say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave (83%, up 48 points since March) or drought (81%, up 55 points) in the past year.

• Northeasterners are more likely to say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave (52%, up 10 points since March) or drought in the past year (23%, up 6 points).

• Southerners who say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave increased to 61 percent, from 50 percent in March.

• An increasing number of Americans in the West say they experienced either an extreme heat wave (49%, up 13 points since March) or drought (41%, up 10 points).

• One in five Americans (20%) says they suffered harm to their health, property, and/or finances from an extreme heat wave in the past year, a 6 point increase since March. In addition, 15 percent say they suffered harm from a drought in the past year, up 4 points.

GROWING MAJORITY SAYS GLOBAL WARMING IS AFFECTING U.S. WEATHER

Poll Shows Americans Believe Global Warming Is Making Extreme Weather Worse

October 9, 2012 – (New Haven, CT) A new national survey finds that 74 percent of Americans say “global warming is affecting weather in the United States” – up five percentage points since March 2012. Likewise, 73 percent of Americans say that global warming made the record-high temperatures of the summer of 2012 worse, while 61 percent say weather in the U.S. has been getting worse over the past several years, up nine points since March.

“Americans have just experienced two years of record-setting extreme weather events, and are increasingly connecting extreme weather in the United States to global warming,” said Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz of Yale University.

Half of Americans (52 percent) recall unusual weather events that have occurred in their own local area over the past year, while 61 percent recall unusual weather events that have occurred elsewhere in the U.S. Half of Americans (51 percent) say that droughts have become more common in their local area, an increase of five points since March, 2012. This national change was driven primarily by a major shift of opinions in the Midwest where two out of three respondents said droughts have become more common (66 percent, up 25 points since March).

58 percent of Americans also say heat waves have become more common in their own local area, up five points since this March. In addition, 20 percent of Americans say they personally suffered harm to their health, property, and/or finances from an extreme heat wave in the past year, a six-point increase since March.

“Extreme weather is clearly having a serious impact on millions of Americans, though the impacts are different in different parts of the country,” said co-investigator Dr. Edward Maibach at George Mason University.

In the Midwest, a large majority (71 percent, up 21 points since March) says extreme weather has caused more harm to crops over the past few decades. In addition, large majorities of Midwesterners say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave (83 percent, up 48 points since March) or drought (81 percent, up 55 points) in the past year.

In the South, a majority (56 percent) says the weather in their local area has been getting worse over the past few years, while a majority of Southerners (61 percent) say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave in the past year, up 11 points since March.

In the Northeast, 40 percent say that droughts have become more common in their local area (up 15 points since March), while a majority of Northeasterners (52 percent) say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave in the past year, a 10-point increase since March.

In the West, 49 percent say that extreme weather is causing more forest fires (up seven points since March). Forty-nine percent of Americans in the West also say they personally experienced an extreme heat wave in the past year (up 13 points since March), or a drought (41 percent, up 10 points).

The data are from a nationally representative survey of 1,061 American adults, ages 18 and older, conducted from August 31 – September 12, 2012. Respondents are members of GfK Knowledge Networks’s KnowledgePanel®, an online panel of members recruited using probability-based sampling methods (random digit dial and address-based sampling). Key demographic variables were weighted to match US Census Bureau norms. Margins of error (at the 95 percent confidence level) for the populations discussed are as follows: Total: +/- 3 percentage points; Northeast: +/- 7 percentage points; Midwest: +/- 6 percentage points; South: +/-5 percentage points; West: +/- 6 percentage points.

The report: Extreme Weather and Climate Change in the American Mind comes from an ongoing national study, Climate Change in the American Mind, by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. The study is funded by the Surdna Foundation, the 11th Hour Project and the Grantham Foundation.

In addition to Dr. Leiserowitz, principal investigators included Geoff Feinberg and Peter Howe of Yale University and Drs. Edward Maibach and Connie Roser-Renouf of George Mason University.

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Here’s the survey:  http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/Extreme-Weather-Public-Opinion-September-2012.pdf