Climate message only reaching the already converted – Americans worry least about global warming
Eric Worrall writes:
Gallup Inc., the management consultancy famous for its well known and widely trusted opinion polls, has published a summary of environmental concerns, which make grim reading for anyone hoping to spark public interest in climate scare stories.
The poll summary is divided between Republicans and Democrats, and compares responses in the year 2000, vs responses in 2015.
Amongst Republicans, the percentage of people who are worried about climate change has plummeted, from 29% to 16%.
Amongst Democrats, concern has risen, but only slightly – from 48% to 52%.
According to Gallup, the implications of this finding;
“Americans’ concern about a series of potential environmental threats remains on the low end of what Gallup has measured over the past 25 years. Last year’s increased worry proved temporary, rather than the start of a trend toward renewed concern about environmental problems.
That diminished concern has both positive and negative aspects for those favoring tougher environmental policies and regulations. The diminished concern may mean the policies and regulations in place are working to protect Americans from environmental threats. However, because of that, and because Americans are less concerned about environmental matters in general, they may be less willing to support policy changes to make those regulations even tougher if they don’t perceive pollution and other environmental threats as imminent.”
“Democrats worry more than Republicans about all of the issues. Notably, Democrats are more worried about global warming now than they were in 2000, perhaps reflecting the shift in the focus of the environmental agenda toward this issue.”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/182105/concern-environmental-threats-eases.aspx
The inescapable conclusion, in my opinion, is that there has been no climate “breakthrough”, and there is unlikely to be a significant rise in support for climate alarmist policies in the foreseeable future. Climate scare stories are only reaching people who are already worried about climate change.
This failure represents a catastrophic return on an awful lot of invested effort. Billions of dollars poured in alarmist propaganda, by politicians and vested interests in the renewables industry, and over a decade of time, might as well have been tossed down the drain. The only result of this stupendous attempt to mobilise public opinion, has been a barely measurable increase in support, amongst people who were presumably already sympathetic to the climate alarmist message – and a massive drop in support outside this magic circle of fellow travelers.
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Considering how many arguments they (CAGW proponents) have lost, and the pause, their support has been alarmingly steady.
I think that there are three things that might eventually dent their core support;
1. Public perception/awareness that they have been tampering with the data to lie to the public
2. The bullying of honest scientists and opponents
3. Cooling (if it starts to happen)
These stories are toxic in a way the hiatus is not, if they break out to wider middle ground audiences they will change opinions.
I remember the 1950/1960’s when there were a few days of unusual climate, we all jokingly blamed it on the atomic tests in the desert near Las Vegas, and then as one we all went back to work fighting the cold war where the bad guys really had sited atomic armed inter-continental ballistic missiles targeted at us. People today have lost their sense of humor allowing a vocal minority who believe that a few more parts per million of CO2 will destroy the planet. Don’t they know that bad guys are out there today who are far more dangerous than those of the past that already have, or soon will have atomic capabilities that can destroy us, and they certainly will try to do just that? Maybe the anthropogenic alarmists should think a bit more about a proven current problem and rethink their anthropogenic hypothesis of some distant apocalypse…
“Don’t they know there are bad guys out there who are far more dangerous…?”
Yes in and behind American Government mostly,
Biden is asleep at the wheel and Obama has locked himself out of control as the U.S. is on a controlled descent.
Did someone mention Biden?
http://i.imgur.com/Zmg75oN.jpg
Biden has no gravitas.
For years I have gone to Yahoo News for a quick hit on headlines. But in the past year to six months, the Yahoo news editors (as well as Huffington Post and others) have gone “loony” by publishing a global warming scare story about every ten minutes. I think the AGW Scare proponents are desperate because they realize they are not convincing reasonable people that global warming is a threat. They seem to think that if they run the scare stories often enough it may change public opinion. Nope.
As long as the left is the Santa Claus party it will have a substantial following which will support whatever their generous leaders put forth.
Spreading the wealth of climate change scare benefits some of the piggies all the time.
If skeptic Liberals in 2005 prefer the Republicans in 2015, wouldn’t the poll give a similar result?
Was there a follow-up question from Gallup on whether climate model error matters? I thought not.
The great unwashed may be easily deceived over the short term, but eventually they cotton on to it and react accordingly
Most products have a life cycle (perennials like Coca-Cola excepted).
http://www.idea-sandbox.com/blog_images/life_cycle_sm.png
It looks like Climate Change™ is entering the decline stage.
Various strategies are recommended but I think they have tried them all except liquidation although the product will always appeal to a limited market.
On a related note
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11492482/Scottish-are-most-friendly-people-in-Britain…but-watch-out-for-grumpy-Londoners.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11492482/Scottish-are-most-friendly-people-in-Britain…but-watch-out-for-grumpy-Londoners.html
As is frequently the case Sir Winston said it best and most succinctly “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
To paraphrase him in terms of AGW — only need to change the word Socialism for AGW aka Climate Alarmism — “Climate Alarmism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
Is a Republican or Democrat “leaner” someone who doesn’t support the red or the blue team, but is forced to “lean” by the pollster?
“42 percent of the American public now call themselves “independent,” rather than Democratic or Republican, according to a recent Gallup poll–more than at any other point in history.”
-Boston Globe, November 2014
Well, those “billions of dollars poured in alarmist propaganda” have helped create some marketing jobs, so yay.
The Essential Poll ( a few days ago) suggests Australians are on a par with US citizens, a bunch of worry warts.
‘52% say they have become more concerned about the environmental effects of global warming over the last two years and 8% have become less concerned – 37% feel about the same.
‘These results are very similar to those when this question was asked in December.
‘Those most likely to have become more concerned were Labor voters (63%), Greens voters (76%) and people with university degrees (58%).’
I’m concerned that I’m running low on beer at this hour, and CA law shuts down liquor sales at 2:00 a.m. If this can be worked into a poll about the climate, I’ll drink to that.
Opening a can of beer emits CO2… 🙂
Try Boddington’s – I believe they use helium.
I’m concerned that we won’t get more global warming.
I don’t suppose that was a choice on the survey. Otherwise, I’d have to rank my concern for global warming about forty spots below ‘Need to get my fingernails trimmed.’
Not surprised.
When I started blooging about AGW on the Daily Mail site, nearly ten years ago, I was a lone voice shouting into the wind. Now, any AGW story on the Daily Mail is laughed at by 99% of respondents. The change is that dramatic.
This is good news. And the Democrat 4% increase? Well that’s just hilarity stacked on top of good news.
It would seem that most journalists and editors haven’t caught on to the general public’s dismissive attitude about AGW, since the media’s mantra of climate alarmism is still unrelenting. Unfortunately, it may take awhile before they realize that hardly anyone is listening. Perhaps a few more winters like the past one will do the trick. We can always hope.
Problem you have here is the “a few more winters” statement. While it is truly that the highly populated NE US has had some brutal winters, not here out West (and not in several other parts of the world).
Well the MSM are doing their level best to change this. They’ve been utterly fixated on the “West Antarctic” (more factually, the Western Antarctic Peninsula) ice shelves for weeks now. Repeating the theme for all the low information voters and various morons out there.
If I read the page at Gallup.com correctly, respondants were given a list of choices, in random order. I wonder how global warming would have ranked if people were asked to respond without being given a list to choose from?
I know, I know, you can’t rank any lower than last place.
Wouldn’t it be Climate changed? I’m more concerned about the GMO food and vaccines they are trying to force us to eat at threat of being exiled as a mental patient, or the fact that our education system in the US has declined so much, that 1:4 Americans thinks the sun rotates around the Earth.
I much rather focus my energy on things I can change, like educating people about sustainable farming, and living closer to the Earth.
Got to work on ourselves, before we can possibly do anything else.