The Hill posted an opinion piece by William S. Becker titled, “Climate denial is tearing our nation apart — we can’t wait much longer to act,” in which Becker asserts climate change is leading to both worsening weather and worsening politics. Becker is wrong on both counts. Polling consistently shows that although most people believe climate change is happening, the number very worried about it hasn’t changed much over the past few decades, and very few people are willing to sacrifice much in an attempt to reduce future climate change – so there is no evidence whatsoever climate “denial” threatens to rend the political fabric of the nation. In addition, data clearly prove Becker is simply wrong about worsening extreme weather.
“We know from decades of scientific research, and now from brutal experience, that global climate change is real,” writes William S. Becker, former U.S. Department of Energy official who founded its Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development under then President Bill Clinton. “Few, if any, places in the U.S. are safe from its many consequences. They are as quick as flash floods and as slow as rising seas, but they are undeniably real and growing worse.”
“One result is personal and society-wide cognitive dissonance — the mental and emotional discomfort we feel when our actions clash with reality or beliefs. a recent Gallup poll shows that 63 percent of Americans believe global warming is underway, and that 48 percent — a record — believe it will seriously threaten their way of life,” Becker continues. “Yet more Americans are moving into places with high risks of climate-related disasters rather than out of them.”
Becker is wrong, there is no cognitive dissonance in peoples’ positions, but rather it reflects a rational assessment of the relative importance of climate change as a threat to their lives and well-being when compared to other issues, like the economy, jobs, health care, education, crime, and illegal immigration.
Polls cited in Climate Realism, here, here, and here, for example, and at Climate Change Weekly, here, here, and here, consistently show that although a plurality of people believe climate change is occurring and are worried about it to some degree, it ranks last or near last in their list of concerns, and they are unwilling to pay much to prevent or mitigate it. The same polls also show the vast majority of those concerned about climate change are not willing to change their lifestyles very much, such as by reducing travel, buying electric vehicles, or giving up meat, to fight climate change.
Indeed, as recently as early July CNN’s senior data reporter, Harry Enten, reported on a new Gallup poll on climate change and natural disasters which found that the percentage of Americans “greatly worried” about climate change had declined by six percentage points since 2020, down to just 40 percent. That’s the same percentage of people surveyed who expressed worry about climate change in Gallups 2000 survey asking the same question. Meaning that despite 25 years of mainstream media constantly warning of climate doom, the public is largely unmoved.
This would seem to suggest that the majority of people understand that to the extent climate change threatens harm, the threat it poses is distant, and would have far less impact on their lives and neighborhoods than ensuring low crime, high quality health care, and continued economic growth. They also seem to instinctively understand that fossil fuels are the foundation for the modern society they take for granted. That’s not evidence of cognitive dissonance, rather that’s hardheaded resistance to propaganda.
In short, polls don’t show that climate denial, whatever Becker means by that, is tearing America apart, and he provides no evidence, direct or indirect, that it is doing so, just pseudo-psychobabble about the public suffering from cognitive dissonance. In case you are wondering, Beker is neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist.
What about the instances of extreme weather and rising seas that Becker claims climate change is making worse or more severe?
To start, for a broad range of extreme weather, even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admits to having low confidence that trends have changed or gotten worse, and for most classes of extreme weather events. The IPCC also does not forecast any such signal to arise by 2050 or 2100, either. Data provides no support for claims that during the recent period of modest warming floods, hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, or drought, have become more frequent or severe, despite what misleading headlines and unresearched stories in the mainstream media might lead one to believe. Globally sea level rise is not uniform, and the best evidence from tide gauges and historical analyses suggest that the present rate of warming is not unusually rapid historically.
In the end, much of Becker’s career has been founded upon promoting climate alarm in an effort to push an energy transition. His reputation depends on people accepting him as an expert and taking his views on the matter as authoritative. His book sales and funding for the various organizations he is associated with depends upon no one derailing the climate change gravy train. While Becker has a right to his opinion, and The Hill has a right to publish it, neither have facts on their side.
Truth will out! And solid science, such as is contained in the Climate Change Reconsidered series of reports and the recent U.S. Department of Energy report assessing the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on U.S. climate, demonstrate that climate change, while undoubtedly real, poses no credible threat to human life or well-being. Real-world data also show that the fossil fuels Becker rails against in his Hill op-ed remain fundamental to growing economic prosperity and ongoing improvements in human health and longer lives.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burnett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
“we can’t wait much longer to act,”
I’d ask Becker:
Who is we and what is act?
I’d hope not to hear that “we” is me and “act” is send Becker more money.
We’ve been acting for at least 40 years, and it hasn’t made any difference. CO2 levels are going up just as fast today as they did back then. There still is no evidence that weather is getting worse.
Meanwhile, having a great garden year. Raspberries did great. Blueberries not so much. Fig trees are covered with figs. Tomatoes doing fabulous. Good year for rabbits who’ve eaten most of the lettuce. Well, I like to help wildlife- I get good karma that way. 🙂
In a roundabout way your lettuce is providing the ingredients for rabbit pie.
I am having trouble whacking down the weeds.
HELP!
LOL
This year I’m using cedar mulch to mulch my several garden and flower beds. I can get a pickup truck load of it for very little cost as there’s a garden center nearby. It’s very effective at keeping the weeds down.
Climastrology serves as a religious support for a sort of Arcadian socialist movement. Restricting methane from cattle appeals to Vegans, who are notoriously militant. Noting rice paddy also produces methane draws less emphasis. Noting the absorption spectrum for methane is overlapped by that of water vapor is sheer heresy.
But the movement does not really care about consistency, just power.
Try explaining that LIVING trees also emit methane and watch their heads explode. It’s fun.
As someone said,
“Q. How can you tell that a politician is lying?
A. You can see their lips moving.”
I don’t know if Becker is a politician but he seems to talk like one.
His “education” (I use that lightly), is in journalism.
Actually it is rabid Climate Belief and the Climate Liars that are tearing our nation apart – and we can’t wait any longer to get the electric grids back on an even keel using coal, gas and nuclear, and ditch the expensive, unreliable, and grid-harming wind and solar.
Climate denier blah blah blah. New developments in the UK…. The Compulsory Purchase Order.
It seems that solar panel companies are being given the right to impose compulsory purchase on private landowners in the interests of pursuing Net Zero as quickly as possible. The Telegraph has the story:
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/08/01/families-face-losing-their-land-in-solar-power-push/
In Anglesey and in Norfolk…
Macquarie is just one of the many, mostly foreign, solar developers being given rights to take land rights from UK citizens.
All want to build solar energy plants whose profits will come largely from subsidies paid for by levies on Britain’s energy bills.
You will own nothing and be happy.
This is true? Not that I doubt you, but the UK is moving so fast towards a Police State that I really fear for you guys. What are you going to do? You’re welcome here, but your poor country…? Part of our Revolution was because the KIng was shoving soldiers into our homes, stealing livestock from our barns, and seizing our land and crops. Is this any different?
I think that this type of ruling is not uncommon in most countries. For example if the government wants to build an interstate freeway in the USA, they can issue compulsory purchase orders on land, at least I’ve heard of it happening.
It appears that power companies, legally or not, are sometimes seeking similar rights. I am certain that they aren’t doing so legally, however.
The power of eminent domain is accorded the government in the Constitution. However, they are required to attempt to purchase land directly first, and if they can’t buy it directly and still wish to take it, they must pay full market value. Much of this ends up in the courts and that takes a lot of time, especially after the Kelo case.
So who is William S Becker? He is presently the Executive Director of the ‘Presidential Climate Action Project’, an initiative of ‘Natural Capitalism Solutions’ (at NatCapSolutions.org) to “enable US Presidents to take decisive action on global warming”.
And who is behind NatCapSolutions? Ms. Hunter Lovins, a 30 year advocate of green solutions, and whose most recent award in 2024 was as one of the “50 most important women in Climate”.
Hard to recognize reality when your income depends on not doing so.
“enable US Presidents to take decisive action on global warming”.
Which Trump has just done! 🙂
*toots horn, throws confetti*
Oh, geez another wanna be planetary savior on the loose….
Try a different scam fella this one is all worn out.
William S. Becker is a journalist writing what others tell him to write.
His comments are scientifically meaningless.
If, by “climate change, while undoubtedly real,” Mr. Burnett means human-caused, CO2-emissions-driven modification of the climate (apart from the effects of global greening), then he’s dead wrong.
There’s no evidence the climate has changed one whit due to human FF CO2 emissions (apart from the effects of global greening).
Likewise, the “undoubtedly” needs to lose the “un.” In the absence of evidence and in the face of a very deficient physical theory of the climate, doubt is the only appropriate position.
I’m very tired of skeptics yielding ground to the supposed consensus in the interests of being reasonable. I’m on Jennifer Marohasy’s email subscription list. Her email this morning was about the new DoE Critical Review of Impacts…, recently announced and discussed here on WUWT.
Here’s an extract from what she wrote about it: “The Christy et al report has surprised me both in its scope and the extent to which it is essentially an endorsement of the current failed paradigm that climate change is human-caused.
“The Christy et al. report operates within the existing paradigm, … Its focus is on moderation … and in no way challenges core assumptions, …“
Such weak-kneed acceptance is become so tedious.
My own experience from publishing in the field – and defending my work -is that the current crop of climatologists, skeptics included, have little or no training in evaluating the physical reliability of their own data or models. Physical meteorologists may be an exception but, if so, they remain silent.
This lack of training may be why even skeptics bow to the premise of CO2-caused climate change. They accept climate models as physically mostly complete and generally predictively correct, though a bit askew.
In fact, climate models produce physically meaningless air temperature projections. Throw out the models, throw out the premise. But the acceptniks can’t see their way to it; perhaps because they haven’t the training. Koonin does, though. He’s a cypher.
I was contemplating writing something similar. Thanks for doing a better job.
Glad for your company, Richard.
If Americans are supposedly so concerned about a warming climate, why is it that the three most populous states—California, Texas and Florida, with a combined population of about 95 million—are all located in the warmest regions of the US? In actuality, the people that continually babble away about climate crises and that we can’t wait to act any longer to combat it are the ones that stand to benefit from climate hysteria through their investments in businesses peddling green products usually subsidized by tax revenue.
While that fact is undeniably true, they also use huge amounts of power to operate air conditioners in the summer. Power outages present a real problem to those areas. Texas has made some progress in managing its stand-alone power grid, with a lot of battery backup, and lots of gas power as well.
It has been scientifically documented that around the globe “excessive deaths” due to cold outweigh “excess deaths” due to heat by an average factor of about 10, with significant variations depending on latitude and nation state.
In this regard, global warming (even if a minor few degrees-C) is a welcomed trend.
BTW, plants, the basis of life of Earth, on average also prefer it to be warmer than it currently is.
This is probably the biggest takeaway from this. When Global Warming is brought up in conversation, I no longer like to discuss it. I merely state that I follow what the IPCC say and draw my conclusions from their findings. Accordingly I see no cause for alarm.
If the discussion continues and ‘facts’ are brought up, I can almost always counter that they are not from the IPCC, but from media, UN, or the ‘Summaries for Policy-makers’ that are (by the IPCC’s own rules) written by politicians.
Nobody has ever resorted to actual IPCC reports, because they are almost universally unknown. Quite deliberately so on the part of the alarmists, in my opinion.
I want my reparations from the Clintons, Obamas, and the Bidens. All else can wait.
I am standing in line directly behind you. Hopefully the pizza and beer arrive soon.
I am not worried about climate change, but I am worried about climate change policies advocated by the left.
Also, polls such as Becker’s citations are confounded by political persuasion. Democrats are in general much more prone to adopting the apocalyptic climate narrative as part of their party’s “package” of beliefs, their decidedly left-leaning platform. What he deems to be climate worries are somewhat explained by party affiliation, not cognitive dissonance. He’s just upset that his party is not currently in power, probably with a large dose of personal TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome).
From the above article regarding the “many consequences” of climate change:
“They are as quick as flash floods and as slow as rising seas, but they are undeniably real and growing worse.”
— attributed to William S. Becker, former U.S. Department of Energy bureaucrat
Let’s see . . .
— is it flash floods, or severe droughts?
— is it sea level rise (SLR), or land subsidence due to pumping out underground water and/or natural isostatic rebound from the last glacial period on Earth?
Also, they may be “real”, but prove they aren’t trivial, yet alone “growing worse”. Show your homework.
Lying and cheating is normal for the other side, if they aren’t allowed to lie and cheat they have nothing to offer.
The silence would be much welcomed.
Thank you for reading The Hill so we don’t have to. I never pay attention to anything from The Hill. Being based in the overwhelmingly leftist, ivory tower elitist enclave that is Washington DC, their views are reliably leftist and disconnected from the views of most Americans and objective reality.
Anyone from the Clinton Gore administration that is now promoting the “Climate Crisis” is to be automatically disbelieved.