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Most Americans Support Government Action On Climate Change
mdsolar points out this report in the NY Times:
An overwhelming majority of the American public, including nearly half of Republicans, support government action to curb global warming, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future. In a finding that could have implications for the 2016 presidential campaign, the poll also found that two-thirds of Americans say they are more likely to vote for political candidates who campaign on fighting climate change. They are less likely to vote for candidates who question or deny the science of human-caused global warming.
Among Republicans, 48 percent said they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports fighting climate change, a result that Jon A. Krosnick, a professor of political science at Stanford University and an author of the survey, called "the most powerful finding" in the poll. Many Republican candidates either question the science of climate change or do not publicly address the issue.
Among Republicans, 48 percent said they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports fighting climate change, a result that Jon A. Krosnick, a professor of political science at Stanford University and an author of the survey, called "the most powerful finding" in the poll. Many Republican candidates either question the science of climate change or do not publicly address the issue.
Ask them what they willing to actually SACRIFICE to fix it and I bet you'll get a very different answer.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
most americans also support "action" on a lot of things. it does not mean most americans have any idea what the right things to do are.
remember, polls can be made to say whatever you want them to. Follow the money and see whos actually funding the poll to know what the desired outcome is.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
"I have altered the planet's climate. Pray I do not alter it further."
Support is fine until it comes out of a paycheck.. then, no flipping way. Watch what happens when Walmart shoppers are asked to pay higher prices for higher wages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Most Americans support government action on labeling food products that contain DNA. These surveys are worthless.
I'm trying to download the poll document pdf and all I get is some Democrat advertising invoice.
"Nonpartisan" means that Resources For The Future doesn't officially support the Democrat party. Everyone who works there, however, voted Green or for Obama.
IOW, it's effectively partisan.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I am not opposed to reducing pollution to a level where I can safely walk outside and breath, and fish are reasonably safe to eat.
I am opposed to reducing pollution to zero and getting rid of all the modern niceties that cause it ... like this computer that I'm typing this post on and the server that is storing it.
Everything in between is up for discussion and probably has multiple supporters and detractors somewhere.
I'll wager that almost no one disagrees that reducing pollution is a good thing.
The discussion is how much are we willing to pay or give up for how big a reduction.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Politicians don't pay attention to voters. They follow the money. Koch et al who are making big bucks from fossil fuels control the politicians.
You can find similar polls on other topics... gun control, health care, education, etc. Politicians vote for the policies of their donors.
The US has the most corrupt political system... it's really fascism where the corporations and the rich control the government.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
>. A lot of this really just boils down to 60s ideas of environmentalism and reducing pollution. It's just that the modern spin ads an extra level of extreme hysterics to the situation that are likely to alienate people and trigger skepticism. ...
>. Someone thinks they need to generate a sense of urgency by any means necessary.
Exactly. That strategy DOES get some people hyped up, but it also makes a lot of tune you out. They then miss the message that's actually potentially accurate. The other day I posted a bunch of examples of leading climate researchers from Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Yale making statements like "by 2010, New York City will be underwater". Well, 2010 has come and gone and NYC is still there. With so much of that crap out there, it gets old hearing about it.
Somewhere, there is probably a reliable source for objective information. Since Stanford, Berkeley and Yale are provably spreading hyperbole (in the extreme), I don't know where to look for trustworthy information.
Global Warming is a theory.
First you say (in a post above) that it's an "opinion", now you've switched to "theory" - yet still spout crap that all the models have "failed" - w/o any support for your position. Apparently, you don't know what the word "theory" means in the scientific sense and/or are simply an idiot that spends way too much time drooling at, I presume, Fox News.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Government Action can be anything - building seawallls and dykes, seeding the ocean with iron, mandating living in caves, resettling populations, handing out vouchers, giving contracts to lobbyists, doing nothing, adopting policies to reduce carbon emissions.
But this is never stated, which is damn annoying. Most people automatically assume the last option, which may well be the worst option, and then arguing over the details.
There is much bloviating over how much science has gone into proving AGW. But there is very little science indeed as to the optimal response.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
These show the frightening level of ignorance about science in the general US population:
http://news.nationalgeographic...
http://www.pewinternet.org/201...
Depending on which study you look at, apparently only 40% - 66% of Americans even believe evolution is real. What are you guys smoking over there?
"Most X Support Y" is such a lame argument for doing anything.
Most people here would like to kick your ass but that doesn't mean we should.
Most drivers on the freeway would like to speed but that doesn't mean the should.
Most kids support not brushing their teeth but that doesn't mean they should skip it.
Most people would like a double-wopper-hopper burger with extra fries but that doesn't mean they should eat it never mind every day.
Most people supporting something is a lame argument for anything.
Stop rationalizing and get rational.
This kind of study is hard on the deniers because it begins moving them toward Flat Earth Society status. In a democracy, the minority just doesn't matter very much once the majority has made up its mind. They stop being a part of the conversation. The only way they will be able to get back into the conversation is to start drawing lines in the sand saying what they will and will not give up. And that will be a good thing. We need to start talking about the tradeoffs that we will have to make.
You mean as opposed to all the other decades of the 19th through 20th century's idea of "let's just slash and burn and pollute all the ecosystems on the planet with our newfound technological power, and see how that goes for our descendants, because we don't give a rat's ass?" That genius idea that we are pretty much living by today? Remember that "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose".
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Oh, some of them have updated it. Not long ago the Obama administration was circulating a piece with just such predictions, after having done a SEARCH AND REPLACE update to change "2010" to "2050". I kid you not.
There is some sound research out there, but it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff because there's a lot more propaganda than there is solid science.
Try to take a breath and have a little intellectual honesty. As you know, in these institutions updated there materials in the 1970s to early 1980s, from "OMG panic man-made ice age" to "OMG panic global warming" WITHOUT passing through any period of
"gee, maybe we were wrong, maybe there's nothing to panic about". It's ALWAYS panic about something. If you're at all honest with yourself, you'll recognize that going from one extreme theory to the other without passing through the middle shows many people have a need to be alarmist - it doesn't matter about what, they just need to be alarmist.
Experience indicates that sky is not in fact falling.
Here are a few names for you. Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
Cristina Tirado (University of California) again made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. ÃoeThe West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under waterà , Hansen said.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"The entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
> What "leading climate researchers" said this?
Here are a few examples. You can of course easily find more. Just Google for "global warming" and set it to show results from whatever time you desire. I wanted to see predictions for 2000-2015, so I Google "global warming" for resources published in 1995 or earlier.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
Cristina Tirado (University of California) again made the claim of 50 million climate refugees, changing it to "by 2020" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by a journalist how the greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under water" , Hansen said.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"The entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work.
> Rising CO2 levels and climate change are politically controversial only because the fossil carbon industry hired a bunch of PR firms to sow public doubt. Who needs science, when industry PR is gospel?
Indeed, who needs this "science" from NASA, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, and the UN, when Comedy Central is gospel?
> So tell my why addressing CO2 emissions is a bad idea (not that you explicitly stated as much in your comments)
Indeed, I've said the opposite, right here in this thread. In the thread last week I said it over and over and over, while the alarmists in the thread just couldn't hear that. To them, it has to be either believe everything you hear and panic, or complete denial. No room for thought, for considering the veracity of the claims, or considering past claims the source has made. Odd.
There are, however, a lot of ways of "addressing the problem" that are REALLY bad ideas. I don't know if you are clear that there is a lot of hype an gross exaggeration, along with some reason for concern. If that's not a point we can readily agree on, I'll refer you to post also in this thread:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
I think that post pretty well establishes that there are definitely plenty of people making wacko claims who have "respectable" titles - that there's plenty of extreme alarmist BS mixed in with more reasonable analysis.
We spent around $100 million per year to reduce drunk driving, and that saved 10,000 lives per year. So by that example, when spending wisely, saving lives costs about $10,000 per life. In other words, if you spend $1 million on the right things, you can expect to save 1,000 people. Maybe you spend it on stop-smoking initiatives, CPR training, driver training, whatever is shown to work best.
Based on the mix of science and alarmism, we're spending up to* $360 billion dollars per year, several thousand dollars per family in the US. I say "up to" because it's from source that will tend to count high. Let's guesstimate that source quadrupled the real amount, and the real cost that we should be using is only around $100 billion. We know that a $100 million drunk-driving campaign saved 10,000 people, so $100 BILLION spent wisely could save about 10,000,000 people. Ten million lives saved. Per year. That's the opportunity cost of devoting those resources to climate change related initiatives rather than health initiatives, or cancer research, or wherever they would make the most difference. That's why I think we should be very careful not to allocate huge amounts of resources based on alarmist, political, and clearly biased studies - because by doing so we're choosing to NOT use those resources on things proven to save many lives. To put it very bluntly, people are dying as a result of poor decisions made by politicians, based on exploiting and manipulating the emotions of their constituents.
What if I'm wrong, and not just a little bit wrong, but wrong by an order of magnitude. If I'm really, really wrong, only 1 million people would be saved each year by using these resources more wisely. When you're talking about major US government initiatives, hundreds of billions of dollars, the consequences are enormous. Putting $100,000,000,000 toward the wrong program means a lot of people die needlessly, because that $100,000,000,000 spent wisely could save a lot of people.
The UN climate panel said it would happen, the date in question has passed, and nothing like that happened. Ergo, the UN climate change panel is full of it.
They obviously got the date wrong, but that doesn't mean the day will never come.
I cant believe people still believe that paying a carbon tax is going to do anything but make a few people richer and everyone else poorer.
What? Who are these few people who are going to get rich off a carbon tax?
There is no attention paid to space weather trends
There has been a lot of attention given to space weather, like solar dynamics. So far there has been no evidence that space weather is having warming effects. That doesn't mean that nobody has been looking. People have, especially in the energy industry, and so far what little evidence there is actually points in the opposite direction.
or the use of a carbon tax to fund a corporate policy boards that will act as a defacto world government with an agenda that is not friendly to individual rights.
I've heard this point made a lot- we can't reduce CO2 because that means a one-world government would take my guns away and force me to be an atheist, or something.
Proponents don't seem to notice that there are weather manipulation programs in place right now.
Have any reference to that other than geoengineeringwatch? Scientists do talk about that as a possible idea but so far it remains speculative, and nobody is actually trying it. Those jet trails you see over your house are from carrying passengers. Sulfuric acid just doesn't have the money to afford the ticket prices.
How is screwing up natural weather by spraying compounds into the atmosphere and shooting it with radiation just dandy but using any petroleum product is killing the earth?
(If anyone got confused by that, the "compounds" he's talking about are sulfur aerosols, not CO2.) To my knowledge the idea strikes everyone as fanciful and distasteful; it only gets discussed as a possible last ditch, desperate option. Cities would have to be pretty flooded before anyone would actually seriously consider doing that. The main argument in its favor is that one ton of sulfuric acid would be potent enough to offset the warming of about 100000 tons of CO2. That's about all that can be said for it. (FWIW, CO2 is also an acidic gas, and obviously it also "shoots the atmosphere with radiation".)
All of you Al Gore subscribers pay honor to the creation but not the creator.
The Senate just voted 98 to 1 that the climate is changing, but refused to vote on whether humans were in any way responsible. I think that if anything qualifies as "paying honor to the creation but not the creator".
You are looking for your keys under the streetlamp instead of where you lost them because the light is better there.
I think that's because we can see them under the streetlamp- if we're the type who even bothers to look at all.
I love how the lefties always say global warming is ruining everything and it is not up for debate and that 100% of scientists agree.
IIRC it's 97%, not 100%. But that's still a really good consensus for a scientific theory, especially given the financial incentives for scientists to dissent.
The planet will gain it's equilibrium back with or without your participation if it needs to.
That's definitely true- a typical CO2 molecule remains airborne for about 10,000 years before being reabsorbed. in several million years the planet will have forgotten about us, except for any mass extinction event that we might have triggered- similar to what happened during the Carboniferous period, when today's fossil fuels were actually fossilized.
The NOAA all stars could not even predict the New York blizzard accurately. Why do you think they know what the climate is going to be like in 25 years?
Rush Limbaugh said this the day after the storm. Weathermen and climatologists aren't actually the same people. In fact most of the "skep