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8 In 10 People Now See Climate Change As a 'Catastrophic Risk,' Says Survey (trust.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Thomas Reuters Foundation: Nearly nine in 10 people say they are ready to make changes to their standard of living if it would prevent future climate catastrophe, a survey on global threats found Wednesday. The survey of more than 8,000 people in eight countries -- the United States, China, India, Britain, Australia, Brazil, South Africa and Germany -- found that 84 percent of people now consider climate change a "global catastrophic risk." That puts worry about climate change only slightly behind fears about large-scale environmental damage and the threat of politically motivated violence escalating into war, according to the Global Challenges Foundation, which commissioned the Global Catastrophic Risks 2017 report. The survey, released in advance of this week's G7 summit of advanced economies in Italy, also found that 85 percent of people think the United Nations needs reforms to be better equipped to address global threats. About 70 percent of those surveyed said they think it may be time to create a new global organization -- with power to enforce its decisions -- specifically designed to deal with a wide range of global risks. Nearly 60 percent said they would be prepared to have their country give up some level of sovereignty to make that happen.
While I fully agree with climate change being a catastrophic risk, a global organization with enforcement power will immidiately become the most valuable target for lobbying in the world.
I believe we'd see such an organization effectively ruled by the very interests it's set to regulate within a few years at most.
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
Trump, plus a good percentage of the US population, which means the ratios must be much higher in the other countries surveyed in order to average out to 80% overall. According to Gallup, just 42% of Americans "Think global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetime." Obviously that's not exactly the same thing as "catastrophic risk" with no time constraint, but it's frankly lower than I expected.
Pew has a more lengthy survey which does a detailed breakdown of views by political affiliation. Here's one aspect I found intriguing:
One thing that doesn’t strongly influence opinion on climate issues, perhaps surprisingly, is one’s level of general scientific literacy. According to the survey, the effects of having higher, medium or lower scores on a nine-item index of science knowledge tend to be modest and are only sometimes related to people’s views about climate change and climate scientists, especially in comparison with party, ideology and concern about the issue. But, the role of science knowledge in people’s beliefs about climate matters is varied and where a relationship occurs, it is complex. To the extent that science knowledge influences people’s judgments related to climate change and trust in climate scientists, it does so among Democrats, but not Republicans. For example, Democrats with high science knowledge are especially likely to believe the Earth is warming due to human activity, to see scientists as having a firm understanding of climate change, and to trust climate scientists’ information about the causes of climate change. But Republicans with higher science knowledge are no more or less likely to hold these beliefs. Thus, people’s political orientations also tend to influence how knowledge about science affects their judgments and beliefs about climate matters and their trust in climate scientists.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
As a South African - go fuck yourself with your racist stereotypes.
South Africans mostly consider climate change a serious risk to our lives, and one of the nasty impacts of climate change is to raise food prices - by much more than combating it ever could. South Africa has huge investments in renewable energy and these are growing (And make up the ENTIRETY of private sector energy investment).
The only deniers in South Africa are conservatives and they make up about erm 1% of the population - they're a loud minority but they are about as influential on the country's culture and politics as pissing in the ocean is on it's salt level.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Most political AGW "fixes" involve taxing CO2, not methane. Methane produced mostly by farmers, who lobby heavily, and are in Iowa the first presidential caucus. If you are interested in winning elections and don't care about solving AGW you need to not admit methane is a bigger problem, which is what liberals do.
Taxing CO2 is taxing the middle class, which to liberals is perfectly acceptable. As the DNC has shown, screw the middle class and lose the "blue wall". Instead of admitting they hate the working class they come up with "Its the Russians" when they lose.
Now that the reason they tax the wrong things is covered, lets see what happens with that tax money... It goes to Solyndra, which ended up producing nothing of value and was split up and sold off in pieces. However they did donate heavily to Obama's election. Along with Fisker Auto (not even an American company, but owned by Al Gore), and A123 again who heavily donated to the DNC and was sold off to China.
So looking at how the DNC deals with AGW, they tax people who they think aren't likely to hurt them in elections, and give that tax money to people who help them get elected and don't seem to care if it helps with AGW at all.
Put me down as the guy who looked at the solutions put into place to solve AGW and noticed it doesn't actually help but is a money scheme for the DNC instead.
It is cyclical, but there is nothing in the fossil record showing as rapid an upward cycle as we are seeing now. That's why the worry.
They demand the end of commercial air travel. After all, it's not necessary to humanity, (we lived without it until less than a hundred years ago), and it puts out a lot of CO2, and it's not possible to electrify in the foreseeable future.
Until then, it's "make someone else change or pay so that I can keep my perks."
I would avoid jumping onto the conclusions that Conservatives are less educated than Liberals. The larger correlation is that liberals will live more in Urban Areas, while Conservatives live in Rural areas. In these different areas, their world view is different. In Urban areas, a strong government is an overall positive, as there are services that need to be provided, and with a lot of people working closely together, a strong rule of law and regulations is needed for that area to function. In rural areas they are more left to fend for themselves, there tax money is going to places where they will see no benefit, and there is a culture if you have a problem you need to solve it yourself. So such regulations proposed by the government seem like an overall negative.
Now both areas have highly educated people, and less educated who will vote for whatever party. In urban areas the Poor are often under educated and vote liberal because government is trying to prevent them from dying, as the city environment can prevent them from living off the land and being able to fend for themselves. In rural areas, the poor who have resources to fend for themselves, doesn't need rules and regulations trying to stop them from doing what they need to do to live.
Conservatives seem to rule corporate higher management, and even modern farmers you need to be just as technical savvy as a Silicon Valley tech worker. These people have those degrees, but because they are working commercial they tend not to flaunt them as much. While in urban areas, there are more colleges and universities, and government agencies, where people will need the education status to help push their agendas.
Now in terms of Science. Liberal groups have seemed to reject science that says "This product is safe" (GMO, Vaccines...) because they expect government to make sure what we do is safe. While Conservative groups reject science that says "This product is dangerous" (Global Warming, Fracking...) because they are afraid that government will take away necessary tools for them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.