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Record Number of Americans See Climate Change As a Current Threat (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: More Americans are very worried about global warming and say the issue is personally important to them than ever before, according to a new poll released Tuesday. The polling may indicate that extreme weather events -- coupled with a series of grim scientific findings -- over the past year are starting to change peoples' minds about climate change, which could have significant implications for any significant climate legislation passing Congress. The key finding from the new survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication is that Americans increasingly view global warming as a present-day threat to them, rather than an issue that will affect future generations. Nearly half of Americans (46%) said they personally experienced the effects of global warming -- a 15-point spike since March 2015.
Okay, so you cannot see any evidence that global warming and climate change is affecting you, even though the evidence is there, it is overwhelming and the effective is very significant.
That's fine, so here is how it is affecting you in your daily life. Another people are concerned about the massive impact that fossil fuels are having on the world, that economics is changing and their lifespan as a viable source of energy is limited. So, everything that you do that depends on fossil fuels is already and will increasingly change. Is that going to change your life? I think it will.
Or rather, the more often a lie is told, the more people believe it.
The right are so old that they'll die before or during a climate change problem would kill them: lack of food/water, weather being too hot/cold to handle by current buildings, power issues from the additional strain for compensating for erratic climate, species of important ecological impact on food production dying. These issues won't happen this year unless you live in a desert yet, but will slowly creep out from the deserts and into normal population centers and then shit will really hit the fan.
Why is it then predominantly only the left t
Nearly everywhere in the world, climate change is a non-partisan issue. Climate change denial is mostly relegated to small, and usually extreme, parties. The US is the great exception.
There are several reasons, but the root of the general anti-science position of the Republican party originates from peddling to fundamentalist Christian creationist voters. To be able to maintain the more brain-damaged forms of creationism, you need to reject a large part of modern science - and also a large part of the institutions of modern science. Once this "scepticism" has set in, it's easy to extend it to other aspects of science.
Stephan
The new tax and political demands passed under the cover of "climate change" will be a change to daily life.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Exactly. Bingo. Why does Elon Musk have 3 private jets and multiple mansions but people don't laugh when he expresses concern about climate change? The same situation with Al Gore. It is like people forgot the phrase "talk is cheap".
This "poll" is from the "Yale Program on Climate Change Communication" - it seeks to push the entire narrative. Now, when you actually ask people what they think is the most important problem, you find environmental issues down around 2-3%. And that's right around where it's been for a LONG time. Push polls make great headlines, and when it's mrsmash as editor - you know it's pushing a defined agenda!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I wish more Americans were involved in foreign politics, they would realize this is very true. Also it's why everyone complains social media sites are all left wing because they get traffic from all over the world. America's far left are centrists in the eyes of the world.
The right are so old that they'll die before or during a climate change problem would kill them:
After dealing with a number of people, I must say there is some truth to your statement. I'd add to it that many of these people are smart enough to understand the issue.
I think they just like it warmer.
And as we enter the once coldest part of the Winter, the last week in January, first week of February, we have flood watches here in Pennsylvania. I mean, it's just weather, but after a while, just weather ends up being just climate.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Not even close to being enough. First thing that will have to go is commercial flights. Those simply cannot be tolerated. Interconnected world the way we know it today simply cannot exist. It has to end.
Next thing to go is uninterrupted electricity for everyone. That means no reliable internet either. That's the other link that makes people care to some extent about "outsiders" far away from their nations.
Finally you'll have to accept that your very culture is dysfunctional, because we're not ready to commit genocide on the level that would make Hitler, Stalin and Mao look incredibly benevolent in comparison. We will have to cull most of the population in Africa, Asia and South America, because as they will desire to increase their wealth, they will become much more polluting per capita, easily nullifying all the cuts made in the West. We'll have to be the most brutal mass murderers to have ever existed.
It's the last part that most people genuinely are afraid of addressing. It's factually true that most of the people who either deny global warming, or just don't care about it are the overwhelming majority of humanity who are living in poor countries, and who thanks to the internet now know just how wealthy of lifestyles compared to theirs we have. And they want to be like us. And their lives are being uplifted at rapid rate, as globalization has shifted wealth to developing countries at incredible rate. This will have to be severed and destroyed, alongside the masses who already got a taste of better lifestyles afforded to them by the economic growth. Because they can't afford to care about a threat that might materialize in a hundred years. They have to care about immediate threats, like medicine so their children don't die, food so their children don't end up with stunted growth, housing so they actually have a home to be at, social security of some kind so they can afford to think of more than their next meal.
It's a genuinely impossible equation. To make people care about things like global warming, you need to eliminate most of other threats in their lives - disease, food security, energy security, housing, social security, etc. And to do so worldwide, would require CO2 emissions that would make current emissions look absolutely tiny in comparison. Therefore, the only way to equalize the two would be to conduct genocide of unforeseen proportions.
The left and the right have been known to agree on many things. Generally they just don't seem to do so on this one.
Prior to about 1988, conservatives pretty much did agree that climate change was a problem, and the science was not at all controversial. For instance, it was well understood through the 60s-70s that CO2 was the greenhouse gas that made the surface of Venus so much hotter than Mercury, and conservatives weren't inclined to dispute it.
When it came to the point of deciding what to do, certain corporations used their lobbying arms to reset opinion amongst the conservatives, framing it along typical lines around controversy and the threat of socialism, in order to protect the profits of those corporations.
I don't think the right is less inclined to deal with climate change because the left has the opposite view. Rather, they see the effort to deal with climate change as disruptive of a status quo they are comfortable with.
And by not participating in the discussion about what to do about climate change conservatives have created the impression that they do not have a solution, so we instead need to look to the left to solve it. Which is ridiculous, like every problem, there is a spectrum of approaches we can take.
You can't negotiate with the physical reality of climate change, it's not a matter of opinion, You can, however, advocate for more 'right friendly' ways of resolving the issue, and if you truly believe that 'right friendly' solutions are the best and most efficient, the right should be confident in advocating for those solutions.
The right saying that climate change is a socialist conspiracy is saying that only socialism can solve a class of global problems, which is not only incorrect it also invalidates the right wing altogether.
I like how people discount the measurements and observations thousands of scientists take day in and day out as they apply their PhDs and livelihood to observe what is happening to the world. They have worked full time or more for decades on end to come to these conclusions.
You think these fucking scientists love being holed up in a shotty little observation pod in Antarctica away from their families the majority of the year? No they're doing it so that they can report to humanity their findings and give us warning and advisement if need be.
To ignore their warning on the basis of "you just feel they're wrong", or "it's political" is a display of self destructive and ignorant hubris.
Seriously you'd have to be deluded or have a mental illness to think you know better than the worldwide scientific community. The worst part is your ignorance will destroy the world for our grandchildren.
Cold winter? Climate change!
Hot summer? Climate change!
Wetter than usual? Climate change!
Drier than usual? Climate change!
It has gone far beyond the point of idiocy.