The number of US citizens that say they “believe the theory” that carbon dioxide emissions are warming the Earth, has dropped down to 44% down from 51% in 2009 and 71% in 2007, but most movement has been into the “not sure” column.
The online poll of 2,163 adults was conducted June 13 through 20. Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/07/11/Poll-Most-see-disasters-few-climate-turn/UPI-71691310419193/#ixzz1Ry51bMe8
Now if we remember that one in five Americans believe in Alien abductions, and note that no government agency appears to be suggesting a policy of anti-alien barrage balloons protecting the population, we can basically conclude that 20% of Americans will continue to believe manmade global warming irrespective of the evidence and government will ignore them.
So as support for manmade global warming (or more likely climate change) is never likely to drop below 20% … and I suppose 20% will never believe it even if they personally were melting into the tarmac as the lava flowed past their house. For fun let’s see how what the “open to evidence” percentage has changed:
- 2007 85%
- 2009 52%
- 2011 40%
And what do those figures tell you … probably not a lot… as there still remains a big proportion who are yet to realise that the experts know no more about what the climate is going to do “long term” than weather forecasters know what the weather is going to do “long term”.
The big difference being we can personally assess whether the weather forecast was right, but we have to rely on the “experts” to assess their own climate forecasting skills using their own “interpretation” of the data.
| 52% |
| 85% |
Another point is that there is a difference between believing that some manmade warming is taking place – believing it is significant ie above say half a degree since natural vatiatiionis as much as 4 degrees up & far more down – and that catastrophic warming is taking place. Personally I would bet at around 0.1 C.
If you actually ask even the “scientists” they shy clear of acknowledging that there is “catastrophic warming”. If there isn’t (if warming is limited to a degree or 2 history shows it will be beneficial) then there is obviously no point in all the fanfare.
I strongly suspect if a 2nd question had been asked of those who believe in warming (& as I say I personally do not exclude that possibility) on whether it would be catastrophic, beneficial or something we can easily live with the catastrophists would have been considerably fewer than the UFO believers.
Neil, this whole thing is a lot of “scientists” using this “doomsday” scenario to justify research. On a totally different subject I wanted to know how quickly a grove of silver birch grew (to work out when the area had been cleared). So I thought it would be pretty easy to search for “silver birch growth rates”. Now that seemed a totally none climate related search but I was wrong within a few minutes I was brining up articles like “the effect of climate change on regeneration of birch forest”. Changes in the species growing in Birch woodland as climate change impacts.
Something like half the papers I found whilst searching for growth rates of birch were actually being funded to research global warming. If this is typical (and I’ve seen very much the same effect before) it suggests that something like half the funding for these subjects is based on the premise of doomsday global warming.
Of course, the reason is pretty obvious if you think about it. Once someone has come up with a definitive “growth rate” of silver birch, there is no need to do further research. Once you understand the ecology of an area … it’s all done and dusted and bang goes the research funding. STASIS IS BAD because unless something changes all the past research is all you need to know. But as soon as you say: “it’s all changing” … basically you can get funding to repeat every bit of research ever done in the past addressing the question: “what would change if this changes”.
I can understand their problem. In the UK, we don’t just do “research” in the way of continuing to monitor areas. Instead there is this stupid requirement to be “researching something new”. That has been as harmful to engineering, where “doing something new” is the last thing you want to do … instead you want to take something old and keep the design integrity and keep the tried and tested bits and change the minimum. Likewise, if you are studying ecology, there is nothing wrong with monitoring areas over a long period to learn more and more, but because it “isn’t new” I doubt it would get funding.
So, they have to find this new angle, and global warming was the goose that laid the golden egg: it gave a rational to revisit areas that had been previously researched and use more modern tools techniques etc. etc. all under the pretence that they were investigating global warming.
If asnything I am more conspiracy minded on this. I believe that warming is being promoted by the state becuase “the purpose of practical politics is to keep the populace cowed and eager to be led by threatening them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary” (Mencken). The Green movement have been responsible for hundreds of such scares over the last 50 years – none of which have turned out to be mainly true.
It follows that funding will go to anybody who says their “research” will support catastrophic warming, however tangentially.
In support of this theory I can point to the fact that no alarmist, anywhere in the world, has been able to name a single scientist, anywhere, who supports catastophism and is not ultimately found to be paid by the state or Luddite lobbies.It is statistically impossible for this to be accidental.
Indeed, belief in AGW go bye bye:
http://i.min.us/icnj0w.gif