As Americans watch Republicans debate the issue, they are forced to mull over what they think about global warming, said Jon Krosnick, a political science professor at Stanford University.And what they think is also influenced by reports this year that global temperatures in 2010 were tied with 2005 to be the warmest year since the 1880s.
"That is exactly the kind of situation that will provoke the public to think about the issue in a way that they haven't before," Krosnick said about news reports on the Republicans denying climate change science.
I sure hope he's right. The debates were skewed with 1.5 candidates arguing for sanity and the rest denialists, playing to a skewed-conservative audience. If that still helped climate realism, then bring on the national campaign. The increasing recognition of Republican leadership being anti-science is probably sinking in somewhat.
I wonder though if it's more just the particular time, right after record heat and weather disasters. The previous poll was done in early June rather than the end of summer heat. Or maybe fading memories of the made-up nonsense over the stolen climate emails.
Anyway, modest progress for realism.
The beauty of this situation is the combination of rejection. Not only climate science, but also evolution and now vaccination*. The Republicans are laying into the keyboard of ideas with hammers in both hands and the resulting awful dissonance is too much for many people to ignore. What small fringe is hears beautiful music where the rest of us only perceive incoherent smashing noises? 10%, I'll guess.
ReplyDelete*Michelle Bachmann is the hood ornament of the GOP Hummer; nobody cares what the vaccination back story is or which "candidate" repeated it, all we know is that it's coming from the GOP pack.
The drought in Texas, and the record flooding in Connecticut and Vermont, are what you expect from Global Climate Change: increases in the extremes of the hydrologic cycle. Dry areas get drier. Wet areas get wetter.
ReplyDeleteThere will be more.
Rick Perry held a stadium prayer rally, but he had barely left the stadium when God set Texas on fire. (credit to Bob Park of APS). Clearly God was sending a message to Brother Rick: limit carbon emissions.
I'd rather the figures for belief in climate change remain as they were ... in trade for solid evidence that NO ONE is watching the blather of this congress of cretins.
ReplyDeleteJohn Puma
In reality, of course, most of the States now reside below a mile or more of blue ice.
ReplyDeletehttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/20/new-peer-reviewed-paper-clouds-have-large-negative-feedback-cooling-effect-on-earths-radiation-budget/
"The cooling effect is found to be -21 Watts per meter squared, more than 17 times the posited warming effect from a doubling of CO2 concentrations which is calculated to be ~ 1.2 Watts per meter squared." found Watts. Go figure... O well, maybe clouds really do keep some sunlight away from earth's surface. More research is necessary :)
I've looked at polls from both sides now
ReplyDeleteFrom Woods and Fox and still somehow
It's poll's illusions I recall,
I really don't know polls at all.
The "Big Dawg" nails it: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/09/bill-clinton-gop-climate-denial-us-look-like-joke.php
ReplyDeleteTo find out what an unpaid Mechanical Engineer discovered in looking into the GW issue (an equation that calculates the measured average global temperatures (agt) since 1895 with 88% accuracy among other things), Google “Climate change is dominated by natural phenomena”.
ReplyDeleteAnother Galileo.
ReplyDeleteThis Galileo uses SST, sunspots, and CO2 as inputs to his equation for predicting agt.
ReplyDeleteYes, he uses SST as an input for predicting air temperature.
Brilliant.
Galileo was a mechanical engineer?
ReplyDeleteHoratio thought he was a TV weatherman.
Yeah John, but when the Guv runs the prayer/fire thing through the Perry Famous Hair Machine, the story comes out that the prayer session limited the damage to ~ 1000 houses burned, and less than the entire state burned. A resounding success! The same Machine, which appears perpetual and immune to the laws of thermodynamics, undoubtedly will find a use on WUWT in explaining that GW actually results from those pesky neutrinos' driving faster than the slowpoke photons. That will be followed by the Guv's dancing the little sidestep, and wishing the Chicken Ranch could lure Texas A&M back from the SEC. Oh, Ricky--you have some 'splaining to do!
ReplyDeleteI never paid much attention to climate change and used to think it was a controversial theory, but after Climategate, I began to read more about climate change and quickly realized that the Republican Party was lying about this. Now I plan to vote for the Democrats.
ReplyDelete