Poll shows belief in man-made warming down, but why?

by Michael Fumento on October 23, 2009

A new poll shows a sharp decline over the last year in the percentage of Americans who see solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. According to the survey by the highly-reputable Pew Research Center, while 44% of respondents saw global warming as a very serious problem in April 2008, that’s down to just 35% now.

Of course, all things are relative. With the economy and unemployment such as it is, despite that miraculous stimulus bill, you can see how a problem that’s not supposed to truly impact us for a while to come might slide down the pecking order.

BUT, the survey also shows that now just 36% of Americans say global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity, down from 47% last year. That’s a scientific belief, independent of the economy right?

I’d argue otherwise. Wild speculation about man-made impact on the environment is a rich man’s game. It’s true that the warming we’ve seen until about a decade ago when it stopped – though exactly why and for how long is debated – either is or isn’t partly man-made, regardless of the economy or regardless of what the public thinks. But when you don’t feel so rich, somehow scientific evidence that seemed so compelling before simply isn’t now.

Bob R Geologist, Tuc October 24, 2009 at 1:16 pm

Maybe the truth is beginning to win out. I certainly have written a lot of blogs showing the science behind our position and the total lack of it behind the Global Warmers. I have emphasized the fact that we are still in a glacial climate as long as there is ice in our polar regions, a condition that began about 14 million years ago. I have also noted the absurdity of declaring Polar bears endangered. A climate graph of the Holocene shows we are in the 5th warmup of the present interglacial period. All of them were warmer and lasted longer than our present 700 year warm up. How did the bears survive all these previous warmups? If you want to ruin a Greenie's day, just ask him. The Green position on Global Warming is sadly lacking in logic. I am sorry to see so many obviously smart people world wide so confused about perfectly normal climate variations. Climates are a geologic process that respond to as much as a dozen variables from the natural world and the cosmos. It is a conceit of humongous proportions for humans to believe that they can control and stabilize climates. Our Greens have to realize this

or they are in danger of spending all the money in the world trying to control and stabilize climates.

James A. Donald October 24, 2009 at 8:11 pm

I think this is simply a case that the truth will win in the end. The evidence for substantial anthropogenic global warming is weak, and this fact is simply becoming more widely known.

We have had increasingly accurate measurements of world temperature since about 1995, with pretty good measurements since 2004, which accuracy is I suspect the main reason that global warming has mysteriously ceased. The more we look at the pre 2000 data, the bigger the error bars get, so now we know that we do not know whether there was any warming from 1900 to 2000, and we do know that there has not been any warming since 2000.

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