Poll: Republicans Increasingly Isolated In Their Denial Of Global Warming
I asked Ipsos to send over a partisan breakdown of the new Ipsos/McClatchy poll on global warming, and the results are fascinating:
The data show that Republicans are increasingly isolated in their denial of global warming: The largest percentage of GOPers yet in Ipsos’ polling says it isn’t happening, and the rise in their denial is far more pronounced than among Dems or independents.
The poll asked whether people believe that the world’s temperature “has been going up slowly over the past 100 years.”
A surprisingly large percentage of Republicans, 43%, say it isn’t happening, versus only 23% of independents and 16% of Dems. Meawhile, only 57% of Republicans say it’s happening, versus 68% of independents and 82% of Dems.
An Ipsos official confirms that this is the lowest percentage yet of Republicans who say it is happening, and that their skepticism is rising at a much more pronounced rate than among Dems or indys.
It gets more interesting. Of those who believe the earth is warming, a whopping 66% of independents and 72% of Dems believe that it’s the result of human activity, and not natural patterns in the earth’s environment.
By contrast, Republicans are the only group in which a minority (42%) believes it’s the result of human activity. A majority (54%) chalks warming up to natural patterns.
The Ipsos official cautioned that these numbers could be more a reflection of partisan opposition to Obama’s agenda, and less a matter of firm conviction. Even so, it’s a striking trend, and it wouldn’t be surprising if it’s largely rooted in the increasing ideological polarization of the political media.
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Going green includes reducing/eliminating man made toxins and pollutants released into the environment. Why so much focus on CO2? CO2 is not a toxin or a pollutant. It is a trace element that is beneficial to plant life and down the food chain animal life. Finding and developing clean, renewable energy sources makes excellent sense. But why should we drive the economies and standard of living of countries throughout the world down BEFORE the alternatives are developed by pursuing CO2 as the big culprit when it is NOT?
Scott,
Another one of your patented ploys to try and sidetrack the main issue.
Not wanting to go green, and independent from foreign oil, while just hoping that the planet is not going to suffer disastrous consequences is playing Russian Roulette.
Liam:
Another one of your patented ploys to try and sidetrack the main issue.
The issue I wanted to address was your non-sensical use of this analogy. And so I did.
Not wanting to go green, and independent from foreign oil, while just hoping that the planet is not going to suffer disastrous consequences is playing Russian Roulette.
No it isn’t, for precisely the reasons I have already laid out, an understanding of which you see immune to. But no worries. I didn’t expect you to stop using it just because it makes no sense. Indeed knowing how stupid an analogy it is, I fully expect you to use it all the more.
We are currently fighting two stupid and very costly wars, which have their genesis in our dependence on foreign oil.
Clean Air is also a health issue. Those two things are huge payoffs from going Green as rapidly as possible.
I recall all the same skeptical **** being tossed around against fighting acid rain, and banning toxic pesticides, which were even killing off The Bald Eagles.
There are always a certain percentage of Luddites to be found, who will always want to fight against making any rational and vital changes.
I bet that most Drug Cartels would really resist having Drugs been dispensed for free to addicts.
That is why the merchants of dirty energy, are trying so hard to stop the green revolution.
Which Scott wanted to discuss.That is why I call him the comments parasite. He offers no original takes on anything, and he thinks that he is such a clever obstructionist, by latching on to snippets of other peoples original remarks, and then attempting to start a sidetracking debate about this snippet or that snippet.
Not wanting to take the prudent step of of doing all we can, to make sure that we are not causing much of the global warming, and accelerating it, is playing Russian Roulette with the lives of all the children of the planet.
Scott C.,
As your previous posts touting the virtues of global warming explicitly reveal, you are utterly ignorant regarding this subject. The evidence supporting the reality of global warming – glacial melt, melting permafost, coastal erosion, warmest decade on record, etc., – is irrefutable. Yet, you would play Russian roulette with our entire planet by ignoring the obvious. If we screw this up, we don’t get any do-overs.
As clear indication of the lack of objective evidence to support their position, the global warming deniers are constantly changing their tactics. First, they denied that there is any evidence of global warming – some still do. Second, admit global warming, but deny that man has had any contributing effect. Lastly, support both theories while simultaneously pushing the meme that there is some global conspiracy among scientists, liberals, George Soros, and our Kenyan/British/socialist/fascist/Marxist/czarist president to con the world into spending more money combating the “fiction” of global warming. The deniers have never yet been proven to be right. Time has consistently proven them to be totally in the wrong. Suddenly, you would have us believe that they are right?
Honestly, could you be less plausible?
Not a member of this echochamber,
“Dems more isolated in their belief Obama is doing a good job.”
This is nothing new. Liberals have been kvetching about Obama from his first day in office. That fact doesn’t exactly dovetail with the conservative lie regarding how the left blindly supports Obama, does it?
Liam:
Not wanting to take the prudent step of of doing all we can…
If the costs of taking your “steps” are greater than the costs of not taking them, then they are not prudent.
Scott,
What cost are you talking about. How much is a stable environment worth to you?
It’s bad enough that in an earlier thread right wing corporatist “Scott C.” explicitly said that American citizen’s controlling our American constitutionally limited democratic republic is “one of the dumbest things” he’s ever read here.
But now “Scott C.” is trying to distort factual, observable reality.
There are of course TREMENDOUS costs associated with doing nothing.
Apparently the corporate interests that right winger “Scott C.” is subservient to think otherwise. So apparently it’s the oil-dictatorships that are enriching themselves off of polluting our planet that “Scott C.” is working for today.
Tomorrow corporatist “Scott C.” will be working for a different corporate interest. My bet, in the next couple of threads corporatist “Scott C.” will push falsehoods that help the Communist Chinese dictatorship and then the corporate-medical-industry leaches.
Any bets?
Right winger “actuator”: “CO2 is not a toxin or a pollutant.”
Try breathing it exclusively.
Well, NO, DON’T try breathing it exclusively, I don’t want to be responsible for your Darwin Award.
CO2 can kill you. Ask anyone in the Navy.
H3ll, ask anyone who has taken a decent Middle-School science class.
If you missed that Middle-School science class than an undergraduate college explanation might be beyond your grasp, nonetheless, the short explanation is:
“Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas – it traps heat radiation that is attempting to escape from Earth.”
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/globalchange/global_warming/03.html
More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means more heat radiation is trapped in our global climate system.
Gasman:
The evidence supporting the reality of global warming – glacial melt, melting permafost, coastal erosion, warmest decade on record, etc., – is irrefutable.
I never said it wasn’t.
Yet, you would play Russian roulette with our entire planet by ignoring the obvious.
You seem as immune to logic as Liam. As I have explained, the Russian Roulette analogy/metaphor is not apt. Simply asserting the metaphor over and over will not make it apt. If you wish to (sensibly) dispute my claim, then you must address the reasons I provided for it. Ignoring them, and simply re-asserting the very thing that is under question is childish and stupid.
As clear indication of the lack of objective evidence to support their position, the global warming deniers are constantly changing their tactics. First, they denied that there is any evidence of global warming – some still do. Second, admit global warming, but deny that man has had any contributing effect. Lastly, support both theories while simultaneously pushing the meme that there is some global conspiracy among scientists, liberals, George Soros, and our Kenyan/British/socialist/fascist/Marxist/czarist president to con the world into spending more money combating the “fiction” of global warming. The deniers have never yet been proven to be right. Time has consistently proven them to be totally in the wrong. Suddenly, you would have us believe that they are right?
Yada yada. You have just accused “deniers” of arguing three different things (including not denying anything!), none of which I have ever proposed here. So why are you bringing it up? Too difficult to address what I actually said, so you have to pretend I have made arguments you are more comfortable with?
Honestly, could you be less plausible?
Honestly, yes. I could be like majority of people here.
Right wing sellouts like “Scott C.” is absolutely willing to play Russian Roulette with life on earth if there’s a short term payoff for him.
He’s a classic right wing Ayn Rand libertarian: A SOCIOPATH.
Seriously, the intellectual leader of “libertarianism” was a sociopath who idealized a psychopathic child murderer as her perfect “real man”:
http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm
That should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the “intellectual” underpinnings of the current right wing movement: It’s sociopathy idealizing psychopathy.
Turns out cap/trade IS a job killer:
The American Petroleum Institute said about 40 employees would be departing as part of a restructuring designed to focus more attention on the oil group’s grassroots lobbying efforts.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/71829-api-announces-cuts
Because of the massive, massive industrial scale of burning fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) all over the earth, every day, by nearly every human being on earth, the CO2 adding up in the atmosphere has changed our climate.
That change in climate has observable realities: Glaciers are shrinking, the ice poles are shrinking, oceans are rising, ancient weather patterns are changing.
These global climate change realities have consequences:
Glaciers feed rivers in the summer for millions and millions of people to drink, those same glaciers feed rivers in the summer that water crops for millions and millions more.
Oceans rising means that every coastline on earth may shrink which means massive displacement of millions and millions of people, and even if you don’t live on the coastlines those influx of people into the mainlands may affect your communities.
Climates that used to support growing certain kinds of plants are dramatically changing, in the Midwest that may have unpredictable (and VERY BAD) consequences to agriculture (farms need certain climates and a steady input of water to thrive).
In the Northwest entire forests are dying because of infestations of pine beetles which eat the forests, those pine beetles thrive in the warmer weather.
All of these observable realities are simply ignored by right wingers, worse, many right wingers are invested in the fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) that are the root of the problem, and as such those right wingers are willing to LIE and deceive and fudge facts in order to distort observable reality.
Actuator says: CO2 is not a toxin or pollutant.
News retorts: Try breathing it exclusively.
So you think water is a toxin/pollutant too? Spectacular logic, News. Spectacular.
News:
Glaciers feed rivers in the summer for millions and millions of people to drink
Yeah, but what would happen if they tried to breath it exclusively?
Right winger “Scott C.’s” deceptive logic would kill him if he tried it in the real world.
Fortunately he lives in the right wing’s fantasy land where he can breathe water exclusively.
So do your corporate puppeteers pay you by the hour or per post, “Scott C.”?
What do you charge to deny observable reality?
Glaciers feed rivers in the summer for millions and millions of people to drink
Simpleton, a glacier that melts away altogether feeds no rivers and no people.
And again:
Glaciers feed rivers in the summer for millions and millions of people to drink
Because those glaciers are shrinking and in some places disappearing completely, the water that those millions and millions rely on to drink is diminishing and in some cases disappearing completely.
But it’s more than just drinking water during the summer that the shrinking glaciers provide, it’s also essential water for farming.
Summer crops in many parts of the world rely on glaciers.
The glaciers that grow during the winter shed some of the water during the summer into river water that is used by farmers all over the world.
As glaciers shrink and even disappear, there is less water available during the crucial summer growing season.
OUTLAW VOLCANO’S NOW!!!!!!! Call the EPA, Al Gore and all the other knucklehead’s this is a CRISIS!!!!!!
The volcano’s continuous output of heat may still be melting the base of the ice sheet, and could be partially responsible for the fast flow of a nearby glacier.
—
Under-Ice Volcano Eruption Spewed Ash Over Antarctica
A rare volcanic eruption punched through Antarctica’s ice sheet more than 2,000 years ago, scattering ash across the frozen landscape, a radar survey has revealed.
The eruption was the biggest in Antarctica in the past 10,000 years, researchers estimate.
The volcano’s continuous output of heat may still be melting the base of the ice sheet, and could be partially responsible for the fast flow of a nearby glacier.
David Vaughan and Hugh Corr of the British Antarctic Survey, based in Cambridge, England, spotted signs of the eruption using ice-penetrating radar, which revealed a layer of volcanic rock embedded within the ice sheet.
“There would have been a very big bang as the plume of ash and steam broke through the ice,” Vaughan said. “Then ash would have begun to rain down on to the ice surface.”
As snow fell over the centuries, this ash layer got buried, and is now embedded in the middle of the ice sheet.
Other studies have found indirect evidence of volcanoes under Antarctica, and researchers have tracked volcanoes erupting under the ice in Iceland.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080121-antarctica-volcano.html
mmmm mmmm mmmm
The volcano’s continuous output of heat may still be melting the base of the ice sheet, and could be partially responsible for the fast flow of a nearby glacier.
We still need clean healthy air to breath, and we have to stop depending on foreign oil, so we need to go green, for those two reason alone.regardless of what is causing climate change.
Going Green is a Win Win Situation, and a good way to avoid having to fight more wars over access to foreign oil.
The sooner we go green, the sooner we can tell Saudia Arabia, Iran, etc, adios, and keep your oil, we no longer need it.
clean air and oil dependency does not = the myth and ponzi scheme that Reverend Al Gore head of the church of global alarmists are forcing on the globe using junk science.
C02 is not pollution and like most every other scam the radical liberals shove down our throats it will do more harm than good.
Just wait until these idiots reduce CO2 to the level that plant life dies. These fools are dangerous as are those sitting in the pew bowing down to them.
i bet 99%of these climate change deniers are fox news devotees and right wing radio—they’ve been hammering this denial **** for years
C’mon News Ref & Scott C, you know full well that in context with the atmosphere in which it resides, CO2 is not a pollutant. In the world of submarines, what happens is that O2 goes down as it is consumed and is by CO2. The combination of not enough oxygen and too much carbon dioxide in an enclosed environment will kill you. In the context of the statement, atmosphere is not a closed environment and CO2 is not a pollutant in that environment. Remove all the CO2 from the atmosphere and most life on this planet will end. Context, context, context.
Oops should be and replaced by CO2 in the third line.
Here is an example of why an open minded person might find reason for skepticism about taking costly political action re “climate change”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/11/giss-raw-station-data-before-and-after/#more-14001
Right winger “actuator” claims:
“atmosphere is not a closed environment”
Uhm, I think I can make a solid argument that:
ON A GLOBAL SCALE “ATMOSPHERE” IS ABSOLUTELY A CLOSED ENVIRONMENT.
Earth only has ONE atmosphere. There’s is NOTHING outside of it.
(And for the contentious nerds: Space dust in a vacuum doesn’t count, nor does the “atmospheres” of other planets.-)
And again:
“Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas – it traps heat radiation that is attempting to escape from Earth.”
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/globalchange/global_warming/03.html
More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means more heat radiation is trapped in our global climate system.
This heat is changing earth’s climate in both predictable and unpredictable ways.
The predictable ways are being increasingly OBSERVED, you can see the effects with your own eyes.
Ice caps are shrinking, glaciers are shrinking, oceans are rising, and climates all over the world are changing.
All of these things have very predictable consequences and almost ALL of them are VERY, VERY BAD.
The unpredictable part is how fast those bad things will happen and whether those bad things will just be very, very bad or catastrophic.
The Antarctic ice cap has grown. Any rise in the oceans has been virtually imperceptible. Climate has been changing since the world formed 4.5 billion years ago. There have always been natural causes for these things. The question at issue is the Human rose in it, which is really extremely limited considering all the natural elements that play a part in climate. Look at the scientific issues aside from the political garbage. Try both pro and con sites and develop an educated opinion that is based on more than the hype.
Try this web site which will present views on both sides but leans toward the skeptical:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Also this one which points out that temperature reporting stations that were used to establish warming data are improperly sited about 80 percent of the time, leading to overstating temps.
http://www.surfacestations.org/
Right winger “actuator”, after repeatedly stating ignorant falsehoods about realities they clearly don’t understand, and that most Middle School students with a decent science class wouldn’t have made, decides to ignore his growing lack of credibility and continue stating falsehoods.
Without any mention of their failure just yesterday to have even a Middle Schooler’s basic grasp of what an “ATMOSPHERE” is, right wing commenter “actuator” decides to lecture US on the complexities of global climate science.
First right wingers denied the observable evidence for years.
Then right wingers tried to minimize that the observable evidence was growing and growing and growing.
Then right wingers tried to minimize what that increasingly undeniable body of observable evidence was caused by.
Now right wingers are trying to minimize what that irrefutable body of evidence is causing.
Even more ridiculous is that right wingers, as a group, are trying to make all of those ridiculous denials simultaneously.
And to help right wingers along with their pattern of denial is a group of extremely well-funded corporate denier sites that are trying to throw doubt on the decades of peer-reviewed science that has been accumulating all over the world.
Frankly, global climate change deniers shouldn’t be taken seriously about anything.
At this point, global climate change deniers are just not serious people anymore.
Some background on the con-artist, Anthony Watts, whose websites right winger “actuator” repeatedly cites:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anthony_Watts
It’s not clear that Anthony Watts, the owner of the websites that “actuator” cites as “evidence” for his false claims, has a college degree in anything.
It is clear that Anthony Watts is a fraud and does NOT know what he’s talking about.
New Ref I thought perhaps you might be able to be reasonable enough to look at sources for their actual content. Instead you pursue a means to attack the blogger without analysis of the blog itself. It appears then that your politics takes precedence over any application of critical thought process on your part.
It is not about Anthony Watts. It is about the site. The blog receives contributions from well known scientists who study various factors that implact climate science, including climatologists. His contributors and those who respond to it, including highly qualified scientists, also include pro and anti “climate change views.
As to the complexities of climate science, do you say it is not complex? Let’s see now:
1. Solar activity affects climate, yet the scientific community cannot say for certain how, and have not accurately determined how solar cycles work.
2. Ocean currents, ocean warming and cooling cycles affect climate, yet scientists cannot predict with precision how.
3. Vulcanism affects climate by releasing large volumes of gas and ash into the atmosphere, yet there is no way to predict when or how often volcanoes will erupt.
4. Cosmic rays and other factors impact water vapor in the atmosphere which impacts climate as water vapor has a greenhouse effect yet also has an albedo effect when clouds are formed. Scientist cannot say with any precision the ultimate effect.
5. There is a known cycle of the earth’s polar wobble cycle, but scientists cannot say with certainty how it relates with other cycles.
6. The earth has been both warmer and much colder than it is today yet we don’t know with certainty why. No scientist seems to have determined what the “ideal” temperature is or how it can be maintained by human intervention.
Despite the complexity and the enormous lack of knowledge that is critical to devising a computer model that will accurately predict long term climate change, politicians and people like you are willing to destroy economies and lower living standards for billions of people based on UNPROVEN “scientific” claims based on computer models that are known to be flawed.
It would appear you are not a critical thinker, but just another political hack.
NR, here’s another site for you to attack:
http://www.co2science.org/