Tainted Saints

Click here for excellent graphic…

A Pew poll released late last month found that just 36 percent of Americans believe humans are responsible for accelerating global climate change, which scientists say mushroomed after the industrial revolution due to humans’ dependence on carbon-based fuels.

Carbon dioxide, which is produced by the combustion of oil, coal and other fuels, was ruled a “dangerous” threat to public health by the Environmental Protection Agency Monday. It increases the propensity of the earth’s atmosphere to retain heat.

But a near-consensus from scientists doesn’t have Americans convinced. The Pew poll found that while 57 percent believe that the earth’s climate is changing, just 36 percent believe that humans are responsible. 77 percent believed that global warming existed in Pew’s poll conducted in 2007.

The 36 percent who believe in human-caused climate change is fewer than the number of Americans who apparently believe they’re protected by guardian angels, some 55 percent, according to a poll published in 2008. [more...]

[Hmmm...that couldn't be because no one has really talked about it on a national level since "An Inconvenient Truth," could it? And because if you think health care reform is hard, wait 'til Obama appears on TV in a sweater, and recommends we turn down our thermostats and maybe take the bus... -Ed.]

There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem – 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones and landlines, finds that 57% think there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. In April 2008, 71% said there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures…

The Chamber of Commerce stunned DC on Monday by calling a last-minute press conference to announce a dramatic about-face in its climate policy—it would not only stop opposing the Kerry-Boxer climate bill but would work with them to make it better. But the whole thing turned out to be a hoax mounted by the Yes Men, a notorious band of anti-corporate pranksters…

OK, I’m working my way through the climate chapter — and the first five pages, by themselves, are enough to discredit the whole thing. Why? Because they grossly misrepresent other peoples’ research, in both climate science and economics.

The chapter opens with the “global cooling” story — the claim that 30 years ago there was a scientific consensus that the planet was cooling, comparable to the current consensus that it’s warming.

Um, no. Real Climate has the takedown. What you had in the 70s was a few scientists advancing the cooling hypothesis, and a few popular media stories hyping their suggestions. To the extent that there was a consensus, it was that there wasn’t much evidence for anything, and more research was needed…

“The single most concrete, substantive thing a young American could do is not turning off the lights or driving a Prius,” Revkin said. “It’s having fewer kids.”

But this is just a thought exercise, he cautions, and no model for the kind of official policy most Americans would want to live with. A recent study, though, by the London School of Economics and the British-based Optimum Population Trust, suggests meeting the world’s unmet need for access to reproductive health would be the most effective and cheapest way to start dramatically cutting carbon dioxide.

View photo essay here…

Whether there is really any significant public support for climate change legislation is very much up in the air (so to speak…)

Don’t you think of the Chamber of Commerce as an innocuous organization that sponsors local events in your community, and whose primary mission is about making your city/town/village look good? Not so much, anymore, it turns out…

The findings of the Catlin Arctic Survey team are based on a 73-day trek through the Arctic, resulting in measurements indicating that most ice had been formed in the last year, and would likely melt next summer.