A (not so) skeptical public

Americans, it turns out, are not so skeptical of global warming as they are skeptical of poll questions.

Our findings might seem implausible in light of recent polls that purport to show that Americans are increasingly skeptical about the very existence of climate change. But in fact, those polls did not produce conflicting evidence at all.

Consider, for example, the most publicized question from a 2009 Pew Research Center poll: “From what you’ve read and heard, is there solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades, or not?” This question measured perceptions of scientific evidence that the respondent has read or heard about, not the respondents’ personal opinions about whether the earth has been warming. Someone who has had no exposure to scientific evidence or who perceives the evidence to be equivocal may nonetheless be convinced that the earth has been heating up by, say, the early blossoming of plants in his garden.

Or consider a widely publicized Gallup question: “Thinking about what is said in the news, in your view, is the seriousness of global warming generally exaggerated, generally correct or is it generally underestimated?” This question asked about respondents’ perceptions of the news, not the respondents’ perception of warming. A person who believes climate change has been happening might also feel that news media coverage of it has been exaggerated.

Questions in other polls that sought to tap respondents’ personal beliefs about the existence and causes of warming violated two of the cardinal rules of good survey question design: ask about only one thing at a time, and choose language that makes it easy for respondents to understand and answer each question.

Imagine being asked this, from a poll by CNN: “Which of the following statements comes closest to your view of global warming: Global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by emissions from cars and industrial facilities like power plants and factories; global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by natural changes that have nothing to do with emissions from cars and industrial facilities; or, global warming is a theory that has not yet been proven.”

Notice that the question didn’t even offer the opportunity for respondents to say they believe global warming is definitely not happening — not the sort of question that will provide the most valid measurements.

When surveys other than ours have asked simple and direct questions, they have produced results similar to ours. For example, in November, an ABC News/Washington Post survey found that 72 percent of respondents said the earth has been heating up, and a December poll by Ipsos/McClatchy found this proportion to be 70 percent.

This is important to keep in mind as Lindsay Graham is the latest Republican to pull the Lucy Act. It seems this could be a singular issue in which a large majority of Americans are in agreement. They believe it's happening, despite the billions spent to dishonestly create questions about the science and the efforts of non-climate scientist scientists to try to put scholarly glosses on bullshit, they believe it's probably caused by human activity, and they believe the federal government should act by using tax credits as incentives. Moreover, there is simply no reason for Senators of both parties to not do the right thing. There are Republicans in the Northeast whose states suffer from coal-burning plants in the Midwest, there are Republicans in the Southwest whose economies would benefit from non-carbon emitting power generation. And even a major catastrophe which, you'd think would spur action, simply hasn't. If anything, the Gulf spill has decreased bipartisan support for passing a bill (and, by the way, when do we stop calling this over 10,000 barrel a day rape a "spill?").

It's depressing. I'm not questioning Harry Reid's legislative priorities. The Recovery Act was an emergency, the Lilly Leadbetter Act was way overdue, and the Affordable Healthcare Act was, to coin a phrase, a Big Fucking Deal -- just to name a few of the big ticket items this Congress passed. But this could have topped off a truly remarkable legislative era and it seems to be dead on arrival.

We await Nate Silver's judgment of this, of course.

Climate skepticism takes its toll

Chickens coming home to roost.

Soon after Waxman-Markey passed, leaders of the natural gas industry met at an annual conference in Denver — where former Sen. Tim Wirth chewed them out.

Wirth used to represent Colorado and has long been an advocate of natural gas. Since 1998, he has been president of the United Nations Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works on climate change.

Wirth told the industry leaders that on Waxman-Markey, they blew it. "Every industry was deeply engaged, except one: Yours," he said. "The natural gas industry, the industry with the most to gain and the most to offer, was not at the bargaining table."

It's an especially harsh verdict because the Waxman-Markey bill was drafted only after high-profile negotiations with proponents of coal, nuclear, oil, wind, solar and other energy sources.

What Kept Natural Gas Out?

Three things kept natural gas away from that table.

First of all: politics. The industry likes Republicans and historically has funneled most of its campaign contributions to the GOP. But now, of course, it's the Democrats who control Congress.

The second problem: The natural gas industry has a lot of global-warming skeptics. Fred Julander, president of Julander Energy Co. in Denver, isn't one of them, but he understands their perspective.

"They want to be honest brokers," Julander says. "They don't want to take advantage of something they don't believe in, even if it improves their bottom line if it's based on a falsehood — which is, I mean, is in some ways commendable, but in some ways is short-sighted."

Well played, sirs. Well played. That said, I'm not sure being tied to beliefs that are not only wrong according to scientific consensus, but also hurt your industry, is "commendable." "Stupid" and "pig ignorant" are the words that more immediately come to my mind.

Ben Stein's ignorance

Shorter Ben Stein: We should emit more carbon, not less.

"Contrarians' arguments are not convincing"

It's depressing to speculate on what would have happened if fossil-fuel related industries had listened to their own scientists and not thrown smoke bombs when it came to climate change.

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

The coalition was financed by fees from large corporations and trade groups representing the oil, coal and auto industries, among others. In 1997, the year an international climate agreement that came to be known as the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, its budget totaled $1.68 million, according to tax records obtained by environmental groups.

Imagine if we had those ten years back?

There will be oil

The Bush administration simply can't list polar bears as threatened. That could threaten drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Interior Department’s inspector general has begun a preliminary investigation into why the department has delayed for nearly two months a decision on listing the polar bear as a threatened species. The decision was supposed to have been made by early January. But when the deadline came, the Fish and Wildlife Service, an Interior unit, said it needed another month. That timetable was also not met. A spokesman for the inspector general’s office said a case had been opened in response to a letter from several environmental groups. He said the preliminary inquiry would determine whether a full-fledged investigation was warranted. Scientists say the bear is under growing threat as a result of significant loss of Arctic sea ice because of global warming.

Alien SUV drivers

While there are one or two GOP presidential candidates who see serious policy implications resulting from global warming, the leading candidates take the helpful stance of indicating that China and India are the problem, not the U.S. So, they'd do pretty much nothing, because, as everyone knows, the U.S. economy is dwarfed by and can't compete with China's and India's. But nothing says "Serious Man," like Hollywood:

Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto. NASA says that the Martian South Pole's ice cap has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter's caught the same cold, because it's warming up too, like Pluto. This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle. Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our solar system have in common. Hmmmm. Solar system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn't even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There's a consensus. Ask Galileo.
-- Paul Harvey Show, April 13, 2007

Glenn Beck's moral equivalence

This man does not work on Fox News.

"Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax. The goal is the United Nations running the world. That is the goal. Back in the 1930s, the goal was get rid of all of the Jews and have one global government." He continued: "You got to have an enemy to fight. And when you have an enemy to fight, then you can unite the entire world behind you, and you seize power. That was Hitler's plan. His enemy: the Jew. Al Gore's enemy, the U.N.'s enemy: global warming." Beck added: "Then you get the scientists -- eugenics. You get the scientists -- global warming. Then you have to discredit the scientists who say, 'That's not right.' And you must silence all dissenting voices. That's what Hitler did."