Most Americans Regard Global Warming as Fact

Source: Angus Reid

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Many adults in the United States believe climate change is a reality, according to a poll by Opinion Research Corporation released by CNN. 54 per cent of respondents think global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by emissions from cars and industrial facilities such as power plants and factories.

Conversely, 20 per cent of respondents call climate change a fact mostly caused by natural changes, while 22 per cent refer to it as a theory that has not yet been proven.

The term global warming refers to an increase of the Earth’s average temperature. Some theories say that climate change might be the result of human-generated carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

<snip>

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 such as 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."

Fact: Cars, Industry
54%

Fact: Natural changes
20%

An unproven theory
22%

Unsure
4%

Read more: http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15967

20% of the people belive the world is flat and the Cubs will win the World Series this year....

Yale.

God, we are so screwed.

I strain not to get angry at that kind of thing. Not everyone is a news junkie like myself and god knows the media has done precious little to educate the public on the truth/reality of global warming, but it's disheartening to see people on a progressive website who have been lulled into thinking the issue is "political".

Peak oil represents a much bigger threat to our society than global warming yet it is ignored.. Time will tell..

Word up to that, cousin.

Mark my words, THE REALITY OF 'PEAK OIL' IS THE REASON we're in Iraq right now, with our mercenaries fomenting civil strife (engaging in genocide, mostly by proxy). The 'civil war' gives us reason to stay there, and by the time the fighting is 'over', Iraq will have no men of fighting age left to defend it from corporate pillage.

I don't even need to go into how evil it all is, however, I must say, I do shudder to think what OPEC (and then of course their clients the oil companies) could do to the West, pricing-wise, once the peak-oil cat gets let out of the bag, as they say. I often wonder why the OPEC nations haven't started jumping up and down and telling the world that the oil is running out so that they can jack the prices through the roof.

Then I figure it out - they don't want their own asses to get Iraq'd...

and they THEMSELVES- personally, are suffering from their selfishness and lack of foresight.

The same will be true for a substantial minority re: global warming.

As oil gets harder to extract the price will steadily go up. People will notice this and it won't be a popular thing. The oil companies will eventually have to admit that the cheap stuff is over. The people will see them scrambling to pump all of the sweet crude from every conceivable spot (your backyard, etc.). This won't be a popular thing.

As this transpires the science showing that the increasing spewing of CO2 into the atmosphere is also a bad thing. This will combine with anger at higher gas prices and corporate greed to produce the weaning away from fossil fuels.

PEAK OIL is a fact. It will be a gradual "tanking" though. If the good oil was not running out then we would all be doomed because of man made catastrophic climate change. The way it is, PEAK OIL will anger the American (and other?) people enough so that we might just stop spewing CO2 before it is TOO LATE for thousands of species.

PEAK OIL is our salvation from man made climate change. Are we smart enough to make the right choice?

Cantarell in Mexico and the North Sea off Norway are declining at 15-25%/year, which is outright collapse. Based on info compiled at The Oil Drum, Saudi Arabia may be declining at 8%/yr already. It will generate a full-blown 2nd Great Depression if this is true and continues at this rate.

As some have pointed out on the E/E board here, there will be a strong push to simply liquefy coal into oil instead to support our habit, and to expand Alberta oil sands mining. This would not be a good thing.

The other bad thing is that we are now dependent on oil to grow our food. Oil supplies decline, and food production falls. The current population of 6.5 billion is far above the planet's carrying capacity if oil production begins to falter badly, and we could expect to see Darwin's phrase "nature red in tooth and claw" come into effect by mid-century.

I've never studied the science behind it, and I've heard the simplified political points from both sides. I can't say I have an opinion. It would be useful if people could point to a resource that presents science related to it, but comprehensible to a layman.

the IPCC science?

I'm very curious about that.

google IPCC and read the 18 page summary for policymakers issued in February.

And here's a decent resource to shed light on some of the lies and misinformation you've obviously been affected by:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11462-climate-change-a-guide-for-the-perplexed.html

have you studied the science behind gravity?

Or the earth being round?

I suspect the answer to both is "no". Yet no doubt you have an opinion about those two items.


I apologize if I'm being a bit abrupt, but this issue is #1 in my mind. We don't have the luxury to treat it like some kind of political football, although there are many interests who would love to do so - something that is truely evil.

are a good place to start. He summarizes the science, and says that, among all peer-reviewed scientists (real scientists), there is NO DISSENT--NONE!--that global warming is occurring, and that it is caused by CO2 (man-made pollution). Period. The consensus is overwhelming.

That anyone has any doubt about it is the work of the Bush Junta, Exxon-Mobile and brethren, and the war and oil profiteering corporate news monopolies. The flat-earth people among us--that 20% who want to control your sex life and force you to believe that the universe was created in 7 days cuz the Bible says so--rule the land, by leave of the war profiteers. Gore doesn't put it this way, but he says it in a politer way. The crazies are charge because it is convenient to the very rich and their profits.

Gore never goes into HOW. HOW did the war profiteers and the crazies get such power, in a democracy? Start with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code in all the shiny new voting machines, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, and work backwards through the last two decades of our filthy campaign contribution system, loss of control over our public airwaves--so that now we get 24/7 fascist propaganda--loss of the "Fairness Doctrine" (all TV/radio stations required to provide equal time for opposing views on public issues), loss of grass roots power in the Democratic Party (cooptation of the party by corporate interests), so that ordinary people--the majority--have little or no say in Democratic Party policy, loss of union strength through outsourcing of jobs, loss of the progressive tax...you name it.

A lot of things have gone into the loss of our democracy, and our inability now, amidst the crisis to global warming, to change course, to address this crisis--to turn away from Bush's war for oil, and start rebuilding our country on a better basis. The capper was 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. I think Gore needs to address this issue: WHY are we so paralyzed?

http://www.climatepolicy.org/
The American Meteorological Society's blog on Climate

http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html
The American Meteorological Society policy statement on Climate Change

http://www.climate.org/climate_main.shtml

http://dels.nas.edu/globalchange/ (National Academy of Sciences site on the topic)

http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676
(National Academy of Science-Temp Reconstructions over the last
2000 years)

http://dels.nas.edu/basc/Climate-HIGH.pdf (Awesome PDF from the National Academy of Sciences)

http://www.realclimate.org
Meaty enough for the most discriminating technophile

http://www.christiansandclimate.org/

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf (Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, (IPCC) - Summary for policy makers)

http://evangelicalclimateinitiative.org/ - Evangelical Climate Initiative with a lot of well known supporters including Dr. Rick Warren who wrote "The Purpose Driven Life", as well as the Commander of the Salvation Army.


http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/international/globalclimate.htm
Catholic Bishops message on Climate Change

http://www.viridiandesign.org/
Science Fiction writer Bruce Sterling's ongoing climate blog

http://www.worldchanging.com

http://www.greencarcongress.com

http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics
How to talk to a Climate Skeptic
send your friends here to answer all questions!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnXCJySzIuw&mode=related&search=
Will Ferrell as G Bush on Climate Change(humor)

http://sciencepoliticsclimatechange.blogspot.com/
excellent blog of Climate science by an atmospheric scientist

succinct explanation of man made warming;
http://sciencepoliticsclimatechange.blogspot.com/2006/08/is-todays-warming-man-made.html

Global Warming Faq - for that skeptical brother in law
http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~sherwood/ClimateFAQ.html

Overview of GW, by Princeton speech by Climate expert Michael MacCracken,
advisor to the Climate Project
http://www.princeton.edu/%7Euchv/EEWorkshop/MacCracken.pdf

http://www.2010imperative.org/
The American Institute of Architects online Teach-in

Weather and climate systems are complex, nonlinear (i.e., do not have clear lines of cause and effect), and chaotic (i.e., initial conditions of the system cannot be used to predict outcomes).

It takes considerable ignorance to profess we know conclusively what's driving global warming or where our efforts to avert it will lead.

Those who continue to look for better answers do us a favor. To squelch scientific opinions we don't like is to revisit the Middle Ages. Let all opinions be heard, and those that demonstrate predictive value will rise to the top.

A good first step would be to develop climate models that can "predict" what already has happened in the past. No model has yet reached that point, or anywhere near.

Meanwhile, we can and must take our best shot at guessing the causes, and decreasing human impact on climate. Let's keep it as a science, and not elevate it to religion, as we do that. I see all the signs around us now that dogma and religious impulse are interfering with reason and scientific inquiry. The most reliable indicator of that is the impulse to tar and feather those who dare hold different opinions.

peer reviewed scientific journals who has doubted that a.) global warming exists, and b.) it is caused by human activity, primarily fossil fuel use and beef production (which includes deforestation). All other "opinions" are just that; opinions offered by those with specific political agendas, or those who are being paid to cast doubt on the causes (one report recently stated that scientists were only paid $10,000 each by Big Oil to suggest that the causes are yet unknown).

What are they willing to do about it?