Global Warming, Anyone?

A recent Pew Center poll reveals some interesting statistics about who believes global warming is mostly because of human activity.

There is a large partisan gap in views about the causes of global warming: 51% of Democrats and 40% of independents say the earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity. But only 19% of Republicans say rising temperatures are mostly attributable to human activity. Of course, if you add all these numbers up based on the percentage of the US population who are Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, you find out that most people do not believe that global warming is mostly because of human activity.

Remember, this question is not about just "solid evidence of global warming" -- we already know the earth has warmed and cooled for billions of years -- its about "do you believe the earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity".

What conclusions can we draw from this? Well, one obvious one is that either a lot more Democrats and Independents are dumber than Republicans, or a lot more Republicans are dumber than Democrats and Independents. I've done a lot more in-depth research on this subject than your average Joe; I don't like being called dumb -- and I'm a Republican.

Let's do some simple math based on the current number of each kind of voter:

Democrats 42 million 51% = 21.42 million
Republicans 30 million 19% = 5.7 million
Independent 24 million 40%= 9.6 million
( 96 million total)        (36.72 million total)

Overall, only 38 percent of voters think that the earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity. Not very encouraging news for your average global warming alarmist.

This signals the end — probably for decades, if not forever — of a trivial pursuit that began 14 years ago with the Kyoto Protocol that the U.S. Senate would not even bring to a vote. The pursuit was for a 194-nation consensus obligating a few nations to transfer enormous wealth to many other nations’ governments, to be politically distributed by them, with the supposed effect of ending global warming, if such proves to be.

Comments

  1. Luc Morin3:57 PM

    One has to be naive to think that the percentage of people who believe in X is a valid indicator of whether X is true or not.

    Don't forget that at one point in time, almost 100% of earth population believed that it was flat.

    Now I'm not saying that warming is caused by humans, and I'm not saying it's not. Just saying that popular belief is a very poor indicator of truth.

    Luc

    ReplyDelete
  2. peterbromberg7:42 PM

    @Luc It's not really a question of whether X is true or not. What's important is the change over time in what most people believe. If you have a majority who don't believe, then conferences like Durban cannot hope to accomplish much.

    In my opinion, that's perfectly fine. I suspect of course that you disagree.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Luc Morin10:10 PM

    @Peter,

    I guess I read your post from a different perspective than what you had intended.

    I definitely agree that people's belief in general is something that changes over time.

    Too easily if you ask me.

    Just so you know, I usually agree with your posts, so keep 'em coming.

    ReplyDelete

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