Thursday, December 10, 2009

Recent Polls on Global Warming

Just further to the recent discussion re. AGW. Here is some info from Rasmussen Reports, one of the most reliable pollsters currently at work.

"Americans remain evenly divided over how urgent it is to deal with global warming.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 43% say we must take immediate action to stop it. But another 43% say we should wait a few years to see if global warming is real before making major changes. Fourteen percent (14%) aren’t sure which course to follow.

These findings are virtually unchanged from late January despite calls from President Obama, the secretary general of the United Nations and other world leaders for immediate action. Many of those leaders are now meeting in Copenhagen at a UN summit with the intention of concluding an international treaty aimed at limiting the human activity they blame for causing global warming.

Just 30% of adults say the world is headed toward an irreversible catastrophe if the members of the United Nations fail to deal with global warming. Nearly half (48%) of Americans don’t believe the fate of the world hangs on UN action. Twenty-two percent (22%) are undecided."

So, like it or not, the fact is that the opposition to AGW is closer to the number of people who were required to elect Obama as president (about 52%) than to a tiny minority of right-wing extremists. And this is the result after years of public school indoctrination, the conversion of the entire educational system, the mainstream media, the entire government and most of the corporate world to the gospel of global warming. This is not a new idea, nor is it one that does not have the weight of the "Establishment" behind it. Yet people are not buying it yet.

Just saying.

1 comment:

Josh said...

This poll does not measure "the opposition to AGW." The questions are phrased in such a way that they measure the level of certainty about global warming--43% of respondents were certain enough to want immediate action, and 43% of respondents were less certain and want to "wait a few years to see if global warming is real before making major changes." Many of the people in the second group may not be convinced that global warming is a hoax or a conspiracy, but instead may simply want to learn more "before making major changes."