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Poll: Americans Don't Believe We Cause Warming
CO2Skeptics.com ^ | July 22nd 2008 | Cheryl K. Chumley

Posted on 07/22/2008 6:46:36 AM PDT by Delacon

Fewer than half of Americans polled by the Pew Research Center believe humans are causing global warming, and a declining number even believe the Earth is experiencing a warming trend.

The survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, finds "roughly half, or 47 percent, of Americans say the Earth is warming because of human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels."

Nearly as many, 45 percent of respondents, contend the higher Earth temperatures are due to "natural environment patterns," that no global warming exists, or that causes cannot be scientifically determined.

Seventy-one percent of Americans believe the Earth is warming, down from 77 percent of Americans who held that belief last year. The six percentage point drop parallels falling, and in some parts of the country, record-low, temperatures over the past year that continued a decade-long trend of temperatures remaining flat or falling.

Political Divide

The survey confirmed wide discrepancies in belief between Americans identifying themselves as Democrat or Republican.

Only 27 percent of Republicans surveyed believe humans are causing global warming. By contrast, 58 percent of Democrats blame global warming on humans.

Among Republicans, higher education brings even more skepticism. Pew reports "only 19 percent of Republican college graduates say that there is solid evidence that the Earth is warming and it is caused by human activity." Higher education has the opposite effect on Democrats: 75 percent of Democrats with a higher education believe global warming is caused mostly by humans.

Big Government a Factor

Tom Kilgannon, president of the nonprofit Freedom Alliance, says the reasons for this partisan divide are simple.

"Those on the left are more likely to accept the global warming theory for two reasons," Kilgannon said. "First, they tend to make public policy decisions based on emotion as a first reaction."

And second, Kilgannon continued, global warming fits the usual Democrat call for bigger government.

"If they can convince the public that global warming exists, then the left can more easily further its mission of creating more government, particularly at the international level," Kilgannon said. "What they want are more treaties, more international bureaucracy, and more authority in the hands of the United Nations."

Science in Dispute

Republicans, meanwhile, are still asking some basic questions that were long ago dismissed by Democrats, such as determining whether "significant global warming [is] actually happening," and if so, whether "climate changes [are] inherently bad," noted Paul Teller, deputy director of the U.S. House Republican Study Committee, in an October 2007 policy brief, "Cap-and-Trade Proposals for Greenhouse Gas Emissions."

"The alarmists have overplayed their hand," explained Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "They have warned that the sky is falling too many times, and people look around and see that all these 'imminent' crises are not materializing. It is the 'boy who cried wolf' syndrome. Now the alarmists are paying the price for too-often misrepresenting the effects of global warming.

"Perhaps the assertion that global warming was causing hurricanes seemed believable in 2005, but taking a step back from the immediacy of Katrina, people now realize the science says it isn't true," said Lewis. "In order to sell the global warming agenda, people like Al Gore have had to delve into science fiction. People don't believe that small increases in global temperature are going to bring on a new global ice age or a wall of water inundating the coastlines."

Lewis added, "There are many real problems that people face in the world on a daily basis. Higher gasoline prices is one of them, and people realize that not only do the alarmists habitually misrepresent the effects of global warming, but that their proposed solutions will merely make their gasoline prices even higher."

Cheryl K. Chumley (ckchumley@aol.com) is a 2008-09 Phillips Foundation journalism fellow.

Poll: Americans Don't Believe We Cause Warming


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2008polls; climatechange; democrats; environment; gasprices; globalwarming; pew; republicans
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Forget McCain, we need to make sure republicans pick up seats in congress. Otherwise, the dems will forward their global warming, kyoto hugging, agenda.
1 posted on 07/22/2008 6:46:37 AM PDT by Delacon
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To: steelyourfaith; Entrepreneur; Beowulf; CygnusXI; Defendingliberty; WL-law; Genesis defender; ...

ping


2 posted on 07/22/2008 6:47:20 AM PDT by Delacon ("The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." H. L. Mencken)
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To: Delacon

Vote straight GOP/Conservative for all offices. Vote McCain to stop Obama, and vote conservative GOPers for Congress to curtail McCain.


3 posted on 07/22/2008 6:47:47 AM PDT by SolidWood (Obamarxislamism, the threat to our Republic!)
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To: Delacon

I know I don’t believe it.


4 posted on 07/22/2008 6:49:34 AM PDT by BenLurkin
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To: steelyourfaith; Entrepreneur; Beowulf; CygnusXI; Defendingliberty; WL-law; Genesis defender; ...

Money quote: “If they can convince the public that global warming exists, then the left can more easily further its mission of creating more government, particularly at the international level,” Kilgannon said. “What they want are more treaties, more international bureaucracy, and more authority in the hands of the United Nations.”


5 posted on 07/22/2008 6:50:34 AM PDT by Delacon ("The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." H. L. Mencken)
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To: BenLurkin
Me and you are finally in the majority!!

I'm not sure about you though.

6 posted on 07/22/2008 6:52:37 AM PDT by chuckles
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To: Delacon; Killing Time; Beowulf; Mr. Peabody; RW_Whacko; honolulugal; SideoutFred; Ole Okie; ...


FReepmail me to get on or off
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH

The Great Global Warming Swindle Video

Not Evil Just Wrong (mash here)


7 posted on 07/22/2008 6:53:35 AM PDT by xcamel (Being on the wrong track means the unintended consequences express train doesnt kill you going by)
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To: chuckles

I’m just your average Joe.


8 posted on 07/22/2008 6:54:58 AM PDT by BenLurkin
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To: Delacon
Don't you want to trade your SUV for a moped?

Just look at file film of the Chinese 20 years ago riding their bikes and mopeds with their Mao suits on and you will see what the left is striving for. It's either religious or sexual, I'm not sure, but I know it's their fantasy.

9 posted on 07/22/2008 6:56:29 AM PDT by chuckles
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To: Delacon

The latter 21st century will go down in history as the period in which scientists destroyed the credibility of science.

When hearing any new scientific finding, what American doesn’t at the least ask themselves, “Gosh, I wonder if that’s true.”?


10 posted on 07/22/2008 6:57:07 AM PDT by SampleMan (We are a free and industrious people, socialist nannies do not become us.)
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To: BenLurkin
Your here aren't you?

That makes you the average Ben.

11 posted on 07/22/2008 6:58:12 AM PDT by chuckles
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To: Delacon

“Forget McCain, we need to make sure republicans pick up seats in congress. Otherwise, the dems will forward their global warming, kyoto hugging, agenda.”

I hope to see at least the Senate go Republican (I said “hope”), however if we have a Republican President with a veto pen that will help.

This survey is encouraging, showing that once again the American people are smarter than the hoi poloi believe. No wonder they want to import uneducated immigrants in huge numbers...


12 posted on 07/22/2008 7:00:17 AM PDT by PreciousLiberty
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To: Delacon
The American people are a heck of a lot smarter than liberals give them credit for. Global warming is a scam and every one knows it.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

13 posted on 07/22/2008 7:08:24 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: Delacon

Al Gore’s financial future just got a lot darker.


14 posted on 07/22/2008 7:11:27 AM PDT by popdonnelly (Boycott Washington D.C. until they allow gun ownership)
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To: Delacon

And we don’t believe in evolution either, despite decades of propagandizing. Sometimes you have to hand it to the American people.


15 posted on 07/22/2008 7:13:14 AM PDT by Aquinasfan (When you find "Sola Scriptura" in the Bible, let me know)
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To: Delacon
Among Republicans, higher education brings even more skepticism. Pew reports "only 19 percent of Republican college graduates say that there is solid evidence that the Earth is warming and it is caused by human activity." Higher education has the opposite effect on Democrats: 75 percent of Democrats with a higher education believe global warming is caused mostly by humans.

Love it!

16 posted on 07/22/2008 7:20:53 AM PDT by BunnySlippers (Made on a Mac)
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To: BenLurkin
I just think of the earth moving 67,000 miles per hour in its' orbit....and thinking of what it draws and sluffs off as it moves.

And then there's the sun, volcanoes, forest fires, the wind, earthquakes, methane from the ocean. Are you telling me that what we're doing unbalances all these things?? Not logical...

17 posted on 07/22/2008 7:32:55 AM PDT by Sacajaweau (I'm planting corn...Have to feed my car...)
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To: Delacon
It is simply a drive for larger gov’t control. The last info out shows that the original numbers used were over stated. So the computation was wrong from the beginning. So I do not believe and even if we do cause some problems with the atmosphere most comes from the hot air the politicians put out in their speeches.

“The alarmists have overplayed their hand,” explained Marlo Lewis,

If con is the opposite of pro, doesn't that mean that congress is the opposite of progress!!!

18 posted on 07/22/2008 7:58:39 AM PDT by onlylewis (dems want a two class system)
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To: Delacon
THE ACQUITTAL OF CARBON DIOXIDE
by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD

ABSTRACT:

"Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the product of oceanic respiration due to the well-known but under-appreciated solubility pump. Carbon dioxide rises out of warm ocean waters where it is added to the atmosphere. There it is mixed with residual and accidental CO2, and circulated, to be absorbed into the sink of the cold ocean waters. Next the thermohaline circulation carries the CO2-rich sea water deep into the ocean. A millennium later it appears at the surface in warm waters, saturated by lower pressure and higher temperature, to be exhausted back into the atmosphere. Throughout the past 420 millennia, comprising four interglacial periods, the Vostok record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is imprinted with, and fully characterized by, the physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, along with the lag in the deep ocean circulation.

Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor amplified global temperature increases. Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a cause. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures. When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase.

If increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere."

http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html

_______________________________________________________________

The graph above represents temperature and CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years. It is the same exact data Al Gore and the rest of the man-made global warmers refer to. The blue line is temps, the red CO2 levels. The deep valleys represent 4 separate glaciation periods. Now look very carefully at this relationship between temps and CO2 levels and keep in mind that Gore claims this data is the 'proof' that CO2 has warmed the earth in the past. But does the graph indeed show this? Nope. In fact, rising CO2 levels all throughout this 400,000 year period actually lagged behind temperature increases ...by an average of 800 years! So it couldn't have been CO2 that got Earth out of these past glaciations. Yet Gore dishonestly and continually claims otherwise. Furthermore, the subsequent CO2 level increases never did lead to additional warming, the so-called "runaway greenhouse effect" that Al Gore and his friends keep warning us about. -ETL

_______________________________________________________________


"The above chart shows the range of global temperature through the last 500 million years. There is no statistical correlation between the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through the last 500 million years and the temperature record in this interval. In fact, one of the highest levels of carbon dioxide concentration occurred during a major ice age that occurred about 450 million years ago [Myr]. Carbon dioxide concentrations at that time were about 15 times higher than at present." [also see 180 million years ago, same thing happened]:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010405M

_______________________________________________________________

So, greenhouse [effect] is all about carbon dioxide, right?

Wrong. The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere.

In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, 'Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,' Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).

The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other 'minor greenhouse gases.' As an example of the relative importance of water it should be noted that changes in the relative humidity on the order of 1.3-4% are equivalent to the effect of doubling CO2.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

_______________________________________________________________

Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many 'facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.

Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).

Human activities contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

19 posted on 07/22/2008 7:59:56 AM PDT by ETL (Plenty of REAL smoking-gun evidence on the demonRats at my FR home page)
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To: Delacon; All
If you look at the chart below, you will see that sunspot activity (during solar maxes--the individual peaks) has been relatively high since about 1900 and almost non-existent for the period between about 1625 and 1725. This period is known as the Maunder (sunspot) Minimum or "Little Ice Age".

From BBC News [yr: 2004]:
"A new [2004] analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years. Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past. They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer."..."In particular, it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun's surface. This period is called the Maunder Minimum after the English astronomer who studied it. It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the "Little Ice Age". Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events - but the exact mechanism remains elusive."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3869753.stm

It's really hard to imagine how this little ball of fire could have any impact on our climate at all.

But the main arguments being made for a solar-climate connection is not so much to do with the heat of the Sun but rather with its magnetic cycles. When the Sun is more magnetically active (typically around the peak of the 11 year sunspot cycle --we are a few yrs away at the moment), the Sun's magnetic field is better able to deflect away incoming galactic cosmic rays (highly energetic charged particles coming from outside the solar system). The GCRs are thought to help in the formation of low-level cumulus clouds -the type of clouds that BLOCK sunlight and help cool the Earth. So when the Sun's MF is acting up (not like now), less GCRs reach the Earth's atmosphere, less low level sunlight-blocking clouds form, and more sunlight gets through to warm the Earth's surface...naturally. Clouds are basically made up of tiny water droplets. When minute particles in the atmosphere become ionized by incoming GCRs they become very 'attractive' to water molecules, in a purely chemical sense of the word. The process by which the Sun's increased magnetic field would deflect incoming cosmic rays is very similar to the way magnetic fields steer electrons in a cathode ray tube or electrons and other charged particles around the ring of a subatomic particle accelerator.-ETL

____________________________________________________

There's a relatively new book out on the subject titled The Chilling Stars. It's written by one of the top scientists advancing the theory (Henrik Svensmark).

http://www.sciencedaily.com/books/t/1840468157-the_chilling_stars_the_new_theory_of_climate_change.htm

And here is the website for the place where he does his research:
2008: "The Center for Sun-Climate Research at the DNSC investigates the connection between variations in the intensity of cosmic rays and climatic changes on Earth. This field of research has been given the name 'cosmoclimatology'"..."Cosmic ray intensities – and therefore cloudiness – keep changing because the Sun's magnetic field varies in its ability to repel cosmic rays coming from the Galaxy, before they can reach the Earth." :
http://www.spacecenter.dk/research/sun-climate

100,000-Year Climate Pattern Linked To Sun's Magnetic Cycles:
ScienceDaily (Jun. 7, 2002) HANOVER, N.H.
Thanks to new calculations by a Dartmouth geochemist, scientists are now looking at the earth's climate history in a new light. Mukul Sharma, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth, examined existing sets of geophysical data and noticed something remarkable: the sun's magnetic activity is varying in 100,000-year cycles, a much longer time span than previously thought, and this solar activity, in turn, may likely cause the 100,000-year climate cycles on earth. This research helps scientists understand past climate trends and prepare for future ones.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/06/020607073439.htm

It appears the sun has been more magnetically active (more sunspots, etc) during the past 60-70 years than at any time during the past 11,000+...

From a well-referrenced wikipedia.com column (see wiki link for ref 14):
"Sunspot numbers over the past 11,400 years have been reconstructed using dendrochronologically dated radiocarbon concentrations. The level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional — the last period of similar magnitude occurred over 8,000 years ago. The Sun was at a similarly high level of magnetic activity for only ~10% of the past 11,400 years, and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.[14]"

[14] ^Solanki, Sami K.; Usoskin, Ilya G.; Kromer, Bernd; Schüssler, Manfred & Beer, Jürg (2004), “Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years”, Nature 431: 1084–1087, doi:10.1038/nature02995, . Retrieved on 17 April 2007 , "11,000 Year Sunspot Number Reconstruction". Global Change Master Directory. Retrieved on 2005-03-11.


"Reconstruction of solar activity over 11,400 years. Period of equally high activity over 8,000 years ago marked.
Present period is on [the right]. Values since 1900 not shown."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

20 posted on 07/22/2008 7:59:56 AM PDT by ETL (Plenty of REAL smoking-gun evidence on the demonRats at my FR home page)
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