A swing of opinion on Global Warming in America?

[Skybird]

With 70 percent of Americans now agreeing that global warming is affecting weather in the U.S., the public is showing increasing support for measures that would tackle the problem of climate change, according to a new survey. Conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, the survey showed that 60 percent of Americans would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports legislation that would reduce the federal income tax and make up for that decrease in revenue by increasing taxes on fossil fuels. The ongoing survey — which divides the U.S. public into six categories on global warming, from the alarmed to the dismissive — showed that an overwhelming majority of people who identified themselves as alarmed, concerned, or cautious about global warming say that if people with their views worked together, they could influence politicians’ views on global warming. The people in these three groups, as well as people who described themselves as disengaged on the issue of global warming, said by a wide margin that they trusted President Obama more than Mitt Romney as a source of information on climate change. Only people who described themselves as dismissive of human-caused climate change said they trusted Romney more than Obama on the issue, the Yale survey showed.

http://e360.yale.edu/digest/increase...e_change/3552/

http://environment.yale.edu/climate/...as-March-2012/

Original paper, full length, graphs and tables:
http://environment.yale.edu/climate/...March-2012.pdf

[August]

Yet again Skybird wants to tell us what we are thinking.

[troopie]

Wow, there's a bit of an enviro theme going on tonite. Almost makes you think there's a glint of hope out there!

On the first of July '12 our (Australian) Government committed political suicide and took the brave move of introducing a 'carbon tax'. They most likely won't be returned to office at the next election and the victorious opposing party will no doubt repeal the tax.

Regardless of this, I can't help but feel a sense of patriotic pride and a fleeting glimpse of a previously unkown level of trust in the Government.

To be amongst the leading countries prepared to take a first step in tackling this issue is incredible. No, the tax will not be perfect and yes there will be major setbacks. Fair chance some demographics will be worse off and (heaven forbid) some big companies may even loose out.

It may fall in a big steaming heap, and be a total failure, but you can't learn if you don't make mistakes! Someone has to give it a go!

That we had the kegs to do it, and make some sacrifices, which will provide a reference point for other countries to learn from in the future makes me really feel proud.

It's only a very small step, but in the scheme of things, it may have a big flow on effect.

[AVGWarhawk]

What I don't understand is Al Gore who was leading the charge has seemingly disappeared from the face of global warming.

[Ducimus]

With 70 percent of Americans now agreeing

You lost me there. I have a hard time believing that 70% of us could agree on anything that touch's on economy or politics, which global warming certainly does. The only time we'd have that high a percentage on an issue like that, is when pigs fly, angels sing, and the apocolypse has come.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

What I don't understand is Al Gore who was leading the charge has seemingly disappeared from the face of global warming.

Perhaps he melted?

[August]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

What I don't understand is Al Gore who was leading the charge has seemingly disappeared from the face of global warming.

It became known that he had a financial interest in carbon trading companies and that he used more electricity at his house than most small towns so rather than continue to be seen as a hypocrite he stepped out of the limelight.

You lost me there. I have a hard time believing that 70% of us could agree on anything that touch's on economy or politics, which global warming certainly does.

It is such a broad range of different categories and different opinions all bundled into one its pretty easy to string out the numbers 70%

As for the swing to 70%??????
4 years ago they had the 70% the new survey gives 69%, doesn't that mean that the swing isn't much of a swing at all and the increase is actually a decrease.

Then again I did read that a survey is empirical evidence and is not open to interpretation as it only can mean one thing

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

You lost me there. I have a hard time believing that 70% of us could agree on anything that touch's on economy or politics, which global warming certainly does. The only time we'd have that high a percentage on an issue like that, is when pigs fly, angels sing, and the apocolypse has come.

I have lost neither you nor anyone else, because I did not claim anything.

The important part is the third link, the original document, in full length.

And from that, page 66ff: methodology.

Methodology

These results come from nationally representative surveys of American adults, aged 18 and older. The samples were weighted to correspond
with U.S. Census Bureau parameters for the United States.
The surveys were designed by Anthony Leiserowitz, Nicholas Smith and Jay Hmielowski of Yale University, and by Edward Maibach and Connie
Roser-Renouf of George Mason University, and were conducted by Knowledge Networks, using an online research panel of American adults.
June 2010: Fielded May 14 through June 1 with 1,024 American adults.
January 2010: Fielded December 24, 2009 through January 3, 2010 with 1,001 American adults.
May 2011: Fielded April 23rd through May 12th with 981 American adults.
March 2012: Fielded March 12th through March 30th with 1,008 American adults.
The six audience segments were first identified in analyses of the 2008 data set. Latent Class Analysis was used to segment respondents, based
on 36 variables representing four distinct constructs: global warming beliefs, issue involvement, policy preferences and behaviors. Discriminant
functions derived from the latent class analysis were used with the 2012, 2011 and 2010 data sets to replicate the earlier analysis and identify
changes in the groups.
The survey results from March 2012 and November 2011 have been combined in this report, rather than released separately at the time the data

were gathered, due to circumstances beyond our control that slowed the segmentation analysis of the November data.

You have better information on the lacking representative value of their data pool? I'm listening. They say they made sure their samples are representative for the demographic structure of American population, such procedures are academic standards to ensure the sample taken indeed is representative for the whole population that gets described by the sample. Show that theis claim is wrong.

Next step: go thorugh the document and show why and where their reported answer patterns are wrong, and erratically listed.

Or do you mean the whole thing is just forged and faked? You then can file a charge at or against two of your universities: Yale, and George Mason. If they are serious with their reputation they will be glad to get evidence for people working in their name and in their institutes compromising their name and reputation by forging results and data sets. To what degree this is also a criminal offence under legal penalty in the US, I donot know. In Germany, such betrayal can serve you high financial penalties.

[Takeda Shingen]

An interesting take on these so-called facts:

These generalizations are based on a series of Yale University studies over the last few years. According to the studies, Americans' belief in global warming fell from 71 percent in November 2008 to just 57 percent in January 2010, but it rebounded to 66 percent by this spring. The findings mirrored those of the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change, which showed belief in global warming bouncing from 65 percent in 2009 to 52 percent in 2010 and back up to 62 percent this year.
What accounts for the rebound? It isn't the economy, which has thawed only a little. And it doesn't seem to be science: The share of respondents to the Yale survey who believe "most scientists think global warming is happening" is stuck at 35 percent, down from 48 percent four years ago. (That statement remains just as true now as it was then: It's the public, not the scientists, that keeps changing its mind.)
No, our resurgent belief in global warming seems to be a function of the weather. A separate Yale survey this spring found that 82 percent of Americans had personally experienced extreme weather or natural disasters in the past year. And 52 percent said they believed the weather had been getting worse overall in recent years, compared to just 22 percent who thought it had gotten better.
Sixty-nine percent of respondents in that March poll went on to say that they believed global warming was affecting the weather in the United States. And that was before the Colorado wildfires and the most recent wave of storms and heat in the Midwest and Northeast, which have brought renewed media attention to climate change. The number might well top 70 percent today.

http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-1...climate-change

In other words, every time the weather warms, or there is a drought, or an ice storm, or a wildfire, or a blizzard, or a heat wave, people start talking about it being global warming. This is why those numbers seem to be in constant flux. This 'paper' only gives a snapshot of this opinion at a high point, and does so to make a political statement, making it disingenuous at best.

Back when we were having those nasty winters a few years ago, no one was talking about that. Of course, we are also in an El Nino cycle, which gives us warmer, dryer weather in my part of the country. I imagine that this would not be the first time that people got hysterical about things, and I know that it is not the first time that Skybird has been caught up in it.

[artao]

surveys only show the results of those surveyed. i don't care HOW statisticians "weight" their surveys. everyone knows that 99% of statistics can be used to show whatever you want.
global climate change is now the preferred term, because some folks don't understand that global warming doesn't actually mean it gets warmer where they live.
anthropogenic climate change has become undeniable, except by those with a vested interest int the current energy system and those who blindly listen to them.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

An interesting take on these so-called facts:



http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-1...climate-change

In other words, every time the weather warms, or there is a drought, or an ice storm, or a wildfire, or a blizzard, or a heat wave, people start talking about it being global warming. This is why those numbers seem to be in constant flux. This 'paper' only gives a snapshot of this opinion at a high point, and does so to make a political statement, making it disingenuous at best.

Back when we were having those nasty winters a few years ago, no one was talking about that. Of course, we are also in an El Nino cycle, which gives us warmer, dryer weather in my part of the country. I imagine that this would not be the first time that people got hysterical about things, and I know that it is not the first time that Skybird has been caught up in it.

Too kind, thank you. You might find it interesting that I found myself in need to alter my opinions a bit, and in some thread I indicated that, three or four moths ago. I had to realise that the money-interest by the third world plays an important role in painting the picture as dramatic as possible, so to get more money transfers from the North, and that sun cycle effects maybe play a greater role than previously taken into account. But I also think that this earlier ignoring of sun cycles is coming from the so-called sceptics' propaganda having been so abusive in misquoting, quoting out of context, constructing totally different material into one strawman argument, that in this noise the solid part of the sun cycle argument got lost and ignored, since it appeared to be just the sceptics' propaganda for too long, and thus was discredited. I still think the planet is warming up, but I realise that the sun causes more prominent microfluctuations in global climate trends and maybe buys some time for us, than previously assumed. Last summer was cold and wet over here, this one is as well, but on a global scale, the weather extremes have increased in frequency and intensity, which is pretty much according to the predictions of global warming models. Greenland is unfreezing quicker than ever, the oceans warm up as well, and warmth-related chemical changes are to be observed, too.

However, the Philly article is way too short and superficial as if I would make it a basis of questioning the results alltogether. The argument of that article would need to become object of empirical examination itself.

We may have won some time in which we can adapt, but I think what it all means is that at the end the final rise in temperature will come even sharper and more drastic, if we do not get ready to cope with that.

On surveys, what is being done if they should fulfill the criterion of being representative for a population, is to make sure that the sample offers demographic represenation, and is big enough in size to minimise the margin of error (= that sample's findings are not meaning anything, but are by pure chance, by randomness, by luck) is not exceeding a certain level, which usually is set at 5%, 3% or 1%. In experimental settings, these error margins often are set even lower, for example 0.5, 0.25 or 0.05%. This is what separates a poll from a representative survey: the poll is just a random snapshot that can but must not be representative at all, since one does not care for the structure of the sample. The representative survey uses statistical calculations to determine how big a sample must be at minimum to bring down the margin error to this or that wanted level. This gets calculated by formulas, it is no random or arbitrary process. You cannot do a representative survey with too small a sample, therefore. The trustworthiness becomes the bigger the greater the sample is, but beyond a certain level, the additonal gain slows down, and from some point on it is not economic to increase the sample size anymore.

On the Philly article, they may have a point. It'S not that I studied those 60 pages so much in depth that I have every detail on my mind. A relation between weather at the time of the questioning, and given answers, would not be that surprising. We know according links between psychic state and mood, and season/light/weather.

[Tchocky]

AL GORE AL GORE

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I have lost neither you nor anyone else, because I did not claim anything.

The important part is the third link, the original document, in full length.

And from that, page 66ff: methodology.



You have better information on the lacking representative value of their data pool? I'm listening.

My statement was more of a sarcastic commentary of how polarized the American people have become on the political and economic landscape. We as a people can't agree on anything anymore, with left and right wing politico's pulling everyone one way or the other with nothing in between. For every left wing tree hugger screaming global warming, they'll be a right wing nut job screaming it's all a lie.

[artao]

Antrhopogenic Global Climate Change is not an "opinion", it is a fact. The only remaining question is exactly how much influence mankind has had in it. There is NO DOUBT AT ALL that we are indeed part of the cause however.
El Nino/El Nina. right. how many years now are those to be blamed? sure are turning out to be some long cycles there.
Crazy winters and crazy summers and crazy storms and crazy droughts .. ALL OF THEM are due to global climate change to some degree. One can not point to any specific event and say "this was global climate change". It doesn't work that way. One CAN however point to the overall trend in weather events and say, with confidence, this has been global climate change.
I just read an article the other day where researchers (actual climatologists, published in Nature) are saying WE CAN NO LONGER STOP THE RISE IN SEA LEVEL FOR SEVERAL HUNDRED YEARS. ... and that's even IF we take the most extreme, drastic measures to reverse global climate change.
"Follow the money" clearly, and always has, traced back to the current energy syndicate making less profit. Not losing money, mind you; simply less profit. they still make money, just not as much.
Global Climate Change is not a political OR economic thing. It has been politicized and economized. Global Climate Change itself is purely science. And the science is now completely undeniable. Period.