Collide-a-scape

Via Matthew Nisbet, I read this NPR transcript from a show discussing the recent Pew poll that had climate advocates wringing their hands in disbelief. The NPR conversation between Pew’s Andrew Kohut and Yale researcher Anthony Lieserowitz is a worthwhile read for anyone who seriously wants to engage with those poll results.

The bottom line: concern about climate change has lessened– at this juncture– because of the economy, the weather (perhaps that cool summer), and Marc Morano, probably in that order of significance. (Nobody points to Morano, specifically, but if you read the transcript, you’ll see that part of the blame for that waning public concern is attributed to the “well amplified message” of the “climate-change-dismissive community,” which makes me wonder if I underestimated the power of that when I wrote this.)

Anyway, I’m just giving the main thrust I gleaned from the NPR transcript.  Read it for yourself. I bet you’ll find it illuminating.

The NYT has a nice round-up of perspectives on this recent Pew poll, which finds:

There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising.

I tend to think this poll is more a snapshot in time. We’re still in a major economic downturn, as Pew research director Andrew Kohut alluded to in this AP story:

The priority that people give to pollution and environmental concerns and a whole host of other issues is down because of the economy and because of the focus on other things. When the focus is on other things, people forget and see these issues as less grave.

Then again, this is a fascinating picture from a war zone. It suggests that some people who have good reason to be distracted from enviromental issues are still focusing on global warming as a major concern.

Still can’t fathom why global warming isn’t more of a bugaboo to the average American (unlike, say, a case of pandemic hysteria)?

Read Nate Silver’s take on this survey conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change and George Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication.

The survey contains various permutations of questions and lots of wonky polling data to chew on. But to Silver, the data, taken as a whole,

reveals that Americans are concerned about global warming in the abstract — but perhaps only in the abstract.

Silver also realistically assesses the world we live in:

Although more aggressive policy responses on climate change generally poll fairly well, they are also often the first things to be sacrificed in Americans’ minds when something else intervenes, such as a recession or higher energy prices. Advocates of cap-and-trade may need to find ways to personalize the terms of the debate.

All this was elaborated on in greater context in last week’s New York Time’s magazine, which I discussed here.

Bottom line: peddling visions of Mad Max meets Soylent Green won’t cut it.

Predictably, Joe Romm inflates the significance of this poll, and obviously fails to see the irony of his own role in that 41 percent number.

For what’s it’s worth, I unpack the Gallup survey here. My take is that it’s a snapshot in time, should be seen in the context of the extraordinary moment we’re living in now, rather than, as Romm argues, proof positive that the deniers are resurgent and that the MSM is failing in its civic responsibility to incite the  American people into collective action on global warming.

Romm’s sense of frustration is such that he too is now grasping for Nazi analogies to make sense of it all. He compares what he thinks is the duping of Americans on climate change to Hitler’s strategy of the “BIG LIE”:

According to the United States Office of Strategic Service, Hitler’s strategy was based on the view: “…people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

In fact, Hitler himself defined the term “Big Lie,” in his autobiography Mein Kempf, as: a lie so “collosal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

Romm is smart enough to know he’s wading into dangerous water here, so immediately tries a little ass-covering:

I don’t think this useful term should be a banned from public use just because Hitler defined it first (sorry RealClimate). I certainly apologize to anybody who is upset by the analogy — I’m not trying to compare deniers with Nazis — there is no such comparison possible — nor does it apply to all of the people who advocate one of the 6 myths below. No, the “Big Lie” refers mostly to the strategy of the professional class of those who spread disinformation for a living.

I don’t have a problem with Romm proposing this meta theory of the BIG LIE.  I just don’t understand how he could delude himself into believing it.

Before you throw up your hands in disgust and move to a remote cabin in Lincoln, Montana, read the entire 2009 Gallup environmental survey closely. I say this, because Gallup’s headline, “Increased Number Think Global Warming is Exaggerated” is setting the tone for news coverage and blog chatter.

The real story can be read in the survey’s data. To start, let’s examine who comprises the record-high 41% that now believe global warming is exaggerated.

Some commentators  in the blogosphere have already noted the “curmudgeon” effect. To put it more charitably, the increased cynicism, Gallup reports, is coming from “Americans 30 and older.”

Then there is the political demographic:

Since 1997, Republicans have grown increasingly likely to believe media coverage of global warming is exaggerated and that trend continued in the 2009 survey.

No surprise there. Conservative titans in talk Radio and cable TV dismiss global warming outright. Hannity and Limbaugh may well lead the GOP to the garbage bin of history but I doubt they will be able to take the planet with them.

This other survey finding, however, should send a collective shiver through the spines of climate change advocates: more Independents are becoming global warming skeptics. In just the past year, according to Gallup,

Republican doubters grew from 59% to 66%, and independents from 33% to 44%, while the rate among Democrats remained close to 20%.

Why are Independents growing more skeptical of global warming? Given that climate change legislation is going to be a hard slog, seems like a good idea to find out what’s bugging those politically treasured Independents.

Turning to the rest of the survey, it’s worth noting that global warming was one of eight specific environmental concerns that Gallup asked about. Americans, it seems, are most worried (84 percent) about polluted drinking water. 76 percent are concerned about dirty air. Global warming ranks last, with 60 percent confirmed as worriers (down from 66 percent last year).

Now I’d chalk up that six percent slide to the tanking economy.  But the fact that more people worry about clean air and clean water than melting icecaps and rising seas is telling. It should tell climate change advocates that they have a bigger obstacle to overcome than a slight uptick in doubters.