Al Who? Gallup Poll: Americans concern about global warming falls to 1989 levels! — Climate ranks lowest among ENVIRONMENTAL Issues

[Climate Depot Note: Perhaps ‘belief’ in global warming is being impacted by lack of global warming. See: Global Temperature Update: No global warming at all for 17 years 8 months – No Warming Since August 1996]

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Gallup April 4, 2014 survey Excerpts: 

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Americans’ generally low level of concern about global warming compared with other environmental issues is not new; warming has generally ranked last among Americans’ environmental worries each time Gallup has measured them with this question over the years. Concern about pollution of drinking water has generally been at the top of the list.

Gallup has tracked worry about global warming using this question format since 1989. The percentage of Americans expressing a great deal of worry has varied over that period, partly reflecting major global warming news events along the way. The highest levels of worry occurred in April 2000 (40%) and March 2007 (41%). On the other hand, worry reached its lowest points in October 1997 (24%), March 2004 (26%), and March 2011 (25%). The current 34% worry is essentially the same as it was in 1989.

Many climate change activists have attempted to raise awareness in recent years, as evidenced by the recent U.N. report. Former Vice President Al Gore has been active in raising the alarm about the potentially disastrous impact of global warming, including in a documentary and a book. But the data at the national level show that none of this has changed Americans’ worry about the issue in any lasting way — perhaps reflecting the strong counter-position taken by many conservative thought leaders, and the “Climategate” controversies.

Politics Remain Major Predictor of Worry About Global Warming

Politics remain a powerful predictor of Americans’ worries about global warming, with more than half of Democrats saying they worry about it a great deal, compared with 29% of independents and 16% of Republicans. This political differentiation of global warming attitudes is not isolated; other research shows that in today’s political environment, Republicans are much more likely to say that concerns about global warming are exaggerated and that warming’s effects will not affect them personally in their lifetimes, and are less likely to say scientists believe global warming is occurring.

Young Americans aged 18 to 29 are more worried about global warming than older adults, particularly those 50 and older. If these young people hold on to these …

Global Temperature Update: No global warming at all for 17 years 8 months – No Warming Since August 1996

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley — Special to Climate Depot

Global Temperature Update

No global warming at all for 17 years 8 months

Global warming? What global warming? According to the RSS satellite data, whose value for March 2014 is just in, the global warming trend in the 17 years 8 months since August 1996 is zero. The 212 months without global warming represents just over half the 423-month satellite data record, which began in January 1979.

Dataset of datasets. The mean of the GISS, HadCRUt4, NCDC, RSS, and UAH monthly global mean surface or lower-troposphere temperature anomalies shows no global warming statistically distinguishable from zero over the 18 full years from March 1996 to February 2014. The 0.14 Cº trend over the 18-year period is within the ±0.15 Cº combined measurement, coverage, and bias uncertainties in the datasets. There may have been no global warming at all during the entire lifetimes of all students now in high school. Not that their teachers will have told them that.

The 18-year and centennial-equivalent warming trends on each of the five key datasets are:

Dataset

18 years

100 years

GISS

0.18 Cº

0.98 Cº

HadCRUT4

0.14 Cº

0.80 Cº

NCDC

0.14 Cº

0.75 Cº

RSS satellite

0.03 Cº

0.16 Cº

UAH satellite

0.21 Cº

1.17 Cº

3 terrestrial

0.15 Cº

0.85 Cº

2 satellite

0.12 Cº

0.66 Cº

All 5 datasets

0.14 Cº

0.77 Cº

Key facts about global temperature

  • The RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming at all for 212 months from August 19996 to March 2014. That is just over half the entire 423-month satellite record. 
  • The fastest centennial warming rate was in Central England from 1663-1762, at 0.9 Cº per century – before the industrial revolution began. It cannot have been our fault. 
  • The global warming trend since 1900 is equivalent to 0.8 Cº per century. This is well within natural variability and may not have much to do with us. 
  • The fastest warming trend lasting ten years or more occurred over the 40 years from 1694-1733 in Central England. It was equivalent to 4.3 Cº per century. 
  • Since 1950, when a human influence on global temperature first became theoretically possible, the global warming trend is equivalent to 1.2 Cº per century. 
  • The fastest warming rate lasting ten years or more since 1950 occurred over the 33 years from 1974 to 2006. It was equivalent to 2.0 Cº

Shock peer-reviewed paper provides ‘rationale’ for ‘information manipulation’ & ‘exaggeration’ in global warming debate to ‘enhance global welfare’

[Update: Authors of paper claim “misrepresentation” by media.:  The authors Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao sent out a note to members of the media which read in part: “Unfortunately, our points in the paper have been mis-interpreted and exaggerated by a few media. In the link below, please see our reply to the blog of Jayson Lusk. http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2014/3/6/information-manipulation-revisited – Hopefully, this link helps clarify our point. We never advocate lying on climate change.”]

[Update #2: # Investors Business Daily: In a note to the press, the authors vow that “we never advocate lying on climate change.” But as Lusk noted in an earlier comment on the paper, the authors constructed “a mathematical model to suggest that exaggerating consequences can have positive impacts by getting people to ‘do the right thing.'” There’s also this statement: “Our key result — that overpessimism alleviates the underparticipation problem — implies that the propaganda of climate skepticism may be detrimental to the society.” So maybe they would “never advocate lying on climate change,” yet they approve of using propaganda and silencing or marginalizing skeptics?]

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A new peer-reviewed paper published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, titled “Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements”, is openly providing a “rationale” for global warming proponents to engage in mendacious claims in order to further their cause.

The paper appears to support or provide a formula for why lying or “information manipulation” is able to further the cause of man-made global warming and “enhance global welfare.” The authors use a mathematical formula to study information tactics.

The authors, Assistant Professors of Economics Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao, note how the media and environmental groups “exaggerate” global warming and then the offer their paper to “provide a rationale for this tendency” to exaggerate for the good of the cause. The paper was published on February 24, 2014

The author’s boldly note in the abstract of the study that the “news media and some pro-environmental have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency.”

“We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA (International Environmental Agreements) which will eventually enhance global welfare.”

The paper conclusions read in part: “This article offers a rationale for the phenomenon of …

Warmists at RealClimate.org: New IPCC Report has been approved ‘after lengthy debates – by government delegations’ – Warns ‘without mitigation, the impacts of climate change will be devastating’

Impacts of Climate Change – Part 2 of the new IPCC Report has been approved

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/04/impacts-of-climate-change-part-2-of-the-new-ipcc-report-has-been-approved/

The second part of the new IPCC Report has been approved – as usual after lengthy debates – by government delegations in Yokohama (Japan) and is now public. Perhaps the biggest news is this: the situation is no less serious than it was at the time of the previous report 2007. Nonetheless there is progress in many areas, such as a better understanding of observed impacts worldwide and of the specific situation of many developing countries. There is also a new assessment of “smart” options for adaptation to climate change. The report clearly shows that adaptation is an option only if efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions are strengthened substantially. Without mitigation, the impacts of climate change will be devastating.

 
 
Guest post by Wolfgang Cramer
 
 
On all continents and across the oceans
Impacts of anthropogenic climatic change are observed worldwide and have been linked to observed climate using rigorous methods. Such impacts have occurred in many ecosystems on land and in the ocean, in glaciers and rivers, and they concern food production and the livelihoods of people in developing countries. Many changes occur in combination with other environmental problems (such as urbanization, air pollution, biodiversity loss), but the role of climate change for them emerges more clearly than before.

Fig. 1 Observed impacts of climate change during the period since publication of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report 2007
 
During the presentation for approval of this map in Yokohama many delegates asked why there are not many more impacts on it. This is because authors only listed those cases where solid scientific analysis allowed attribution. An important implication of this is that absence of icons from the map may well be due to lacking data (such as in parts of Africa) – and certainly does not imply an absence of impacts in reality. Compared to the earlier report in 2007, a new element of these documented findings is that impacts on crop yields are now clearly identified in many regions, also in Europe. Improved irrigation and other technological advances have so far helped to avoid shrinking yields in many cases – but the increase normally expected from technological improvements is leveling off rapidly.
 
A future of increasing risks
More than previous IPCC reports, the new report deals with future risks. Among other things, it seeks …