The New York Times reports on a new poll.
A record number of Americans understand that climate change is real, according to a new survey, and they are increasingly worried about its effects in their lives today.
Two important takeaways:
First, the results themselves. “I’ve never seen jumps in some of the key indicators like this,” one of the investigators said.
Second, the Times saw no need to “balance” the results with a statement from a self-identified scientist living in his mother’s basement. Further, they used the word “understand” four times to describe the respondents’ relationship to the facts of global warming.
Real progress.
And open thread.
Jeffro
If the Times…(the TIMES!!1!)…is not engaging in both-siderism on climate change, then truly we have won the war.
J/k of course but it’s a start!
Carolina Dave
My neighbor, the Chemist, doesn’t accept the scientific consensus because 1. Her ideology 2. Tax cuts.
Chief Oshkosh
28% today, 27% tomorrow.
…there’s that number again…
Jeffro
@Carolina Dave: That’s exciting – I’d love to hear her explanation how tax cuts keep away climate change (or whatever the linkage is, in her mind). Hoo boy…
The Moar You Know
The first thing I notice, as someone who was trained a long time ago to read graphs, is the trendlines. We are right back in 2019 where we were in 2009. What the hell happened to send the number of Americans who thought climate change is bullshit from 29% to over 40%? This graph is not showing progress, but rather regression to a mean.
2009. I wonder what happened in 2009?
Oh yeah. That.
I could speculate on why but Occam’s razor suggests that people feel when a Dem is president, climate change is no longer a problem.
japa21
Bah, GW is a Chinese plot. We’re going to hit -17 twice in the next week with a subzero high next Tuesday. Don’t talk to me about global warming.
So say all the skeptics in Chicagoland.
bemused
A little good news but why does it take freaking decades for deplorable deniers to get anything reality based through their stubborn heads.
Jeffro
I think it’d be great to hear some #NeverTrumper speak up and talk about how it’s possible to be a principled conservative and also believe that climate change is man-made and a real threat. I could do it for them, but I’d really rather they make the effort first.
charluckles
I’ve started a new career where I am working with a lot of young folks. The refrain from them in discussions about global warming is “your beliefs are irrelevant, global warming is real.” It’s heartening to hear, but I fear things will be too far gone by the time they take the reins.
Major Major Major Major
I saw that! Bravo.
The Midnight Lurker
Well, I’m glad some are finally starting to get the message. We only had to lose the Arctic, the Greenland ice sheet, hundreds of lives, dozens of towns, and a shitload of military aircraft.
Thoughtful David
@japa21:
Someone else (Trump? I wasn’t paying attention) was saying the same thing a few days ago, but not facetiously. Meanwhile, most of the US is having normal weather, and Australia is burning up, setting new records for heat.
cmorenc
The GOP/RW resistance to accepting the reality / human causation / need for action is grounded in their perception that doing so would involve:
1) willing acceptance of a much more substantial role of government regulation (especially at the federal level) than is compatible with their ideological belief in free markets and limited government;
2) substantially decreased reliance on automobile travel (and the individual autonomy that comes therewith, including residential options) and increased reliance on mass transit big-government projects dictating where people can go and live;
3) for the more fundamentally religious among them, they perceive such as shifting from belief that the factors involved are controlled by Gods’ will and plans, to accepting a secular scientific naturalist view of the world – that scientists are a flawed secular priesthood who are arrogant and failable, whereas Gods’ promises and mysterious plans are not. Bottom line: they’d prefer to believe in magic rather than science, Genesis over geology, because it’s a more comforting way (to them) to view how their lives and the universe are controlled.
Bottom line: Al Gore had it right saying that AGW is an “inconvenient truth”, especially as it applies to GOP RWers.
Mary G
George Will goes after Lindsey Graham but good in the WaPo today. He starts out complaining that he’s like a windsock in an old rural airport, quotes all the horrible things like “Trump is a jackass” and “if we nominate Trump, the Republican Party will be destroyed, and we will deserve it.” Then documents the pitiful capitulation since the election.
I’m most commenting because it is extremely rare that I come across a word I don’t know, and he’s right, this one is perfect:
Republicans in a nutshell.
cmorenc
“An inconvenient truth” indeed AGW is for Republicans.
Viva BrisVegas
@japa21:
Send some of that cool down this way.
Almost the whole of South Australia is sitting between 40C and 50C right now.
They expect 45C in Adelaide today and 43C in Melbourne tomorrow.
If you want to see what future continental summers are going to look like, now you can. This won’t just be an Australian thing. Imagine heat waves like this sitting over Central Asia or the Mid-West USA for weeks at a time.
To tell the truth, if this becomes the norm every summer, a whole lot of real estate is going to become uninhabitable.
JGabriel
Yale Program on Climate Change Communication:
So 62% understand that “global warming is caused mostly by human activities,” but only 51% are “extremely” or “very sure” that global warming is happening?
How does that happen?
I guess it means that, overall, 49% of the public are still idiots, but only 38% are clueless fucking idiots while 11% at least have a clue?
I mean, seriously, what the fuck?
JGabriel
@Viva BrisVegas:
For Americans, that’s 113 degrees Fahrenheit. 50C would equal 122F.
This is the world the GOP and its conservative business polluter donors are leaving for us.
Edited to Add:
@Carolina Dave:
See above.
Immanentize
@The Moar You Know:
Seriously, another possibility is economic disaster in your personal life. If you are being told that environmental regulations because of “global warming” means your job is gone, regardless who is president, it might be a good idea to attack the cause — climate change. See, Massachusetts v. EPA.
But racism? Yeah that too.
Steeplejack
@The Moar You Know:
It could also be related to the economic crash of ’08. I think a lot of people have been indoctrinated with the idea that “fixing” climate change will be hugely expensive, and (I hypothesize) they therefore don’t want to “believe” in climate change in a sort of “La-la-la, I can’t hear you!” reaction. As their financial circumstances become less straitened, they are more open to hearing the truth.
Plato
If the totus thug ‘breaks into the house’, who can and more importantly, who will stop him?
ruemara
Great. Now can they start voting like it?
germy
I’m pretty sure Sarah Huckabee Sanders said we should leave the climate to God.
Eric S.
@japa21: This Chicagoland global warming is cramping my half marathon training.
Xecky Gilchrist
This is great – language is hugely important and telling, so “understand” instead of equivocating is fantastic.
I noticed that shortly before marijuana legalization became politically popular, suddenly the tone of news reporting about it abandoned the sneering, hippy-dippy contempt that was a requirement for decades before.
Maybe it’s really progress!
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: I saw your answer to my question in the last thread. I had forgotten that I had mentioned Gurudutt, here.
Martin
California’s Low Cost Fuel Standard law was just upheld by the 9th circuit. In short, it looks at fuel intensity and the total lifecycle carbon cost of the fuel – not just the cost from the vehicle using it, but also the cost of acquiring it, transporting it, refining it, etc. The industries that were suing California claimed that fuels produced in-state were unfairly benefitted because our power is generated by natural gas or solar as compared to coal for other states. The 9th circuit basically said ‘tough shit’:
California is going to fix this, and our industries will happily sell the other 49 states the solutions when y’all come around. Thank you for my kid’s future home ownership.
Jeffro
@cmorenc: Shorter version: they don’t like it that it’s not “God’s will” one way or they other, it’s us; and by the way it’s going to hit all of us in the pocketbook a little in order to keep it from hitting us quite bigly.
Also, too: the libs were right about public transportation. Gack!
Mart
Recently learned my daughter is pregnant. My first thought was not happy-happy joy-joy, but oh shit, what about the future? Until recently I thought my parents picked a perfect window for me – never had to register for the draft, could drink at 18 (at least that is what I thought at 18), lived about as well as my upper middle class mom and dad (with four less kids), weed is now legal, and no cataclysms hit – unexpected disease or death, no tornado, earthquake, fire, flood, riot, or war. Reading about the warming feedback loops and sixth great extinction stuff, pretty sure I won’t escape the climate change cataclysm unscathed; and certain to disastrously impact my children and grandchildren. Some people say the climate dam breaks in a few years, but heard on Fox they are just saying that for the federal grant money…
AOC (Ms. 70%) is right about this. We need leadership and funding at a Moon Landing or Manhattan Project level to see if science can slow this death march. Doubt will ever happen. Against the law to raise taxes.
Edit – Forgot to mention micro-brews.
plato
smintheus
Hooray, we’re now all the way back to the level of opinion as of 2009 before the GOP set about demagoguing global warming to…death.
Baud
@plato: They spelled hellmouth wrong.
JGabriel
@Mart:
We need funding and taxes at paying off WWII debt levels, both to pay down our current debt load from 4 decades of borrow & spend “tax” policies (aka Reaganomics), and to fund the new infrastructure we need to replace aging infrastructure and to fund urgent science & tech priorities like slowing down the AGW death march.
Martin
@Steeplejack:
I think it’s a bit broader than that. I think the US has shifted quite significantly from capitalism to corporatism. Climate change mitigation means upending some existing corporations by a bunch of new ones. Now, not only is this an okay result of capitalism, it’s a desirable outcome. But collectively the US citizenry is really opposed to this – Democrats as much as Republicans. Fixing this is going to involve breaking a lot of large established companies. Because it costs money, it’ll create a lot of jobs, but losing your job and moving to a new one is frightening and disruptive.
Now, California has been on this trajectory for 40 years, so the disruptions have been relatively manageable here, but the longer we wait, the faster we’ll have to move, and the more disruptive this will become – at least for everyone but California.
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
Glad you saw it.
Another Scott
@JGabriel:
Eh? I’m with you except for paying off the debt.
The debt is mostly money we owe ourselves. Paying it off (early) is a bad idea.
Dean Baker:
WaPo from 2009:
What we should be doing is investing in efficiency, improved infrastructure (so people aren’t sitting in traffic or sitting on the tarmac, etc.), and fossil-fuel-free power generation and storage. The debt can take care of itself as long as the economy is growing, and as long as we don’t intentionally default… AGW is a huge problem and getting bigger. We can’t let worries about our national debt affect what we should be doing.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
John fremont
@JGabriel Back in November, one third of the population of a native fruit bat species died in under a week due to the heat.
chris
Thanks for this, Cheryl, I think there should be one of these threads every day. There is the odd bright spot but most of the things I read are pretty dire and people need to know that. So good on you and the FNYT.
Bess
There’s no large need for government spending when it comes to electricity and personal transportation. Low carbon electricity sources (wind and solar) are already the lowest unsubsidized cost global average sources of electricity. Battery prices are close to the point where it becomes as cheap, and then cheaper, to manufacture an EV than a similar-feature ICEV. It’s already cheaper to operate an EV.
If we had lots of time we could wait for economic forces to eliminate fossil fuels for energy. Our coal plants are old and aging out. New coal plants are far too expensive compared to renewables and natural gas combined cycle plants. Wind and solar are cheaper than gas. As we add more wind and solar we will burn less gas. And batteries are reaching the point at which they are starting to replace some gas on the grid.
Unfortunately we don’t have enough time to wait. What could greatly speed up things is for the government to create a cost on carbon. For electricity it could be cost neutral to consumers. Use the tax collected on fossil fuels to cut the cost of electricity at the consumer level.
A carbon tax on fuel might be used to assist people to purchase EVs. We need to increase sales volumes to speed battery plant construction which, in turn, will lead to lower cost batteries. What would probably work best is to target subsidies to the lowest cost EVs, making it easier for less affluent buyers to afford an EV. Lower cost EVs, like lower cost ICEVs, can only be manufactured in larger number due to the lower profit margins possible on lower cost cars.
Where the government might best put its money is in the other sources of greenhouse gas. We seem to have some low carbon concrete solutions. If they truly work then subsidize their use in order to get them into use. There’s even a concrete solution that absorbs CO2 over time.
The thing that we as individuals can do that will likely help most is to contact our elected officials and make them aware that we want our state and federal governments to take effective action.
Cheryl Rofer
@chris: I said some time ago that I intended to write more about global warming, but the general Trumpian chaos has gotten in the way, and right now real life is heating up as I become more involved with state legislation.
Ruckus
@bemused:
Steel plates? The on/off switch is broken in the off position? They are morons in more than one subject? Like all of them…..
jonas
@japa21:
Oh yeah? Tell them they’re welcome to relocate to Australia where they’re enjoying record-shattering temperatures north of 120 in the shade. With no end in sight. Thousands of fish and waterbirds in lakes and rivers are dying because the water has become too hot for them to survive. Good times.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bess: A major problem is their campaign contributors don’t like competition from non-fossil energy, because they are too lazy and stubborn and greedy and selfish to think long term for everyone.
Bess
@Villago Delenda Est:
We’re reaching the point where coal has no money to give politicians. The wind and solar industries are growing to the point that they can make meaningful contributions.
Interestingly, some of the strongest supporters of wind generation have been red state governors and congress members. Wind farms have created lots of good paying jobs in areas where good jobs were few. The wind farms are creating local and state tax revenues which are being a real sweetener.
The solar industry is a major job creator. The US oil industry doesn’t really employee many people. Workers vote.
We’ve reached a tipping point at which renewables and EVs are becoming the lower cost alternatives and renewable energy is creating lots of jobs. Coal is dying and natural gas is unlikely to grow much more. In a short number of years we should reach peak oil demand. At that point oil will start losing its political power.