71% Think Global Warming Has Nothing to do With Man’s Actions

ByGroovy Green Jun 26, 2007

And they aren’t blaming women either. Pocket Issue and AOL have issued a press release that shows the results of 4000 people polled with almost 3 out of 4 believing that human actions aren’t causing global warming, with 65% going further to agree with the notion that scientific findings on this issue are “far fetched.” What strikes me as odd is how people all over the radio are claiming this as proof that global warming just isn’t our fault. “If that many people believe it isn’t true, then it must not be true,” goes the logic in resposne to a statement by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that says global warming is,

very likely due to the observed increase of anthropogenic [man-made] greenhouse gas concentrations.

Very likely, they later clarify means 90% sure. But this recent poll doesn’t surprise me. Least I forget,

Even today, more than four years into the war in Iraq, as many as four in 10 Americans (41 percent) still believe Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11, even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection.

Closer to home, more Americans are able to name Jordin Sparks as the winner of the most recent season of American Idol (18 percent) than can identify John Roberts as the Supreme Court’s chief justice (11 percent). source

But that’s to be expected right? We’re too busy watching American Idol to be bothered with the “reason” we’re fighting a war, let alone who is in charge of the high court in our land. But before I go too far in picking on poor Americans I should remind myself that this phenomenon of mass disillusion is not a recent invention of our nation in the modern era. Plenty of people didn’t believe the first folks to point out at that the Earth is round or that cigarettes cause cancer or that our solar system revolves around the sun. For at least three centuries after Copernicus wrote Commentariolus explaining that last little idea the catholic church wouldn’t allow such a “theory” to be printed in Rome. Hell, the church just got around to pardoning Galileo in 1992 for defending it!

But we seem especially good, as a society, at ignoring scientific evidence these days. As proof I offer the fact that we even have three Republican candidates for president who think they can’t get elected unless they publicly admit they don’t believe in evolution. Me personally, I don’t believe Prezident George W. Bush is real. The “evidence” is just too overwhelming.

So call it a group sickness or a mass denial or a twisted reality we just have to get used to. Plenty of people will believe what ever they want to believe and if they don’t want to believe that their behavior is largely responsible for global warming and the subsequent global climate change due to severely impact our children as well as increase the mass extinction among God’s creatures here on Earth, well, there’s probably not much you’re personally going to be able to say that will be able to aurally compete with talk radio propaganda. Those guys have heard the uninformed masses speak and that’s proof enough for them that everything is A OK.

Is there a bright spot? Well maybe there is. This time last year the same Joe Q. Public I’m picking on wouldn’t even admit global warming existed. I can tell you one thing, they’re going to have a hell of a time with peak oil.