More Americans Believe Global Warming Natural Versus Man-made

More Americans Believe Global Warming Natural Versus Man-made

By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive)
April 18, 2009 - 11:48 ET

Despite years of hysterical, Al Gore-loving media hype that humans are destroying the planet by emitting too much carbon dioxide, more Americans now believe global warming is being caused by long-term planetary forces rather than man's activities.

This represents a stunning reversal in the past twelve months, and is likely a function of a recent global cooling that has thwarted efforts by climate alarmists to convince citizens that the warming trend that began in the mid-'70s was going to continue forever if the world didn't immediately stop burning fossil fuels.

Now, according to Rasmussen Reports, those believing man can actually control the planet's thermostat have plummeted in number:

Story Continues Below Ad ↓

Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying. However, a plurality (48%) of the Political Class believes humans are to blame.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, while seven percent (7%) blame some other reason. Eleven percent (11%) aren’t sure.

These numbers reflect a reversal from a year ago when 47% blamed human activity while 34% said long-term planetary trends.

Maybe this is why climate alarmists like Joe Romm are getting more and more insane with their claims on this issue.

After all, with the planet cooling -- and destined to do so for many years to come according to most meteorologists and climatologists -- the window of opportunity to tax carbon emissions is shrinking.

People like Gore, James Hansen, and Romm know this, and that's why the pressure to get Congress to act quickly on carbon cap and trade legislation has been ramped up.

With that in mind, if such a scheme is not enacted this year -- which Hill watchers view as very likely due to other priorities facing the nation -- and temperatures do continue to cool thereby further reducing the public's belief in the anthropogenic global warming myth, the probability of such legislation ever coming to fruition gets lower and lower.

That's what I call a convenient truth.

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters. Follow him at Facebook and Twitter.

Comments Policy

All comments are owned by whoever posted them and are subject to our terms of use. They should not be assumed to represent the views of NewsBusters.

CO2 Parties

April 18, 2009 - 11:55 ET by JustAl

Now we need to have CO2 parties so we can all exhale together and be considered polluters by EPA just as we are considered suspected terrorists by the DHS and uber rich Republicans by Pelousy.

This awakening is too late now that EPA has it's marching orders, another $trillion or so along with what's left of American industry will be flushed down the toilet pronto. If true conservatism ever gets power in this country this is one of the first agencies that should be cut to the bone.

State sponsored redistribution of wealth based on psuedo science. The last time this happened it involved measuring people's skulls to decide who should be pushed into the gas chambers. This sort of thing always ends badly.

Should have been cut the LAST time

April 18, 2009 - 12:28 ET by TheHistorian

the conservatives were in control. Along with the mis-educators (Department of Education), the no-alternative energy bureaucrats (Department of Energy), the non-regulators of unions (Department of Labor) and probably a couple more that I am not thinking of right now. Oops, I forgot, the conservatives were NOT in power, just Republicrats.

"What experience and history teach is
this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history,
or acted on principles deduced from it."

G. W. F. Hegel

Exactly

April 18, 2009 - 12:33 ET by JustAl

"Oops, I forgot, the conservatives were NOT in power, just Republicrats. "

Exactly my point friend, exactly my point. The media annointed Bush and McCain as "Conservatives" in order to move the entire spectrum to the left.

McCain and Obama wanted to point the nation in the same direction, only the speed is different. Had McCain won, we would have no chance for a conservative backlash, so, in effect, Obama was the lessor of the two evils this time IMHO.

Global Warning

April 27, 2009 - 08:58 ET by grumpyoldb

I remember the FIRST Earth Day... That's when they tried to brainwash us into believing that by the year 2000 the world would be plunged into another ICE AGE because of carbon, and greenhouse gasses..... They just can't make up thei rmind which junk science to use...

I do believe that some global warming is man made. It's caused by all the hot air coming out of Algore and all the global warming eco-terrorists....

Eco terror from the US government

April 18, 2009 - 11:58 ET by DontFeedTheTrolls

After all, with the planet cooling -- and destined to do so for many
years to come according to most meteorologists and climatologists --
the window of opportunity to tax carbon emissions is shrinking.

Too late, Obama, and the democrats, are determined to choke America to death with laws preventing the use of fossil fuels. These will be forced through. Please Mr. Ecofriendly Earthlover, tell me what I can put in my oil fired heater or my gas stove and clothes drier other than what I use now? What's that, replace them? Oh, so you feel it would be best to throw them in the trash and spend thousands to replace them. Right.

Keep the ILLEGALS out, join NumbersUSA to send free faxes to your reps.

This is not my father's

April 18, 2009 - 12:07 ET by SpaceManSpiff

This is not my father's EPA. They had a purpose when the agency was formed, but the majority of that purpose is gone now. If anything, they should be gutted and folded into another agency. They're only doing this to keep from being irrelevant.

Government agencies are just like the Hydra, you can't kill them, and they just keep growing.

Did Orwell predict the future? Or are the enemies of freedom following Orwell's example?

its not helping

April 18, 2009 - 12:20 ET by Rowane

Its not helping a bit, they'll never admit that GlowBull warming is crap because that would show they didn't even try to correalate the data to arrive at a proper theory.

Damn idiots who pretend to be scientists make real scientists look bad.

Consult Janeane Garofalo about it

April 18, 2009 - 12:40 ET by The Smokin Frog

All this is nice but these folks that don't believe in global warming are probably people that go to Tea Parties so they probably aren't smart enough to realize how stupid they are. Or they may have a racist bias against 'climatologists'. They probably got the wrong weather report one time too many and being found without an umbrella in a sudden down pour, developed a serious hatred for the whole field. We know these people are out there, they even made a money about it with Nicholas Cage.
Maybe we should consult Janeane Garofalo about it. She seems to be up on the biases of the right wing extremists.
TSF Protests!

Alienating Himself

April 18, 2009 - 13:31 ET by dbo

Joe Romm is so far out in left field that even many warmists consider him a total whack job.

...Romm and his now time tested routine of slander, innuendo, guilt by
association and conspiracy theory, along with voluminous text and
repetitive argument, mostly citing his own prior posts, all
masquerading as documentary proof that the arguments of his
adversaries, often grossly misrepresented, have been "debunked"

Kiss the economic "recovery" good-bye

April 18, 2009 - 13:41 ET by R D Helm

In these days of our completely out-of-control government running amok, it really doesn't much matter what most people think, as the job-killing EPA is about to choke off whatever pitiful economic recovery we [might] have been headed for:

http://online.wsj.co...

And the coup just rolls right along, totally unimpeded.

-Dave

This coup has gone on long enough. The time to put it down is NOW.

It is man made, man made-up,

April 18, 2009 - 13:42 ET by b4m4wy

It is man made, man made-up, that is.

Now we know

April 18, 2009 - 13:59 ET by 10ksnooker

Why ZERO is in such a hurry ...

Only 34% believe that "as seen on tv" means it's true.

Breaking....

April 18, 2009 - 14:37 ET by acumen

Antarctic sea ice is growing.

Somebody needs to tell the

April 18, 2009 - 14:40 ET by d1carter

Somebody needs to tell the EPA before they go all crazy on us. It has just made a prelim ruling that is going to change all of our lives. Where do we go from here?

It's part of the New World Order.

April 18, 2009 - 14:52 ET by Protocol_9

Noel,

"...those believing man can actually control the planet's thermostat..."

I thought it was the part of the Conspiracy Theorists telling the whole world of the New World Order! Some type of weather machine that can control the weather. Good Stuff!

Thanks for the stats!

protocol9

taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear the most. -dostoyevski

Unfortunately 90 percent of

April 18, 2009 - 17:03 ET by eaglewingz08

Unfortunately 90 percent of the 34 percent who believe such tripe are democraps, the other 10 percent of the 34 percent are RINOs like John McCain.

Daaang! The planet's

April 18, 2009 - 17:19 ET by Eugenia

Daaang! The planet's cooling again? Harumph!

I was hoping for a nice, hot summer. It's been a long,

cold winter. Where's that global warming when you need it?!!!

Eugenia

April 18, 2009 - 17:25 ET by Noel Sheppard

Eugenia,

Well, where I live in northern Cal, we're having what I believe is our first 80 degree day of the year. We haven't even been able to go into our pool yet, which normally happens in the middle of March.

After a few more days like this, we're supposed to cool off by the middle of next week, and possibly have rain next weekend.

Ain't no global warming happening here! :-) ns

Snowed here this

April 18, 2009 - 19:12 ET by bigtimer

Snowed here this morning...again.

Mr. Sunshine finally melted it away.

I just love global warning...Denver is too.

Doubling down on stupid is not a particularly good idea. ~Andrew Breitbart

Evidence of Global Cooling

April 18, 2009 - 19:17 ET by PopularTech

Global Cooling in 2008

Obama: "Cap & Trade Will Cause Electricity Rates To Skyrocket"

CO2 Caused Global Warming is a Fraud

April 18, 2009 - 17:24 ET by hwm98264

hwm982xx

....It appears that “air pollution" is being confused/associated with global warming. The current political battle over global warming/climate change is a totally different subject than “air polution” and boils down to the fundamental issue of: "Does CO2 cause global warming?" How can carbon dioxide (CO2) be a pollutant when there would be no life on Earth, as we know it, without carbon dioxide (CO2)? CO2 is an invisible, odorless and non-toxic trace gas. Carbon Dioxide, along with Oxygen and Water are 3 basic necessities to sustain life on earth. The current EPA must be totally ignoring and/or are uneducated on the subject of Paleoclimatology.

.....Carbon dioxide is a very minor green-house trace gas. Water vapor is also a green-house gas, but its atmospheric content is 2,550 times greater than that of CO2.

.....Carbon Dioxide (CO2) does not cause Global Warming because there is no past historical scientific factual evidence, data and/or records that link CO2 as a forcing factor or a cause of any meaningful increasing temperature rise climate warming period. Any current rising temperatures is not causation. ALL other global warming arguments are irrelevant, since humans are incapable of controlling any various exogenous and endogenous natural processes of climate change.

A Complete Fraud

April 18, 2009 - 18:05 ET by JustAl

The number of temperature measuring stations has fallen dramatically since the '70s, with a very sharp falloff in the number of stations (particularly in Canada and Siberia) in the late 80's (I guess you need pretty good temperature gradient data to target an ICBM??).

And by what I'm sure is a coincidence the reported average world temp shot up dramatically at exactly the same time as the biggest decline in the number of stations.

With fewer stations more of the data has to be "estimated" particularly when so many existing stations are in built up cities of asphalt (as opposed to fields of grass when they were put into service). And again, by what I'm sure is a coincidence, those years like 2007 that the left (excuse me, the "climate saviours") site as being the hottest, are also those years for which the amount of data "estimated" was also the highest.

CO2 appears to be a unique molecule indeed. When you point out to the "climate savours" that it has no major absorption peaks in the IR spectrum which are close to the major bands of radiance by the son or re-radiance by the earth, they will tell you that it "reflects" the earth's re-radiated heat. Not only that, but apparently only CO2 produced by western democracies is bad, Indian and Chinese CO2 is just better behaved.

So only the bottom of the molecule is reflective of heat since it obviously does not cool the earth by reflecting the sun's incident IR radiation. Pretty nifty little molecule, if only we could turn those little suckers over and point the reflective side up!

If we really want to stop global warming we should go ahead and destroy ozone since it does have an IR absorption band very close to the major band of IR re-radiance of the earth. More aerosoles anyone?

Of course water is the grand daddy of all green house gases, not only more plentiful but also more efficient (and a by product of those nifty fuel cell cars the greens were so high on a few years ago). But despite it's pivotal role, the climate elites want shit loads more money for computer models because (surprise) none of their models do well at taking water vapour's effects into consideration.

Now that we are in a minimum of solar activity the same greenies who a year ago said the sun had nothing to do with climate are saying solar activity is "masking" the green house effect so we shouldn't be fooled by the fact that the earth is getting cooler since the theory is that it is getting warmer. ;-)

It isn't just the biggest scam, it is also the most perfect. How can anyone ever say that spending this money didn't solve a problem that no one can prove exists? And if the random data goes the other way they can just say we didn't spend enough or soon enough.

Spending money on man made global warming makes as much sense as sacrificing virgins to a volcano to ensure good crops.

U.S. Temperature Stations are Unreliable

April 18, 2009 - 19:22 ET by PopularTech

FACT: The temperature has only increased 0.6°C in the last 100 Years (IPCC)
FACT: 89% of U.S. temperature stations are biased by +1.0°C (SurfaceStations)

Is the U.S. Temperature Record Reliable? (PDF) (SurfaceStations)

Worldwide is even worse, stations are disappearing...

The Graph of Temperature vs. Number of Stations (Ross McKitrick, Ph.D. Professor of Environmental Economics)
- GHCN Air Temperature Station Locations 1950-1996 (Animation) (University of Delaware)
- Historical Station Distribution (Climate Audit)

Obama: "Cap & Trade Will Cause Electricity Rates To Skyrocket"

JA... What a great post

April 18, 2009 - 19:30 ET by bigtimer

JA...

What a great post you have here...I also have read about the decline in the weather stations...

I just have to tell you your last paragraph still has me chucklin'...and no better words could be said as those pertaining to this issue.

Spending money on man made global warming makes as much sense as sacrificing virgins to a volcano to ensure good crops.

Thank You... I love it!

Doubling down on stupid is not a particularly good idea. ~Andrew Breitbart

Exactly - Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is Not Pollution

April 18, 2009 - 19:09 ET by PopularTech

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is Not Pollution

"CO2 for different people has different attractions. After all, what is it? - it’s not a pollutant, it’s a product of every living creature’s breathing, it’s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, it’s a product of all industrial burning, it’s a product of driving – I mean, if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality." - Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science, MIT

"CO2 is not a pollutant. In simple terms, CO2 is plant food. The green world we see around us would disappear if not for atmospheric CO2. These plants largely evolved at a time when the atmospheric CO2 concentration was many times what it is today. Indeed, numerous studies indicate the present biosphere is being invigorated by the human-induced rise of CO2. In and of itself, therefore, the increasing concentration of CO2 does not pose a toxic risk to the planet." - John R. Christy, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alabama

"Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a naturally occurring, beneficial trace gas in the atmosphere. For the past few million years, the Earth has existed in a state of relative carbon dioxide starvation compared with earlier periods. There is no empirical evidence that levels double or even triple those of today will be harmful, climatically or otherwise. As a vital element in plant photosynthesis, carbon dioxide is the basis of the planetary food chain - literally the staff of life. Its increase in the atmosphere leads mainly to the greening of the planet. To label carbon dioxide a "pollutant" is an abuse of language, logic and science." - Robert M. Carter, Ph.D. Professor of Environmental and Earth Sciences, James Cook University

Obama: "Cap & Trade Will Cause Electricity Rates To Skyrocket"

PT... They are going to

April 18, 2009 - 19:35 ET by bigtimer

PT...

They are going to cram this through no matter what...come rain or shine.

As we pay...in more ways than one.

Doubling down on stupid is not a particularly good idea. ~Andrew Breitbart

It may not matter how many "ordinary" Americans reject . . .

April 18, 2009 - 20:20 ET by CKA in Red State USA

. . .the eco-religion of Algore called catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

It's the people in Congress -- read: Demockacrats/Dementocrats plus some RINOs and CINOs (conservatives in name only) -- and the enviro-wackos who stuff their coffers with money that count most right now.

That may be mainly because they have ears for nothing that contradicts them.

And they have the advocacy/adversary media and its numbnuts so-called journalists who know nothing about science and engineering, nor do they possess objective bones in their bodies.

Plus there are some regulators at EPA and states agencies that are absolutely salivating about something else to absurdly try to regulate.

as natural as the sunshine

April 18, 2009 - 20:37 ET by botg

as natural as the sunshine baby

"Outside of a dog a book is man's best friend,------------inside a dog it's too dark to read" ---Groucho

"Iced" Tea Party, Anyone?

April 18, 2009 - 20:46 ET by metaphorsbwithu

I'm up for it. As a matter of fact, I'm always up for a cold brew.

metaphorsbwithu

News Flash

April 18, 2009 - 22:24 ET by bknownst

This just in.

The dirty little secret is out.

It turns out the mythilogical Global Warming Scare is all a marketing scam set in motion by the Communist Syndicate to cotrol peoples lives and fortunes. Apparently the commies figured since they could no longer scare the populace with nuclear terror they decided "Catostauphic Climate Change" was less expensive to sell and would be a great cash cow to boot.

Further details to follow as torture of Comrade Gore extracts more details.

Lets add fuel to the fire!!!!

April 18, 2009 - 23:45 ET by Steve08080

People are catching on to the scam that AG is trying to push. I originally put this in another post, but since there are few new stories regarding GW and the envirnoment, I wanted to repost. I APOLOGIZE for posting this more than once, but I believe this is worth reading and passing along.

I just had to share this report. I read this report about debunking Global Warming. Quite a report and a good read especially the conclusion. Enjoy!

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/markey_and_barton_letter.pdf

PASS IT ALONG!!!!!!

Steve

April 19, 2009 - 22:43 ET by nofate

God bless Lord Monckton! And Noel Sheppard. Both of them continue to be big, sharp thorns in the sides of Gore and Hansen and the AGW movement in general. That was one of the best references I have seen. Monckton has a way of synthesizing a lot of information from across the spectrum of scientific inquiry, putting the lie to the "the debate is over" argument. And keeping alive the true spirit of scientific inquiry- an open mind to new information that adds to the body of information we have already. It baffles me how anyone who claims to have an inquiring, scientifically oriented mind can possibly NOT be skeptical of AGW. The CO2 as driver argument has been negated, but they are still using it as a central tenet of the religion that they are foisting on the ignorant in order to consolidate political power. Without that and the unconscionable support of a lie by the MSM, they have nothing and they know it. Thus their near rabid attempts to discredit those skeptics who lead the charge in exposing them.

As far as posting things more than once, I am not apologizing, and I don't think you should either, as this is the first time I have seen your link, and it will go into my list of references. Here are a few more that I have put up before that I think everyone should have a chance to see, or not, as they prefer.

The Inhofe EPW Press Blog -the site to keep up with the foremost advocate of AGW skepticism in the U.S. Senate. For a stark contrast and a better look at what we are up against, politically, see Barbara Boxer's EPW homepage.

Science and Public Policy Institute -Lord Monckton's site. He still has a standing invitation for Algore to debate him, but so far Al will not bite.

Unstoppable Global Warming, by S. Fred Singer. -A good synthesis of hundreds of scientific papers and their significance to the climate debate.

In this New York Times bestseller, Singer and Avery closely examine historic data from two millennia of recorded history � combined with the natural physical records found in ice cores, seabed sediment, cave stalagmites, and tree rings � to reveal that the 1,500-year solar-driven cycle has always controlled the earth�s climate, and remains the driving force in the current warming trend. As a result, trillions of dollars spent on reducing fossil fuel use would have no effect on today�s rising temperatures � and the public policy key is adaptation, not fruitless attempts at prevention. Further, they offer convincing evidence that civilization�s most successful eras have coincided with the cycle�s warmest peaks. With the added benefit of modern technology, humanity can not only survive global climate change, but thrive.

This book is where I first ran across a mention of the work of Henrik Svensmark of Denmark and the direction that the most advanced work in climatology is headed- cosmoclimatology.

The Past and Future of Climate, by David Archibald, May 2007 -I think I got this from upcountrywater. Sample:

In this presentation, I will put forward a prediction of climate to 2030 that differs from

most in the public domain. It is a prediction of imminent cooling. And it is a prediction that you will be able to check up on every day.

I am going to start off by looking at the near term temperature record, and then go back successively further in time, looking at the range of temperatures in the historic record and then the geological record...

...

We are currently in an interglacial that has lasted 10,000 years to date. You can see from this graph that they are usually much shorter than that, so the next ice age is overdue...

...What this graph shows is there is no correlation in the geologic record between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature. The Earth went into an ice age 450 million years ago despite a level of atmospheric carbon dioxide that is ten times what it is today. 150 million years ago, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were five times what they are today, but that didn.t stop a Cretaceous-aged glaciation.

Cosmoclimatology: a new theory emerges, Henrik Svensmark, Director, Center for Sun-Climate Research in the Danish National Space Center, Copenhagen, Denmark

The Chilling Stars, by Henrik Svensmark. From the review by Fritz R. Ward "dayhiker":

For many years it has been known that periods of global cooling are associated with with reduced solar activity. In the 1970s, Jack Eddy of the High Altitude Observatory in Colorado named the correlation between the lack of sunspots and the consequent decline in earth's temperature the "Maunder Minimum" and showed that similar sequences of global warming and cooling were also associated with increasing and decreasing solar activity. Until recently, however, no one has been able to provide a mechanism explaining why this correlation exists. Henrik Svensmark, however, has done just that in his published work and with the help of science writer Nigel Calder has provided a very readable explanation of how solar activity affects climate change. This book has profound implications for policy debates in this country and deserves a wide audience.

Svensmark's theory is that cosmic rays which originate from collapsing stars (novas) are the primary cause of cloud formation, in particular the formation of low level clouds, those 3,000 meters above the ground and lower...Most climate models simply see clouds as a byproduct of climate changes, but as Svensmark and Calder demonstrate, clouds themselves are the predominant factor in global cooling. Although they trap heat between the clouds and earth's surface, they also reflect radiant energy from the sun back into space. The net effect of low lying clouds is therefore a cooling one. And, as it happens, all periods of global cooling have coincided with increasing cosmic rays and cloud cover.

The implications of this theory are quite startling. For one thing, it almost completely elimates increases and decreases of carbon dioxide and other so called green house gasses (GHG) from the equation of climate change, a matter of some concern to those who use fears of anthropomorphic global warming to advance their political agendas. Indeed, when Svensmark first proposed his theory in the mid 1990s, it was called "dangerous" because, if correct, it would undermine the vast public funding currently available to the many scientists who feed off of global warming fears.

A series of articles at the blog "Watts Up With That", one of several out there that help literate minds find the cutting edge information that puts the lie to the current AGW-CO2 driver-"debate is over" crowd:

Negative feedback in climate - empirical or emotional?

A short primer: The Greenhouse Effect Explained

CO2 Does Not Drive Glacial Cycles

Basic Geology Part 2 - CO2 in the Atmosphere and Ocean

CO2, Temperatures, and Ice Ages

Sample: For instance, as pointed out here, what would happen

"When a few decades of low sunspot number is accompanied by Dalton minimum and 50 years of missing sunspots is accompanied by the Maunder minimum, what can for example thousands of years of missing sunspots accomplish? We don’t know."?

For those with even a touch of skepticism of AGW, who may be looking for information to help make up their mind, "The Chilling Stars" and "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years", are two great reads by non-agenda driven scientists who have been dismissed by the political agenda driven IPCC and other AGW oriented groups. Both books contain a wealth of references to original scientific research which often just happens to go against the grain of the AGW agenda.

"The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."

michaelyon-online.com

The Anti "Man-Made" Global Warming Resource

April 19, 2009 - 23:49 ET by PopularTech

If you want references, I've compiled over 10,000....

The Anti "Man-Made" Global Warming Resource

Obama: "Cap & Trade Will Cause Electricity Rates To Skyrocket"

PT

April 20, 2009 - 06:05 ET by nofate

An awesome list. But I'm trying to stick to the ones I've read or are reading. Trying to avoid the MSM stuff, too, although you do a good job of listing some of the more ridiculous stuff.

"The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."

michaelyon-online.com