% Of Americans Who View Climate As "Serious" Problem Flat Over 7 Years; For GQP, Down 10%

[hatrack]

Fine. Let crown fires rage and winds howl and waters roar. We're officially too fucking stupid to survive.

Even as windstorms became more powerful, wildfires grew more deadly and rising seas made damaging floods more frequent, American views about the threat of global warming over the past few years remain largely unchanged, a Washington Post-ABC News poll finds. A clear majority of adults say that warming is a serious problem, but the share — 67 percent — is about the same as it was seven years ago, when alarms raised by climate scientists were less pronounced than they are now.

The poll, released Friday, also finds that the partisan divide over the issue has widened. The percentage of Democrats who see climate change as an existential threat rose by 11 points to 95 percent over seven years. The increase was driven partly by Black Americans who are now more likely to say the issue is very serious.

EDIT

Meanwhile, the share of Republicans who say climate change is a serious problem fell by 10 points, to 39 percent, over the same period. The Republican decline in Post-ABC polls tracks with the findings of annual Gallup polls in which Republican concerns dropped after 2017, when Donald Trump took office as president. Trump denied the existence of climate change and pulled the United States out of a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the atmosphere to warm. In 2017, 41 percent of Republicans told Gallup they believed warming had already begun. But this year, 29 percent expressed that belief.


Terry Wright, 61, believes warming temperatures are signs of the Earth entering into yet another climate phase. “If you think in terms of time, geological time, there’s a lot of fluctuation over millions and millions of years, and I think we have that.”“I think what we’re experiencing right now is a fluctuation that’s not as serious as an ice age and it will go back to normal,” said Wright, a Republican who lives in Central Texas. “It’s like the stock exchange. It will go up, it will go up and go down and then it will go stable.”

Ed. Yes, Terry The Republican from Central Texas, planetary climate is just like the stock market!!

EDIT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/11/12/strong-winds-climate-change-have-failed-move-opinions-many-americans/

[Lonestarblue]

1. Employers should start using political affiliation as a hiring screen.

If you’re a Republican, you’re more likely to be violent, a white supremacist, a gun nut, poorly educated, and stupid. Just the opposite if you’re a Democrat.

[irisblue]

2. Wanna bet Terry is expecting to be raptured and he & his will avoid their just desserts?

[Snackshack]

3. After 2016

I stopped putting any faith in polls. However climate change is certainly not a hot topic of discussion and when it is discussed there is never the sense of urgency it requires (unless you are talking to a climate scientist). So I agree with your statement about intelligence.

Today we are at ~417ppm of CO2. That is a devastating number at numbers below that Palm Trees were growing at the Arctic Poles. CO2 that high has never been seen in the climate record going back at least 800,000 yrs based off ice cores. Temperature lags behind CO2 but it always catches up. When it does life as we know will be drastically different. Weather patterns will be unrecognizable. IThe Paris accord had a target of 2C warming. We are now looking at 5C or more rise in warming and that should scare the 💩 out of anyone who hears it. That is well beyond the “tipping points” climate scientists speak of and they do not know just how catastrophic passing those tipping points could be. The automatic feedback loops created by say the melting of the perma frost that will release trillions of tons of Methane (a gas ~30x worse then CO2) into the atmosphere could trigger a run away effect of phenomenal proportions. Scientists are already finding large craters dotting the landscape in Siberia where pockets of Methane have exploded leaving huge holes in the ground.

We are seeing jet streams dipping to latitudes past the equator. Storms will be intensified Hurricanes & Tornadoes with a ferocity only imagined. As glaciers continue to melt rivers that have been flowing for thousands of years will slowly disappear. Critical food production will plummet sustaining 8 billion people will not be possible.

David Wallace Wells wrote a very good book about what the future of climate change has in store and there is literally no aspect of life or any place on the planet that it will not be affected by it. Climate scientists have been warning us for decades. In fact I just read a post here on DU about a lady back in the 1860’s who sounded an alarm about greenhouse gasses. We have known about this for a long time, we had plenty of time to make the changes needed to avert catastrophe but instead we ignored it.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Which is why policy is more important than what the public thinks

Reality is not for the public. They prefer fantasy.