Twenty years of public opinion about global warming
August 29th, 2007Posted by: admin
Matt Nisbet has a good paper out now about polling results on global warming. The pdf is here and general paper link here.
The polling supports what we’ve been saying for a while: the public is there. They believe (even if they think the scientific consensus isn’t as strong as it really is).
The science community has been freaking out for years about trying to answer the “we’re screaming at them about this problem, why aren’t they doing anything about it???” question. The stock answer from climate scientists is either about skeptics sowing doubt, or the problem is too complicated, or something like that, but it usually comes down to, “the public just isn’t convinced that it’s a problem.” Matt’s paper shows that clearly the public is aware of global warming and does think it is a problem.
So why are we (through our electeds) still not doing anything about it then? Because even the public realizes that the solutions are very, very difficult and will probably mean considerable pain. (And no politician wants to inflict pain on his/her constituents.) Perhaps the collective is making its own collective calculation: a world without potentially disruptive-to-catastrophic global warming or a world without coal-fired electricity and 20mpg family sedans?
This is really my insidious way of making a strong plea to the climate science policy (funding) community: stop spending money on GCMs. Start spending those billions we spend on basic climate research on climate solutions. We do not need 21 models feeding the IPCC process to see the risks. In a resource-limited science funding world, we know enough already about how climate works to see the risks.
What we don’t see is how we’re going to shovel ourselves out of this mess. We would do quite well to quit crying about science budgets, climate skeptics and inaccurate media representations and finally turn our energies to usable, useful science for a very uncertain future. Our politicians and policymakers will listen if we give them useful solutions, especially if we work with them to figure out what kind of information is useful to them. They will continue to NOT listen if we decide to pad our status quo by indefinitely giving them journals filled with GCM studies and 500-page IPCC reports that are all science and no ways out.
August 29th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
A word of caution on the interpretation of our study:
On global warming, to paraphrase Kevin, the public isn’t there and that remains both a major communication problem and a major policy problem.
Until policymakers see global warming showing up in polling across party lines as a top priority, many will lack the incentive to devote the necessary political capital to passing meaningful policy solutions.
A few key conclusions highlight from our paper:
–>On questions measuring actual knowledge about either the science or the policy involved, the public scores very low.
–>Although a strong majority of Americans believe that global warming is real, that temperatures are rising, and that the release of carbon dioxide is a cause, the public remains relatively uncertain about whether the majority of scientists agree on the matter.
–>Only about a third of the public believe that global warming will pose a threat within their lifetime.
–>When asked specifically about a range of environmental issues, global warming remains at the lower end of worries, especially in comparison to water-related pollution.
–In terms of specific policy proposals, public support appears strongest for regulations that require emission limits on industry and automobiles and that would mandate the production of hybrid cars. But few Americans support increased taxes on gasoline and electricity.
–>Our POQ study does not break down poll trends by partisanship. However, in this case, across polls, we still have a “two Americas” of public perceptions on the issue. According to Gallup and Pew polling, over the past year, Democrats have become more concerned and supportive of policy action while Republicans remain relatively unmoved both in terms of the certainty of the science and the urgency of the issue.
August 30th, 2007 at 4:43 am
Kevin- Well said. Here is my comment to Matt on his blog:
Hi Matt- Congrats on the paper it is a very useful compilation! A few reactions to your interpretation of the polls.
You have not demonstrated any influence of “skeptics” on opinion. You overlook your Table 12 which shows using a consistent polling question an increase in those who think most experts think that global warming is happening from 46% to 65%.
Either way, it is not clear that the public’s views of scientific agree are at all related to (a) their views on global warming, or (b) support for policy action. Your Tables 9, 11 shows that 75-85% of the public think climate change is real. Further, at the end of your paper are a slew of tables showing strong public support for action, including Kyoto.
Finally, you assert that “As long as the public remains confused about where the experts stand, public support for policy action is likely to be weak and volatile.”
Yet the data in your paper show exactly the opposite! The most remarkable thing about the data to my eye is how consistent it is over a decade and how little volatility there actually is.
On 2. you write, “As long as global warming continues to lag as a relative concern for Americans, few policymakers will feel an incentive to spend political capital in support of meaningful policy action.”
The real lesson to take from this is that the public has always valued the economy, crime, education, and the war higher than global warming. And they likely always will. Do you really think than people in places that have, say, signed on to and are meeting their Kyoto commitments, rank climate higher than economy, crime, war, etc.? Here in the UK the answer is “No”! How do you explain that action in the US requires that climate be a top public priority, but action in th UK does not?
The challenge is not to agitate people about global warming such that they view it as a crisis, but instead to design policies that are compatible with public values. Trying to take a century-scale issue and tun it into the most important issue in everyone’s eyes is asking too much, and a recipe for asking science to do more that it is capable of.
See the new book by Norhaus/Shellenberger on this last point.
You see the challenge of climate change as a communication problem. I don’t. I see it as a challenge of designing policies to go with the grain of people’s values, rather than against that grain.
Thanks!
Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr. | August 30, 2007 3:57 AM
August 30th, 2007 at 4:51 am
Matt- A few reactions to your points raised here:
–>On questions measuring actual knowledge about either the science or the policy involved, the public scores very low.
REPLY: This is the case on every issue. See NSF Science and Engineering inidcators.
–>Although a strong majority of Americans believe that global warming is real, that temperatures are rising, and that the release of carbon dioxide is a cause, the public remains relatively uncertain about whether the majority of scientists agree on the matter.
REPLY: I disagree. The Gallup polls show a majority belive that there is a consensus. But really, so what? regardless of their vies on what scientists think, the public is overwhelming conviced of the reality of global warming and has been for many years.
–>Only about a third of the public believe that global warming will pose a threat within their lifetime.
REPLY: Are you suggesting that the view of this third incorrect?
–>When asked specifically about a range of environmental issues, global warming remains at the lower end of worries, especially in comparison to water-related pollution.
REPLY: Indeed. What does this say about policy action? I would say it tells us that the climate issue needs to be broken down into parts or as kevin says “turn our energies to usable, useful science for a very uncertain future.”
–In terms of specific policy proposals, public support appears strongest for regulations that require emission limits on industry and automobiles and that would mandate the production of hybrid cars. But few Americans support increased taxes on gasoline and electricity.
REPLY: Hey, just like Europe, India, and China!!
–>Our POQ study does not break down poll trends by partisanship. However, in this case, across polls, we still have a “two Americas” of public perceptions on the issue. According to Gallup and Pew polling, over the past year, Democrats have become more concerned and supportive of policy action while Republicans remain relatively unmoved both in terms of the certainty of the science and the urgency of the issue.
REPLY: Yes, and you’ll find partisan differences on a whole bunch of issues from stem cells to Iraq to abhortion to guns.
September 7th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
> stop spending money on GCMs. Start spending those billions we spend on basic climate research on climate solutions
This strikes me as shortsighted and ineffective. The big bucks in climate research goes to remote sensing, which is needed to monitor progress and has other uses like weather forecasting and criteria pollutant monitoring. You could take the whole climate science budget, not just the GCMs, and spend it in the energy sector, and it would disappear without a trace. You could probably take the whole NSF science budget and drop it into DOE technology with little effect.
March 10th, 2008 at 1:37 am
Though global warming is a serious issue, we as public lack in efforts to publicize this issue at every level starting from political to administrative level. Therefore rather than spending money on GCMs we should focus more on spending those huge amounts in finding out better climate solutions and basic climate research.
http://www.keyman.uk.com