Global warming gets worse — as does Republican understanding of the crisis

February 5, 2007

In April 2006, National Journal asked lawmakers on both sides of the aisle whether they believe the evidence shows that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. 98% of Dems said yes, as opposed to 23% of Republicans.

Last week, the same magazine asked the same question. The results were not at all encouraging.

National Journal has released a new “Congressional Insiders Poll,” which surveyed 113 members of Congress — 10 Senate Democrats, 48 House Democrats, 10 Senate Republicans, and 45 House Republicans — about their positions on global warming.

The results were startling. Only 13 percent of congressional Republicans say they believe that human activity is causing global warming, compared to 95 percent of congressional Democrats. Moreover, the number of Republicans who believe in human-induced global warming has actually dropped since April 2006, when the number was 23 percent.

If there had been no progress at all, that would have been discouraging. But a 10-point drop?

It’s possible the wording of the question was problematic. National Journal specifically asked lawmakers, “Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?” Maybe Republicans consider “reasonable doubt” too high a standard. If they’d been asked whether they believe the phenomenon is caused by human activity or not, perhaps the results would have been more heartening.

Or perhaps not. Honestly, how much more evidence will it take?

One would like to think reports like this one would have sealed the deal.

In a grim and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is “unequivocal” and that human activity is the main driver, “very likely” causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.

They said the world was in for centuries of climbing temperatures, rising seas and shifting weather patterns — unavoidable results of the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

But their report, released here on Friday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said warming and its harmful consequences could be substantially blunted by prompt action.

While the report provided scant new evidence of a climate apocalypse now, and while it expressly avoided recommending courses of action, officials from the United Nations agencies that created the panel in 1988 said it spoke of the urgent need to limit looming and momentous risks.

“In our daily lives we all respond urgently to dangers that are much less likely than climate change to affect the future of our children,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, which administers the panel along with the World Meteorological Organization.

“Feb. 2 will be remembered as the date when uncertainty was removed as to whether humans had anything to do with climate change on this planet,” he went on. “The evidence is on the table.”

It may be on the table, but if congressional Republicans don’t want to look at it, the problem will persist.

Part of the problem is that many people don’t understand what global warming really means.

The other part of the problem is that two of Congressional Repubs biggest donor/bribers are oil companies and electric utilities (those who have a lot to lose if they cap CO2) With those two big hands up their bungholes, it is very hard for Repub Congress critters to say Yes to Global Warming.

  • The report probably had too many polysyllabic words in it for your average far right halfwit to understand. Probably also had tables that used math beyond the take-of-your-shoes-to-count-beyond-10 variety.

  • i think the whole issue would be clearer to all, if it were more often referred to as “global climate change” instead of global warming. the latter tends to make people think that the only result is warmer weather, and when it does (inevitably) get cold, they can say, see? no warming! in reality the issue is overall change in the climate in general, which can mean anything from warmer weather to colder weather – i.e., changes in climate patterns.

    then again, the repubs probably wouldn’t catch the difference.

  • But if these Republicans were told that increasing CO2 emissions would make the climate of this planet more gay, they’d be on this like flies on poop.

  • Today’s ReThugs will never care about global warming. Why should they? They’ll party on until they die, knowing that the damage they’ve done will never affect them. We are, after all, dealing with people who would sacrifice their own offspring for a profit….

  • “asked lawmakers on both sides of the aisle whether they believe the evidence shows that global warming is a man-made phenomenon”

    It’s a bullshit question. The question is/should be, “are we willing to do what is necessary to stop industry and the utilities from putting the pollutants suspected of causing global warming into the atmosphere?” Changing the chemical make-up and refractability of the very air we breathe cannot be good. The public environment is being polluted for private profit and the US government’s best proposal to date is to license and regulate (not eliminate) the amount of pollution that private industry can release into the public environment.

    It’s like the old comedian’s line: “The FDA has limited the allowable amount of rat scrotums in hot dogs to 0.25%. I DON’T WANT ANY RAT SCROTUMS IN MY HOT DOGS!” And I don’t want to be breathing excessive amounts of carbon dioxide and particulate matter so that the government can protect Exxon-Mobil’s profit margins.

  • It can be discouraging to hear politicians continue to deny humanity’s role in creating the climate crisis that we are facing. But you know what? Politicians generally only “get it” when they realize that public support for a political solution is overwhelming. It’s often the only way to overcome the influence of big-money interests.

    We are experiencing a surge of grassroots activity in response to climate change in cities throughout America. We can all play a role in this effort by reducing the greenhouse gases for which we are individually responsible and urging our cities, workplaces, schools, and religious institutions to do the same. If we do, the politicians will follow. They always do.

  • I guess I can see what happens when Tom Delay stips telling them what to believe and what to say. Also, someone like Chafee may have known quiet a bit (for a republican) but since he lost the aggregate for the GOP is more reflective of the party now that Chafee is no longer there to throw off the curve.

  • Climatologists have been predicting for 40 years that we were in for serious climate change about now. They said that we had experienced a historically rare 100 year period of relatively “good” weather and that the normal weather patterns were much less stable. Politics is not a complex enough prism to use to view science.

  • Can anyone think of any issue, recent or distant, in which a worldwide consensus of reputable scientists reached a conclusion, and which liberals persistently denied? On the other side, however, the list gets longer with every passing year of the Bush administration. That situation alone should shame any conservative who claims to possess a logical mind.

  • Rats got scrotums? (#7) And they’re dropping them in our hot dogs? Does Cheney know about this?

    Sorry, Art. Couldn’t resist.

  • To Jim Strain
    A couple of decades ago there was a big flap in Bridgeport, Conn. Half a rat was found in the local hot dog factory’s meat grinder and the papers got the story. The factory and the FDA both said it was within permissable limits and of no concern.

    There was quite an uproar.

  • Does anyone remember ‘nuclear winter’?

    I seem to remember that back in the 70’s or 80’s that a number of scientists argued that nuclear bombs are immoral because a side effect of a major war would be a nuclear winter that would freeze the earth and destroy all life.

    There was a fairly lively debate and the evidence showed that the nuclear winter scenario was wrong. The anti-nuclear scientists admitted they were wrong and the issue died.

    I wonder when the global warming debate will be over?

  • “the evidence showed that the nuclear winter scenario was wrong”

    Actually, the nuclear winter scenario is very plausible. All the studies that tried to disprove it failed.

    What you might be thinking of is when Carl Sagan predicted that the Kuwaiti oil fires post 1991 Gulf War would cause a global cooling scenario and he was wrong and admitted that he was wrong. However, it was also discovered that the temperatures in the areas around the oil fires dropped 10C compared to seasonal averages.

    The nuclear winter scenario is similar to the one that scientists speculate caused the demise of the larger dinosaurs.

    We also saw that when Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines exploded in 1991. It caused about two years of global cooling and slowed down global warming

  • I think the 10% drop can explained by the fact that a large chunk of the Democratic gains last November came at the expense of liberal Republicans like Nancy Johnson, Charlie Bass, and Jim Leach – all people who believed in global warming.

  • I think it’s bad statistics – sample size is not so helpful.

    out of 55 respondents, 23% is 12.65
    13% is 7.15. So 5 representitives changed their minds? or just a slightly different sample of 250 R’s caused a different set of statistics.

  • Hopefully the results would be different if they took the poll now, after all those Republicants have seen the picture of the polar bears stranded on ice and floating to sure deaths somewhere out at sea. Even Rs can’t be that heartless not to realize that something needs to be done after seeing those poor defenseless bears.

  • Speaking of Congress and Global Warming, I remember the “warmest year on record” (the record being only about 100 years long) – it was 1998 – Newt Gingrich was still the Speaker of the House.

    Just grammatically speaking, shouldn’t we refer to whether man WAS the cause rather than IS the cause, of global warming?

    And since we’ve continued to do more of what we were doing that supposedly caused global warming, yet it hasn’t gotten any warmer, can you people just SHUT UP NOW?

    Funny – the anti-spam question is “what color is an orange?” and the answer is supposed to be “orange” but because it’s so darned COLD out, about 1/3 of the Florida oranges are going to freeze this year.

    But that must be caused by global warming too, right?

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