Groundhog Day Indeed--Pew: Americans don't much care about 'global warming'

Groundhog Day Indeed

by Steven Hayward in Climate

Just in time for Groundhog Day tomorrow, fresh reminders of the stuck-in-the-rut status of the global warming—no, make that climate change controversy. So it’s going to be nearly 70 degrees here in Washington today, and close to it in New York. A winter heat wave! (Though not a record, it turns out; January 1950 was apparently warmer.) The groundhog will think he missed his appointment, and woke up in May. Last night NBC News ran a segment saying—wait for it!!—that the warm winter is a sign of climate change global warming after all, while we should all remember that last winter’s very cold temperatures and snowstorms were evidence of global warming climate change. (By the way, don’t tell Eastern Europeans were suffering from global warming right now.)



Meanwhile, the latest annual Pew Research Center annual survey on issue priorities is out, and once again, climate change ranked dead last out of the 20 priorities Pew asks respondents to rank. Not only dead last, but with a 13 percent drop from five years ago. (See the chart at the left; notice also that Environment in general has slipped by a similar amount.)

So what is the climate campaign doing? Same old, same old. The New York Times’ Andy Revkin has a long and balanced post on his DotEarth blog that surveys the ruckus caused by the letter in the Wall Street Journal the other day decrying the climate crisis, which drew a rebuttal from the climateers in today’s WSJ, stamping their feet and saying it is too so! (Revkin shoots about as straight as anyone in the mainstream media on this issue. A careful reading of his long post suggests he’s not much impressed with the rebuttal, even though his sympathies are closer to their point of view.)

In related news, over the years it has been notable that there is one cohort of scientifically qualified people who doubt the Standard Climate Narrative in large numbers: meteorologists. So whattyaknow: the climate campaign is launching a pressure campaign to try to force meteorologists to conform to the party line. Specifically, they want to American Meteorological Society (AMS), the main professional organization in the field, to crack down on the climate dissidents in their ranks. It’s the same old playbook of the left: enforce orthodoxy by capturing institutions. It often works, but I doubt it will this time.

So my prediction for tomorrow: If the groundhog sees Al Gore’s shadow, it will mean at least six more years of climate alarmism. But even Groundhog Day gets old after this many reruns.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/groundhog-day-indeed.php