On the Public's Perception of Global Warming: Not as ‘Dumb’ as Some Believe

Abstract

There is a growing irony about the man-caused global warming issue that has every potential of exposing the entire thing as being an ideologically-driven movement which was never supportable from its start. Various public polls lately show an ever-downward slide of opinion about the importance of the man-caused global warming issue. Such polls prompt many articles from environmentalist writers suggesting that, in light of the science being long settled, this worrisome situation with average citizens and ‘anti-global warming’ politicians could be reversed through better communication from the media and climate scientists. If only they weren’t so ignorant, you see. Typical of this kind of pontificating was an announcement1 back in mid March of 2011 about the Google organization spearheading an effort to ‘take on climate change skeptics with a new technology effort’. The article noted public and political ignorance was being perpetuated by skeptic scientists who have been given too big of a ‘megaphone’. To quote Google’s senior environment program manager Amy Luers, “The public’s understanding of science across all disciplines is extremely low, because the scientific community is really siloed from the community in general.” Sorry, Ms Luers, on the issue of global warming, no. We have been inundated with the so-called scientific community’s side of man-caused global warming ever since the late 1980s, beginning with the testimony of NASA scientist James Hansen at a hot summer hearing chaired by Senator Tim Wirth. A “google search” of that event results in a 10th year anniversary recount2 of it by the Washington Post saying “...the heat itself became a kind of congressional exhibit. It was 98 degrees on June 23, 1988, and the warmth leaked in through the three big windows in Dirksen 366, overpowered the air conditioner, and left the crowd sweating...” Further searching results in a 2007 PBS Frontine Wirth confession3, where he said he’d opened the windows the night before in order to make the room overly hot. Such contradictions in aren’t just in minor story telling details, they spread far into the mainstream media inundation about the issue. The mainstream media does not tell us about these contradictions. Instead, we hear those from various new media sources, we do our own internet searches via Google or