From the highly respected Pew Research Center for the People and the Press comes a research article from January 2007 showing that a large majority of Americans (77% and more) report they believe the earth is warming, but under half believe it is due to human activity. The information about this article comes from The Pew Research Center.
Ironically, the article begins by noting the unusual weather that had preceded its publication in the winter of 2006-2007 and before the incredible summer weather we are experiencing from serious flooding in the midwest to unprecedented heat in a very larger portion of the central and southern U.S. Amazingly, "global warming" ranked dead last in a list of 23 items about which the respondents were polled. Only the Chinese in an earlier study expressed less concern than U.S. citizens. That's alarming when you consider that the U.S. and China are at the very top of the list of polluters contributing to global warming.
In addition, the Pew Research Center found that conservatives are far less concerned about global warming than liberals. Although it comes as no surprise, when I consider it I would like to better understand why conservatives are far more sanguine about global warming than liberals. Some probable answers are the misperceptions that addressing global warming means more government spending and, therefore, an issue conservatives would rather ignore or, perhaps worse, discredit. As I recall Al Gore explaining when he ran for president in 2000, the irony here is that there is money to be made in the private sector by companies that work on technologies to "fight" global warming such as any technologies that reduce the introduction of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and technologies (including plants) that will help suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. I invite the experts to comment here on technologies to lower carbon emissions, and the one elephant in the living room are the oceans that cover 2/3 of the earth. Perhaps they hold the key, but I won't pretend to be an expert on oceans and CO2. I plan to become one, however.
All images are courtesy of Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and were accessed from http://pewresearch.org/pubs/282/global-warming-a-divide-on-causes-and-solutions. on 27 August 2007.
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