Sunday, February 15, 2015

'FIVE MORE GENERATIONS AND IT'S OVER'

A polar bear floats on a lone piece of ice in the Arctic. (photo: GuardianLV.com)

Most of Public and About Half in GOP Back Climate Action

By Coral Davenport and Marjorie Connelly, The New York Times

30 January 15
www.readersupportednews.org

n overwhelming majority of the American public, including nearly half of Republicans, support government action to curb global warming, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future.

In a finding that could have implications for the 2016 presidential campaign, the poll also found that two-thirds of Americans say they are more likely to vote for political candidates who campaign on fighting climate change. They are less likely to vote for candidates who question or deny the science that determined that humans caused global warming.

Among Republicans, 48 percent said they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports fighting climate change, a result that Jon A. Krosnick, a professor of political science at Stanford University and an author of the survey, called “the most powerful finding” in the poll. Many Republican candidates either question the science of climate change or do not publicly address the issue.

>“It recruits more Tea Partyers than it repels,” Mr. Krosnick said.

+5 # Dust 2015-01-30 16:44

The question becomes one primarily of world view. Interestingly enough, nobody wants to be considered "unscientific", so they begin with an a-prior view and look for evidence that that can classify as "science" to support it. (Most people do this, regardless of viewpoint, but people who are truly interested in science refer to science and change their views accordingly).

The parallels to the "creation science / intelligent design" paradigm are fairly clear. Nobody wants to outright dismiss science, so they define the only valid sources of scientific research in increasingly limited and constrained ways. CS/ID people produce NO science of their own; the only thing they do is use their modified version of science to produce what appear to be legitimate questions or holes in the field of evolutionary biology. (FWIW - they also confuse the fields of evolutionary biology and physics). They then assert that ANY lack of perfect understanding in evolutionary theory is clearly grounds to dismiss the entire thing.

A similar parallel can be found in the field of encryption and cryptanalysis. Folks read a standard reference like Applied Cryptography in C and set out to write their own encryption algorithm. Now - THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS!! But when their lack of understanding comes to the fore and their work is not taken seriously by cryptanalysts, the intelligent thing to do is learn more about the field, not scream that there is a conspiracy against you.

+3 # Ken Halt 2015-01-30 16:45

Interesting to read some of the uninformed comments in the article. The MSM and Koch affiliates have been very effective with their propaganda

+1 # fredboy 2015-01-31 08:34

History has proven that people are relatively stupid. They abhor warnings, and generally wait until the predicted danger arrives to react. It's one of our weaker traits.

Five more generations and it's over. The first species to intentionally engineer its own extinction.

-1 # Atliberty 2015-01-31 08:45

Global warming is changed to climate change but what did not change is the people behind this want you to send them money. They are no better than those that deny that humans are having a detrimental impact on the biosphere of Planet Earth. Not one of these pigs will say we need a world wide plan like China has, one child per couple for about 100 years. We are over populating and depleting resources, increasing the extinction of species and destroying the Earth like fruit fruit flies in a jar and on a collective level we are no more intelligent than mold in a Petri dish, Climate change expert money grabbing hypocrites included.