President Obama, the Grand Poobah of Climate Change, checks the air for warming. (Eathan Miller/Getty Images)
As President Obama embarks on his 11-day climate change tour, the Wall Street Journal claims “global warming is expected to emerge as a key issue.”
WSJ bases its prediction on a Pew Research Center report finding that 74 percent of American adults say there is “solid evidence” of global warming, and that 46 percent believe the warming trend is “mostly due to human activity.”
You can expect to hear that its “proven science” backed by hundreds of leading scientists, supported by the majority of Americans. And count on him to scoff at deniers.
Democrats are particularly convinced human behavior is driving climate change, according to WSJ, and that has emboldened Hillary Clinton to prescribe more aggressive solutions than those pressed by Obama.
Before I continue, I assure you that I believe there has been warming, and while it may or may not be caused by human activity, there’s nothing we can do to alter that trend. The administration stated as much in its recent introduction of its $655 billion plan for a 32 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.
The purpose of this piece is to not to deny global warming, but let’s get serious. We have seen a 1.53 degree of warming averaged over all ocean and land surfaces from 1880 to 2012. While much has been made of heightened recent warming, the 1990s averaged 53.5 degrees, and the 1930s averaged 53.4 degrees.
I want to stress the impact of money on the outcome of polls like the recent one by Pew.
Billions of dollars are funneled from government agencies to hundreds of scientists in the form of grants to study and support the desired outcome of global warming.
Scientists then participate in policy debates and sit for interviews with journalists to promote their study and further the opportunity for follow-on grants. A separate Pew poll revealed that 87 percent of scientists agree that they should take an active role on this and other issues in the public arena, and 43 percent believe their careers can be advanced through media coverage of their work.
An interesting sidelight: Nearly 80 percent of scientists believe news reports don’t distinguish between well-founded and not well-founded scientific findings, indicating it is a major problem for science in general.
With that in mind, consider that the public develops its opinion on climate change by reading those published findings, and the repetition of those findings by the president and his minions.
It’s time the administration cease funding what is termed “the irrational fear of global warming” based on the concept that it not substantiated by physical evidence. While the belief that climate change is caused by human activity has seen a rise of just one percent in the past five years, the belief that there is no solid evidence of that has increased from 11 to 25 percent.
While the Pew study reveals that 71 percent of Democrats believe that warming is due to human activity, just 27 percent of Republicans believe this is true.
It seems that Jeb Bush leans toward more funding for grants as he recently told the WSJ that “It’s appropriate to invest in the proper research to fund solutions over the long haul.” What does that mean?
We need to stop the flow of funding, not continue it.
SEE NEXT POSTING: The CO2 Myth
