Polls: Signs of Increasing Skepticism on Global Warming in the US?

This from Gallup's latest article "Increased Number Think Global Warming Is Exaggerated"

All charts from Gallup.

In the US, while Global Warming adherents remain a significant majority, although recent signs suggests of declining interests by the public over such concerns.

There seems to be a mounting sentiment over "exaggerated" accounts of global warming.

And most of the shift in sentiment seem to emanate from the middle age to the elderly or from the age group of 30-65 or older. In other words, signs of skepticism have grown in most age groups except for the youth.

In addition, relative to other environmental issues, global warming seems to be losing ground in terms of priority.

According to Gallup, "the solitary drop in concern this year about global warming, among the eight specific environmental issues Gallup tested, suggests that something unique may be happening with the issue."(bold highlight mine)

Yet, the article can't seem to ascertain the reasons behind the sagging trend, "It is not clear whether the troubled economy has drawn attention away from the global warming message or whether other factors are at work. It will be important to see whether the 2009 findings hold up in next year's update of the annual environmental survey."

No problem. Experts realizing this have been quick to work on the arrest of the ebbing flow of interests with recent environmental disclosures by claiming sea levels have been rising twice as fast than originally thought of.

Unknown to most the issue of global warming is MORE than just about science or environment but mostly about political ideology (socialism) and dogmatism, money (funding grants, business or economic or financial interest groups & etc..), political power and control (limit civil liberties, suppression of economic growth). Thus some vested interest groups have been fighting strenuously to assert control by influencing public sentiment.

To aptly quote Jeff Jacoby at the Boston.com,

``There is no shame in conceding that science still has a long way to go before it fully understands the immense complexity of the Earth's ever-changing climate(s). It would be shameful not to concede it. The climate models on which so much global-warming alarmism rests "do not begin to describe the real world that we live in," says Freeman Dyson, the eminent physicist and futurist. "The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand."

``But for many people, the science of climate change is not nearly as important as the religion of climate change. When Al Gore insisted yet again at a conference last Thursday that there can be no debate about global warming, he was speaking not with the authority of a man of science, but with the closed-minded dogmatism of a religious zealot. Dogma and zealotry have their virtues, no doubt. But if we want to understand where global warming has gone, those aren't the tools we need."

Remember failed math models [see earlier post How Math Models Can Lead To Disaster] played a big role for the mess that brought into this financial crisis.

And importantly math models have essentially less variables to deal with than nature itself.

So, caveat emptor.