Global warming: Why is skepticism growing?

“Cue the rejoicing on the right,” said Tobin Harshaw at TheNew

YorkTimes.com. A poll released last week by the Pew Research Center found that the proportion of Americans believing that global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity has fallen to 36 percent, an 11-point drop since last year. Why the growing doubt? asked Michael Barone in The Washington Examiner. “One factor may be the weather,” which over the past decade has been cooler than global warming models—and climate “alarmists”—had predicted. But that’s not the only explanation. The election of Obama and a Democratic Congress “has raised the real world possibility” that cap-and-trade legislation to restrict emissions could actually become law—hiking energy costs and inflicting “serious” economic damage. “The prospect of hanging,” as it has been said, “tends to concentrate the mind.”

Or confuse it, said Chris Good in TheAtlantic.com. Prior to the last election, a national consensus on global warming emerged. But that consensus has fallen victim to our polarized political landscape. A few policymakers explicitly argue that warming is a myth. But most Republicans and their business allies instead are sounding the alarm about the price tag of Obama’s proposed solution. It appears all that “anti-cap-and-trade messaging” has led many Americans to disbelieve global warming because they don’t want to face the cost of actually dealing with it. That could explain why just 35 percent of Republicans believe that climate change is happening at all, compared with 53 percent of independents and 75 percent of Democrats, said Steve Benen in WashingtonMonthly.com. “The more GOP leaders characterize climate change as an ideological/partisan issue—it’s only something liberal eggheads with their annoying ‘data’ and ‘evidence’ care about—the more the rank and file will agree.”

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This may just be one of those debates impervious to facts, said TheEconomist.com. There simply is no scientific doubt that the Earth is getting warmer and that carbon emissions are a factor. But as a Yale University study recently found, “people’s views on the risks of global warming were strongly determined by their cultural outlooks.” People defined as “egalitarians and communitarians” were more likely to believe data showing global warming is real than were those defined as “hierarchical” and “individualistic.” What’s really “depressing” is that as partisanship over the issue increases, the chance for enlightenment dims even further.