Communicating With Vladimir

Freak Out!
Scientists may hesitate to link some of the weather extremes of recent years to global warming — but the public, it seems, is already there. A poll due for release on Wednesday shows that a large majority of Americans believe that this year’s unusually warm winter, last year’s blistering summer and some other weather disasters were probably made worse by global warming.
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When invited to agree or disagree with the statement, “global warming is affecting the weather in the United States,” 69 percent of respondents in the new poll said they agreed, while 30 percent disagreed.


“My sense from around the country and the world is that people definitely understand that things are getting freaky,” said William E. McKibben, the founder of 350.org. “During that crazy heat wave in March, everyone in Chicago was out enjoying the weather, but in the back of their mind they were thinking, this is not right.” (NYT, 4/17/2012)


So taking up the line of reasoning championed by Middlebury's enviro-alarmist McKibben, RedStateVT dug into the issue of Chicago temperatures. It took three minutes, maybe less. The 2012 Chicago average temps were 5 degrees higher than the previous historical average. And when was that? Why it was in 1945! So let's play this out. Back in 1945 were Chicagoans "freaked out" by the warm weather? Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. Did they attribute it to man-made global warming? Of course they didn't. Could McKibben attribute the 1945 highs in Chicago to global warming? Not with a straight face! So what "caused" those highs in 1945 and might whatever it was have also "caused" the 2012 highs?


Or maybe it is just that highs and lows happen all the time. Those who think that humans have a "right" to steady and predictable weather are the real climate-deniers. And what about that poll? Can we trust it? Let's look at another poll on the same subject:


On a relative basis, Americans tend to worry more about environmental threats to the nation's water supplies than those that affect other parts of the environment. The highest levels of worry this year are for contamination of soil and water by toxic waste, pollution of drinking water, and pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.

Concern about global warming is lowest of the seven environmental issues tested, even though it is up slightly this year from last year. (Gallup.com, 4/13/2012, linked from ClimateDepot.com)


Partial Thanks
President Barack Obama holds a nine-point lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney thanks in part to the perception that the president is more likeable and more in touch with the problems facing women and middle class Americans, according to a new national poll. (CNN.com, 4/16/2012)


Registered voters are evenly split between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama. The poll finds 46 percent support Mr. Obama, while as many prefer Mr. Romney. (NYT, 4/18/2012)


Speaking of polls, RedStateVT advises readers not to look at the presidential polls. They have become politicized. Last night we even saw MSNBC run a segment on a poll asking people who they THINK is going to be elected. The results were two to one in favor of Obama. Whereupon Liberal pundits then opined on how bad this was for Romney. Really, who do you THINK is going to be elected? Add to that nonsense small and biased sample sizes and the majority of polls mean nothing. 


Flame Out!
If it were learned that the car driven by the average American is 10 times more likely to burst into flames than the car driven by the richest 1%, what should the policy response be? Should it be to mandate that cars driven by the rich burst into flames more often?

Income inequality is a strange obsession, at least to the extent the obsessives focus their policy responses on trying to adjust the condition of the top 1% rather than improving the opportunities of everyone else.  (Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., WSJ, 4/17/2012)


Well put by Jenkins. The Liberal worldview is that wealth is static. If someone accumulates it, they are depriving someone else of it.