Yay, 'Murca! 32 Years Post-Hansen, W. World On Fire, We're More "Concerned" About Warming
More Americans than ever before — 54 percent, recent polling data shows — are alarmed or concerned about climate change, which scientists warn is a planetary emergency unfolding in the form of searing heat, prolonged drought, massive wildfires, monstrous storms, and other extremes. These kinds of disasters are becoming increasingly costly and impossible to ignore. Yet even as the American public becomes progressively more worried about the climate crisis, a shrinking but vocal slice of the country continues to dismiss these concerns, impeding efforts to address the monumental global challenge.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. has already seen 16 billion-dollar weather disasters this year, including horrific fires in the West and powerful storms like Hurricanes Sally, Laura, and Delta on the Gulf Coast. This reality of intensifying climate disasters in part helps explain the rise in concern on this issue among the American public, says Ed Maibach of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. Maibach is part of a research team that since 2008 has surveyed and categorized American attitudes on climate change into six different groups that they call the “Six Americas.”
The latest update to this research based on polling done in April this year found that Americans who fall into the “alarmed” category outnumber those who dismiss the climate problem nearly 4 to 1. This “Alarmed” group now represents 26 percent of the public, while the group at the far opposite end of the spectrum, those hard-core climate science deniers who researchers categorize as “Dismissive,” are roughly 7 percent of the U.S. population. The sizes of these two polar opposite groups have shifted significantly in just the last five years, with the “Alarmed” category more than doubling (up from 11 percent in 2015) and the Dismissive category declining by nearly half (down from 12 percent in 2015).
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How is it, then, that climate science denial remains so influential in America even when the “Dismissive” group represents less than 10 percent of the population?
One explanation is the role of right-wing media echoing climate science denial talking points and disseminating disinformation. “There’s no question that Fox News punches way above its weight in terms of spreading disinformation and keeping doubt alive among the public,” Maibach told DeSmog in an interview. Another big factor, he added, particularly when it comes to Republicans in Congress, is the money pouring into election campaigns from vested interests opposed to climate policies. “Americans for Prosperity, the Koch Brothers’ network, dark money interests, they are absolutely willing to fund extremely conservative Republican candidates who are toeing their economically self-interested line that either climate change isn’t real or it’s not human-caused or it’s not very serious anyway,” Maibach said.
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/10/22/polling-concern-americans-climate-deniers-exxon
