So Obama's polls are dropping. A lot. In fact, he's had the biggest third-quarter drop in fifty years. Andrew points out that by recent historical standards, his absolute approval rating is still perfectly fine. Especially since he started out in the stratosphere.
What I don't get is the big recent change. His Gallup favorables touched 50 briefly in August before they rebounded, but his job disapproval has marched sharply up in the last few weeks. Which is something of a puzzle, because he hasn't really done anything in the last few weeks. Yes, yes, Fox News and AHIP. But while I would like to think that the nation shares my disapproval of the president personally bullying trade associations and cable networks, I'm not really suret hat that's true--and it seems just as likely that the causation runs the other way, that Obama is going on the offensive because his polls are dropping. No, we seem to just have had a vast national fit of pique.
Also in the WTF category, Pew says there was a fourteen point drop in the number of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that anthropogenic global warming is real. I mean, maybe 45 million Americans spent the last year reviewing the scientific evidence on Global Warming and changed their minds. Certainly, a lot of laid-off workers have soem time on their hands. But this doesn't really seem a spectacularly likely explanation of the phenomenon.
I can only come up with two explanations for this phenomenon: one, that many Americans are happy to embrace a symbolic belief in global warming as long as there is no danger that anyone will do anything about it. The other is that Americans don't know what they want, and also, enjoy messing with pollster's minds.
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Another possibility is that broad polls simply don't measure what they purport to measure. More than anything else I think polls like that measure general mood. No one (so to speak) has the qualifications to actually determine whether Obama is "doing a good job" or whether the climate is warming. If they are in a good mood, then Obama's doing fine. If they are in a bad mood, then he's not. With Global warming it's probably a measure of people just feeling like we are powerless, so there is always a psychological shift to deny the problem in that case.
Its pretty straight forward. The Rasmussen polls were always the harsh truth and the public simply does not want health care reform, especially the public option. ABC lapdog polls designed specifically to produce a positive outcome don't change the actual opinion of the public, which manifests itself in the presidential numbers.
They may not like what Rasmussen has to say, but they will continue going down in flames if they keep wallowing in progressive consensus denial.
Its pretty straight forward. The Rasmussen polls were always the harsh truth and the public simply does not want health care reform, especially the public option.
Proof? Rasmussen is a Republican pollster. He worked for Dubya in 2004. The public doesn't want health care reform, especially the PO? What planet are you on? Better yet, can I have what you are smoking?
Rasmussen is a Republican pollster. He worked for Dubya in 2004.
Wow, you've uncovered some shocking impropriety there. They should really brand an "R" on those people's heads so people will know they are all liars, and perhaps throw rotten fruit at them.
Of course, the revolving door between Dems and the MSM is of no concern, esp in regards to polling, because Democrats practice only Truth and Honesty.
If you poll on some vague magical pony like "competing with insurers" people will appear to want reform. If you get into ugly specifics like "your employer can dump you off your currrent insurer onto this public option and btw all these other new laws will cause your premiums to skyrocket, oh and we're cutting Medicare to pay for it" not so much.
The proof is Rasmussen was the only polling company to correctly predict the 2000 election, and the consistently predict actual election results to less than 1%.
Yes Rasmussen is a republican pollster, but that doesn't mean it's smart to be in denial about the accuracy of his results.
Uno mas: An analysis by Zogby claiming Rasmussen as the most accurate poll in the game. Again, yes, he is a republican pollster.
Predicting one election right does not make a pollster perfect. If that's the standard for accuracy than any astrologer or tarot card reader is a sure bet too.
And in last year's election Rasmussen showed McCain a lot closer in several states (notably PA) than the "final poll" on election itself came in.
I'm guessing that in the parts of the country experiencing record cold temperatures this year, weather = climate.
Also, past polling has tended to show concern for global warming to peak around election cycles as Democrats discuss it. Do people believe in it less when they hear about it less?
Fair enough.
Given the advantage the advocates had, testifying before Congress during a heat wave, they should be able to cope with losing it.
no, weather doesn't = climate.
But cooler weather for 10 years does = climate.
Failed predictions of ice-free arctic over several years = climate.
The left wants to redefine climate to mean whatever helps advance their agenda.
I hope this poll helps show that people are getting tired of that.
I live in a subtropical climate and it snowed in October.
Prominent scientists abandoning that sinking ship has influence too.
Re: AGW
I'd say that there are two things at work here:
(1) I think many people confuse weather with climate. (Kyoto enthusiasts subtly encouraged this when the weather was hot; they regret that now that we've had a really mild summer and may be looking at a really cold winter in much of the U.S.)
(2) When people feel "rich", they're willing to endure vague, impersonal "shared sacrifice" for some common good. When people feel "poor" (or fear becoming so), they're more likely to look more skeptically at the remedies. [Also boosting skepticism: I think the idea is starting to sink in that, if GW were really a crisis, we'd look at every possible solution. As it is, greens only want one solution: less energy use.]
Re: BHO
It's not really a surprise. Most voters only vaguely know anything about politics. (Call 100 voters and ask them "Which party is more closely identified with 'the left' and which with the 'right'?" You'll be amazed!) They knew they were sick of Bush, tired of the war, and that Sen. Obama was this moderate, reasonable voice for lots of nice things. Of course, once he was elected, it became clear that Republicans and others _weren't lying_ when they said he was the most liberal member of the Senate.
I don't the first half of you paragraph matches with it's conclusion.
Of course these polls don't matter...yet.
We won't have a good picture until the healthcare reform bill actually passes or dies. Until then there is too much noise.
(1) I think many people confuse weather with climate. (Kyoto enthusiasts subtly encouraged this when the weather was hot; they regret that now that we've had a really mild summer and may be looking at a really cold winter in much of the U.S.)
Nothing subtle about it - AGW enthusiasts have happily leapt upon every heat wave and warm winter as proof-positive that global warming is occurring. Live by the weather event, die by the weather event.
And, they're doubling down:
From the BBC:
The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.
It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).
Jim Hansen in the Guardian:
Before the end of Obama's first term, we will be seeing new record temperatures. I can promise the president that.
Going to be an interesting next few years...
First, we have been in a cooling climate direction.
A freaking decade isn't just "weather" but an actual trend.
Second, ya gotta love the basic dishonesty of "year on record".
There is plenty of scientific evidence the world has been quite a bit hotter without destroying life at times, and quite a bit cooler with destroying lots of life at times, and times with higher CO2 in the atmosphere, etc, etc...but since the evidence wasn't recorded by scientific instruments (hadn't been invented yet), they don't count. But that's bogus, because the data has been verified by antarctic ice core samples, fossil records, etc.
Meanwhile, others are saying a PDO cooling cycle will keep things flat or cool as far out as 2030.
Odd that this super-liberal has continued Bush administration policies in quite a few matters, notably foreign policy and finance. If anything I suspect that disapproval of Obama among independents is based far more on the fact there's been less change and reform than we were promised and what we have gotten so far is simply a kinder, gentler (and somewhat more intelligent and articulate, and with no Dick Cheney) third Bush term.
All of this is a function of news sources being focused on process and not on reality. When tempests in teapots get breathless breaking news coverage, they become the drivers of public opinion. It's garbage in garbage out.
Put me down for your first explanation. I was thinking that just a few days ago. It's easier to put weight into Global Warming when all that requires to "make your statement" is to disapprove of the President's handling of the issue. When the political climate (no pun intended) becomes such that measures can be taken, the focus becomes on those measures that the potential harm they may do to the economy. That sort of gets people wondering again what all the fuss is about.
And also that they're more willing to listen to arguments that stopping global warming will cost money when they don't have jobs or are otherwise worried about their finances.
Since they don't want the cognitive dissonance of saying that global warming is a real threat but that they don't want to pay for it, they shift their belief on the former.
Presidential polls always drop when there's high unemployment. Part of what's going on is that people who thought that Obama's election would magically change certain things are losing a bit of faith, and part of it is that the memory of GWB is fading a bit. The more the Presidency goes on, the harder it is to blame everything on Bush. 9/11 happened a month earlier in GWB's Presidency than now; if that wasn't Clinton's fault, then there have to be some things that Obama is responsible for now.
Regarding voter knowledge, what will really sadden you is the percentage of people who thought that the Republicans controlled Congress in 2007-2008 because Bush was President.
This is an under appreciated consequence of the President's early term media blitz (including the dust-ups with Fox and Rush). His many, many prime time appearances, magazine covers, high profile foreign speeches (and snubs) and extremely ambitious legislative agends have 'aged' his presidency faster than any prior administration. If anything significant goes wrong, he actually will have a great deal of trouble blaming others because he is so obviously in charge (contra bush and Sen. Jeffords pre-9/11 jump which highlighted President Bush's weakness).
And part of it is probably the fact that he hasn't been the absolute dove in Afghanistan and Iraq that some leftists had hoped for. He's continued a fair number of Bush's policies in that regard.
Obama's foreign policy has been shown naive and foolish in the last few weeks. Normally this wouldn't cause that much of a polling change. But in this case Obama is also facing the charge that his domestic policies are naive and foolish. Perhaps being proven naive and foolish in foreign policy has convinced previously supportive moderates that Obama is just what he seems.
You mean successful and producing results of course.
Right. Iran's given up their nuclear program and Russia is supporting sanctions, just like the administration planned.
But maybe these are the results you were after?
Um... seems you are a week behind on the news cycle.
It's not successful unless its a trillion dollar, no-real end in sight war
I think you're a year behind on the news cycle.
Sometimes I can't tell which are the sarcastic comments, and which are the clueless ones.
I mean, maybe 45 million Americans spent the last year reviewing the scientific evidence on Global Warming and changed their minds. Certainly, a lot of laid-off workers have soem time on their hands. But this doesn't really seem a spectacularly likely explanation of the phenomenon.
But, of course, for most people the initial belief in AGW also did not result from a review of the scientific evidence either. It seems to me that a lot of this is really identity politics and the two polling trends are connected. The question is, "Am I the kind of person who supports Obama and thinks man-made Global Warming is a big problem? Do I want to be a member of that group?" It could be that those Americans are leaving that group and abandoning the beliefs that go with it.
The GW poll results didn't surprise me. For a decade the public has been told, "the earth is warming, go outside and see how much hotter it is today than it was on the same day a decade ago."
Most people bought into this logic.
Then we heard that it would get much worse, much faster. Rising seas, hurricanes, tornadoes, and warmer/hotter temps were going to be the norm, and they were going to happen NOW, not in the future. Hurricane Katrina was going to happen every year.
Alas, those predictions didn't come true, at least not yet. The models showed warming and catastrophe and what we got was a mild summer and even milder hurricane season. And it isn't just 2009. Most people notice that it really HASN'T gotten warmer in the past decade, and might be getting slightly cooler.
Again, I don't think this invalidates AGW per se, but it clearly casts doubts on those who preached doom and gloom for the past decade. And that is what the poll result suggests, even if that wasn't the question that was asked.
Data is a bitch, 'aint it?
Theories are all well and good, but eventually your theory is going to be tested with actual data to see if the theory holds up.
Turns out ... the theory of global warming isn't holding up to actual testing.
Actually it does. Nice try though. Please come back when you have reviewed the data. You are unemployed so you have a lot of time.
Dear Brian,
Can you point me to an AGW model in 1998 that predicted almost no warming in the next 11 years? Thank you so much.
grrizzly
Brian: Actually it doesn't. Thanks for proving the point. Debate by fiat, as you're trying to do, is a reaason people have stopped buying.
Nice try though.
"Please come back when you have reviewed the data."
OK. I'm back now after having reviewed the data again and the data indicate that AGW theory is fundamentally flawed.
Much of the data was faked by the scientists involved. Since their data is fake, their conclusions must be incorrect.
Hmmm, pretty hard to review since the main data has been "lost" The dog ate my Data. And before it was "lost", the GW folks pushing results based on it refused to release it for peer review.
Sorry, that just ain't science...
If you look at the raw data, there's no tropospheric warming in excess of surface temperature warming as required for CO2 induced AGW. What people are shown is typically 'corrected' data, with warming written in via a 'correction' factor of one type or another. Look at the raw data, not the 'corrected' data. It tells a different story. Both radiosonde data and IPCC data has been 'corrected.' Until I found that out, I thought AGW was 'scientific' too.
The tropospheric issue is a problem... but the ERBE data is devastating. It says every GCM has the radiative relationship wrong.
Why did Obama win in the first place?
Why are his numbers plummeting now?
Why did anyone outside of science believe in AGW in the first place?
Why are they changing their minds now?
4 words:
People are easily led.
This explains the lions share of just about everything we discuss here.
Obama won because he ran a reasonably competent, albeit mendacious, campaign with the active support of the vast majority of the major news organizations, while McCain tried to rerun Bob Dole's campaign using Bob Dole's themes and assumptions and got Bob Dole's results.
There are all kinds of myths about the electorage in E2008, such as 'independents elected Obama'. Most 'independents' are actually closely attuned to one side or the other, there just isn't that big a crossover vote. Broadly, the same people who voted for Gore in 2000 voted for Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008, or stayed home. The same people who voted for GWB in 2000 voted for him again in 2004 and then for McCain in 2008, or stayed home. The 'stayed home' factor is key.
What actually happened was that Obama boosted Democratic turnout and McCain depressed Republican turnout, when faced with a choice of the lesser evil many GOPers just stayed home. John McCain had spent 8 years sticking his finger in the eye of Republican base voters, who were already in a bad humor because of Bush Admin policies in the last 2 or 3 years of his time, and the voters just didn't feel sufficiently forgiving to save him.
Obama's numbers are plummeting now because they were so artificially, ridiculously high before. It was always impossible for him to satisfy all the diverse elements of his 'coalition', many of them want opposite things.
I agree with the above on global warming. Most people don't have strong opinions on global warming one way or the other, and this past year we've had a freakishly cold summer in much of the country, and a spat of news reports attributing this to a 10-year reduction in sun spots. Those 45 million were (quite rationally) fence-sitters to begin with -- doesn't take much to get them to reevaluate their positions.
The “drop” in the approval rating might be because they quit oversampling Democrats in their sample ;)
Seriously I think the further into the term he gets, the less that voters are willing to give a new guy the benefit of the doubt and the more they expect results other than whining “I inherited this mess” (actually he was in the Senate when a lot of it started and some of these policies like TARP have his and the current Congressional leadership’s grubby mitts all over them).
Part of it also might be due to while we live in a world with 24-7 news coverage, a lot of “normal” people (read: those who don’t live and breath politics) don’t necessarily follow and process the same information you and I do. Believer it or not, there are many people who lead perfectly normal and productive lives who are just now tuning into parts of the policy debates that many of us follow on a daily basis. Something that happened weeks or months ago that we’ve already taken into account in our opinion of Obama’s job performance might just now be registering for a lot of people and that lag might account for the “drop” in public opinion.
On the warming stuff, maybe people, in part, are starting to believe their goddam eyes. I've been looking at the Gulf of Mexico for 30 years. It's not rising. Sorry to disappoint people, but it's really not. Not even a teensy-weensy bit. And when everything that is bad-- and I'm mean everything -- is attributed to "climate change," normal people start to wonder if they're being had.
Global warming has caused sea levels to rise. But the added weight of water has caused sea floors to fall. Oh, and continents have been rising because they're no longer weighed down by all that glacial ice.
I snark, but I've actually read something along these lines offered as a serious explanation for the lack of observable sea level rise...
OMG!
The mountains in Europe are growing taller and melting glaciers are partly responsible, scientists say.
Heavy glaciers cause the Earth's crust to flex inward slightly. When glaciers disappear, the crust springs back and the overlaying mountains are thrust skyward, albeit slowly.
http://www.livescience.com/environment/060804_mountains_growing.html
Who am I to argue with Science?
This phenomenon - crustal rebound - does actually seem to happen; the Midwestern states in the US, for instance, if I recall my LONG-ago only-bachelor's-level geology factoids correctly, are still rising after the recession of the continental glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age. Great Britain, ditto. Importantly for the current debate, geologic evidence indicates that the poles have been ice-free multiple times in the past, and there's never yet been a true Ice Age in recorded history, the Little Ice Age notwithstanding... all of which means to me that we humans, an eyeblink in geologic time, had just better learn how to deal with ALL extremes of climate, because if we last long enough, we'll see 'em.
1, 1a, 1b: the economy.
2. The health care battle.
When health care passes, Obama will get a solid jump in approval.
Then it's the economy.
Polls are always a good occasion for some horse-racing. For the first time since January, if a Presidential election were to take place, say, 3 months from now, the Republican candidate might have a shot.
But who would that be?
There's nothing like a bit of idle, forever untestable speculation.
I don't know if the GOP would necessary have a shot with only 3 months until election day. Their numbers are at an all-time low in a decade. Looks like people are turned off by both parties right now.
But if someone had a shot, I believe it would clearly be Mitt Romney. With Huckabee or Gingrich distant seconds.
I agree with Romney. I don't think anybody else would have a chance.
Almost certainly not Gingrich, Huckabee or Petraeus (wild card!).
Certainly not Palin, Steele, McConnel or Boehner.
If I could offer one possible explanation on why there might be a shift in whether people subscribe to the AGW theory, it might be because many of the proponents like Mr. Gore have insisted that the entire issue is “settled” by science in order to bully people into accepting their proposed policies. If you believe in the AGW theory, then you must also believe that (a) it’s a bad thing and (b) that we should be trying to stop it rather than mitigate the effects. In other words the issue of whether AGW is happening has been tied by many of its proponents with a particular set of policies that they happen to favor.
What we could be seeing is many people have started to look at the costs and the benefits of those proposed policies like Cap and Trade and realized that they don’t favor them. But since these policies have been linked by many of the proponents of the AGW theory (e.g. if you don’t support a carbon tax or cap and trade, it’s because you don’t believe in science), disapproval of those policies might also register as a disbelief in the AGW theory. Obviously one should be able to separate the two but in many ways the two have been so linked that many people don’t.
FWIW: I’m an apathetic agnostic when it comes to AGW. It might be happening but I don’t think it’s been proven certainly not to the point where I would support spending Trillions of dollars in new taxes and lost economic growth. I would prefer to focus on growing the economy and increasing our scientific and technical knowledge so we (a) have a better understanding of what’s actually going on and (b) are wealthier and better able to afford mitigation if it is warranted.
Also in the WTF category, Pew says there was a fourteen point drop in the number of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that anthropogenic global warming is real.
There's no mystery. Let me explain how science works.
A scientist posits a theory. Others attempt to disprove that theory. If they cannot, the theory holds up. But if they can easily disprove the theory with data then the theory is rejected.
In the past year, much new data was released demonstrating that the theory of anthropogenic global warming is flawed, since its entire foundation is based on faulty data input into flawed theoretical models.
Much of the data, it has been recently revealed, was faked by the scientists involved.
Those revelations have caused the polls to reflect a newfound skepticism based on new studies. In other words, scientists are rejecting the theory by testing it.
In the past year, much new data was released demonstrating that the theory of anthropogenic global warming is flawed, since its entire foundation is based on faulty data input into flawed theoretical models.
What new data? The flaws with the hockey stick, the problem with relying on bristlecone pine trees as proxies, the 800 year time lag, the lack of an increase in Atlantic hurricane activity, urban heat islands, these are all old news. Maybe some progressives want a face-saving reason to change their belief on AGW, but the evidence has been solidly against it for a long time.
What new data? The flaws with the hockey stick, the problem with relying on bristlecone pine trees as proxies, the 800 year time lag, the lack of an increase in Atlantic hurricane activity, urban heat islands, these are all old news.
There's actually been quite a lot of new data relevant to the "hockey stick" debate that made the old criticisms more salient. The new data about the number of Yamal cores (which probably invalidates most of the "spaghetti graphs" that weren't already tainted by Graybill bristlecones) is just a few weeks old. The confirmation that HadCRU has lost their raw data and can't find the alleged agreements that justified refusing to release it earlier is maybe a month older than that. But I, too, am curious to know exactly which data is alleged to have been "faked by the scientists involved".
Scientists refused to release the alleged data underlying their theories; and then when pressed these very same scientists announce to the world that their dog ate their data and that their data were "reconstructed" using estimated data.
Only the painfully naive would believe this story.
The scientists faked the data.
Everyone with a scientific background agrees that such practitioners are not to be taken seriously.
Look ... science, like every other field of human endeavor, has some immoral and unethical practitioners engaged in it. That's dog bites man stuff guy.
You've discovered some hucksters who can't produce their data when questioned. No big surprise there. Science has a remedy for this problem: ignore their conclusions.
Ug, I really hate poll analysis. It's just far too easy to take the trends of the aggregate and over apply them to the parts. An across the board 14 point drop in global warming belief doesn't mean a 14 point drop across every demographic/constituency and certainly doesn't mean every individuals personal level of confidence has dropped by 14 points. I would venture to guess that you can frequently find segmentations where there are 20 point sways one way or the other in their global warming beliefs. That 14 point movement is just the weighted average of all the segmented movements.
While knowing the aggregate movement in global warming belief gives us a floor on the stability of global warming belief (we know *at least* 14% of the population changed their mind) we don't know much more than that when it comes to actual stability. If total amount of belief changes is substantially higher than 14 points then we should be asking both "why have so many people dropped their belief of (A)GW" and "why have so many people increased their belief of (A)GW."
I think we've trained ourselves to care a lot about 20% changes in polls because we leverage opinion changes so much when it comes to elections. But outside of elections I think that the context of these numbers substantially affect their relevance.
What are the chances that polls might be a lagging indicator?
Meaning, people need time to digest things, consider, mull over, and then suddenly you see a sea change in opinions as thousands suddenly decide to switch to a new opinion?
It fits "tipping point" theories.
Thus, the current big jump is due to the foibles of August and September more than the battles of October.
Hysteresis. If so, then very bad news for Obama.
Derek
This has been touched on other blog sites. The reason the polls don't jive is because of the oversampling of Democrats in these polls. It's a calculated attempt to form a non-existent consensus. As was stated, Rasmussen continues to be the most accurate polls, as their sampling is far more representative of the public.
Actually, Pew tied for 1st place with Rasmussen in the 2008 election, and they have very different approval rating numbers for Obama right now. Differences of 15 percentual points.
I didn't check, but I'll bet it's not just the sampling method that is different.
Rasmussen does likely voters, which are more Republican than the population as a whole.
Not only that, but Rasmussen also tries to understand the responses to polls by trying asking the questions in different ways, and with different frames. Most polling organizations do far too little of this, and the reason is that they aren't really interested in getting at what people's opinions are, but rather, are interested in shaping them, or trying to.
I would prefer to think that it has to do with two things.. especially of late. One is the bank profits and payouts. What do you think the public thinks when it sees the banks with those large profits and bonuses? Of course, that Obama's policies worked for banks, and not for the ordinary citizens.
Also, a sharp jump came just around the Nobel time. May be the public disapproves of his acceptance of the Nobel, or the award as such, when America is involved in two wars, and the ratings are simply a reflection of the same.
One of McCain's successes was the rock star ads. Obama as popular but shallow. The Nobel was a rock star award, popular but not much there.
Derek
The irony of the Nobel Prize in this case is that it was intended to boost Obama's credibility, and had the exact opposite effect. I don't think the authorities who handle the Nobel Peace Prize quite realize how big a joke their previous politicized awards have turned the prize into, and giving it to Obama just seemed to underscore how very little he's accomplished.
It could be that unemployed people are using their new-found free time to listen to talk radio.
The President's gallup daily tracking jumped 3 points today. Why? Who knows? I think it's all statistical noise, frankly. We're talking 2-3 points here and there (maybe 4). There is no trend other than a leveling off since August.
The idea that the majority of people are going to make a decision on global warming on any kind of scientific basis is laughable.
I will go one further -- I can't say for sure that I understand the science behind global warming enough to say that my belief about global warming is based on a review of the 'evidence'. And I can guarantee that I have thought more about GW than 99% of the population (which may translate to being at about the mean for people who post on this board given the skewed sample).
My belief in the validity of GW mainly caused by man is primarily due to my understanding of the percentage of scientists who believe it is real, combined with all the scientific evidence I have heard. The problem is that climate change is extremely complicated and so it is pretty easy to have some doubts about the chain of causality. So while I abhor idiots who say "do we really know for sure about global warming?" as a way of saying "global warming is hokum", I actually agree than I am not 100% convinced because I don't have the time to learn all I would need to learn to get that convinced -- and I just don't have the time for it.
I think this is a great example of certain policy issues that are extremely complicated -- although a consensus may be found on one side, there is enough uncertainty (genuine scientific uncertainty) that people can be swayed against the consensus by those with a political agenda.
"My belief in the validity of GW mainly caused by man is primarily due to my understanding of the percentage of scientists who believe it is real ..."
Steve, you clearly do not have a scientific education if you advance the argument that a theory is valid as long as a lot of people agree that it is valid.
The percentage of scientists who agreed that the world was flat was 100%, until the day that it wasn't any more. That theory was no more valid because everyone agreed with it.
That's not how science works. Science doesn't require "belief." Science requires evidence ... and too much of the AGW evidence has been wholly manufactured by unethical scientists and pushed by political agents.
"... I don't have the time to learn all I would need to learn to get that convinced -- and I just don't have the time for it."
I do have the time. So, I've studied this more than you have.
The data that has been shown to you advancing the AGW theory has been tainted. Many of the scientists who manufactured the data refuse to allow other other scientists to access their data (which they claim exists but which there is no independent evidence that their data actually even exists).
They've refused to allow other scientists to validate their work because it would reveal their unethical behavior and cause them to be fired from their jobs and have their lucrative government grants revoked. So they've refused access to the data.
This scientifically invalidates their theories.
"Many of the scientists who manufactured the data refuse to allow other other scientists to access their data (which they claim exists but which there is no independent evidence that their data actually even exists)."
That is simply a LIE. All the data sets are available. ALL OF THEM. What data set did you try to get and was re-buffed?
It's certainly not true that ALL OF the data sets are available. For instance, the data required to analyze CRU's temperature corrections isn't available. Phil Jones at the UK MET office has variously claimed that this data was restricted "for academic use only" due to various confidentiality agreements but was fuzzy on who these agreements might have been with, the nature of the restrictions, or the legality of the restrictions. Faced with FOIA queries as to the specific nature of the agreements he claimed the agreements themselves had been "lost in a move" or might in some cases have been "verbal" agreements. Then, faced with clearly legitimate "academic use" data requests, he started claiming the original data had been lost too - that all they had now was the "corrected" version.
The Nature article about all this (which credulously accepts Jones's attempt at a positive spin - claims it's just dealing all these pesky FOIAs that has slowed down release of the data, when in fact they were the only thing that produced any progress at all) is here:
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090812/full/460787a.html
Since it's behind a paywall, here's a climateaudit page that references and quotes liberally from the Nature article:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6797
So: not all the data is available. Nonetheless, I, too, am curious what data sets here are alleged to have been "manufactured".
I notice that Mr. Despain has gone strangely quiet once presented specifically with information regarding which scientists are making up global warming data and refusing to release their underlying data sets for independent analysis.
Once forced to release his data, this scientists announced to the world that his dog ate his homework.
The data were faked, sir, by yet another scientific charlatan. History is replete with them. AGW is a garden variety scientific fraud that cannot withstand the minimal amount of scrutiny it's gotten.
Briffa would not release the Yamal time series data for TEN YEARS, until finally he was forced to this year because one particular journal he recently published in indicated they would pull his paper if he continued ignoring requests to share his data (nearly all journals claim to require this, but enforcement is often lax).
Mann would not release the "hockey stick" code (I think he eventually released at least some) forcing others to try to reverse-engineer it.
This is not how good science is done, folks.
Also, Hansen does not release the GISS algorithms, and the UK Met claims it has LOST (you read that correctly, lost!) their raw data.
Where's Brian? He seemed so interested in this topic until it became obvious that it is trivial for unemployed know-nothings to point him to extensive evidence that AGW data has been manufactured and thus that the theory has been irrevocably undermined.
No good data exists. What data has been released has been shown to be significantly flawed and relies on easily manipulatable estimates of temperature data.
Much of the underlying data has not been independently studied because the scientists involved faked the data and won't release it.
The fact that they can't produce their data (and/or may have fabricated it) doesn't automatically falsify their theory; it does, however, invalidate the results based on those data. Important distinction: broken clocks and so on.
FWIW, I'm an AGW skeptic, because my early training in geology showed me what the systems of the Earth were capable of accomplishing all by their lonesome. I have, from the beginning, emphasized that humans must endeavor to be as adaptable as possible if we want to survive on this planet (or anywhere else, if any other option were to become available) - because this planet can throw some nasty surprises.
I've been surprised that the Prez's approvals have been so high while the majority have continued to feel the country is on the "wrong track" politically. Wrong track numbers have fallen since the inauguration, but folks have remained deeply pessimistic about how events are shaping up for some time now.
Having not been an O-man so far, I've been baffled by reports of candidate and President O exuding some sort of optimism. That view escapes me entirely. For the past two-and-a-half years, Obama has bitched and moaned about this country in general and by singling people out.
The only optimism I've ever heard pass his lips is about the government stepping in to solve people's problems. He has also consistently portrayed free individuals as far too weak to look after themselves.
If Obama doesn't believe in Americans as free individuals, why should Americans believe so much in him?
All models show that Obama approval ratings and AGW belief are increasing at alarming rates. Only deniers deny it.
I hope everyone enjoy and appreciates this comment as much as I do.
Jay Cost had a really good essay yesterday about health care polling. Even though it discussed healthcare specifically, it clearly showed something significant about polling organizations in a more general sense. Now, this was something I already knew since I am a politics junkie, but a lot of people are completely oblivious to this knowledge about poll takers.
Yes, it was excellent piece.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2009/10/does_the_public_want_a_public_1.html
I've been a big fan of Jay's since his first posts at The Horserace Blog. He does some great analysis.
The AGW is easy enough to explain - the cold weather. Whenever it gets hot the AGW proponents get on their high horse and start lecturing. See also: the unseasonably warm December two years ago when all the liberal bloggers took pictures of flowers blooming. But when the weather is cold the dynamic reverses.
Think about water cooler chatter. The weather is unseasonably cold and all the skeptics start saying, "I need to drive my SUV some more because we sure could use some global warming!" The AGW believers cower and refuse to engage. The people in the middle align their preferences with the side that establishes dominance.
Of the two I think the skeptics are fairly rational and the believers are catering to confirmation bias. We don't care about the data that fits a model, but the data that falsifies it.
The other is that Americans don't know what they want, and also, enjoy messing with pollster's minds.
This is a real hobbyhorse of mine, especially when people get their knickers in a twist when people answer 'incorrectly.' Can't it be that the typical American just isn't good at what amounts to pop quizzes?
"Can't it be that the typical American just isn't good at what amounts to pop quizzes? "
Maybe they ARE good at them. But their GOAL is different. ie. They want to have fun with a pollster rather than help her do her job for free.
Local weather probably could make a difference in polling on AGW. It's not like the average American can drive up to the North Pole and watch the ice melt. For many people, cold weather = no global warming.
I suspect that for the most part, like someone said above, that these polls just represent a somewhat irrational example of the souring national mood. Life is annoying these days with wars and pandemics and broken economies and idiot politicians and shrieking media loons...when people are in a bad mood, they sometimes say things they don't mean.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
Living as I do in a 99% pro-Obama neighborhood (Emanuel was my congressman, and before him, oh joy, Blagojevich and Rostenkowski), I sort of feel I am performing a civic duty any time I answer a pollster's questions with opinions well to the right of Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher and Robert Welch. I think it's important for them to feel that there is some tiny pocket of free market, libertarian dissent left in Illinois which has not been totally subsumed by the Cook County Machine and SEIU.
That said, I find all these poll numbers fit very neatly within the same change in viewpoint, which perhaps is best summed up by:
January: Hooray, we're saved!
Now: Holy crap, these guys don't have a frickin' clue about anything, do they?
Every once in a while, the cult of the expert implodes in this country, and the bulk of the citizenry stops believing in anything they say, whether it's about health care, the economy, or climate change. A mulish conviction that it's all being made up on the fly to feather well-connected nests sets in.
(How they could believe that about an administration which came out of Chicago, I'll never understand...)
Congrats, your comment was Instalanched.
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/87264/
Also nice to know there's at least one other libertarian in IL. That makes three I know of. Can electoral dominance be far behind?
Or, perhaps you're seeing what happens when people yell loud and long enough about a subject, people tend to believe the person who's the loudest, particularly on subjects that are beyond the comprehension of 90% of the population in the first place. (anyone can read the summaries, but how many people could crunch the data and comprehend the math behind the modeling to see if it's right in the first place.
Obama is more a symptom of more people viewing the economy as his responsibility now.
As to "global warming", maybe people have noticed the recent spate major mainstream media stories reporting the fact that there's been no measured warming since 1998. Such as the BBC:
Among others.These don't refute the science of global warming, of course. But since non-experts generally form their opinions on any given subject from the media ... that could do it.
(It also refutes the one claim after another we see that bigger forest fires in the US west result from global warming, hurricanes are increasing due to global warming, etc., etc. -- which could hurt the credibility of global warming in the public mind as well.)
As to Obama, I'd guess that being he started off so high in the polls, so far most of his fall is mostly reversion to the mean. From here on we will see.
Who are being polled? Are we discussing the opinion of people who have traditional phone lines, aren't very busy and like talking with strangers? Are the polls geographically weighted to the population? What are the specific questions asked? All of these things can skew the outcomes.
Americans are remarkably ignorant about science. Like the guy who says that scientists come up with a theory and then other scientists try to disprove it. Actually they come up with a theory, come up with experimental results that support that theory and outline the process they went through. Other scientists then try to reproduce the same results and their degree of success and reliability determines the value of the theory. It is a collaboration not an argument.
And Megan, you say, "But while I would like to think that the nation shares my disapproval of the president personally bullying trade associations and cable networks". Those poor folks, I feel so sorry for them, I'm sure that their millions in compensation/profits are little solace when someone publicly disrespects them. Darn that first amendment.
Actually they come up with a hypothesis, not a theory. Only hypotheses that are extremely robust should reach the level of "theory."
And it's not a "collaboration" (or shouldn't be), even among scientists on the original team; it should always be adversarial - every data collection event, even (or perhaps especially!) those attempted by the original team, being a good-faith attempt to invalidate the hypothesis. If you love your hypothesis, you may not try hard enough to disprove it; you should doubt it, "hate" it, so to speak, so that if your evidence supports it after all, no one can infer that you've created the equivalent of a scientific Mary Sue. (Yes, you can "hate" it while acknowledging its elegance. But you should still be absolutely committed to the data, not to the hypothesis.)
Isn't it simply that people are disappointed with O? After two dud Presidents they'd hoped they'd elected a good 'un. It would seem not.
Two dud presidents? That's a very odd number. Exactly which people would consider GWB and Clinton duds, but GHWB not a dud? Three I could see, numbers much larger than three I could see(8, 9, and 10 seem believable), but two?
Assume that most voters start paying attention in the first election they were eligible to vote, and most are unable to participate in politics by 76.
1992 was the first election where people who are 38 were eligible to vote. That's probably close to 1/2 the probable voters (you start to get a big die off in the 60s, which might be compensated for by the increased percentage of participation by the Silver Pirates).
Or, people have short memories and no knowledge of history. They don't remember Reagan, even if they were alive then. They certainly don't remember the (virtual) non-entity that was Bush Senior, so all they know are the last 17 years, and I'll bet the memories of Clinton are fading.
I'll bet 2 decades from now, other than being the first half-white president Obama will primarily be known for being even worse than Harding.
Failing to place one's hand over one's heart during the Star Spangled Banner should be a impeachable offense for ANY politician in America. The ONLY exception is if you're deaf AND blind.
Or have no hands.
My guess is that polls are variable because they reflect moods and the public's uncertainty about what the actual right policies are. Any time you try to capture a complex set of phenomena in a simple set of data points, you're gonna loose a lot of the relevant information.
Peggy Noonan on the subject:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704224004574489530713762884.html
Eventually you own the problem, and people won't appreciate your trying to keep blaming it on your predecessor.
"Americans are remarkably ignorant about science." Gimme a break. What fraction of anybody knows enough about AGW to form a coherent opinion? Aside from working scientists in the field, I imagine that more than 99% of people have at best read polemical treatments by one side or the other, or hopefully by both. Or summaries of conclusions. The intricate details of the data analysis are beyond most of us, whichever side we are on. The vast vast majority even of those writing on the subject are just following the lead of the side they choose to believe, quoting the ones they like and knocking the ones they don't.
There have been a very few studies and surveys trying to find out what the scientists in the field actually believe. The upshot is that most climate scientists believe in AGW but by no means all.
I mean, maybe 45 million Americans spent the last year reviewing the scientific evidence on Global Warming and changed their minds.
Describes me to a 'T.' I'm probably giving people too much credit (since I've only heard a handful of people, aside from myself, using the same reasoning) but there has been more data coming out against catastrophic global warming. Now to begin with there was the fact that the radiosonde data was 'corrected' to show a non-existant warming trend. But I figured that that must have been legit because the altered radiosonde data matched with the IPCC's data. Now we find that the IPCC has LOST their original dataset making their conclusions non-peer reviewable. No tropospheric warming = no evidence of a greenhouse effect. This was enough to change my mind. That, and the fact that news reports were becoming increasingly slanted and shrill.
"Increased CO2 may increase spread of poison ivy!!!"... with no mention of the fact that the plants which benefit most from the increased CO2 (to a point) are cultivated crops that receive enough of all the other nutrients that they need.
Megan,
From your earlier post about the H&HS site recruiting support for Obama's political initiatives:
"Increasingly, I feel like Obama and his team are trying to run his office like a community organizing outfit"
My take on Obama's poll numbers is that 'increasingly' describes a lot of the negative feelings or reserves that a lot of people have about this administration. No big dramatic disasterous blunder, just a stream of small misteps, each of which rubs certain groups of people the wrong way and the group of people who haven't been rubbed the wrong way gets whittled down a bit more each time.
Politically, AGW mitigation efforts will behave like a big, long, expensive war with an implacable enemy, few useful allies, and no end in sight. And there will be lots of casualties; you can't redeploy trillions of dollars of effort without getting people killed that otherwise would have lived.
AGW "hawks" call for infinite resources to be devoted to crush the enemy before he destroys us, while "doves" will argue that we should make peace and move on.
Now, we're in the prewar phase where people are debating just expensive the war will be. Early on, everyone agrees that the enemy must be crushed, but as the cost of the war begins to take shape, people wonder if we could just deal with it as a cheap police action and refer it to the UN...
Or maybe, just maybe more and more swing voters that voted "Obama" last November are realizing what a fascist he really is. The attempt to smear and throw out Fox News is just the latest indication of what his real instincts are. Total Mao-ist control.
Do not use the F-word about your opponents in political debate if you wish to be taken seriously.
Is that a new rule?
Derek
I understand that fascism has been thrown around too much, and it is also too associated with Hitler/Nazi-ism too much, so it has an extreme emotional impact that tends to obscure your point rather than highlight it.
However, the true definition of fascism (as I understand it) is excessive government interference into/control of private enterprise. That's exactly what President Obama has done to the financial industry and GM/Chrysler, and is seeking to do with the medical industry. Add that to the mortgage and student loan industry which Democrats took control of starting in 2006, and you'll have government semi-direct control (with Democratic Party administrators) of more than 50% of the economy, with the intent to engineer social justice rather than economic growth to some.
What do you call that, if you can't use the word Fascism?
Fascist economics may be based on government control of private enterprise, but the term also includes implications of repressive dictatorship, fanatical nationalism, and military aggression - three things not normally associated with Obama.
And if I had to pick a term? "Social democracy" springs to mind.
1) The economy. It's been long enough since passage of the stimulus bill, and unemployment is enough worse than Obama's "if we don't pass the stimulus bill", that blaming Bush and claiming we need time for the stimulus to kick in is wearing thin.
2) The Nobel Peace Prize. The general reaction—"What the hell for?"—produced lots of stories on Obama's lack of accomplishments in office. The only thing Obama can really point to is the stimulus bill, but that immediately draws our attention back to #1.
first on the Big O:
the higher the expectations, the bigger the crash if those expectations are not met.
Obama ran as all things to virtually all people. He thus far has disappointed most.
On Climate Change (note: Global warming it out, "change" is better as it can be used to scare people regardless of which way the thermometer is going.)
Support for "doing something" is easy when someone thinks all it involves is recycling more and changing to florescent light bulbs. When doing something means your energy bill will go up 25% -- not so much. Its the reason Tom Friedman openly yearns for some benevolent dictator to save us from ourselves (of course, Tom never imagines that dictator kicking Tom out of his own 10,000+ square foot house)
Yes, yes, Fox News and AHIP. But while I would like to think that the nation shares my disapproval of the president personally bullying trade associations and cable networks, I'm not really suret hat that's true
Americans don't like one-party rule. They like it even less when that one party starts being petty and vindictive and even less yet when that oen party starts trying to delegitimize the parts of the press they don't like.
I mean, maybe 45 million Americans spent the last year reviewing the scientific evidence on Global Warming and changed their minds.
Not surprising at all. AGW rests on some very shaky evidence, which has only recently come to light because the "scientists" involved have been assiduously avoiding requests to share their data (which is crazy when you think about it: "I have evidence we need to spend trillions of dollars or the world will end! What? You want to see my work? No way!").
When you get down to it, the whole thing falls apart without the hockey stick, because otherwise you don't need CO2 to explain anything; many proxy averages indicate the Earth saw very similar warming around 1200. But for all the cries of "consensus" the hockey stick is the product of a relatively small group of people who all cite each other and tend to be environmentalists -- and some of them appear to have done some very bad things with the data; this year, it's started to look more like a hoaxey stick.
Meanwhile, AGW proponents' predictions both short- and long-term haven't panned out. The Arctic wasn't ice-free this year or last, hurricane activity is dropping off the charts, even IPCC predictions as far back as 1988 are all too high, and the methane prediction turned out to be way off too.
All in all, it's looking more and more likely that trace concentrations of CO2 just aren't that important to climate.
I think most people are open to the idea of AGW, but the evidence just isn't there, at least not yet. If temperatures spike over the next 10-20 years, we might have to reconsider, but if a cooler PDO pushes them down AGW may be regarded as the Club Of Rome prediction of its day.
(Atlantic didn't like all my links; the rest are here)
I think that, in the words of a "great libertarian" writer, the American people asked themselves: "So how much am I willing to pay, in tax dollars, to make this well-deserved gesture? Some. But the recession has lowered the amount I'm willing to spend on gestures."
I've only ever had one gesture for those pushing AGW (while living in mansions and flying in private jets).
I remember one poll that famously found support for doing something about global warming fell off dramatically if they were asked to spend some absurdly low amount like one dollar.
It's not that we aren't concerned with the environment; we're willing to pay for clean air, clean water, parks, etc. But Americans are too smart to open their pocketbooks for vague, poorly substantiated claims of apocalypse, esp. older Americans who remember things like the Malthusian population bomb that were so popular in the 1970s/80s.
For a lot of Americans, both climate change and Obama are about being liked. And being liked by the right sort of person.
If you support Obama, you're not a racist and the elites will like you. Similarly, if you are a climate change hysteric you are not ignorant and the elites will like you. But, being liked becomes less important when you have real world concerns.
You're right about Americans not knowing what they want. OTOH, if you don't realize that global warming is a crock of shit, why am I reading this blog in the first place.
Obama has made some mistakes and seems to have finally, perhaps, revealed himself, in his pique against Fox for instance, and been revealed by the Nobel Peace prize as a 'figment of your imagination,' and (more) people think this is silly. In markets the hardest thing to predict is the strength of a move. The polling doesn't square with the '65% of the population supports a public option' however for me.
On AGW, pretty much what every one else has been saying. Al Gore evidently didn't realize the ability of this intertube thingy he invented to store data. It's allowed us to keep track of the bullshit predictions that Hansen and the Hockey Team started cranking in the 1990's that aren't even close to reality (except for the one inhabited by the reality-based community). He must have thought those could be buried like that "A Glacier is coming! Run for the hills' Newsweek cover from the late 1970's.
IIRC, a number of polls early in his tenure showed Obama's personal popularity/job performance rating running quite a bit higher than support for his policy proposals (whatever they were at that time). His drop has probably been caused by people seeing at least fragements of jello sticking to the wall around the nails.
You happen to have a link to an accumulation of old predictions? Might be interesting to look at.
Interestingly, all of the polling data shows a remarkable drop in support among independents.
While I voted against the O and have never been a fan, I would have told you that he is a smart fellow and seems like a reasonable guy. And even I was tired of the Bushies.
I don't think that the independents have the same opinion of Obama's character. Here is the key: Obama's complete inability to learn from his mistakes and to deal with honest criticism. When he is cornered, he goes for the full Alinsky, which strokes the erogenous zones of the base but does little to win back the moderates.
Megan:
Maybe the American people are just getting sick of Obama's ineptitude, his general nastiness and vengefulness and his socialist policies. He's passing his one-year expiration date of stupid post-election euphoria.
As far as Global Warming, this past month has been the coldest early Fall we've ever had. In addition, it becoming obvious that the Green Jobs hype is just something to keep the rubes happy while the White House frantically cooks the numbers on the rising unemployment rate.
Even moderately aware people didn't vote for this last November, but you did.
Where's your Mea Culpa?
The polls are a natural result of three things:
1) People are beginning to see through the old leftist trick of claiming "scientific justification" for their social programs. See Karl Marx, Lyschenko, Margaret Mead, Freud among others - all regarded a hooey these days. Man-made Global Warming? Not a picogram of real science there - doctored data and crappy computer models and.... you see that big, hot ball of gas in the sky? Yeah, their "models" don't account for it's presence and effects. Sunspot activity is the best determinate of global temperatures. who'da thunk it?
2) Not everyone wants to live in: BARACK OBAMA'S FAIRY PALACE
3) His push for socialized medicine(actually, his push for any of his programs) is creepily similar to the Thalidomide fiasco of 1957-1961. People are generally more skeptical these days.
Still he's:
President Thalidomide
Hmm, how about the possibility that unemployment is still high and people don't like it? Regardless of whether or not it's his fault, he's the guy at the top, and will get more than his share of blame if things continue to be bad.
Is it possible earlier polls have all been skewed more favorably toward Obama and AGW (gasp! the shock!), and now pollsters are skewing less in order to help preserve what little credibility they have left before the bottom of everything drops out and they're disbelieved 100%? I already don't believe about 98% of what I read in the MSM and I don't believe a word anyone in the administration says about anything, period. I think pollsters are worried (and should be) that they are on the verge of utter irrelevance or worse.
There are other reasons for reduced belief in AGW. Just as industries over time have sometimes slanted studies, occasionally outright lied, and often just been misleading in advocacy, the IPCC and the hockey stick authors appear to have done the same thing in spades. Truth is the first casualty in love and war, and AGW policies are war, on both sides.
Also, many people are now aware that temperatures haven't risen for a decade, that sea levels haven't risen for three years, and that Arctic sea ice has recovered the last two years.
None of this means that AGW isn't real and won't resume. It is certainly possible that the Arctic will be ice free 15 years from now for a week or more in summer.
But it is also possible that these events (no temperature and sea ice increases, regrowth of Arctic sea ice) might mean that the climate models aren't calibrated correctly and may overstate the positive feedbacks necessary to get the kinds of warming predicted. I don't have the expertise to say much about that, but the possibility is there.
While 45 million people might not have studied AWG assiduously, they might have read the blogs where this information is available. Try climateaudit.com for wonky but disciplined analysis of all information about broken hockey stick temperature records, and try wattsupwiththat.com (which won an award for the most read science blog) for constant and interesting new information (although with a bit too much skepticism about AGW -- yes it DOES exist, the question is how much).
Thanks to MikeR for pointing out Peggy's column in WSJ. The polls say the President now owns the mess. This includes:
1. The Financial Mess, and it's related sub-messes: GM, Insurance, Housing, and Stimulus
2. The Afghan Mess,
3. The Health Care Mess,
4. ...probably, whatever Congress does, after all, the Dems control everything.
So we're all waiting for those new jobs to materialize, housing sales to recover, somebody to decide something about McChrystal's request, somebody to decide something about Gitmo, etc. The buck still stops in the White House, even if they don't like it. They may just have lost the 'Mandate of Heaven.'
Has it crossed the mind of any of you that maybe, just maybe Rasmussen is wrong and the rest of the polls that show the President with an approval rating of between 50-56% are right and that when asked if they support the option of a public option Americans also support that.
And maybe, just maybe, voters are unhappy with the President because we still do not have health care reform that includes some type of public option nor has DADT been done away with, ect.
Considered it, yes.
Rejected as ridiculous, also yes.
Liberal voters, who make up part of the heart of Obama's coalition, are unhappy about absence of health care reform and the presence of DADT, yes. The rest of the country is hostile to the first and friendly or indifferent to the second.
Nathan and HC are talking out of their asses. You're right on health reform, jules.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Politics/obama-health-care-abc-news-washington-post-poll/story?id=8863442
Some people here think wishful thinking is a competitive sport...
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don't realize that the 'old media' rig their polls to give pro-Democratic results. So, do you have a real poll to back up your claims?
ABC and WaPo forge polls. Evidently!
It's difficult to underestimate right-winger lunacy.
I eagerly await your contortions to explain this one away:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/123854/Conservatives-Maintain-Edge-Top-Ideological-Group.aspx#
Apparently me "speaking out of my ass" is still more truthful than you speaking out of your mouth.
My guess would be that attitudes are viral. A lot of people don't pay much attention to news, but they do talk and they listen to talk shows. Unemployment, the price of gas (even without cap and trade), Obama's dithering about Afghanistan and nationalization of health care are memes that are sinking in.
Another element could be that Obama's support among hard line liberals is falling because of Afghanistan, his failure to close Gitmo and the ire of gays over his delays on dropping DADT.
Re: AGW
I'm a simple guy. I remember reading an article about the danger of relying on computer models which haven't been tested. A model is only a hypothesis until it has been verified by experience, and even then its accuracy depends on how many variables come into play. Climate models would have to have an almost unlimited number of variables, many of which are totally out of our control. Basically they're trying to model an entire planet including geology, oceanography, atmosphere and the effect of phenomena from space. Add to that the effect of chaos theory and the long term effects of very slight changes and the whole project seems fraught with uncertainty.
There is a concept called Trans-science advanced by Alvin M. Weinberg which states that some things are too complex for science to give any opinions of use in fixing policy. He was the head of Oak Ridge National Laboratories and a leading expert in nuclear physics. See http://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Reactions-Science-Trans-Science-ebook/dp/B0013JLK6U
"Americans don't know what they want"
Bingo. Public opinion is extremely malleable, very fickle and utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things because it is so ephemeral.
I can only come up with two explanations for this phenomenon: one, that many Americans are happy to embrace a symbolic belief in global warming as long as there is no danger that anyone will do anything about it. The other is that Americans don't know what they want, and also, enjoy messing with pollster's minds.
There's a simpler answer, which is that respondants don't answer the question pollsters ask. A poll might ask "[Do you] believe there is solid evidence that anthropogenic global warming is real?", but the answer they get back is to the question "How do you feel about global warming?" They're telling you about the emotional content of climate change, not about about a matter of fact.
Which makes sense. Most laypeople are not climatologists, so their opinions on the science can't be based on any empirical understanding. They're taking it (or not) on faith, or at the most on argument by authority.
But people are, in contrast, the leading authority on their own emotional state. That's what they're telling you about.
RealClearPolitics shows Obama's job approval average across multiple polls at 52.4%. That's more or less where the numbers have been since mid summer, fluctuating a percentage point up or down. Yes, some outlier polls have shown a drop, but any single poll can have anomalous numbers, and an averaging like this is the surest way of looking at the numbers. So there's no evidence here of dropping polls, let alone "a lot" of drop.
The GW poll result is quite simple to explain: It's really cold this year.
And why wouldn't people believe there's no GW when it's snowing in Colorado in early October?
Yeah, yeah, weather is not climate, but the problem is that GW believers have been pushing the very opposite idea for more than a decade now. Hot summer? GW. Brush fires? GW. Hurricanes? GW. Every time it gets hot out, the Al Gores start saying "See?!" Now that it's abnormally cold out, people start going in the opposite direction.
According to NOAA data it actually it has been really cold in the US midwest and mountain states for the past few months but much warmer in pretty much most other areas of the world (with a couple of other small areas of colder temps).
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20091015_sepglobalstats.html