Romm revealed multiple flawed assumptions in his latest attack, but one stood out above all the rest. Despite all the empirical evidence, Joseph Romm believes global warming is a high public priority. Romm and other greens will continue to peddle this false belief at their peril.
Joe Romm, who runs the Climate Progress blog, has launched another set of hysterical attacks on the Breakthrough Institute, comparing Michael and Ted to Karl Rove for their latest LA Times op-ed.
Disregarding the histrionics, Romm revealed multiple absurd assumptions in this piece, but one stood out above all the rest. Despite all the empirical evidence, Joseph Romm believes global warming is a high public priority. Quoted from his post:
"Here they recycle the standard GOP talking points that nobody really cares about global warming. In fact, even though S&N are pollsters themselves, they seem completely unaware of the fact that the overall Gallup poll numbers mask a sharp break between the views of Democrats and the views of Republicans"
And in response to my question in the comments, "do you think the primary reason why global warming is a low public priority is because of right-wing disinformation?" he said:
"This is not an issue that can be answered so simplistically nor do I accept the claim that "global warming is a low public priority.""
And here:
Global warming is not a low public priority, especially for those who haven't been the target of a disinformation campaign...
But even more egregiously, he goes on to suggest in his Slate piece today, "A can't-lose debate strategy for Joe Biden," that climate is one of the greatest issue priorities for swing voters. His opening paragraph:
"Democratic vice president candidate Joe Biden has been given a gift that I don't think any politician of either party has ever received. He gets 45 minutes of free airtime in front of a huge national audience to debate his opponent with little fear of substantive rebuttal. Sarah Palin simply lacks the knowledge to rebut any detailed factual charges, especially on clean energy and climate, two issues of great concern to swing voters."
Romm (and apparently others) think global warming is a high public priority -- so high that they would advise Biden to strongly emphasize it in his debate with Palin tonight.
Unfortunately, this belief is false -- and here's the evidence to prove it.
Most pollsters know how low global warming ranks with the public, so they don't even provide it as an issue priority on their list of options. But let's look at
the same poll Romm cites in his post. Not surprisingly, it contains a big section titled "
Global Warming a Low Public Priority," with global warming ranking 18th out of 21 issues for independents (click these pictures to get a larger, clearer image):
This poll was conducted back in January, but if anything, global warming is a lower public priority today due to the concerns about the economy. It's difficult to find many recent polls that even list global warming as an option, but here are
two more polls that do.
Conclusion: global warming is a low public priority compared to other issues. Romm and other greens will continue to peddle their false beliefs about public opinion -- and allow it to guide their political and policy approach -- at their peril.
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Yes, these polls show that global warming is a low priority, when compared with other issues. However, you are also out-of-hand dismissing the 48-51% of Americans (that would be well over 100 million people, for reference) in the latter two polls who say that global warming is "very" or "extremely important". Also note that Romm says "clean energy and climate"; unfortunately the Pew polls doesn't break out "energy" in "dirty" and "clean", but you all have to agree that you want them to man "clean" just as much as Romm or I do. Why are you so much more interested in winning a blog-war-of-words with Joe Romm than you are in finding common ground?
Posted by: Asa at October 3, 2008 8:16 PM