Climate experts like Sarah Palin will be thrilled at the new Rasmussen Poll asking voters to weigh in on global warming causes.
The poll finds 50%, a new high, of voters now believe global warming is caused by cyclical planetary trends and only 34%, a new low, believe it's due to human activity.
Americans remain evenly divided over how urgent it is to deal with global warming: 43% say we must take immediate action to stop it, but another 43% say we should wait a few years to see if global warming is real before making major changes.Just 30% of adults say the world is headed toward an irreversible catastrophe if the members of the United Nations fail to deal with global warming. Nearly half (48%) of Americans don’t believe the fate of the world hangs on UN action.
There's several things about this polling...
1. The debate about climate change continues to be addressed as if it's like asking folks to choose Justin Timberlake's best song. The great majority of learned scientists have accumulated what, in their expert opinion, is irrefutable evidence that global warming is a result of human activity. Those scientists really shouldn't have to worry what either John Doe or I believe is the cause of global warming.
2. And if public polling will be used to decide scientific questions, I'm waiting for the Rasmussen Poll on whether there really is a Higgs boson. It is, after all, predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics, but perhaps we should allow the American public to decide.
3. This was the how Rasmussen hyped their poll: "50% Now Say Global Warming Caused by Long-Term Planetary Trends, Political Class Strongly Disagrees". How about this instead: "50% Now Say Global Warming Caused by Long-Term Planetary Trends Despite Overwhelming Evidence To The Contrary. Scientists Wonder Why They Need To Sell Their Theory To The Untrained"?
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