...to superstition and junk science? That wasn't the point of this bit of push-polling propaganda spew on anthropogenic global warming, but that's the question that got answered for me. According to the article, people in "Latin America were most worried" while those in the United States were the least. Also, the countries most prone to natural disasters rated global warming as "very serious." As developing nations move away from animistic traditions that not even forced Christianization has removed, the need to attribute events outside of human control to the "gods" or "spirits" is slowly being culturally transferred to governments and multi-national corporations.
What about the junk science side of the coin? China is a key part of the story, whose government is responsible for the worst air pollution and most questionable land-use policies in the last 50 years. Eastern europeans, still cleaning up their environmental disasters from years of communist bloc resource management, were quick to attribute human activity to global warming, just like to the Chinese. Grouping all environmental issues together is a natural response, but specious reasoning, of which junk science proponents and propagandists heartily take advantage.
Glaringly, there were no characterizations of the opinions of western europeans. What do the regular people of Britain and Old Europe think of man-made global warming, when their politically correct minders are not around? Could it be this political push to rush into harsh economic constraints, when we're not sure that anything we do will actually accomplish anything, really does not have the backing of the people?
Dude - Have you noticed that, ahead of the IPCC report coming out, every AP article's tagline on global warming is the canard that Bush pulled the U.S. out of Kyoto in 2001? As if a Senate vote 98-0 in 1997 against joining Kyoto never happened, right? Last I heard, there weren't 98 GOP senators at that time.
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