Poll finds growing disenchantment with Bush environmental policy

But 82 Percent Would Still Grab a Brewski With Him

A new poll finds a rise in the number of people who think President Bush is not doing enough to protect the environment -- 56 percent, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg survey, up from 41 percent in 2001. Most want more action on environmental problems, and by a more than two-to-one margin, they think Democrats in Congress are more likely to give it to them. The number who think global warming is a serious problem rose to over 70 percent, and 58 percent think Bush isn't doing enough about it. Unsurprisingly, Bush's support on environmental policy is sharply higher among Republicans, and higher in the South than in the East and West. Support for mandatory government regulations is low -- under 10 percent support raising vehicle fuel-efficiency standards, and just 11 percent support carbon-emissions caps -- but Americans are gung-ho about research into and subsidies for new technologies, including wind and solar. So Americans think global warming's a problem, but don't want to do anything about it but funnel pork to industry, and yet they disapprove of Bush's policy. Why?

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Bettina Boxall, 04 Aug 2006

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Comments: (4 comments)

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Global warming and Religious morons

Why do you waste space voicing the opions of religious small brains? This guy believes in the supernatural desguised as dogma. We want facts not blowhards. No speculation, no guesses, no psychics, we want facts! Does 100 plus degrees all over the US ring a bell???

by RobPellucid at 6:42 PM on 04 Aug 2006

Feeling the Warm Sky

"Of course, no individual weather event can definitively be traced to global warming;". But the heat felt outside on any clear day is directly related to global warming.

Put a hot skillet outside on a stump under a blue sky or under a clear night sky and it will not cool down as fast as it did last year while the air temperature remains the same.

In technical terms, the sky has a blackbody temperature that radiates infrared. This infrared radiation affects the comfort level of people and slows night cooling of the gound.

Building designers know that warm walls make air feel warmer and cold walls make air feel colder. The difference is significant. Closing shutters on nighttime windows makes rooms feel instantly warmer, significantly reducing the need for heating air.

We can feel the radient heat from the sky. This is not the same as air temperature. (Of coures, air temperature is also affected by a warm radient sky warming the Earth.)

by sunflower at 7:48 PM on 04 Aug 2006

Re-irradiation on the spelling

Radiant ground heat is the other blackbody, of course.

Great story on this evening's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer PBS on global warming consensus and "criminal" inaction.

by sunflower at 8:05 PM on 04 Aug 2006

Religious Moran Might Be Our Salvation

Over the last couple of week David has been trying to show us the light of religious thinking in presenting our sense of good and evil to world. He makes the good argument that for many seeing things in the terms of religious good and evil is a clearer choice and one that can be retained under strong opposition. Religious leaders such as Richard Cizik and Jim Ball of National Association of Evangelicals have been doing their part to get more religious leaders to adopt this view that abusing the earth is not what God intended when he gave us dominion. We were to exercise some wisdom.

For whatever reason many of us take a very intellectual view of policy and in fact are uncomfortable assuming a stance of it simply being a sin. And of course if it is not something you truly believe you can not fake it.

I think David points us in a correct direction. I think that it is wrong to abuse the world and the people in it and I think that religious leaders have an obligation to carry that message forward. Rev. Robinson may be one of those leaders.

It takes a lot of people to make up the world, it is a mix of creeds, races, nationalities, and etc. All in all that mix makes us better. I believe that Rev. Robertson has probably caused a number of people to alter their thinking in a favorable manner regarding global warming.

One thing we have to realize is that as global warming gets to be better understood people whom we have little regard will become supporters. It is even very possible that republican leaders, such as Sen. Snowe and others may become new conservative leaders who will support greenhouse gas controls. It will not just be liberal intellectuals who will carry the word.

Personally I like the liberals intellectuals better, but truth has a way of finding many speakers.

by ffletcher at 9:35 PM on 04 Aug 2006

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