Sunday, December 1, 2019

87 Percent of Americans Unaware There's Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

In the words of Noam Chomsky, we Americans are a massively propagandized people. If we weren’t we would have been informed decades ago about the looming climate crisis and we would have united as a nation and world to transition off of fossil fuels and onto renewables as rapidly as possible.
But instead the evil acts of propagandizing rather than informing us has humanity and most life on Earth facing extinction by the end of the century if we don’t engage in massive comprehensive changes now.
We’ve run out of time. The status quo of pragmatism and realism will kill us and all of our children if we don’t awaken and evolve and unite to act out of the consciousness of a highest good for us all and our planet.
Of course, part of the necessity of awakening is to inform ourselves. In Bill McKibben’s latest book, he estimates that 70% of Americans are unaware of the dire threats now facing us due to the climate and ecological crises. (http://billmckibben.com/). I’m recommending Bill’s book and the work of Naomi Klein to everyone. (https://naomiklein.org)
The collusion of the American mainstream media with the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street, and other enormous financial interests has kept us uniformed for far too long. If we’re only listening to FOX, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, OPB, and other corporate media — rather than independent media resources who receive no funding from the industries and individuals who are destroying the planet — then it’s likely that we have no idea of what’s truly happening and the urgency that we unite and act.
I’ve written about this many times, including this letter to NPR/PBS: http://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/…/my-letter-to-npr-and….
The world’s climate scientists estimate that at best we have less than 12 years to transform our economic system, our belief systems and values, and our way of life — which has long been based on the ideology of domination culture and the patriarchal, neoliberal, predatory capitalist system that is destroying life on Earth — and instead unite to birth a nation and a world that cares for life rather than destroys it.
This is another excellent resource that illuminates the roots of our peril and what we can do about it: https://www.kosmosjournal.org/…/breaking-out-of-the-domina…/.
It is also incredibly important that we research deeply each presidential candidate’s plan to address the climate emergency. As we do, we’ll see that there is only one candidate whose plan, very much including the funding, matches the enormity of the crisis. This is why both Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben endorse and support Bernie Sanders and the movements which will bring about the dramatic changes that we need to save ourselves.
This is the imperative of our time. Everything we love and cherish is at stake. The eyes of the children are watching. — Molly


By Pam Wright

Nearly 90 percent of Americans are unaware that there is a consensus within the scientific community that human-caused climate change is real and threatens the planet, a new report says.

According to the report published last week by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, only 13 percent of Americans were able to correctly identify that more than 90 percent of all climate scientists have concluded that climate change is real.

The annual survey of 1,266 adults compiled in May and June failed to note that it is actually 97 percent of climate scientists that concur that human-caused global warming is happening. 

The most common but incorrect response from the survey was that there is a 50 percent consensus among the scientific community that global warming is real and human-caused. One in four responded that they did not know.

"Public misunderstanding of the scientific consensus – which has been found in each of our surveys since 2008 – has significant consequences," the researchers note in the Yale-GMU report.

"Other research has identified public understanding of the scientific consensus as an important 'gateway belief' that influences other important beliefs," the researchers said, including the beliefs that global warming is happening, is human caused, is a serious problem and is solvable.

Researchers also noted that this lack of understanding hinders support for action. 
On the other hand, seven in 10 Americans do believe climate change is happening, which nearly matches the highest level (71 percent) recorded since the survey began 2008. Over half of Americans (58 percent) believe global warming is mostly human-caused — the highest number recorded since the survey began — while 30 percent say it is mostly a natural occurrence.

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