Majority of Americans don't buy global warming fraud

Beyond Belief

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, January 20, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Climate Change: Despite years of media bombardment about the imminent dangers of global warming, the alarmists are losing ground. Fewer Americans are buying into the myth.

According to a Rasmussen poll, 44% of U.S. voters blame long-term planetary trends for the (perceived) global warming; only 41% say human activity is responsible.

Those are far different numbers than Rasmussen recorded less than three years ago. In July 2006, Rasmussen found that a mere 35% believed the cause of warming to be part of a natural cycle, while 46% said humans were culpable.

It's also starkly different from a poll taken last April, when 47% said man was to blame and 34% said long-term global trends were the cause. Since that survey was taken, Rasmussen says, "the numbers have been moving in the direction of planetary trends."

These numbers support the findings of a 2008 survey that questioned 12,000 people across 11 countries. It found only 47% willing to change their lives to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. A year earlier, 58% said they would be inclined to change their lives to cut CO2 emissions.

That survey, commissioned by financial institution HSBC and environmental groups, also revealed that last year 37% admitted they were willing to increase the time or effort they put into cutting carbon emissions, a drop-off of 8 percentage points from 2007.

The waning faith in the church of global warming seems to have sent one of its apostles into a near panic. James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is saying that time to save the planet from a blistering-hot, ice-cap-melting, sea-rising doom is running out.

"We have to get on a new path within this new administration," he told the British Observer. "We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead."

Hansen can't admit it because he has staked his name and reputation on the notion that man is causing Earth to warm. But once the raw emotion and partisan bias are stripped " 59% of Democrats blame global warming on man vs. only 21% of Republicans " there's nothing for the U.S. to lead on.

Unless, of course, the country was to lead the rest of the world into an age of true enlightenment about climate change. That's a campaign we can get behind.