Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog.
Hot enough for you? Your answer might depend on who you’re voting for.
World views affect not just how we interpret what we see; these views influence what we actually experience. That was the point of the previous post.
Do people who reject the idea global warming perceive the weather as being cooler? Gallup just published the results of a poll that asked people if this winter was warmer than usual. Unfortunately, Gallup asked only for political affiliation, but it can stand as a rough proxy for ideas about global warming. So the data are suggestive, not conclusive. But for what it’s worth, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say yes, it’s been a warm winter. Some of the difference can be attributed to geography (Democrats living in places that had a much warmer winter than usual). But I suspect that at least part of the 11-point difference is political.
Republicans reject the idea that the world is getting warmer — that’s a question of science — but they also experience their own immediate environment as cooler, which is a matter of perception.
As the graph shows, Gallup then asked those who did think that the winter was unusually warm what they thought the cause was — global warming or just normal variation.. As you might expect, political affiliation made a difference. Democrats were more than twice as likely as Republicans to cite global warming as the cause.
Comments 21
Anonymous — April 19, 2012
72% of Republicans agreed with 85% of Democrats about something. That's quite an accomplishment.
Brandon — April 19, 2012
Mitt Romney as their presidential frontrunner is leaving a lot of Republicans in the cold.
Rishi — April 19, 2012
This is a good example of a false dilemma. The warm winter this year was probably the result of natural variation and global warming, not one or the other.
WG — April 19, 2012
Wamer?
Erich Roggenbuck — April 19, 2012
This makes me crazy. None of the answers in this poll are correct. Climate change is real, and it is causing major shifts in weather and climate. However, it is impossible and meaningless to ascribe a single weather event, even the temperature over the course of a single year, to climate change.
Veg Nik — April 19, 2012
The regressive Republican Party of No is obstructionist,
mean-spirited, thuggish, religiously fanatical, scientifically
ignorant, corrupt, hypocritical, xenophobic, racist, sexist,
homophobic, evolution and global warming denying, oily,
anti-environment, anti-health, anti-consumer, anti-birth control, anti-choice, anti-education, anti-99%, union
busting, Medicare mashing and Social Security slashing, fiscally
irresponsible, misleading, authoritarian, selfish, greedy, out-of-touch, lacking
compassion, warmongering, and otherwise dangerous.
NEVER vote for Republicans.
Anonymous — April 19, 2012
No, it cannot stand as a proxy. Not all Republicans reject the idea of global warming, though some vocal ones do. This also doesn't take into account the geography of participants, as we all know some places have more Democrats and some have more Republicans. While CA had quite a warm winter, Spokane has had a bizarre one that has given them snow as late as April. This post was a real reach, and almost offensively so.
Yrro Simyarin — April 19, 2012
Sounds like the poster child for a spurious correlation.
The warmer weather would be much more noticeable in the midwest and Northeast coast, where it is the difference between getting snowed in or not. Both of these areas have more democrats than the deep south. In fact, over 90% of people in these areas agreed that it was a warm winter.
Seems like a great graph to bring up for the "republicans reject science" threads... Last winter was not warmer because of global warming, even though global warming is completely a real thing. Once again showing that it isn't about believing science - it's about believing your movement's leaders.
Cartergunn — April 19, 2012
That is a pretty significant typo. I can't help but dismiss the graph.
pduggie — April 20, 2012
Proximity to the Canadian border is a good proxy for a great many political and social disparities.
Lucas Green.screen — April 23, 2012
I think you are only looking at one side of a very interesting analysis. Just as Republicans are tending to perceive the winter as being cooler, so are Democrats tending to perceive the winter as being warmer (than Independents, who we are assuming to be the neutral/control group?), and they are more likely to blame it on Global Warming. It is interesting to see how the position one takes on the Climate Change argument becomes a very influential lens through which one experiences weather.
Anecdotally, I've had people cite to me a particularly rainy week as being due to global warming. Or a particularly sunny week. Experiential perception of climate change is patently unreliable, since our human attention spans (unless you are a researcher on the subject) are much, much shorter than the time frames of even the most immediate, cataclysmic climate change predictions.Why only analyse the Republican side of the graph? The bigger picture is much more interesting. The pendulum swings both ways, as they say.