Stanford University communications researcher Dr. Jon Krosnick has released an analysis of his latest public opinion survey on American's perceptions of global warming. Dr. Krosnick, a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute, presented his research findings on March 12 at a climate briefing hosted by the American Meteorological Society. The survey was funded by Stanford and the Associated Press (AP). Visit http://woods.stanford.edu/research/majority-believe-global-warming.html for more information and a YouTube video with Dr. Krosnick.
Today at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Minnesota, I met a man who had been a student in a higher-learning situation for the past 7 years, but had never heard how global warming would directly affect Minnesotans. I was just as surprised as he was.
Last week, I blogged about New Zealand's birds. I had visited an island sanctuary where several near-extinct birds had been introduced. Today, I went to a museum in Auckland, and saw stuffed birds in glass cases--one I saw in the wild yesterday that seems to have made it and escaped extinction, one that hovers at the precipice, and one that is gone.
Today we went to Tiritiri Matangi with our group of Midwest college students studying sustainability and policy in New Zealand. We hiked the trails (or tramped the tracks as Kiwis say) with a volunteer for the Supporters of Tiritiri Matangi, an island sanctuary that is an exemplar of a conservation and restoration project. Olga, a opthamology nurse in Auckland, was our guide. She spoke with great demonstrative gestures and a joie de vivre revealing a true excitement for the conservation efforts on the island. We saw New Zealand birds that were once well on their way to extinction and now were faring well. Tiritiri Matangi is small dot of land in the ocean, situated off the eastern coast of Auckland, NZ. It is one of the world's pioneering habitat restoration projects, with over 300,000 trees planted and several species of endangered birds re-introduced by hundreds of volunteers in partnership with the New Zealand Department of Conservation.
In the past month's hubbub over East Anglia's climate science emails, the idea has taken root that science has two camps. Recent polls show that many Americans hold this idea, that climate science is greatly unsettled between warring camps of scientists, the Believers and the Skeptics. Nothing could be further from the truth. All good scientists are all on the same side, they are all pursuing knowledge, and by training, they are all skeptics.
Mountains of blog postings, op-eds and YouTube videos have piled up in the past three weeks about the email heist from the climate think tank in England. The majority of ink and airtime has been zealotry and misrepresentation by an orchestrated band of bloggers seeking to undermine the science and tank any progress on international negotiations taking place in Copenhagen.
Excerpts from the EPA release December 7, 2009 with my emphasis added:
Scientists have not had good success explaining what they know about the climate and why they know it. They have a good story, and it would be refreshing to hear it told more often.
Here's an example. The story behind this data is the story of the Earth's climate history, and the story of the scientists who reconstructed it. As you can see, Earth's temperature history is closely correlated with CO2.
At Fresh Energy, we focus on solutions to create clean energy jobs, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and protect the environment. We have a record of meticulous non-partisanship, and we know that we cannot fix our energy challenges with only one political party on board.
We feel proud that we helped to forge political consensus here in Minnesota, especially during the 2007 legislature, when 90% of the politicians voted for sweeping changes in energy and environmental protection, signed into law by Governor Pawlenty. Those sweeping changes included that one quarter of our state's electricity would come from renewable energy like solar and wind by 2020. In addition, by 2020, even more new energy would come from utilities investing in energy-savings programs.
Bill McKibben has been the clarion voice of the climate movement for 20 years, long before it identified itself as a movement. His 1989 The End of Nature was the first popular book to outline the basic reality of the global warming problem. His current passion is to raise the awareness that science is now telling us that we must reduce atmospheric concentrations below their current levels of 390ppm. Today, at Yale360, Bill McKibben writes "A Timely Reminder of the Real Limits to Growth."
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