Our Voting Public: Uninsured revolt against the Anti-Christ behind the climate hoax edition

An April survey from Kaiser Family Foundation found that four in ten Americans (42%) are unaware that "Obamacare" is actually the law of the land. 12% thought the health reform measure had been repealed by Congress, 7% thought it had been overturned by the Supreme Court (which actually upheld the law in June of 2012), and 23% didn't know enough to say whether the law was in force or not. Overall, 49% of Americans didn't know enough to say whether the law will impact their own families--but, depressingly, the percentage of people lacking that knowledge was highest in the two groups the law is likely to benefit most: the uninsured (of whom 58% said they didn't know how the law would affect them) and the poor (56%).

Another poll--from PublicMind at Farleigh Dickinson University--shows that 29% of all Americans (18% of Democrats, 27% of Independents, and a whopping 44% of Republicans) believe that an armed revolution might be necessary in the next few years, in order to protect our liberties. An armed revolution. In the next few years. Another 5% of Americans aren't sure about that. Well, that's good, I guess; one doesn't want to decide these things too precipitously.

And in other polling news from what appears to be this planet, Public Policy Polling (a well-respected polling firm known for asking the occasional oddball or controversial question) has found (among many other amusing and/or scary things) that 58% of Republicans think global warming is a hoax, while 77% of Democrats disagree; and that 20% of Americans think vaccines cause autism, while 34% aren't sure.

And 20% of Republicans believe that President Obama is the Anti-Christ. Well, I guess we know why they think armed revolution might be necessary. Hope your health insurance covers gunshot wounds.  

They Blinded Me With Science, Climate Change Edition

One day a group of friends were talking about climate change in the cafeteria. Ralph said, “There is growing concern and evidence that scientific data, from which global warming theories emerged, has been manipulated, enhanced or deleted.” Larry nodded and responded, “The data does not support the premise that carbon dioxide emissions are playing a significant role in the world temperature variations. The temperature of the Earth has been changing over centuries with warmer and colder periods throughout history.” Dana agreed, saying,“I do not believe that CO2 is a cause of global warming.”

Chip was more emphatic. “One word,” he said, “Bunk. It's built off of corrupt data and a corrupt NASA program. It's bunk. It's fallacy. There is absolutely no substantial evidence to prove that there is global warming.” And Dan agreed: “I think it’s all baloney. It’s all baloney. I think it’s just some scheme….I just don’t believe it, I just don’t believe it. You know, I’m a scientist, I’m a surgeon, I’ve done scientific research papers, there’s a lot of skepticism.”

From his seat at the next table, Chuck muttered, “I think we ought to take Al Gore, put him on an iceberg, and put him way out there.”

Randy took a sip of his drink, and started to wax philosophical. “The greatest impact on our climate clearly is the sun,” he said, “and we have very little impact on the sun and how much energy and temperature the sun is sending to the earth. We have seen clearly over thousands of years that at different times more energy has come through and different times less energy has come through, and that variation has impacted climate change. Over the thousands of years that’s been recorded we’ve had both colder times and warmer times. It happens to be that we’ve recently come out of a warmer time and now actually we’re headed in to a little bit of a colder time. The impact of the sun is much different than impact that we could have had.” Ben nodded and offered his terse agreement, saying, “Our planet has warmed and cooled from the beginning of time.”

Paul spoke up: “Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus.” And he had a lot more to say about science: “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior…You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.”

Jim shifted the conversation back. “I think that the science is inconclusive on this,” he said. “What the science says is that temperatures peaked out globally in 1998. So we’ve gone for 10 plus years where the temperatures have gone down….I personally believe that the solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything that human beings do and our lunar, our rovers on Mars have indicated that there has been a slight warming in the atmosphere of Mars and that certainly was not caused by the internal combustion engine.”

Sandy wanted to know, “Does the so-called danger posed to the economy by not acting to reduce what some may call man-made effects on climate change outweigh the economic costs to the country?”

Finally Todd concluded for the group, saying, “This whole thing strikes me if it weren’t so serious as being a comedy you know. I mean, we just went from winter to spring. In Missouri when we go from winter to spring, that’s a good climate change. I don’t want to stop that climate change you know. Who in the world want to put politicians in charge of the weather anyways? What a dumb idea….Some of the models said that we’re going to have surf at the front steps of the Capitol pretty soon. I was really looking forward to that.…”

Then the whole gang got up to attend their next meeting of the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

2011: Tenth-hottest Year Ever

The World Meteorological Organization is reporting that 2011 is looking to be the 10th warmest year on record, and the warmest-ever La Nina year. (La Nina years are typically cooler than the years before and after them.) The decade from 2002-2011 is tied with 2001-10 for having the highest average temperatures on record. 13 of the hottest 15 years on record have occurred within the last 15 years. Arctic sea ice extent was at its second smallest level ever, the smallest having been recorded in 2007; and sea-ice volume hit a record low.

Health Costs of Climate Change

The current issue of Health Affairs includes this article, which is trying to quantify the health-related costs of US environmental events related to climate change. This is a tricky problem, since no single environmental event can properly be attributed to climate change. The authors have instead named six categories of events tied in the literature to climate change (ozone pollution, heat waves, hurricanes, infectious disease outbreaks like West Nile, river flooding, and wildfires), and done a health-cost estimate for one example of each such event. It's an interesting approach to getting a handle on health costs of environmental problems. They find $14 billion of health costs related to the six events, most of it due to premature loss of life; and $740 million in health-system costs incurred during 760,000 encounters with the health-care system.