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(42%) are unaware that "Obamacare" is actually the law of the land. 12% thought the health reform measure had been repealed by Congress, 7% thought it had been overturned by the Supreme Court (which actually upheld the law in June of 2012), and 23% didn't know enough to say whether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.  

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.