GOP conservatives remain skeptical on climate change: Poll
Source: CBS News
A majority of conservative Republicans believe global warming will never happen, or that it won't happen in their lifetime, according to polling data released Wednesday by Gallup.
Forty percent of self-identified conservative Republicans believe global warming will never happen, according to the data, while 17 percent believe it will affect future generations. Only 37 percent of GOP conservatives believe the current generation will have to deal with the effects of a changing climate.
That belief puts them at odds with every other ideological group Gallup surveyed. Eighty-nine percent of liberal Democrats, 78 percent of moderate Democrats, 66 percent of independents, and 64 percent of moderate Republicans believe they'll see the effects of global warming during their lifetime, according to Gallup.
The results expose the tricky political question facing proponents of a more aggressive response to climate change: Can progress be made on a response if a significant part of one party can't even agree on the existence of a problem, much less the wisdom of a proposed solution?
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gop-conservatives-remain-skeptical-on-climate-change-poll/
= new reply since forum marked as read
But the rest of us would like to do something about the problem.
What a pack of idiots....
willful ignorance of science. The "if I say it is not true, then it will go away" mentality. A variant of the old: "“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed and you will even come to believe it yourself.”
I think the answer is YES. Civll Rights and other important legislative achievement were successful despite the willful ignorance or opposition of conservatives. In this case, even among conservative republicans while 40% believe global warming will never happen, 37% believe that it will and it's happening now. That is not a monolithic opinion even on the far right. Another 19% of conservative republicans think global warming will happen but only affecting future generations.
And only 16% of "moderate and liberal" (?) republicans believe that global warming will never happen; 64% that is happening now.
The real problem is not the republican base - as wacky as the fringe of that may be. It is the 1% who control the republican party and use that influence to constantly fight against recognition of global warming as a huge problem and any efforts to fight it.
