Percentage of Americans Who Identify as 'Environmentalists' Down 36 Points Since 1991

A Gallup poll released on Friday shows that the number of Americans who identify as environmentalists has dropped 36 points, from 78 percent in 1991 to 42 percent in 2016. There has also been a decline in Americans expressing concern about environmental problems, such as pollution.

The Earth Day poll is conducted annually by Gallup. The polling firm cites the politicization of environmental issues as one possible reason for the decline, highlighting the growing partisan gap in those who identify as environmentalists.

A large percentage of Americans (Republicans and Democrats) – 78 percent – considered themselves environmentalists in 1991. That number today is 42 percent.

Also, only 27 percent of Republicans identify as environmentalists, compared with 56 percent of Democrats, a partisan gap of 29 percentage points.

However, Gallup notes the “broader decline in personal environmentalism at the same time that the environment has turned into more of a Democratic than Republican issue,” citing the large decline in Democrats who consider themselves environmentalists -- 56 percent today versus 78 percent 25 years ago.

Gallup also notes a decline in Americans’ concern over environmental problems, such as air pollution and pollution of rivers, lakes and reservoirs. Concern over polluted drinking water is down from 65 percent in 1989-1990 to 61 percent today.

Concern over air pollution is down from 61 percent to just 43 percent today.

While concern over climate change has risen slightly (from 33 percent to 37 percent) since 1990, Gallup notes that, “on a relative basis, global warming is still of less concern than most of the other problems.”

Gallup’s poll results are based on telephone interviews conducted March 2-6, 2016, with a random sample of 1,019 adults, aged 18 and older.

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Global warming hits a British spring

EVERYTHING is caused by global warming

Snow and sleet has fallen in many parts of the UK as temperatures struggle to get into double figures with the prospect of a Spring-like May a long way off.

Despite the time of year, forecasters are warning the unsettled picture will continue for much of the week with freezing conditions in many parts.

Thunder, lightning and sleet showers are expected with some in northern areas witnessing heavy snowfall, including on the North Yorkshire Moors and parts of Scotland.

The blizzard seen all over the UK were reminiscent of the bizarre scenes on the very same day 35 years ago, when snowstorms hit the British spring.

Cars were buried on the roads as the nation was blanketed in a thick layer of snow on April 26 1981, which saw the worst blizzards for that time of year in a century.

Yesterday's downfall was the latest widespread snow has been seen in the UK since May 6, 1997, when more than 200 weather stations recorded it.

Before that forecasters have to go back to April 27, 1985 when several London weather stations recorded sleet.

Snow even stopped play at The Oval cricket ground this afternoon as the south was dusted in the white stuff.

The type of snow flurry seen in London is known as 'thundersnow'. It is a phenomenon caused by heavy showers accompanied by lightning storms.

Forecasters think parts of Britain will be colder than Siberia and Greenland this week. There is a strong risk of hail showers throughout the country, with a chance of snow settling down to 200 metres.

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Clearing the Air on Fossil Fuels

A few years ago, Hal Willis, a scientist from the University of California, Santa Barbara, resigned from the American Physical Society after 67 years as a member. Why? He cited the global warming/climate change issue and the blind allegiance to global warming theory by so many of the Society’s members, as well as the organization’s failure to challenge these members in the name of true scientific investigation. Moreover, he noted that billions of dollars of research funding is a major reason the practice of true science on climate change has been replaced by ideological advocacy.

Of the climate change issue Willis said, “It is the greatest pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a scientist.” His position has support from other scientists, among them Dr. Ivar Giaever, a 1973 Nobel Prize-Winner for physics.

Giaever joined more than 70 Nobel Science Laureates in signing an open letter in October 2008 expressing strong support for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, who had proclaimed that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” Seven years later, Giaever believes Obama’s warning was a “ridiculous statement.” He told a Nobel forum last July, “I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem.”

Dr. Richard Lindzen is emeritus professor of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT. Citing the growing shrillness of the cries about “global warming” during his 30 years there, during which time he says “the climate has changed remarkably little,” he notes that the less the climate changes, the louder the warnings of climate catastrophe become.

In a recent video presentation for Prager University, Lindzen asserts that participants in the climate change debate fall into one of three groups:

Group One, he says, is associated with the scientific part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Working Group 1), and are scientists that generally believe recent climate change is due to burning fossil fuels, which releases CO2 (carbon dioxide) and might eventually dangerously harm the planet.

Group Two is made up of scientists who, like Lindzen, don’t see the problem identified by Group One as an especially serious one. They say there are many reasons why the climate changes — the sun, clouds, oceans, the orbital variations of the Earth, as well as a myriad of other inputs, none of which are fully understood.

Group Three is made up of politicians, environmentalists and the media. Climate alarmism provides politicians money and power and environmentalists also get money as well as confirmation of their religious zealotry for the environment, while the issue satisfies the media’s need for a cause to support, money and headlines. As Lindzen put it, “Doomsday scenarios sell.”

From the climate alarmists' point of view, virtually every problem on Earth stems from climate change — as Lindzen said, “everything from acne to the Syrian civil war.”

The Director of the Center for Industrial Progress, and author of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” Alex Epstein, shows us in another Prager University video presentation (complete with thorough sourcing for his assertions) that burning fossil fuels has improved the lives of millions in the developed world by helping solve their biggest environmental challenges, purified their water and air, made their cities and homes more sanitary and kept them safe from potential catastrophic climate change.

Could we have built reservoirs, purification plants, and laid networks of pipes to bring clean water to homes without fossil fuels, Epstein asks? Fossil fuels can do the same for those in the developing world, if the powers that be will allow it. More fossil fuel use equals more clean water.

Epstein further shows that despite an increase in fossil fuel use from 1.5 billion tons in 1970 to around 2.0 billion tons in 2010, emissions dropped from about 300 million tons to about 150 million tons during the same period. This resulted from using anti-pollution technology powered by … fossil fuels.

If CO2 emissions cause harmful changes in the environment, and if emissions have increased, then more people must be suffering “climate-related deaths,” due to things like droughts, floods, storms and extreme temperatures. But no, Epstein said. “In the last 80 years, as CO2 emissions have rapidly escalated, the annual rate of climate-related deaths worldwide has rapidly declined — by 98%.”

“In sum,” Epstein said, “fossil fuels don’t take a naturally safe environment and make it dangerous; they empower us to take a naturally dangerous environment and make it cleaner and safer.”

That understanding gets to the heart of the disagreement.

A large segment of the public has bought into the “we are killing our environment” idea put forth by the climate alarmists, and they now meekly accept it when the United Nations and their own governments advocate harmful solutions to climate change, ignoring the mounting pile of contrary data. Consequently, the economic damage done to regions of the U.S. and the thousands of American workers put in the unemployment line by the foolish policies of the Obama administration basically are considered necessary collateral damage.

A strong case has been made that fossil fuels aren’t significantly harmful, and that they have been and will be extraordinarily helpful to the people of the world, if only we will listen.

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Sierra Club's Next Target Is Natural Gas

The Sierra Club has relentlessly, tirelessly and now successfully worked to smother the coal industry. Consequently, the effects are being felt in the form of higher energy bills. But if the Sierra Club gets its way, prices at the pump could also skyrocket. And it’s all thanks to the ecofascist group’s unnecessary disinformation campaign that’s now looking to quell hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”).

Lena Moffitt, the director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign, tells S&P Global Market Intelligence, “We have moved to a very clear and firm and vehement position of opposing gas. Our board recently passed a policy that we oppose any new gas-fired power plants. We also have a policy opposing fracking on our books.” She added, “We are doing everything we can to bring the same expertise that we brought to taking down the coal industry and coal-fired power in this country to taking on gas in the same way.”

“That’s an amazing admission,” says Investor’s Business Daily, “given that natural gas is a clean-burning fuel that is reducing greenhouse gas emissions and real pollutants, too. There have been no reported cases of water contamination from fracking technology, as even the Obama administration has admitted.” Not to mention “the idea that America will be 100% reliant on green energy is a deeply delusional and dangerous fantasy. Even after more than $100 billion in government subsidies over the past decade, wind and solar power are so expensive and unworkable that they account for less than 4% of our energy supply. Is America really expected to give up on the other 96%?”

It’s eerily demonstrative of what Rick Moran recently wrote concerning Sanders' climate proposition: “His policies are not designed to deal with energy as much as they’re supposed to impoverish us by reducing output for reasons having nothing to do with generating electricity or fueling our cars.”

Democrats once loved natural gas. As recently as 2012, the Obama administration welcomed a future replete with liquefied natural gas. But behind all the Democrats' philandering is a strategic ruse. Columnist John Goodman makes an important insight when he writes, “We naturally assume that that public policy advocates actually want to achieve the things they advocate. But there are a lot of people both on the right and the left — but especially on the left — for whom that probably isn’t true. … Causes are vehicles to money and power.” Take away the cause, and “the donations would dry up. The jobs would go away. The research grants would vanish.”

Today, Democrats claim to hate natural gas. That’s probably because their prerogative isn’t to solve anything — rather it’s to keep the issues alive and milk them for all their political worth.

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Victim of AGs’ Climate Change Inquisition Fights Back

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has launched a fierce counter-attack against Claude Walker, the attorney general for the Virgin Islands, who recently served a subpoena on CEI demanding documents related to CEI’s research on global “climate change.”

On April 20, CEI’s attorney, Andrew Grossman, filed a long and extensive objection to the subpoena and made it clear that CEI will not comply with it. Grossman, a lawyer at BakerHostetler and co-founder of the Free Speech in Science Project, told Walker in his cover letter that the attorney general’s legal action targeting CEI is “a blatant attempt to intimidate and harass an organization for advancing views that you oppose.”

The only reason to try to force CEI to turn over its internal research and documents on this issue is “to punish [CEI] for its public policy views, chill its associations, and silence its advocacy.”

Grossman cites Walker’s own statements at the press conference held by AGs United for Clean Power on March 29 to show that Walker launched this investigation to achieve political ends, not “carry out any law enforcement duty.”

Walker said his investigation was intended to “make it clear to our residents as well as the American people that we have to do something transformational” about climate change, stop “rely[ing] on fossil fuels,” and “look at reliable energy.” As Grossman says, Walker is entitled to his opinions on public policy, but Walker doesn’t have a right to wield his “power as a prosecutor to advance a policy agenda by persecuting those who disagree with” Walker.

The objection filed by Grossman on behalf of CEI not only points out the constitutional problems with Walker’s investigation, but some crucial procedural mistakes made by Walker. For example, Walker didn’t actually get a court in the Virgin Islands to issue the subpoena; he simply issued it himself.

Subpoenas that are not issued by a “court of record” and that are not part of a “pending judicial action” cannot be domesticated in another jurisdiction like the District of Columbia where CEI is located and was served with the subpoena. This is the type of basic error that one might expect from a young law firm associate, not the attorney general of a U.S. protectorate.

But more fundamentally, CEI is objecting on First Amendment grounds, citing to court cases prohibiting the compelled disclosure of the type of information and documents that Walker is trying to obtain. Grossman claims that the subpoena “violates the First Amendment because it constitutes an attempt to silence and intimidate, as well as retaliate against, speech espousing a particular viewpoint with which the Attorney General disagrees.”

CEI asserts that the subpoena is also “invalid because the underlying investigation is pretextual, is being undertaken in bad faith, is intended as a fishing expedition, and is in support of an investigation of charges that have no likelihood of success.”

In what may be a sign of the involvement of the plaintiffs’ bar in pushing these climate change persecutions in the same way it helped instigate the massive tobacco industry litigation, CEI says the subpoena is invalid and violates the Fifth and 14th Amendments because Walker has delegated “investigative and prosecutorial authority to private parties.”

CEI is referring to the fact that Walker’s subpoena was handled by a private law firm in Washington, D.C., Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, which has been called one of the “most feared plaintiffs’ firms” in the country. The firm itself brags about being the “most effective law firm in the United States for lawsuits with a strong social and political component” (emphasis added).

CEI says that Walker’s investigation “could result in penalties available only to government prosecutors.” Thus, delegating “investigative and prosecutorial authority to a private attorney, Ms. Linda Singer, and a private law firm, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, that are most likely being compensated on a contingency-fee basis, violates due process of law.”

That raises a very interesting question about “AGs United for Clean Power”—are they hiring private firms like Cohen Milstein on a contingency basis to target climate change deniers?

CEI’s objection also claims that Walker, Singer, and the Cohen Milstein firm may be subject to sanctions for violating a local court rule in the District of Columbia that required them to “take reasonable steps to avoid imposing undue burden or expense” on CEI, and that this broad, burdensome subpoena “plainly violates that duty given its facial invalidity, astonishing overbreadth, and evident purpose of imposing unwarranted and illegitimate burdens on CEI and CEI’s exercise of its constitutional rights.”

CEI says that Walker, Singer, and the firm “violated their ethical obligations” under a D.C. Bar Rule that prohibits an attorney from “knowingly us[ing] methods of obtaining evidence that violate the legal rights of” a third party.

CEI’s attorney concludes his letter to Walker by calling him (and all of the other attorneys general involved in this climate change cartel) out in very plain spoken terms: "Your demand on CEI is offensive, it is un-American, it is unlawful, and it will not stand"

He gives Walker a warning and a choice: “You can either withdraw [the subpoena] or expect to fight … the law does not allow government officials to violate Americans’ civil rights with impunity.”

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Some news from Scotland



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