Why, when it comes to Global climate change, does it seem that Americans still think that the World is flat?
Answer:
That might be a slight overstatement towards how backwards Americans really are when it comes to such issues, but I suppose that when your foreign policy = me, myself and I it is easy overlook the curvature of the planet and not see a lot of things coming, or rationalize how your choices affect other parts of the globe!
Nah, they haven't got that far, its more of a archaic news trumpet on an old radio with a brief news clip. Soon as we hear it, well, we just dump out the gasoline whereever. (parody)
its run by oil people,simple as that
Not all of us think like that. But as one of the more powerful countries in the world we need to step up our environmental efforts more. But green Americans are trying our hardest.
Where are you from, that you have such a view of the US? Just curious.
It's Asia who is polluting the world the most, not Americans.
I heard in world civ. class there is actually an organization today that still believes the world is flat and I'm not kidding. I'm not sure if it's in America though, but seriously, yikes!
The majority of Amricans take global warming/climate change seriously.
But there is a small minority--mostly the religious right--that does still think the earth is flat--or at least, they don't believe in evolution, or in modern geology, physics, or astronomy. And so it is no surprise they are only too happy to believe the oil company propaganda because their clt leaders tell them to.
There is no treatment for willful ignorance.
Most Americans probably haven't been well educated in global climate change. A lot of pseudo-science exists bashing well supported theories and people eat it up. Corporations play on religion and zealots in order to skew information into a load of garbage.
I think people are so welcoming to false information because it is conveinent. Deny there's a problem is a lot easier than facing our destructive behavior and changing it.
The aspect of all of this that bothers me is Americans don't realize how economically sound it is to invest in green electronics and to adopt more environmentally-friendly practices.
The ice-core data is frequently cited as principal evidence to argue that CO2 is the earth’s main climate driver. Rises in the CO2 level "closely corellate" to rises in temperature. It is the jewel in the crown of the theory of man made global warming. But the ice-core data does not show that CO2 drives climate. It shows, very clearly, that the opposite is true!! Variations in temperature precede rises in atmospheric CO2 by several hundred years. It's true they correllate, but with an inverse relationship to that inferred by the Global Warming quacks.
Talk about an inconvenient truth.
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Most Americans don't. Don't judge by the few skeptics you see on FunQA.com.
And it's pretty funny how they keep bringing up the fact that historically CO2 lagged temperature, because it's one of the proofs that this warming is not natural.
CO2 can act in two ways (this is very basic science). It can cause warming through the greenhouse effect, and it is released by warming, since warm ocean waters can hold less CO2.
Historically, warming happened for other reasons, usually the Sun, and then CO2 rose hundreds of years later as the ocean warmed. This time CO2 is going up simultaneously with temperature, proving that this warming is caused by CO2 from burning fossil fuels.
More here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...
The climate is always changing, and people have always adapted. On a list of things to worry about, a rise of a degree or so in a hundred years ... is just not in the same ballpark as:
total thermonuclear war
large meteor strike
flu pandemic
tsunamis
gamma ray burst
yellowstone super volcano eruption
reversal of earth's magnetic poles
new madrid, missouri class earthquakes
Unlike other countries, Americans are free to debate ideas and decide for themselves what makes sense.
And it makes no sense to an American to destroy the American economy, so that China can open a new coal-fired power plant EVERY WEEK and thereby emit more CO2 than America starting in 2008 or 2009.
However, to China, India, third world developing nations, western europe, expatriates, and other America bashers, it makes perfect sense.
Unless you have traveled overseas and visited some third world toilet, you just don't know how far ahead America is compared to the rest of the world.
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The countries I visited had a few people living really well, and everyone else in extreme poverty. I don't see how that is an attractive social model for America.
America invented nuclear energy, that is free of CO2 emissions, and ready to use "off-the-shelf".
Before you get too infatuated with hydrogen ... hydrogen has to be made from something, it is not a base fuel like coal or uranium. Hydrogen is proposed because it is clean burning, not because it solves any energy crisis.
Americans as a whole, no. There are a number of people who will accept misinformation of equal quality as the claim that the planet is flat, however. For example, one person claimed on Y!A that carbonation in soda and beer is the cause of global warming. Many others have made outlandish claims about volcanoes, for example that one volcanic eruption releases more CO2 than humans have in 5,000 years, when in reality volcanoes emit roughly 1% the amount of greenhouse gases that humans emit annually.
I don't know if these are all Americans, but it's true that America produces a lot of misinformation as companies like Exxon Mobile have a lot at stake in the greenhouse gas battle and a lot of money to throw at it. JunkScience.com, for example was started by tobacco company Phillip Morris to depict peer-reviewed papers that connected secondhand smoke and lung cancer as "junk science" and corporate funded 'research' that concluded otherwise as "sound science". Now Exxon Mobile funds the site to do the same thing for science that connects human greenhouse gas emissions with global warming.
There are many Americans who are well-informed about global warming, but there are certainly a large number like Andy G up there who accept claims of the quality that the world is flat.
Didn't your mother ever teach you that starting with and insult is not an effective way to initiate a conversation with the person you insult.
But, to answer your question, very few of us Americans believe the world is flat. But, very few of us believe that government programs, regulations, mandates etc. are likely to solve global warming or any other program. In this, I believe we are more realistic than say people in the EU.
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