Tea Partiers Hold Fossil Fuel Industry's Views on Climate Change

Polar bear on iceOnly 14 percent of Tea Party supporters believe global warming is a real environmental problem compared to 49 percent of the rest of the public, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. Global warming skepticism is an article of faith among Tea Party adherents, some of whom say they rely on the teachings of scripture and conservative opinion leaders as sources for their information about climate science. Tea Partiers' beliefs on global warming agree with those of the fossil fuel industry, which funds the Tea Party movement. Following in the footsteps of the tobacco industry, the fossil fuel industry has carried on a longstanding, pervasive campaign to raise doubts about global warming science and undermine policies that to address it. For decades, the fossil fuel industry has created and lavishly funded institutes that produce anti-global warming studies, organized and paid for rallies and Web sites that question the science, and generated scores of economic analyses that claim policies to reduce greenhouse gases will eliminate jobs and damage the overall economy. Conservative opinion leaders, like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, George F. Will and Sarah Palin have spread the oil industry's ideas by questioning the credibility and motives of scientists who point to global warming as a situation that needs to be addressed. The industry's campaign appears to have had a significant impact on Tea Party adherents' beliefs.

Comments

Some exploitation of natural resources is an essential condition of the human existence. This refers primarily to food production and necessities. The exploitation of nature is often done unsustainably and is of increasing concern as the depletion of natural resources from economic growth and population growth ultimately threatens human existence

Big surprise. The Koch Brothers finance their misguided pseudo organization with the help of FOX's Murdoch and other corporations. These biggies have tricked these clueless people to take BIG Oil's point of view even though it hurts the peope including the Tea Partiers. Was the plan also to ruin our excellent educaton system so the Corporations could pull this off? People who know how to think would never fall for this dangerous view.

The problem with the climate change believers in trying to convince the unbelievers is that the climate is not changing fast enough and its not changing on a continuous up curve.

Andy001 is right about "convincing the unbelievers... climate is not changing fast enough ... etc.." but hopefully this past week's extreme weather will help to give more of them, a bit more to reconsider there position. see; Massive Storm, Lowest Barometric Psi ever recorded in Continental U.S. - Global Warming, predict fewer but more extreme winter storms. http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html ... but ya,, a lot of them will just attribute it to there biblical imputations, the end times and all... ugh! mike d