The U.S. is not alone in its skepticism that man contributes to global warming â€" a 2009 Gallup survey found Denmark, the United Kingdom, Norway and the Netherlands were other countries where less than half of respondents blamed global warming on human activity.
But there's a stark difference when you look at who in the U.S. â€" and Orange County â€" is responsible for that skepticism. The difference correlates not with education level but with political party affiliation. (Surveys show that the two parties have roughly the same level of education).
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Among Orange County Republicans polled, 69 percent say man does not contribute to global warming or that there is no global warming. Among Democrats here, 98 percent say man does contribute to global warming. These findings by the OC Political Pulse poll portray an even starker partisanship than shows up in a Gallup nationwide poll, perhaps because OC Political Pulse participants signed up for the polling project and so may be more politically engaged and ideological than those randomly phoned by Gallup.
Even more striking: Among county Republicans, 44 percent say no global warming is taking place. Among Tea Party identifiers, 54 percent say there's no global warming. Among anti-illegal immigration activists, 52 percent don't believe there's global warming. Among conservative Christians, 41 percent say there's no global warming while 97 percent of those who identify as progressive Christians say there is global warming and man is contributing to it.
That sinking feeling
The people of the Maldives and Kiribati islands would appear to side with Orange County's progressive Christians.
Former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed says people need to be relocated from more than 16 islands there because of rising water levels resulting from global warming. The president of Kiribati says his cabinet had approved the purchase of 6,000 acres on the main island of Fiji that would be the country's hedge against rising sea levels. Meanwhile, the journal of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences looked at the writings of 1,372 climate scientists and found that 97 percent thought there was man-made climate change.
Skeptics point to the dissenting scientists, the disagreement on details among scientists, epochs-old fluctuations in global temperatures, and an alleged political agenda among those who promote the notion of man-made global warming, among other things.
But as I previously explored, both sides of the partisan divide tend to take their positions based more on ideology and emotion than a thorough understanding of the facts.
"People come to their political beliefs through emotions, but they think they come them through facts," said Peter Ditto, who specializes in social psychology at UC Irvine. Ditto has a Ph.D. from Princeton but says that even he can't process the scientific information about global warming to make his own determination.
Global polling
While the U.S. is sharply divided along partisan lines on the issue of man-made global warming, Western Europe is divided along country borders.
In the U.S., 48 percent of those polled said man contributes to global warming â€" the same as the world average, according to a 2011 Gallup poll. When all of Western Europe is tallied, 69 percent of its residents say man contributes to global warming. Topping the list is developed Asia, where 83 percent say man contributes to global warming. The least likely to blame man? Sub-Saharan Africa at 32 percent.
The Western European countries most likely to attribute the phenomenon to man are Greece (84 percent) and Spain (71 percent), according to the 2009 Gallup study.
Deniers speak out
Deniers of man-made global warming dominate the comments on the Total Buzz version of this article. A sampling:
"Scientists form options [sic] based on who pays the most. ... This global warming is just another gimmick to raise prices." â€" Anthony Miskulin
"Climate scientists have nothing else to study and they don't have jobs if they don't have 'Grants.' NO HEADLINES - NO GRANTS!" â€" Keith Benicek
"I'm just not all that 'hot' on scientists these days." â€" Maddy Farfan
See all OC Political Pulse polls and sign up to vote in future surveys.
Contact the writer: 714-796-6753 or mwisckol@ocregister.com
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