26/10/2009 (Deforestration Watch) - In a poll of 1,500 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, released Thursday, the number of people saying there is strong scientific evidence that the Earth has gotten warmer over the past few decades is down from 71 percent in April of last year and from 77 percent when Pew started asking the question in 2006. The number of people who see the situation as a serious problem also has declined.

The steepest drop has occurred during the past year, as Congress and the Obama administration have taken steps to control heat-trapping emissions for the first time and international negotiations for a new treaty to slow global warming have been under way.

The poll was released a day after 18 scientific organizations wrote Congress to reaffirm the consensus behind global warming. A federal government report Thursday found that global warming is upsetting the Arctic's thermostat.

Only about a third, or 36 percent of the respondents, feel that human activities – such as pollution from power plants, factories and automobiles – are behind a temperature increase.

That's down from 47 percent from 2006 through last year's poll.

"The priority that people give to pollution and environmental concerns and a whole host of other issues is down because of the economy and because of the focus on other things," suggested Andrew Kohut, the director of the research center, which conducted the poll from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4. "When the focus is on other things, people forget and see these issues as less grave."

Andrew Weaver, a professor of climate analysis at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said politics could be drowning out scientific awareness.

"It's a combination of poor communication by scientists, a lousy summer in the Eastern United States, people mixing up weather and climate and a full-court press by public relations firms and lobby groups trying to instill a sense of uncertainty and confusion in the public," he said.

Political breakdowns in the survey underscore how tough it could be to enact a law limiting pollution emissions blamed for warming. While three-quarters of Democrats believe the evidence of a warming planet is solid, and nearly half believe the problem is serious, far fewer conservative and moderate Democrats see the problem as grave. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans say there is no solid evidence of global warming, up from 31 percent in early 2007.

Despite misgivings about the science, half the respondents still say they support limits on greenhouse gases, even if they could lead to higher energy prices. And a majority – 56 percent – feel the United States should join other countries in setting standards to address global climate change.

But many of the supporters of reducing pollution have heard little to nothing about cap-and-trade, the main mechanism for reducing greenhouse gases favored by the White House and central to legislation passed by the House and a bill the Senate will take up next week.

Under cap-and-trade, a price is put on each ton of pollution, and businesses can buy and sell permits to meet emissions limits.

"Perhaps the most interesting finding in this poll ... is that the more Americans learn about cap-and-trade, the more they oppose cap-and-trade," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who opposes the Senate bill and has questioned global warming science.

Regional as well as political differences were detected in the polling.

People living in the Midwest and mountainous areas of the West are far less likely to view global warming as a serious problem and to support limits on greenhouse gases than those in the Northeast and on the West Coast. Both the House and Senate bills have been drafted by Democratic lawmakers from Massachusetts and California.

The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The survey’s findings is vindicating our position that those who believe in anthropogenic global warming is standing on less than solid ground.

As things stand, only 36% of Americans think anthropogenic Global Warming is real, whilst 64% of Americans think anthropogenic Global Warming is not real.

The percentage of Americans who think AGW is real dropped by roughly 24% over the last 12 months, or 2% per month, from 47% to 36%. If this rate of decline continues for another full year, only 27% of Americans will think AGW is real.

Meanwhile, winter has not yet arrived, but is looming before us. The fall weather in the Northern Hemisphere is already unusually cold in many areas. If this winter is a reversion to the cold weather of much earlier decades, the steep decline in Americans' belief in Global Warming will likely accelerate.

The findings of this survey vindicates Deforestation Watch, which has been maintaining for some time now that all the allegations of palm oil causing massive deforestation leading to global warming is a hoax perpetuated by the “greenies” such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

After all, palm oil is inherently the most sustainable of all oilseed crops with yield that is close to ten times that of its nearest competitors such as soy, canola and sunflower. One hectare of palm oil planted can yield 4-5 metric tons compared to 0.5 metric tons for its competitors.

Malaysia, long the largest producer of palm oil in the world is such a small country that the allegations of deforestation ring hollow as it is obvious when you do the math – palm oil do not require quite as much land to produce the same unit of edible oil as its competitors.

This is borne out by the fact, that the small country that is Malaysia could be the world’s largest producer of palm oil for more than a century and yet retain close to 55% forest cover which dwarfs the 20 odd per cent typically found in the countries of the industrialized west, from which Greenpeace and FoE hail!

What is clearly a cleverly disguised proxy trade war has been elaborately dressed in the cloak of environmental conscience and probity. 

That the global warming hype is losing traction with the American people and indeed, the peoples of the world is a sad come-uppance for a movement that feeds off government grants and public donations to fund their activities and indeed, the livelihood and lavish lifestyles of their office bearers!

Industries like palm oil are victimized without compunction so long as their coffers continue to fill up with willing contributors lining up to ensure that the growth of an edible oil that is the most popular and fastest growing amongst consumers worldwide are checked.  Sadly but inexorably, their bread-wagon is slowly grinding to a halt!